North Star

CHAPTER ONE

It took three days to get new cables sent out and wound on to the winch drums. Some of the big oil companies had established a supply base at Lyness in Orkney and were beginning to move back-up facilities to Lerwick, but Star-Trion was an independent and had to get supplies where it could. Mostly that meant Aberdeen, which was a long haul. Another day was lost in retrieving the anchors and re-laying them, so that it wasn't until late on 12th June that the drilling string was connected up again and the rig operational. The meeting in Ed Wiseberg's office had established nothing. Both the cables had parted at their extremities, close to the length of chain shackled to the anchor. This was confirmed later when Rattler winched in both buoys and the anchors at the end of their pennant wires. No. 1 had fifteen feet of cable still attached to the chain, No. 2, seven feet. This seemed to support the conclusion reached at the meeting that the cables were old and suffering from fatigue and that replacement of all anchor cables was essential for the safety of the rig.

Since the discussion had centred on the condition of the cables, I was not involved, except to the extent of justifying my departure from Ken Stewart's instructions in order to identify the fishing boat Island Girl. My action was accepted as being reasonable in the circumstances, Ed Wiseberg merely insisting that in future I adhere strictly to the barge engineer's orders. I made no reference to that moment when I thought I had felt an explosion under water. In view of what was discovered later it would have been better if I had, but with everybody convinced that cable fatigue was the cause, it would have introduced a new dimension. I did, however, point out that the fishing boat, Island Girl, had been steaming without lights, but they merely put that down to the determination of Shetland's fishermen to shoot their nets close in to the rig. They thought it was a political move, since the purse-seiners normally worked closer inshore, and the absence of lights was attributed to a natural desire to avoid being sighted by the guard boat.

Immediately following that conference I had arranged to get Gertrude ashore. I had never had a woman on board a trawler before and the fact that the crew were so accustomed to her presence that, almost unconsciously, they looked to her for decisions, made my own position considerably more difficult than it would otherwise have been. Johan, in particular, had a great fondness for her, as though she were a close relative as well as the owner. In any case, we needed I her back at base to organize supplies. There was no room for her on the helicopter, but when the new cables came out I got her away on Rattler. After that I was able to re-establish my authority and get a grip on the ship and her crew.

There was a great deal of activity during the days it took to get the rig fully operational again. But once they had resumed drilling, everything settled down to normal, and the dullness of our patrol, the steady routine of watch-and-watch about, made things considerably easier for me. Throughout this period the Shetlanders gave us no trouble. Indeed, for the better part of a week we never saw a single fishing boat. Johan thought they would be fishing either west of Sumburgh or out by Fair Isle, for the weather was fine and clear. It was mid-summer now, the days so long there was almost no night, only a weird pinkish twilight before the sun edged up over the horizon again.

Twenty-third June and another clear, silky morning. I was just coming off watch when the rig called us. I was to report on board immediately — Ed Wiseberg's orders. I found him alone in the toolpusher's office, his hard, leathery face even more craggy than usual. 'You've seen this, have you?' It was a copy of the Shetland paper with a headline — Dragging Rig a Danger to Lives.

'No, we haven't had any papers sent out yet.'

He grunted. 'Then you won't have seen the stories in your national press. The Morning Star is the worst, of course, accusing Villiers of gambling with men's lives. But they're all on to it — The Times, Express, Telegraph, the whole goddam lot, all screaming for our blood.' He flung the pile down in front of me, staring at me angrily as though I personally had leaked the story. The intercom phone rang, and while he answered it, I picked up one of the papers, my eye caught by several lines of print underlined in red: It is not the first time things have gone wrong for this 51-year-old American driller. In the past six years he has had a fire, a blowout and an accident in which two men were killed. Regarded as something of a Jonah by his fellow toolpushers, it is hardly surprising that he now finds himself in charge of the oldest rig in the North Sea operating west of Shetland in the most dangerous sea area of all.

No wonder he was angry. I turned to the Telegraph. Here, too, the story was front page news, but at that point I suddenly became interested in what he was saying over the phone — something about fishing boats and he had mentioned Gertrude Petersen's name. He reached for a pad, made a note and then looked across at me. 'Okay, George. I think that's a pretty smart deal… Yeah, I guess that should cool the whole thing down, locally at any rate. When d'you reckon it'll be on station?… That's fine. Rattler can stand by till it arrives. Yeah, I'll tell him. He's here with me right now.' And he put the phone down. 'That was George Fuller,' he said. For a moment he didn't say anything more, just stood there facing me, his brows drawn down and his face grim. He was looking older than when I had last seen him, the lines of his face deeper, the shoulders sagging. The effect was to make him seem less than life size, as though the weight of responsibility had diminished his stature.

The silence hung heavy. 'What was it about?' I asked him.

'You.' He paused, still frowning. Then he straightened up, squaring his shoulders. 'First, I'd better tell you the results of the laboratory tests on Nos. 1 and 2 cables. We sent the whole lot ashore, including the broken ends from both anchor chains. It wasn't what we thought. No indication of cable fatigue. Know what it was?' He was suddenly leaning on the desk, his head thrust aggressively forward. 'Sabotage.'

I was so shocked by the boldness of his statement that all I could think of was that moment on the bridge when something, some force, had slammed against the soles of my feet. So I'd been right. It had been an underwater explosion.

That surprise you?' He glowered at me. 'No, I bet " it doesn't. I can see it in your face. You know damn well they were ripped apart by a bomb.'

'Are you accusing me?'

'I'm not accusing you of anything. All I know is that your political record stinks, and yours was the only boat with the opportunity-'

'What about that purse-seiner I reported steaming without lights?' But I knew Island Girl hadn't had time to undertake what would have been a very tricky operation. He knew it, too.

'That fishing vessel's got nothing to do with it. Mebbe you haven't either. God knows how it was done. But there it is. There's the laboratory report.'

He picked up a telex and tossed it across to me. 'Read it if you want to. The frayed ends of those cables all showed indications of heat metamorphosis. Traces of carbon, other more technical details. It all adds up, the findings conclusive. And something else you should read.' He reached for the local paper and handed it to me, his finger pointing to the second column of the front page story. That boat you saw. It wasn't fishing. It was tailing you. Read it.'

'But it couldn't possibly-'

'Read it. Then I'll tell you what we've decided.'

It was a statement by Ian Sandford:

The rig's only stand-by boat is the Duchess of Norfolk, manned partly by foreigners. This is not the sort of boat that should be permitted to harry our fishing boats, which have an age-old right to fish those waters. Nor should a man with a police record be in command of the one boat with the right to come and go around the rig. This should be a Shetland responsibility. My own boat was, in fact, present in the neighbourhood of the rig at the time it began to drag. The man on watch saw the Duchess out by the windward buoys, but then she forced Island Girl to leave the area.

The implication was obvious, and it went on: Mr Sandford, who was recently elected to the Zetland County Council, drew a hair-raising picture of what could happen if this rig were to break adrift at the moment when the drill bit had penetrated an underwater oil reservoir. 'It could mean,' he told our reporter, 'vast quantities of crude oil gushing out into the waters west of Shetland. Every fisherman knows the effect this would have on his livelihood. But it's not just the fishing that would be hit. With the prevailing winds, all the west of Shetland could be totally polluted, the whole coastline black with crude oil. The beauty of our islands, the bird life, everything that attracts the tourist, would be ruined.'

