I crawled down beside him and waited. The engine started, then Tom spread a tarpaulin over us and the light was blacked out.
`Where are we going?' I demanded.
Anderson said quietly, 'Tom will drop us at my boat. Maybe it's being watched. Maybe it isn't. When we reach it be ready to jump.'
`But where — ?'
He cut me off. 'Until we get there, only I know. When we get there . . .' he paused and added after a moment, 'you'll see.'
boat was moving off now. The engine puttered quietly, and water swished along the boards beside my ears. The trip took only three or four minutes. Then Tom lifted the end of the tarpaulin. 'Seems quiet,' he said softly, 'but I don't know. There's a Russian purseseine-setter half a cable away.'
`Can you see anybody on her?'Anderson asked.
`No. But . .
But there would be somebody. All three of us knew it. Anderson said, 'We'll have to try it. Go ahead, Tom.'
The engine's power increased for a few moments, then died back to a slow throb. '
Coming on her now,' Tom's voice said.
`Right.' Anderson flung back the tarpaulin and we sat up then stood, then jumped as the boat came neatly alongside Anderson's big Shetland model. Anderson put his foot on the thwart and stepped easily across. I followed a good deal less gracefully and a lot more noisily. But at least I was aboard.
`Get the anchor up!' Anderson ordered briskly, himself bending to the engine. Obediently I hauled on the chain, the metallic racket loud in the stillness as it fell through my hands into the little chain locker. Then the motor was going and we were off. I secured the anchor and went back to join Anderson and we both stared back at the lines of tied up vessels.
It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I thought savagely, that I'd been doing exactly this, trying to sneak unobserved out of Lerwick harbour. Apparent success; no success at all. I thought about the events that had followed, the ghastly cradle-ride, the desperate race over Noss, the final exhaustion from which only the helicopter had saved me. I remembered I hadn't thanked Elliot and Willingham for saving me; hadn't even asked where they'd got the helicopter or how they knew where I was. Nor, I realized then, had they ofiered to tell me! My eyes strayed involuntarily upward to search the night sky for lights, but it was dark and empty. The only lights were in the town. High on the hill I could see the glow of flaring torchlight from the Up-Helly-Aa procession. Or maybe it was the galley, already burning. Somehow in that moment it seemed a bad omen.
Tom's boat was already almost out of sight, and soon we were coming under the Bressay cliffs, leading south towards Bard Head. Anderson's face was pale and determined. He was fighting shock and fighting it well, but there would be a penalty to be paid. I said, thinking of the night before, Ìs there anything aboard. Tea? Whisky?'
`Both.'
Ì'll make some tea.' I went into the little cabind and put the kettle on. The whole thing was like some nightmare
re-run of the earlier trip. The kettle boiled, I made the tea, poured it into a mug, stirred in a lot of sugar as treatment for shock and handed it out to him. When he'd drunk half, I laced the remainder with Scotch, and watched him finish it.
`How do you feel?'
Ì'm all right.'
I said, 'I didn't lead them to you, you know. They must have had a lot of men in town tonight, watching for us.'
Ì know. Forget it.'
Somehow I found myself slightly in awe of Anderson, something I don't feel often for an yone. He had the solid confidence of a wholly self-contained man, a tangible authority that seemed to come from deep knowledge of his own world. Looking at him now, at the helm of his boat, it wasn't difficult to imagine other Andersons a thousand years ago, coming confidently to these shores in the same flimsy longboats that also explored Iceland and Greenland and may even have crossed to America. I almost hesitated to speak. Almost. I told myself sharply not to be a fool, and said, `Tell me where the bloody thing is. And why you copied it.'
He glanced at me. Àlsa's note said her life depended on that one thing. It wasn't much, that flimsy wee piece of film, for the girl's life to hang on. But Alsa wouldn't have said it, if it hadn't been true. You'd know that. I thought, what if I lose it, or maybe damage it. What then? So I made a copy.'
Òne copy.'
Àye, one. I'd not lose two'
`Where are we going? And when we get there, what then?'
`Later.'
`Now!' I said. 'You can't afford to be the rugged individualist. Not any more. You've only one arm, for a start. You're going to need me.'
`He looked at me dourly, the weighing eye of the islander
on the city slicker. But he told me. 'Noss,' he said. `The Holm? That bloody cradle !'
`There isn't a cradle any more. I cut the rope last night. But it's on the Holm, all the same.'
`Then how — ?'
He spoke one word then, and I shuddered, because the word meant a lot of things; it also flashed pictures on the screen of my mind. I didn't like what I saw. The word was, `
Climb.'
I made myself speak quietly, and reasonably, and listened to the tremble in my voice., '
You can't climb it.'
`No.'
Ànd I certainly can't.'
He turned to look at me and nodded. 'You can do it.'
I said, 'I wouldn't even try. I get vertigo on a long escalator. I've no climbing skill. For Christ's sake, man!'
`Take the wheel.' He went into the cabin and came out again a moment later carrying a big canvas bag with a drawstring neck. He fiddled one-handed with it for a moment, then handed it to me. I pulled the neck wide and he tipped the contents out: a pile of metal objects that rattled into the stern seat. He shone his torch on the little pile and picked out a shiny piece of metal a few inches long. 'See that? '
I nodded. 'What is it?'
`jumar clip,' he said. 'Sooner use Heiblers myself, but the Jumar's safe and efficient and I'
ve no Heiblers here. Now see,' he fumbled among the bits and pieces and selected three other items. The first was another identical clip. The other two were stirrups of some kind, with strong webbing through the eyelets.
`Now do you see?'
Ì bloody well don't see!' I thought of that dreadful cliff, all two hundred feet of it, sheer and impossible. And I thought about Alsa, too, and my stomach churned because I knew suddenly that I was going to try. I had to try! I'd fail; I knew that, too, with awful certainty, just as I'd failed all
along the line. But with Alsa still a prisoner .. .
I said soberly, through a dry, rasping throat, 'How does it work?'
Anderson said, 'In the night, before I cut the cable, I crossed to the Holm and let down a rope. It's secure, don't worry. Now, what you do is this . . I listened appalled. It was safe, he said. I couldn't fall, he said. He got the climbing belt from the cabin and demonstrated how safe it was and why I couldn't fall. He told me the breaking strain of the nylon line was God knows how many thousand pounds. He didn't convince me for a second.
We moved away from the eastern cliffs of Bressay, across open water towards the southern tip of Noss. When I could tear my eyes away from the sinister wedge silhouette of the island, I glanced across towards Bressay, wondering about Lincoln's boat. Was it wrecked, sunk, what? I should have felt guilty, but I didn't. Where I was going, sins were forgiven, though I doubted if Lincoln would forgive mine. The closer we came, the more impossible the whole crazy idea became. As distance narrowed, the cliffs reared higher. From above they'd seemed big, from below, as Anderson nosed the boat in beneath them, they looked stupendous, grim dark grey walls striped strangely across with dull white. Anderson looked up at them almost with affection. He could afford to; he didn't have to climb.
He said, 'Be glad it's winter.'
`Why?'