The Principal Lighthouse Keeper stood in the bows of the longboat and the shadow of Eilean Dhuine fell upon his weathered face. The men at the oars came alongside the landing carved from the islet’s black rock and Crawley leapt onto the island for the sixty-seventh time.

Childs, his new assistant, rose steadily. He flattened his palms for balance but the boat was bobbing up and down on the water and his head was spinning. On the journey he had heaved over the side of the boat and his ashen face, luminous in shadow, was flecked with vegetables from the soup in his belly. Childs gripped the edge of the boat and tried to judge the hop to shore but the gap had widened with the boat’s movement and when he reached for Crawley’s help, his hand was not forthcoming and he overbalanced over the boat and into the freezing waters of the Great Western Ocean.

The men were in uproar laughing as Crawley hauled the shivering Childs out of the water and onto the dark volcanic rock. Then they steered the longboat away from the isle and rowed on, leaving Crawley and Childs alone on that black isle.

Six weeks later, the relief lighthouse keepers secured their boat at the Eastern landing place and scrambled up the steep steps hand-hewn from rock. Nobody there to greet them when they had hove into view. The lighthouse flag unhoisted. Assistant Keeper Spieth had fired a flare from the tender but it was answered only by the circling sea birds and the rocket’s repeat from the crags.

The two men moved quickly— best to meet whatever scene awaited than bear their foreboding any longer. Inclement weather meant that they were thirty days late relieving Crawley and Childs from their shifts. Although they had plenty of food, the recent storm was the worst on record and it was reported no light shone from the beacon the past three nights.

At the summit the men removed their hats and turned sun-ways to thank God for their safety as was custom. They went on. Across the grassy plain the ruined chapel and the stone-built lighthouse beyond. Spieth could remember Crawley versing them in the punctilios of the islands of which Eilean Dhuine was largest in a cluster of seven. Strict rules were to be followed before hunting the island for bird meat and eggs. Strip your garments, Crawley had said. Lay them on the altar. They were to say three prayers before fowling, the first advancing to the chapel on their knees, the second whilst walking around the ruins and the third inside. The most important rule, Crawley had said, is to never kill fowl with a stone.  

Childs sat on the rock with his heels in the soft earth and a rope round his waist from which Crawley was tethered. Crawley deftly descended the cliff face in a manner that belied his years.

‘What if you fall, Mr Crawley?’

‘If I fall, catch me.’

Soon Childs could no longer see the principal lighthouse keeper. All was quiet. Only the tugging on the rope and Crawley grunting with each step. Sweat beaded Childs’ forehead. He leaned back on the soft grass, clutching the rope. Here there were daffodils, some were white and most were yellow and some were studded with orange yolk.

He thought of his mother, over the sea, as the swell sharpened the rocks below. For a moment he was elsewhere, in his eyes swam the ocean, waves of emerald dying white.

‘Pass me the rod, boy.’

Childs grabbed the fowling rod and moved towards the edge of the cliff. He looked down at Crawley stood on a ledge and he could see the gannet nested on a ridge, guarding her eggs. The gannet was white as a swan bar a hood of yellow and her black tipped wings. She was staring at the boy with one brilliant blue eye.

Childs lay on his stomach and crawled to the edge of the cliff. He felt as though he were back on the longboat, the oarsmen’s song on the salted air and his vision buoyant with the marble waters of the Great Western Ocean.

‘The rod!’

Childs lowered the fowling rod but it slipped from his grasp. Then he snatched at it but in so doing disturbed the earth, causing a shelf of loose rock to cascade.

‘O, no,’ Childs said.

He looked for Crawley below and found him staring at the nest through his fingers, silent. The gannet lay bent and bloodied, breathing heavily. Her broken eggs bled with yolk. Out across the sea a storm loomed. It tumbled towards them like the waves, as though the sea had swapped with the sky.

Speith unlocked the gate to the lighthouse as sun-bellied gulls called overhead. He tried the front door but it was locked so he walked round the lighthouse and entered the kitchen. On the two clothes pegs hung an oilskin coat with a pair of sea boots underneath.

The kitchen was clean, the dishes washed and out on the drying rack. Dust motes shone in shafts of light.

More, Speith’s assistant, went over to the unlit fireplace and disturbed the cool charred coal.

They went to the spiral staircase in the centre of the lighthouse and found the clockwork drive weight slumped in the sandpit. They climbed the stairs to the bedrooms but found them empty, the beds made.

All the clocks had wound down and were stopped at Three O’clock, or there abouts.

‘Let’s wind the gears and light the lamp,’ Speith said. ‘Then we’ll search the island.’

Crawley wound the handle, turning the gears and barrel that powered the clockwork lens. Childs watched as the drive weight rose, slowly up the central shaft. When it arrived, Crawley stopped winding and said:

‘Eight hours before it’s wound again. Twice every night.’

In the light room spun the Fresnel lens. A kaleidoscope of sea green glass. One-hundred and forty-thousand candle-power lamp, Crawley had said. A golden light that dazzles. Ships see us from twenty-four miles. Stepped glass, concentric, annular. Two-hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level.

When they left the lighthouse the spring sunshine stung their eyes. Speith cupped his mouth and called, Crawley, Childs.

Nothing.

They searched the Western landing place and found that the storm had displaced the wooden box that held the mooring ropes and the crane handles. A large block of stone had been tossed by the gales to the concrete path thirty feet below. The life buoy torn from its ropes by the force of the sea.

When More returned to the summit he cried:

‘Our boat!’

Speith looked beyond the Eastern landing place and out across the marbled surface of the Great Western Ocean. He saw their boat. A lone oarsman, with every frantic row, was sailing ever further from Eilean Dhuine.

March 2021