His solution: A modern, self-positioning drilling ship in place of the obsolete North Star. And in the interim, proper surveillance with two Shetland boats sharing the guard duties, and manned by Shetlanders.

So that was it. The man had turned politician and was using his new position to get us out and his own boats in. I looked across at the big toolpusher and knew by the look on his face I hadn't a hope of changing his mind. 'You're ditching us, is that it?'

'Call it that if you like. I told you, when I first met you, I didn't want you on my rig. Now I don't want you anywhere near it — or your ship. Nor does George. You're a political liability, and to my way of thinking a potential danger to the rig.' He was looking down at the paper again, his voice thick with anger as he said, 'A dynamic stationed drill ship! That shows their goddam ignorance. A dynamic stationed ship in these waters! There's no heave compensator invented could cope with the pitch and movement of a drill ship in the waves we'll be getting out here later in the year.'

But I wasn't interested. To hell with drill ships and technicalities. All I cared about in that moment was the Duchess and Gertrude. Myself, too. 'We've a contract,' I said. 'And provided we can keep on station-'

His fist came down, hammering at the desk. 'I don't give a damn about your contract. No doubt you'll get compensation, if that's what you're worrying about. George can sort that one out with the Petersen woman. Now get back to your ship and get it out of here. Okay? Rattler takes over from the Duchess as of now.'

I was so angry I had to push my hands down into my pockets to stop myself doing something stupid. 'Have you thought about how an explosive device could have been attached to the cables — close to the anchor stocks in 500 feet of water?' I was holding myself in, my voice tight and controlled. 'You think about that. A bomb slid down the pennant wire from buoy to anchor would cut the buoy adrift and mark the anchor when it exploded. I saw those anchors as Rattler hauled them up. They were undamaged. And the buoys didn't break adrift. Both pennant wires were intact. And if you think somebody could slide a device down the cable from the rig end of it on a snap block, then you just try it, see whether it gets anywhere near as close as the point of break on those two cables.'

I had his attention then. 'Okay. How do you think it was done then?'

It was a matter I had given some thought to, but I hesitated, suspecting a trap. When a man has virtually accused you of sabotaging his anchor cables, you don't expect him to enquire about the method used without some ulterior motive. But Ed Wiseberg wasn't built that way. He was a rugged, straightforward drill operator and there was no guile in the grey eyes waiting upon my answer. Their expression was one of puzzlement, and it came as a shock to realize that the man was out of his depth and profoundly worried. He really was seeking my advice. 'Christ! You expect me to tell you?'

'Not if you had a hand in it. No.' He shrugged, and then suddenly that craggy face broke into a smile. 'But I'm asking you all the same. You know about the sea. I don't.'

I laughed. I couldn't help myself. 'You asking me!' The bloody nerve of it! 'All right,' I said. 'I'll tell you.' And I cursed myself for a fool. But you couldn't help liking him, and he knew how to handle men. 'It could only have been done by a ship towing a grapnel. I can't think of any other way. If a grapnel were towed just the rig side of one of the anchor buoys it would be bound to grab hold of the cable. The device could then have been slipped down the grapnel line. A good lead weight on top of that, then cut the line adrift and let it sink.'

'And how do you set it off — delayed action?'

'Either that, or fasten a thin connecting wire to the side of the anchor buoy so that you can detonate by radio signal.' Even as I said it, thinking the method out as I went along, the real reason for the presence of that fishing boat flashed into my mind. 'Since they need a gale to make the operation worthwhile, radio signal would be the sensible method of triggering the bomb off.'

'So we inspect the buoys, a daily routine.' He nodded. 'Yeah. That's the answer.' He came round the edge of the desk. 'I guess you think I'm being pretty rough, hm? Well, nothing I can do about that. I got the rig to consider and the bloody Shetlanders on my back.' He held out his hand, the tough, leathery features lit by a smile of surprising charm. 'I hear the fishing's good now, so no hard feelings, eh?'

I shook his hand. What else? It wasn't his fault. And no good telling him that in getting rid of me he was losing the one person who knew enough to give the rig some protection. 'Good luck!' I said, and I meant it, remembering that paragraph in the Express underlined in red.

He nodded, reached for his safety helmet and gloves, and then he was gone, striding out on to the helicopter deck. I watched him through the window as he headed for the derrick floor, back to the world that was his life, the world he knew and understood.

I thought then, and still think, that the division between toolpushers and barge engineers is a dangerous one. How can you expect a man who has spent most of his life drilling on land to adapt himself to the sea in middle life? Ed Wiseberg at fifty-one couldn't be expected to think in terms of a real Shetland gale. He couldn't even conceive what it was like. Yet so long as North Star was drilling, he was in charge.

I went slowly out on the deck, pausing a moment to see his heavy figure climbing the long iron stairway at the base of the derrick that led from pipe deck to derrick floor, climbing with a sort of punchy swagger. He flung open the corrugated iron door and stood there for a moment surveying the scene, a lone figure standing right above the pipe skid, the noise of the draw-works blasting out and the men inside dancing a strange ballet around the kelly, the tongs in their hands and the winches screaming. Then he stepped forward into that hell's kitchen of machinery and closed the door behind him, safe now among the tools that were his trade.

God help him, I thought, as I turned away, wondering how he would measure up if he was caught in a real storm.

The Duchess was wallowing in the bright sunlight out by No. 7 buoy. I went down the stairway then to the waiting boat, and as the outboard pushed us clear of the cold cavern of the rig's undersection, I was considering how I would break it to the crew. They had been out here for over two months now, sacrificing shore time for the benefit of their ship. I wasn't angry.

I was past that. But the humiliation of it sickened me, knowing that they would have nobody to blame but myself. And later, when we reached Shetland, there would be Gertrude to tell.

I climbed on board and went straight to the bridge.

Lars was at the wheel and I told him to turn in towards Rattler. She was still moored stern-on to the rig unloading stores. I steamed close past her bows, hailing her skipper and telling him it was all his now. He wished us luck and I was thinking I could certainly do with some as I swung away to point our bows towards Mainland of Shetland. Then I called the crew to the bridge and told them why we were leaving.

I could see the shock and dismay in their faces and I didn't wait for the inevitable questions, but ducked into the chart recess to lose myself for a moment in the practicalities of working out the course for Scalloway. Johan followed me shortly afterwards. 'So we get compensation and Gertrude pays off the mortgage, then we go fishing, ja?' He was smiling and I guessed what he was thinking. That close positive relations between them would be resumed and everything would go on as it had before. He put a great paw on my arm. 'What will you do then?' To my surprise there was real concern in his voice.

'I haven't thought about that,' I said.

He nodded. 'Well, time you think about it.' He hesitated, his head turned away from me, staring out through the doorway as he said, 'You are a good captain, a good seaman, ja — but for you it is not enough to fish.' He spoke slowly, awkwardly, as though afraid of giving offence. 'Fishing is a good life. But not for you. You need something bigger. Politics per'aps, or oil.'

'You may be right,' I said and gave him the course. He didn't say anything after that. For him it had been a long speech. We had moved into the bridge and we were silent, both of us wrapped in our own thoughts, the only sounds the sounds of the sea and the hum of the engines.

