The Silver Darlings Read Online Free

strongly—just a very little. We don’t want to drift off this spot.”
    By the time they saw the boats coming out from the harbour mouth they didn’t mind who would inspect their catch. It was a fine evening, with the wind, from the land, inclined to fall. They watched the small fleet with an increase of excitement and a certain self-consciousness, expecting them to pass close by and in a friendly way call a few sarcastic greetings. “We’ll just answer, off-hand, ‘Oh, about a cran or two.’ Like that,” said Tormad. “Leave it to me.”
    But the herring boats did not come near them. They watched the oars rising and falling like the legs of great beetles as the small fleet headed south. They were all open boats, one or two of the largest some twenty feet in length. The use of sail on this northern coast was as yet little understood and on this fair evening not one was to be seen.
    Tormad began wondering if he had come to the wrong place. They discussed this. “We’re doing fine here,” said Ronnie. “And it’s as well we should have the first night by ourselves.” They all agreed with this in their hearts, but Tormad said he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t see why they shouldn’t go where anyone else went. Success had given a fillip to his adventurous mood. Tormad could be put up or down, and when he was up he could be very high. But in the end he smiled. “Ach well, it’s fine here, boys, by ourselves and we’re doing grand.” Often enough the herring boats caught little or nothing. Perhaps they themselves in this spot might be lucky. It would be a joke if theirs would be the only boat to go into Helmsdale with herring in the morning! They laughed. They had made up their minds to distribute all the white fish they caught among their own folk as a first offering to good luck, and now Ian began to mimic old Morag’s astonishment when he went up andpresented her with the cod. He did it very well, hanging to high-pitched vowels and flapping his hands. Life was good, too!
    “They’re shooting their nets now,” said Tormad. Some two miles to the south the boats were scattered over the sea. Blue shadows came down the hills. Tormad blew up his big buoy until his eyes disappeared. He had got it from the man in Golspie, and though its skin crackled with age it seemed tight enough. He could hardly blow up the second one for laughing, because it was the bag of an old set of pipes to which they had danced many a time as boys. It had a legendary history, for the old piper, its owner, had been a wild enough lad in his day. When he was driven from his home, he cursed the landlord-woman (who had inherited all that land), her sassenach husband, her factors, in tongues of fire. Then he had broken his pipes, tearing them apart. It had been an impressive, a terrifying scene, and shortly after it he had died.
    Well, here was the bag, and perhaps it marked not an end but a beginning! They had had a little superstitious fear about using it. But they couldn’t afford to buy another buoy, and, anyway, they argued, if it brought them luck it would be a revenge over the powers that be. The dead piper wouldn’t be disappointed at that!
    The net was made of hemp and, being old, was coarse and stiff, but quite strong. The large buoy, tied to the outer end by a fathom of rope, was first slung overboard; then as Ronnie and Torquil let out the net, with its back-rope and corks, Tormad slipped a flat stone into each noose as it came along on the foot-rope, Ian meantime keeping the boat going ahead for the wind had all but dropped. It took them a long time, for Tormad would insist on hauling at the part of the net already in the sea to make sure that it was going down as straight as a fence. He got wet from hand to neck doing this, without being aware of it. At last he dropped the piper’s bag upon the sea with his blessing, adding, “Now play you the tune of your life, my hero, andlet himself smile on us from the green glens of