LITMIR.BIZ

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rumbled down the road toward the interior of the island; recently-built huts of corrugated iron, an age away from the primitive thatched Uist cottages of field-stone that stood scattered over the oozy plain, shouldered one another near the pier. The hotelkeeper had said briefly that something important, in a military way, was in progress in the heart of South Uist. A range for guided missiles, perhaps; and perhaps something even newer. Idle policemen, the hotelkeeper had said, lounged about the approaches to the construction-area. He did not like it. It would spoil the snipe-shooting, and also evict honest families from their crofts. “Those men in London are spoiling the best places and the best people.”

      About the middle of the morning, Logan plodded up the soggy road to the schoolhouse. The sky was very gray again, and a fairly heavy rain was falling; but even the guidebook confessed that the climate of South Uist was the worst in Britain. MacLean, the rawboned schoolmaster, would do what he could to assist the gentleman. Leaving the schoolroom in charge of a senior boy, he went back with Logan toward the harbor. Yes, Mr. MacLean knew the master of a drifter, now in Loch Boisdale, who might conceivably engage to land Mr. Logan in Carnglass. This fisherman, though akin to the schoolmaster, was a very remote cousin, mind, and in need of money, to pay a fine. A fine for what? For poaching. Logan wanted to know what sort of poaching – fishing in forbidden waters?

      “No,” said MacLean, shortly, “sheep. Judge not that ye be not judged. My cousin Colin knows all the shore of all the lonely islands, and on some of the islands there are sheep, and deer. Whatever Colin is or is not, there is no better pilot in all the Outer Isles.”

      Although Colin’s boat was in the harbor, the man himself was not in sight when the schoolmaster and Logan got down to the pier. “He will be drinking somewhere,” the school master said. “But here are some people to interest you: people from Daldour.”

      Seated on the clammy pier, eating bread and butter in the drizzle, were three men in rough island dress and rubber boots – or, rather, two men and a bright-eyed boy. All three had about them a twilight look. Their bodies were lean, their cheeks were hollow, their teeth protruded slightly; a Lowlander might have said that they were not canny.

      They seemed so much alike that, but for differences in age, they might have been triplets. “MacAskivals,” the schoolmaster murmured. “A dying breed. In Daldour, now, most are old bachelors and old maids; they have seen too much of one another, and will not marry. The last of an old song. That big lobster boat by the pier is theirs; the MacAskivals have but a naked beach at Daldour. I will speak the Gaelic to them, for they will speak no English, although this boy knows the English well enough. Among themselves, Mr. Logan, they speak a dialect as strange to me as the Gaelic is to you.”

      Except for the boy’s bright glance, the three MacAskivals had given no sign of recognition as the schoolmaster and Logan approached. Now, as Mr. MacLean spoke to the three in Gaelic, there came very faint shy smiles to all three narrow faces; the two men nodded, and the boy replied in the slow flowing Gaelic. Presently, in a cautious tone, the schoolmaster seemed to say something significant. The boy turned to the elder of the two men, who spoke curtly, and the boy translated for him to the schoolmaster. As he finished speaking, over the boy’s eyes came a kind of glaze, and the two men turned again to munching bread and butter, as if they had forgotten the existence of everyone else.

      “I asked them,” the schoolmaster told Logan, “whether they would take you with them to Daldour, and then to Carnglass. They are in Loch Boisdale for this day only, to buy what few things they do buy, from month to month. They said they would not take you to Carnglass; it is not a good place for a man to go.”

      “Not for fifty pounds?” Logan asked.

      “For no price, I believe. But if money speaks, my cousin Colin is the man for you. And here he comes.” A squat man was sauntering along the pier. “Colin is not overly civil, and he is fond of the drink; but he knows the waters and the coasts.” They turned away from the three silent MacAskivals and walked to meet the fisherman-poacher.