The evening was deepening into twilight as we steamed through the Middle Channel into Scalloway, and we had barely dropped our anchor under the castle ruins when a boat put out from the shore and came alongside. The old man at the oars wore a fisherman's cap. He said his name was Mclver and that he had a note for me from Gertrude Petersen. All this in a high piping voice like the call of a curlew. I bent over the bulwarks and took the note from his outstretched hand, ripping open the envelope and reading it by the light of the deck light. It was dated 23rd June at 14.15:

I think perhaps you do not come into The Taing but go direct to Scalloway. In case, this is to tell you that a Detective-Sergeant from Hull came to the house this morning. He is asking for you, but will not say why. His name is Gorse and he is waiting for you at the hotel in Scalloway. I think you may like to know so I am leaving this note for Terry McIver of Dun Croft to give you as soon as you arrive. It is more trouble for you, I think, so let me know if there is anything I can do. G. And she had added a PS: Sand-ford now has the Star-Trion contract. He is providing two Shetland boats to replace the Duchess.

I looked across at the lights of the little port, thinking there wasn't much time now to do what I had to do. Any moment a boat would put out from the pier and I had no doubts as to why Gorse was here. 'Do you have a car?' I asked the old man. But he shook his head. 'Know anybody who could run me over to Taing?'

'Aye. My son. He's got a Ford van.'

I told him to wait and went to my cabin, hurriedly stuffing the things I'd need into my grip. I took my anorak, and sea boots as well, shouted to Johan that he was in charge now, and a moment later I was in the boat and being rowed ashore. Money and a vehicle, and I didn't wait for the inevitable questions, but ducked into the chart recess to lose myself for a moment in the practicalities of working out the course for Scalloway. Johan followed me shortly afterwards. 'So we get compensation and Gertrude pays off the mortgage, then we go fishing, ja?' He was smiling and I guessed what he was thinking. That close positive relations between them would be resumed and everything would go on as it had before. He put a great paw on my arm. 'What will you do then?' To my surprise there was real concern in his voice.

'I haven't thought about that,' I said.

He nodded. 'Well, time you think about it.' He hesitated, his head turned away from me, staring out through the doorway as he said, 'You are a good captain, a good seaman, ja — but for you it is not enough to fish.' He spoke slowly, awkwardly, as though afraid of giving offence. 'Fishing is a good life. But not for you. You need something bigger. Politics per'aps, or oil.'

'You may be right,' I said and gave him the course. He didn't say anything after that. For him it had been a long speech. We had moved into the bridge and we were silent, both of us wrapped in our own thoughts, the only sounds the sounds of the sea and the hum of the engines.

The evening was deepening into twilight as we steamed through the Middle Channel into Scalloway, and we had barely dropped our anchor under the castle ruins when a boat put out from the shore and came alongside. The old man at the oars wore a fisherman's cap. He said his name was McIver and that he had a note for me from Gertrude Petersen. All this in a high piping voice like the call of a curlew. I bent over the bulwarks and took the note from his outstretched hand, ripping open the envelope and reading it by the light of the deck light. It was dated 23rd June at 14.15:

I think perhaps you do not come into The Taing but go direct to Scalloway. In case, this is to tell you that a Detective-Sergeant from Hull came to the house this morning. He is asking for you, but will not say why. His name is Gorse and he is waiting for you at the hotel in Scalloway. I think you may like to know so I am leaving this note for Terry McIver of Dun Croft to give you as soon as you arrive. It is more trouble for you, I think, so let me know if there is anything I can do. G. And she had added a PS: Sand-ford now has the Star-Trion contract. He is providing two Shetland boats to replace the Duchess.

I looked across at the lights of the little port, thinking there wasn't much time now to do what I had to do. Any moment a boat would put out from the pier and I had no doubts as to why Gorse was here. 'Do you have a car?' I asked the old man. But he shook his head. 'Know anybody who' could run me over to Taing?'

'Aye. My son. He's got a Ford van.'

I told him to wait and went to my cabin, hurriedly stuffing the things I'd need into my grip. I took my anorak, and sea boots as well, shouted to Johan that he was in charge now, and a moment later I was in the boat and being rowed ashore. Money and a vehicle, standing uncertainly, looking up at that lighted window. The night was very still, the fine drizzle soft on my face, and I was suddenly seeing it from her point of view, the contract cancelled and myself coming like a fugitive out of the night. I dumped my things in the Land Rover and then moved hesitantly towards the door, no longer sure of my reception and conscious of Robbie watching me curiously. My knock sounded loud in the stillness: Light streamed out as the bedroom curtains were whisked back. Then the window opened and Gertrude's voice called down to enquire who it was.

'Mike Randall,' I said. 'Can I talk to you a moment? I want to borrow the Land Rover.'

There was a pause. Then she said, 'Wait a minute and I'll come down.'

She came to the door in her dressing gown. Her hair was held with a band of ribbon and she had an oil lamp in her hands. 'It's very late.' She was staring past me at the van. 'Is that Robbie?'

'Yes, Mrs Petersen,' he answered.

Her gaze came back to me. 'You put in to Scalloway then.' There was a long pause, her eyes looking directly at me, a puzzled expression, as though she couldn't make up her mind. And then suddenly she was smiling, to herself, as though at some private joke. 'So that's why you've come — for the Land Rover.'

I nodded.

'How long do you want it for?'

'Three or four days,' I said.

I could see her working that out and then she standing uncertainly, looking up at that lighted window. The night was very still, the fine drizzle soft on my face, and I was suddenly seeing it from her point of view, the contract cancelled and myself coming like a fugitive out of the night. I dumped my things in the Land Rover and then moved hesitantly towards the door, no longer sure of my reception and conscious of Robbie watching me curiously. My knock sounded loud in the stillness. Light streamed out as the bedroom curtains were whisked back. Then the window opened and Gertrude's voice called down to enquire who it was.

'Mike Randall,' I said. 'Can I talk to you a moment? I want to borrow the Land Rover.'

There was a pause. Then she said, 'Wait a minute and I'll come down.'

She came to the door in her dressing gown. Her hair was held with a band of ribbon and she had an oil lamp in her hands. 'It's very late.' She was staring past me at the van. 'Is that Robbie?'

'Yes, Mrs Petersen,' he answered.

Her gaze came back to me. 'You put in to Scalloway then.' There was a long pause, her eyes looking directly at me, a puzzled expression, as though she couldn't make up her mind. And then suddenly she was smiling, to herself, as though at some private joke. 'So that's why you've come — for the Land Rover.'

I nodded.

'How long do you want it for?'

'Three or four days,' I said.

I could see her working that out and then she nodded. 'All right. You'd better come in then.' She pushed the door open wide and called to Robbie that he needn't wait. 'Captain Randall will take the Land Rover and I will settle with your father.'

'Okay, Mrs Petersen.'

'Thank him, will you please,' she called as the van's engines started up again. I raised my hand, but he was already backing and turning. I watched as the red tail lights climbed the hill and disappeared over the top. Everything was still then and we were alone. 'Are you coming in, or do you want just to take the Land Rover and go?' She sounded uncertain of herself, her voice sharp and trembling slightly.

'I need some money,' I said. 'For petrol.'

'Then you'd better come in. You need to explain, too.'

'All right.' I went in then and she slammed the door behind me. 'You like some coffee or something 'stronger?'

'Coffee please. I'll be driving all night.'

She led me through into the flagstoned kitchen, and as she set the lamp on the table, she looked at me angrily. 'You don't think of my reputation, do you — coming here at this time of night. It will be all over Hamnavoe.'

'I'm sorry,' I said. I was thinking of the last time I had been in this house, the difference in my reception. 'I needed transport-'

'So you come to me.' She began filling the kettle. 'First my ship, and now-' She turned the tap off. 'Anybody else, anybody at all, and we would have kiss, just a mutual longing for sympathy and under-landing, and her face was wet with tears.

We stood like that for a long time, oblivious of everything. And we were relaxed. We were no longer righting each other. We had surrendered to something stronger than ourselves, and standing there with my inns round her, the softness of her body, the pressure of her lips, I felt a strange surge of confidence, a feeling that I had found myself at last — that I knew where I was going now and had the strength to get there. It was a marvellous, quite ecstatic feeling, and not explainable in any way.

'The kettle,' she murmured, and pushed me away. The kettle was boiling its head off and we were suddenly both of us laughing for no apparent reason, except that we were happy.

She leaned forward and switched off the gas. She was smiling now, holding out her hand to me and leading me out of the kitchen. The bedroom looked straight out across the voe and I remember a pale line of light to the west reflected on the water.

Then we were together, and for a long time, it seemed, the world stood still and there was just the two of us, everything beyond that tiny room, beyond the absolute harmony of ourselves and our bodies, as though it had never been, all stress gone, an obliteration in ecstasy.

I had never had this sort of an experience before, the giving and taking without restraint. Love is not a word normally used by trawlermen, but at least I knew a when it happened. And afterwards, there was a lot to talk about, sitting smoking together over coffee in the kitchen.

She put up a parcel of food for me and by then it was full dawn with the cloud all gone and the greenish pink glow of the sun just beginning to limn the line of the hills on the far side of Clift Sound. We kissed and she clung to me a moment, murmuring something about being careful and not doing anything stupid. But she didn't try and stop me. She knew it was a thing I had to do. 'There are ordnance survey maps behind the seat,' she called to me as I drove off. I waved, and then I was up the track and over the hill, with time to wonder what the hell I thought I was doing when I could have stayed with her. But that, I knew, would have been anti-climax after what we had just experienced. At least I was doing something, not waiting around until Gorse arrived.

Up by Scalloway I turned on to the main road and kept going north along the shores of Asta and Tingwall lochs with the sky a brilliant green shading to duck's egg blue and the steep slopes of the hills standing back above the water as the sun's glow increased in the east. There were flecks of mackerel cloud ahead and soon all the great bowl of the dawn above the peat hills was aflame. By then I had put Gertrude out of my mind; my thoughts were now concentrated on the journey ahead and what I would find up there at Burra Firth.

The sun was bright in the mackerel sky and it was warm as I drove through the dale between the black peat hills of Mid and East Kome. Coffee and sandwiches by Loch of Voe, then more black-peat diggings to Dales Voe and up over Swinister to Sullom Voe, where a ship was offloading material at the jetty and the wartime camp had been adapted for the use of the contractors building the oil terminal for the Brent and Dunlin fields. I was able to fill up with petrol here, and in the hotel, now full of contractors' men, instead of tourists, a surveyor who had just arrived gave me a copy of one of the London papers. I hadn't had a chance to read a newspaper for several weeks, but the world didn't seem to have changed. I glanced at the headlines over my coffee and it was all gloom — strikes, disruption, shortages, and Britain as always on the verge of bankruptcy. It seemed incredible that union bosses and more of the media men didn't come to Shetland and see for themselves the brighter hopes for the future.

An hour later I was at Toft, a north wind driving down Yell Sound, the waters broken and streaked with white. Standing on the pier I couldn't help thinking what a target Shetland could become when half the lifeblood of industrial Britain was passing through these islands. On Mainland of Shetland the people were of fairly mixed race, infiltrated over the years by Scots and others, but when I crossed into Yell, and farther north to the last island of Unst, I would be among purer Viking stock, men closer to the Faroese, the Icelanders and the Norwegians than to Britain. And if Iceland became wholly Communist, or the Russians moved across the Pasvik River into Finnmark in the north of Norway, how would these men react? In this watery land, touched with the old glacial hand of the last Ice Age, England seemed very remote and London a whole world away.

Sitting in the Land Rover, reading the paper while I waited for the ferry, I came across the headline:

VILLIERS HITS BACK AS VFI SHARES TUMBLE. It W3S an account of the DTI Enquiry in London into the Star-Trion deal and Villiers was challenging his detractors to risk their own money on the West Shetland shelf — The trouble with our country is that politicians and their bureaucratic masters are only interested in equality in poverty — in how a meagre cake can be shared more fairly — when they should be bending all their energies instead towards increasing the size of that cake by every means in their power. This is what I am doing, and shall go on doing — whatever the cost, whatever the risk. Call me a buccaneer if you like — that is a term of abuse thrown at me by Mr Swingler, my own Conservative member. All right, I am a buccaneer, and when times are hard, as they are now, Britain is the loser that there aren't more of us, but when North Star brings in another field — as I am confident it will — you won't call me a buccaneer then. You'll pay tribute to my sagacity, claim me as the shareholders' friend, while others will call me a capitalist and scream for nationalization of my company.

The ferry was halfway across now, and I sat watching it crawl like a steel beetle across the foam-flecked waters of the Sound, seeing in my mind the man I had talked to on North Star at bay in that courtroom, angry and obstinate, fighting back with all that extraordinary vitality and energy of his. I turned to the City page. There had been a run on VFI shares, now standing at a new low and less than half the price they had been when the market as a whole had bottomed after the Arab oil embargo. I was thinking of North Star then, of its loneliness out there in the march of the westerlies, and of its extreme vulnerability under the orders of a man near desperation and periodically under the control of a toolpusher whose luck appeared to have run out.

Tailor-made to our purpose.

The ferry berthed while I was thinking about that purpose, about who would gain. Not the workers. Nor industry. Certainly not Britain. The direction my thoughts were taking scared me and I drove on to the ferry feeling as though, in crossing the Sound, I was moving into another world, a step nearer the destiny to which all my life had been a preparation. It was not a nice feeling.

From Flukes Hole on the other side I took the lesser road that ran up the western coast of Yell. From Gutcher it is only just over a mile across Bluemull Sound to the island of Unst and then six miles on a good straight road to the main port of Baltasound, another two to Haroldswick. There, in a little house behind the harbour, up near the school, an old man who understood the use of words took me into a strange wild world of myth and legend. He had bright bird-like eyes, intensely blue in the dark wind-wrinkled face, large gnarled hands, and a voice so soft, so lyrical in speech, that to hear him talk was like listening to music. His name was Robert Bruce — 'That's no' a verra good name to have in the island of Unst.'

I thought he was referring to the early Scottish king, but no, he was harking back to a Laurence Bruce — 'the Great Foud of Zetland', he called him — a tyrannical land-grabber who, from his castle at Muness, had held all Unst in the thrall of Scottish law during the last days of the first Elizabeth when James was still only king of Scotland. It was a strange, haunting story, a Romeo and Juliet legend of the north, and at first I did not understand why he was telling it to me.