      What is uncommon among the people of the Isles, Colin MacLean seemed surly. He did not acknowledge the schoolmaster’s introduction of Logan. “Colin,” said the schoolmaster, “Mr. Logan asks you to set him ashore in Carnglass. I will leave you to make your bargain.” Logan shook his hand, and the schoolmaster strode up the hill.

      Colin MacLean gave Logan a long hard look from under the brim of his sou’wester. “Carnglass, is it?” The only polish about Colin was his careful English speech, no doubt learned from the British Broadcasting Company, and uttered with a musical Gaelic intonation. Colin MacLean spat upon the pier. “Carnglass: and so Lagg and his keepers would shoot holes in my boat. You may go to hell, Mr. Logan.”

      Logan drew from his billfold ten big colorful notes of the Royal Bank of Scotland: five-pound notes. “This is yours, Mr. MacLean,” he said, “if you’ll set me ashore anywhere in Carnglass. It needn’t be Askival harbor. Is there no other spot where a boat might put in?”

      Colin stared at the notes. “There is a place, Dalcruach, in the east, where at high tide a boat – a small boat – can pass over the reefs, if the sea is calm. All the rest is cliff. But I would not risk my drifter among the rocks. You would need to row over the reefs alone. Here: I have an old dinghy. For twenty pounds more, I would sell it to you. I would bring you as close to Dalcruach as I could, and then you would take the dinghy and fend for yourself, Mr. Logan. Are you a seaman?”

      “I’ve rowed before,” Logan said. “Here’s another twenty pounds for the dinghy.”

      “The swell about Carnglass is a fearful thing,” Colin went on, shaking his heavy head in doubt, “and the reefs are like knives. Now would you sign a paper to say that Colin MacLean would be in no way responsible for the possible drowning of Mr. Hugh Logan?”

      “I would,” Logan answered. “Take me aboard your drifter, and I’ll write it now.”

      Colin tucked the five-pound notes into his pocket. “Midnight, Mr. Logan: come aboard at midnight, and we will make for Carnglass. It is not good to be seen landing in Carnglass; there might be a keeper with a rifle, even at Dalcruach. I will land you at Dalcruach early in the morning, with the tide in flood, the weather permitting. And then I wash my hands of it.”

      That afternoon, Logan borrowed from the hotelkeeper an old knapsack, into which he put some socks and underclothing, a shirt, sandwiches and chocolate, and a thermos of coffee. He would leave his suitcase at the hotel. He put on heavy waterproof boots and an old cap, and wore his oilskin and carried his stick. And he was ready long before midnight.

      Colin MacLean, with two less dour South Uist men who made up his crew, received him solemnly aboard the drifter. They puffed out of Loch Boisdale into the sea, with only two lights showing; and after that, for hours, Logan could perceive nothing but the obscurity of the night sky, clouds shutting out moon and stars. Before dawn, they stopped the engine, and Logan thought he could make out, vaguely, an enormous land-mass to the south. The drifter rolled heavily in a menacing swell; and there came the noise of that swell breaking upon rocks. “I will give you back your money for this dinghy,” said Colin, with a sour grin, “if you have changed your mind.”

      “Let me into the dinghy,” Logan told him, “and I’ll cast off.”

      “The more fool you,” Colin growled. They picked their way over the uneasy little deck to the stern, where the dinghy was in tow. MacLean let down a rope ladder into the little boat; he held an electric torch to light Logan’s descent. “Here,” said Colin, in a last-minute access of charity, “I will make you a present of the torch, Mr. Logan. And here is something else for you.” Colin took a bottle of whiskey from a jacket-pocket and thrust it into Logan’s canvas pack. “You will be wetted in beaching the boat, and the sea is cold. Row straight for the cliff ahead. The tide will carry you over the reef, but you must watch sharp for the needle-rocks. At Dalcruach clachan there is a keeper’s cottage, and perhaps you can dry yourself there.” Under his breath, Colin muttered something like “God help you.”

      Then Logan cast off and took the dinghy’s oars. The drifter receded into the night.

      For a moment,

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