When I had arrived in Haroldswick I had gone to the post office, and because I had to explain my need of accommodation, I said I was an ornithologist. Birds were the main attraction for visitors and it would allow me to walk the hills around Burra Firth without exciting comment. The Bruces had just had a cancellation, so I had been sent to them. But Robert Bruce, a retired schoolmaster living with his sister, now occupied his time helping with the preservation and marking of seabirds on the western cliffs and I don't think it took that shrewd, beady-eyed little Scot long to realize I was no ornithologist. So instead of talking about birds, he told me the story of Edwin and Helga, and how, to escape the wrath of her people, whose leader had been murdered by one of Bruce's minions, she had rushed her lover to the family's little boat and sailed for Yell in a northerly gale, past the great cliffs of Vallafield, to be lost for ever in the roaring tide race off the entrance to Bluemull Sound.

It is too long a story to repeat, and I have forgotten I much of it — and in any case the beauty of it was in the telling. But what I do remember is Bruce's guile and greed, his despicable ruthlessness, and the fierce, law-abiding determination of the islanders who had sailed an open boat three hundred miles to Scotland to lay their just complaints before the King in Edinburgh. 'And do you ken why the Scots were in Zetland?' Bruce asked me, his bright eyes fixed on me like the Ancient Mariner. 'Because the islands were handed over to them as a pledge for a Danish princess's dowry. The people were subject only to the Scots king, retaining their own laws and customs, but history is strewn with conditions of treaty unfulfilled and Bruce, as gauleiter for the Crown, violated them with a vengeance.' Looking at me very closely, he added, 'In this lonely island of Unst we are very vulnerable to big northern shifts of power.'

And then, as his sister took the blackened kettle from the hob and made the tea, he began telling me an older island story, of the Pictish inhabitants a thousand years ago who, when their brochs were destroyed and all their lands taken by Vikings from the fjords of Norway, had been forced to retreat into the great caverns of the south-west from which they emerged only at night. 'They were the trolls, you know, the little people of superstition — call them dwarfs, gnomes, fairies, it's all the same — you watch for them at night, mind your children don't get stolen and put out offerings to placate them. That's what the early Norse did and only Coul, the old priest man, captured from the Celts of the south, ever saw the caves in which they had found refuge, and he died just after they had let him go.' He told me the story then of Gletna Kirk, the church Coul tried to build and which they destroyed in the night, thinking it was to be another of the invaders' strong-holds.

But by then my head was nodding. It had been a long day and I drank my tea and went to bed, to wake once, briefly, in the night and remember how the old man had harped on successive waves of Northern invaders.

In the morning, after breakfast, I went with him up the road to Burra Firth, about a mile and a half to where a track branched northward. 'You'll not be finding many birds up there, not unless you go right to The Noup and that's a good long tramp by Saxa Vord.' The blue eyes watched me curiously from under his peaked cap. 'Better you come with me up Milldale to Tonga. There's all the birds you could ever want there and I can show you Goturm's Hole.'

I thanked him and he nodded. 'Suit yerself.' He half-turned, then paused. 'Take the right fork in half a mile and it'll bring you to Buel Houll. There's a good view there of The Ness on t'other side of the Firth with Fiska Wick beyond and a fishing boat close inshore. You'll see in your map there's a track from just near Buel Houll that winds round Housl Fiel and straight back by the School.' And then he asked me, 'You've no glasses?'

'No.'

He slipped his own from off his shoulder. 'You'll need them I'm thinking to see what you want to see.' He nodded then and left me, walking with a steady, tireless stride, his body bowed a little into the west wind. I examined the glasses he had given me. They were Zeiss, small and very compact, but of extraordinary clarity and brilliant magnification. Birdwatchers' glasses, but he'd known when he handed them to me it wasn't birds I had come to watch. I went up the track, and before I had reached the fork, I could see the black hull of the fishing boat anchored off a sprawl of buildings on the far side.

I took the left fork, and where the track ended I turned north along the edge of the fifth. It was very quiet, only the sound of the seabirds and the lap of the water on the rocks. Root Stacks was right below me and I lay in the grass watching the buildings opposite, across the narrow strip of water. White puffs of cloud sailed over the hills and it was warm, the breeze-block sprawl of the Root Stacks Hotel basking in the sunshine. Through the glasses I could see the sign quite clearly, a painted board on the stone-built front of what must have been part of the old original steading, and just below it, on a wooden bench, an old man sat dozing in the sun, his face strangely twisted. He had a stick beside him and there was a dog at his feet, a black and white collie curled up on the sheep-cropped grass.

It was all very peaceful and nothing stirred for a long time. Then, shortly after eleven, the dog uncurled itself and began to bark. A Land Rover was coming down the track. The old man stirred and lifted his head, the disfiguring line of a great scar showing. The Land Rover stopped and three men got out. One of them was Sandford. The old man shook hands with the other two and they all went into the house, including the dog, and after that the stillness and the quiet descended again.

I must have fallen asleep, for I woke suddenly to the sound of the dog barking. Five men were loading packages into the Land Rover, the old man watching them, leaning on his stick. They piled into the Land Rover, Sandford driving it up the track that disappeared behind The Ness to where my map showed the narrow gut of Fiska Wick. Ten minutes later the quiet was shattered by the sound of an outboard and an inflatable with four of them in it nosed out from under The Ness and headed for the fishing boat.

I watched them as they climbed on board, but it was impossible to tell whether they were Shetlanders or not, and though the sound of their voices reached me across the water, I couldn't hear what was said. The Land Rover was back at the hotel now, not a soul in sight. The vessel's engine started up, figures on the foredeck and the clank of the chain coming in, and when the anchor was housed, she steamed down the firth, hugging the farther shore and disappearing westward through the gap between Herma Ness and Muckle Flugga. I lay back in the peat moss again, thinking of the rig and that damned fool Fuller exchanging the Duchess for one of Sandford's boats.

I lay there, scarcely moving, until late in the afternoon, when the clouds thickened and it began to drizzle, and by then I knew I was wasting my time. I had discovered nothing except that in the right weather Sandford used the firth as a base for his boats, and I got to my feet, climbing towards Housl Fiel and the track that led back to Bruce's cottage.

He came in a little after me, the tweed of his jacket glistening with moisture, his ruddy face flushed with exertion. 'I could have shown you a snowy owl,' he said, his bright eyes laughing at me. A snowy owl meant nothing to me and he knew it. 'You saw the purse-seiner leave, did you? I watched it from the top of Libbers Hill. It was steaming south-west to clear The Clapper and the islands north of Mainland.'

He talked about birds until we had finished our meal, and then he began telling me the story of Goturm's Hole, how the son of the jarl of Stackhoull had been killed returning from a raid into Norway and the man who had killed him had had his boat wrecked on the rocks north-west of Unst. 'He climbed the cliffs to the hole named after him and there he would have been killed but for the young man's sister, who had some contact with Christianity and couldn't stomach vengeance for vengeance's sake. Goturm was a Dane and became a king of the Danes, and years later, when the Norse people in Unst had been overrun by yet another invasion from Norway, he repaid the debt he owed for his life, sending one of his captains with a great treasure to the girl who had saved him, now a woman and no longer living in the great hall at Stackhoull, but in a little cot on the Milldale burn. I may well have walked on the ruins of it this very day.

A wild place, Captain Randall, this island of Unst — and nothing ever certain in an uncertain world.'

'Why are you telling me this?' I asked him.

'Bobbie loves telling the old legend stories,' his sister said.

'Aye.' He nodded, filling his pipe and watching me, his eyes full of curiosity. 'Y'see, I taught history as well as English and geography. A bit of natural history, too, of course. I love this land of ours, so rugged, bleak and beautiful. It fascinates me.'

'But you had a purpose,' I insisted. 'All your stories are of invasion and retribution-'

'Your name,' he said. 'And you salvaging the Duchess. We may be lonely island people, but we do get the Shetland Times.' I waited while he lit his pipe, staring at me over the flame. 'Now that's a strange coincidence. You and the Duchess. It was during the war and that same trawler putting in to the firth here in a westerly gale. The winter of 1942 it would be and I rowed out to her. A young naval lieutenant was in command and she was on her way back to Sullom Voe from the Norwegian coast. There was a Randall on board there, a man with his face all twisted and the scar of a gash that had bit deep into his skull. I heard he was some sort of an agent — a Russian agent, so the story went, but it was later I heard that.' There was a long pause and I thought I knew what was coming. But then he said, 'There's nobody here walks the cliffs of Tonga, Saito, Neap and Toolie, all the way out to Humlataes, as often as I do. Not much happens in the neighbourhood of Herma Ness that I don't know about. And often I catch a glimpse of those big trawlers that hang around our coast with more aerials and scanners than they have fishing gear. About two months ago it would be and I was up on Tonga with the sun shining brightly and a grey greasy-looking bank of fog hugging the sea. Sticking up out of it were the masts and antennae of one of those big trawlers, and coming in from the north the tip of a single mast, cleaving the fog like a submarine's telescope. It was a queer sight I can tell you, the two of them coming together and voices drifting up through the swirl and the shriek of the birds.'

'What's this got to do with the man you saw on the Duchess all those years ago?'

'Aye, it'd be thirty-two years now. But a man so disfigured-'

'He's come back, is that what you mean?' The man on that bench in the sunshine, old now and walking with a stick. My God! And the two of us separated only by.that narrow strip of water. 'He's at the Root Stacks Hotel. That's it, isn't it?'

He nodded and his eyes gleamed with the certainty that here was another story. 'A week after I had seen that trawler rubbing shoulders with a fishing boat in the fog, I came down off Sothers Brecks to join the track at Fiska Wick and there he was.'

'Are you sure it was the same man?'

'No doubt at all,' Bruce said. 'Though his name is not Randall now. But a name doesn't matter, not with the mark of a terrible wound like that.' And he added, 'He was sitting there this morning. You must have seen him.'

I nodded, feeling it couldn't be true, but remembering the old man's face in the glasses, the twisted, broken features. About the right age, too, and Root Stacks run by Anna Sandford's son.

'Mouat, he calls himself now.'

His middle name, and mine, and I knew it must be true.

Bruce leaned towards me. 'That's a common enough name in Shetland. But Mouat isn't his real name. It's Randall.' His large hand gripped my knee. 'And your name is Randall, and whatever you may say, Captain, you're not here to look at the birds.'

'No.'

'Then what are you here for?'

I shook my head, not sure I had really known until this moment. 'I think that man may be my father,' I said. And after that I told him a little about myself, enough at any rate to satisfy his curiosity. 'Do you know if a man calling himself Stevens is ever at the hotel?' But he shook his head, and when I gave him a description, he said he had never been to the hotel, had never seen any of them close to. 'Is he Irish?' he asked. 'I know there's an Irish lad works there. And others, they come and go, claiming they're birdwatchers, same as you, and a mixed lot they are by all accounts.'

'I'll be_ going up there this evening.'

He nodded. 'Ask Mouat where he was in 1942. It'll be the same man I'm sure.'

I left just after nine and he walked with me as far as the neck of land that separated Loch of Cliff from the Burra Firth. There was a lot of cloud and the light was fading. 'If a new invader were to come to our islands,' he said, 'this is as good a place as any. It's happened many times before — but so long ago nobody remembers, only old men like me who know the history of the islands.'

I looked at his weatherbeaten, gnome-like face, the bright blue eyes, a man so deep in the legends of his land, so close to the wildness of it, that for him the prospect of a new horde landing on the rocks was not beyond the bounds of credibility. 'There are more subtle ways-' I checked myself, conscious of the dark hills against the clouds and my thoughts running away with me. A light gleamed down the track beside Burra Firth, a door opening; then it was gone. 'Don't wait up for me,' I said.

I saw him hesitate, but then he nodded. 'The door will be on the latch.'

I left him and went down the track along the water's edge. The Root Stacks buildings were dark in the shadow of Mouslee Hill and, as I approached them, I was thinking back to that night on board the Fisher Maid with Shetland's hills black lumps against a cold green strip of sky. It was then that I had decided to come north to the islands, seeking some knowledge of my father that would help me to understand myself. Barely three months, yet it seemed an age, and now, here in the dark of Unst with my mind stuffed full of the ghosts of old legends, in the dark shadow of these buildings…

My pace faltered and for a moment I stood listening, unsure of myself and reluctant to face him. The dog was barking, and I walked quickly up to the door and knocked. I could hear voices, but it was some time before anybody came, the dog protesting from its kennel at the back until a shout silenced it. The door opened and a man stood there, short and squat in an island jersey. 'What is it? If it's a drink you're wanting-'

'Mr Mouat,' I said. 'I'd like a word with him.'

'Mouat, eh? Are you sure of the name now?'

'Quite sure.' I thought he was going to close the door in my face and I put my foot against it. 'Better call Sandford,' I said.

He hesitated, looking at me curiously. Finally he turned and called out, 'Ian. There's a man here asking for Mr Mouat.' The lamp-glow in the stone-flagged hallway brightened as a door was flung wide and Sand-ford appeared, his shirt open at the neck and a drink in his hand.

'The skipper of the Duchess, eh?' He was smiling. 'All right, Paddy. He can come in.' He waved his glass in invitation. 'I wondered how long it would be before you called on us.'

'You knew I was here.'

'Oh, sure. Word of a stranger gets around pretty fast in a place like this. Come on in and have a drink. You're out of a job, I hear.' The same harsh, breezy manner, but there was something in the eyes, an uneasiness, and the cheerful smile seemed somehow forced. 'Come on. You don't hold it against me that I've got the North Star contract now, do you?'

I stepped into the narrow hallway full of stuffed seabirds in glass cases. 'The old man's gone to bed,' he said, leading me through into the lamplit room where a quiet bearded man sat at a table littered with glasses and the remains of a meal. 'Whisky?' Sandford picked up a bottle and poured me a drink without waiting for an answer. 'We're short of a skipper. Interested?' There was a peat fire burning in the grate, and it was warm, his round smooth face shining with perspiration as he handed me the drink, small eyes watchful, waiting for some reaction.

'You offering me a job?' I asked. The whisky was colourless, a home brew from some local still.

'Could be. It depends.'

'On what?'

'How badly you need it.'

'I didn't come here for a job,' I said. 'And I didn't come to" see you. I came to see the man who calls himself Mouat.'

His eyes flickered towards the farther door, the uneasiness there again, and his face changing, a hardening of the mouth. 'I told you, he's gone to bed.'

I moved to the farther door then, something he hadn't expected, and before he could stop me I had thrown it open.

The old man was sitting there, in a wing chair, a lamp beside him and a book open on his lap. The gashed side of his head was in shadow, so that all I saw was the smooth transparent skin of an older version of the face that stared at me every time I shaved. The likeness vanished when he turned his head, but the shock of that moment of recognition was so great that I didn't resist the grip of hands seizing hold of me.

'Let him be, Ian.' His voice was very quiet, his eyes glinting in the lamplight, a searching stare. 'He knows who I am. I can see it written all over his face.' They let me go then and I stood there, feeling numb as he went on, 'It's something of a shock, isn't it — at your age to find your father isn't safely dead and buried?'

Was there a note of bitterness there, of regret? 'Who put that plaque in Grund Sound Church?' I asked, my voice so choked it was almost a whisper.

He contrived a smile that was more of a grimace. 'I did. Or rather I arranged for it to be placed there.' The twist of his mouth gave a curious lisp to his words. 'Leave us alone now, Ian. We have much to talk about — and things must be said that I'd rather you didn't hear.'

But Sandford stood there, frowning angrily and unwilling to leave us. He didn't trust me and the old man laughed. 'The two of you, here together with me for the first time. We should kill the fatted calf.' That ghastly smile and the blue eyes gleaming wickedly up at me in the lamplight. 'You met Anna, I believe — Anna Sandford in Hamnavoe.' His eyes slid away from me, still with that terrible smile twisting his face, and I turned and stared at Ian Sandford, knowing now what it was he had meant with that reference to the prodigal returned. Christ Almighty! Two sides of the same coin, and I was looking at the other half, wondering how much of the same blood each of us had, whether hidden behind the smooth roundness of my half-brother's face was the same devil of self-doubt.

CHAPTER TWO

I was alone with my father in that room for about an hour. It was a difficult, very disturbing interview, for the twisted features, that terrible gash left by the shell splinter that had ploughed the side of his skull, shocked me deeply. It had marked all the left cheek, split the ear and cut deep into the side of his head, and the wired up remains of his jaw gave a lisp to his speech. Yet he wasn't a man you could pity. He was too withdrawn, too self-contained. And old though he was, he still had some of the fire that had driven him to fight for a cause he admitted he knew was lost before ever he had embarked for Spain.

'That plaque?' I asked him.

'What about it?'

'Making out that you were dead when you weren't. What was the point?'

'You have your mother's tidy mind,' he said harshly. 'How is she, by the way?'

'She died two years ago.'

He didn't say he was sorry, just shrugged as though accepting the inevitability of death. 'But there's something of me in you, too, isn't there?' He smiled, grimacing. 'You see, I've checked up on you.'

'Why?'

'Why not? You're my son, aren't you? As soon as Ian told me…' He hesitated. 'I've been expecting you, knowing you were bound to come.' He leaned a little forward. 'What brought you to Shetland seeking out my past? It wasn't affection or filial regard. It was something else. Something you'd been told?'

'No.'

'What then?'

I tried to explain, but it wasn't easy with him sitting there smiling crookedly. He was remote, a stranger, and I sensed an underlying hostility as I told him of the doubts that had gradually ended my early admiration for him.

'So I was a hero to you, eh?'

'At first.'

'And you left your mother, turned your back on the capitalist wealth of her new husband and set out on your wanderings.'

'I wanted to live my own life.'

'We all want that — when we're young. Later it becomes more difficult.' I thought he sighed. 'And for you more than most. You were pulled two ways. That's your nature, Michael. You don't mind me calling you Michael?'

'Most people call me Mike.'

'Your friends and those you work with perhaps. Have you any friends?'

I stared at him angrily, thinking he probably had a liking for getting under people's skin, the bitterness of a man forced into loneliness.

'You're a solitary, is that it?' He nodded, and again that crooked smile. 'I think I know you now. A wanderer. A boy who has never grown up to be a man. Isn't that right? Every time you come up against the rawness of the world we have to live in you run away from it, seeking escape in drugs or…'

'That was only a phase,' I said quickly, annoyed that I felt the need to justify myself.

'… or some eastern religion.' I had never told anybody about that, only Fiona. 'Buddhism, wasn't it? Then playing with Communism, and running away to sea.'

'You went to sea yourself.' I was angry now, and that annoyed me even more, for I knew he was goading me. And the knowledge that Fiona must have been here, before she had gone · to see Gertrude presumably… 'What are you after?' I demanded. 'Prying into my private life, asking questions of my wife.'

'Just trying to understand you. When you've never met your son before-'

'You've a reason,' I cut in hotly.

'Perhaps. But it's natural, isn't it?'

And so it went on, a verbal duel between us, each trying to learn something about the other. But he was more adept at it, side-stepping direct questions and shrewdly needling me until there wasn't much he didn't know. Only once was I able to probe a little beyond the ruined mask of his features. He had introduced Gertrude into the conversation, not very nicely since he had implied that the only thing I had ever done that showed any promise of success was going into partnership with a woman. 'Maybe that's the only way you can demonstrate your manhood.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'You wouldn't have gone into partnership with Ian, for instance, would you?'

'No.'

'Or any other man.'

'I never had the opportunity.'

'Feel safer with a woman, eh? Think a woman's easier to handle. Or are you in love with her?'

'What would you know about love?'

He was silent then and I remembered the strange letter he had written Anna Sandford. 'Like you, I never had the opportunity — not after this.' It was just a flat statement, no bitterness, his hand touching the scars. But he kept clear of Gertrude after that, switching to the North Star contract, and to Villiers. 'You're a loner, that's your trouble. Now Ian's got the contract, and deserves it. He gets around, that boy, lots of friends, and he's a Shetlander. Oil companies, men like Villiers, they don't think about the islanders or their livelihood, just as they never thought about the Arabs until it was too late. You've met Villiers, haven't you?'

'Yes.'

'Admire him?'

'Somebody else asked me that — a man called Stevens.'

'Well, I'm asking you now.' The name didn't seem to have registered. 'When a man changes his mind about the social structure he wants, he often leans so far over in the opposite direction-'

'I haven't changed my mind,' I told him. 'If anything has changed, it's the society in which we live. Militants are less concerned with justice. They want anarchy now.'

'Do they?'

'You know they do.'

'I know nothing of the sort. I think it's you who have changed.'

'I'm not an anarchist,' I said. 'I never have been.'

'So now you're against all progress towards a fairer, more equitable world.'

I laughed. 'You don't believe that any more than I do. The world's never been fair, never will be. Men are not born equal. And if you don't recognize that, then all I can say is that it's you that has never grown up. You're still a Communist, I take it?'

He hesitated. 'Yes.'

'A Russian-style Communist?'

'If you like.'

'You came here from Russia during the war.'

'From Norway.'

'In 1942. On board the Duchess.' And I added, hoping to get something positive out of him. 'You were an agent up in the north of Norway. A foreign agent?'

I saw his eyes narrow. 'Whose side were you on — Russia's or ours?'

'Britain and Russia were allies.'

'And that salves your conscience. But now? What side are you on now?'

He sighed. 'Does there have to be sides? Nobody is at war. Not here.'

'No, not in the old sense of the word,' I said. 'But a new style of warfare — economic war.'

'Ah, yes, the London School of Economics. Just because your head has been stuffed with economic fallacies, you don't have to turn your coat at the first whiff of the real thing. And even if the world is temporarily short of energy, it doesn't mean.that men like Villiers should gamble lives and risk the future of the Shetland fishery to keep themselves and their City friends afloat. Villiers, in particular. He's stripped others' assets so often, it would only be poetic justice if his own assets were stripped for a change. You surely don't support men like that?'

'Of course I don't.'

'Then what are you doing, coming up here, trying to resolve your doubts by digging up your father's past, and then salvaging a trawler and pretending you're a capitalist?'

'Only this,' I said. 'I think it's time we started picking up the pieces, instead of trying to destroy everything — before it's too late.' And I added, 'You ask my reasons, but what the hell are you doing here?'

'You forget, I'm a Shetlander. I belong here.'

But that was not the answer. 'Stevens,' I said. 'A man calling himself Stevens.' Not a muscle of his face moved, no sign of recognition, not even when I described the man to him, the hard mouth, the slight squint. But when I repeated what he had said about rehabilitation and not many surviving, I thought he winced, a muscle on the right of his jaw tightening. 'Were you returned to Russia, after the war?'

He laughed, a conscious effort. 'What are you, a Nationalist now? An Empire Loyalist? Patriotism in place of Communism that you speak of Russia as though it were a hostile power?'

'I was never a Communist,' I said. 'In theory, yes. But not a Party member.'

'And now? What are you now?' He was suddenly leaning forward, his eyes fixed on my face. And when I said that perhaps that was what I had come to Shetland to find out, he smiled. 'Seeking the answer in me, eh? In my life.' He let his body fall back, the wings of the high chair framing his face. 'Well, now you've found me and I have no answer for you.' He sounded tired then, as though talking to me had proved too exhausting. Or was it the memory of the long years that were a locked secret in his mind? 'You mentioned a need for picking up the pieces. I could help you there.'

'How?'

'I have some influence with Ian. Otherwise I wouldn't be living here in his hotel. You and he have this in common, you both want to be owners. You know he's got three of the larger fishing boats working for him now. Two will share the standby job on North Star, the other, which he has just arranged to charter, will ferry stores out to one of the rigs on the Dunlin field.'

'And that doesn't worry you, that he's working for Villiers and the oil companies?'

A slight movement of the shoulders, almost a shrug. 'He wants to make money. Why not? He's only doing what everybody else is doing.'

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if he knew North Star had had two of its anchor cables cut by an explosive device, but I checked myself. 'Where's he find the capital?'

'Borrows it.'

'From you? Are you providing him with funds?'

'I never had any capital. I don't believe in it.'

'How long have you been here?" His mouth was a tight line and he didn't reply. 'Was it a fishing vessel put you ashore about two months ago?'

'You ask too many questions,' he said, and I knew by the set look on his face that he would never disclose where he had come from or what he had been doing all these years. 'It's your own position you have to consider, not mine. I'm told you're out of a job. And on the run. Is that right?' Suddenly his manner, the atmosphere between us, had subtly changed. 'Ian had a call yesterday to say the police were making enquiries about you in Lerwick.'

'Why should anybody telephone to tell him that?' My throat felt dry, the net closing again and my liberty threatened.

'The boy's in local politics and his friends keep him informed.' He paused, and then he offered me the way out: 'He needs a skipper for his new boat. He'd give you the job if I told him to. And on a supply run to the Dunlin field you'd be clear of the police.' He left it hanging in the air and reached for his stick. 'No need to make up your mind immediately. Sleep on it.' He got to his feet. 'I'm going to bed.' He smiled, and now that I could see the other side of his face more clearly the smile sent cold shivers down my spine. 'Be nice for an old man to have both his sons with him for a while.'

'And if I don't take the job?'

He looked at me, the smile gone and the blue eyes hard. 'You will.' He said it emphatically. 'You've no alternative. And nor have I in view of some of the questions you've been asking. You can't keep your mouth shut and if the police got hold of you… I can't risk that.' He was frowning, the scars showing in the glow of the peat fire. 'And then there's that girl of yours,' he added. 'I don't know what.you've told her about me, but if she were to learn that you had found me, still alive and here at Burra Firth..' He moved slowly to the door. 'Think about it, my boy. You're committed now. You're one of us.' He was at the door then and he smiled at me. 'Just remember that.' And he nodded, 'Good night.'

I couldn't help it. I suddenly blurted out, 'So you're the organizer, are you? They sent you here to organize the-1 'Organizer of what?'

'The oil-' My voice faltered before his steady gaze. 'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'I just thought-'

'You should have learned by now to keep your thoughts to yourself.' And he turned and went out, leaving the door open behind him. I don't know whether he meant it as a warning or whether he was simply giving me the benefit of his own experience. I heard the sound of his voice, then the tap of his stick, the slow tread of his feet on the stairs, and I went out into the other room to find Ian Sandford waiting for me. The others had gone and he was alone. 'Well, now you've talked to him, do you want the job?' He was smiling, a gleam of humour. 'He says you can have it if you like.'

'You do what he tells you, do you?'

He laughed. 'Sometimes.'

'Why didn't you offer me a job that day you took me down to see the Duchess?'

'Didn't know anything about you, did I? Besides, I'm just the old man's bastard. Makes a difference, doesn't it?'

'I didn't know,' I said.

'Well, now you do.' He turned and reached for the bottle on the table. 'Like another drink before you go?'

'No thanks.'

But he poured it all the same, handing me the glass and topping up his own. 'Here's to our better acquaintance.' He was grinning.

I raised my glass perfunctorily, the whisky raw in my throat and my mind on the future. 'He said you needed a skipper to run supplies to a rig on the Dunlin.'

He nodded. 'Deepwater IV. That's right. You'd be skippering the Mary Jane. That's the boat I've taken on charter. The usual diesel job, about sixty-five feet long, registered tonnage forty-five.' He finished his drink. 'The old man said you'd like to sleep on it.'

'Why offer the job to me?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'Why not? You're my half-brother.' He was grinning again. 'There's always fiddles running supplies for big contractors whose only concern is speed, so keep it in the family, that's what I say. Makes sense, doesn't it?'

'Maybe,' I muttered, and I put my glass down. 'I'll be going now.'

He nodded, seeing me to the door, the lamp in his hand, and the likeness to his mother very pronounced. 'I'll see you in the morning,' he said. The door closed and I was alone in that strange twilit world that was neither day nor night with the glimmer of water lapping the rocks below me. The moon was just rising, ragged patches of cloud drifting across it and a glimpse of stars.

I walked slowly back up the track, going over in my mind that strange meeting and feeling trapped — trapped by the sort of person I was, and by the system which didn't allow me to escape from my own past, the things I had done before I turned to the sea. If only they would leave me alone. But I knew they wouldn't. And now my own father, the man whose past I had come north to seek — for support, for strength — and he was there in that straggle of buildings, a part of the net that had closed around me. What had he been doing all those years?

He hadn't said, of course. He had evaded all my questions. But instinctively I knew, some deep communication between us — that plaque, that quote from Browning, it still applied — a man deeply unhappy, alone and embattled within himself. It wasn't just the face, the terrible twisted features. I had seen it in his eyes. He, too, was unable to escape the things he had thought and done as a young man. I felt weighed down, utterly crushed by this glimpse of an older, distorted reflection of myself. My God! Was this the road he had trod, drifting along the line of least resistance? And myself doing the same, knowing what my answer would be.

I had known it ever since he had offered me the job. I couldn't face another court, the police, prison, and my own world against me — anything was better than that. Even working with that little bastard Sand-ford. I laughed at that, laughed so loud I frightened a seabird from the verges of Loch of Cliff, the shadow of it taking wing against the clouds. If only I were a bird and could take wing! But I was grounded and the earth hard and hostile, his face grinning in the lamplight.

I reached the cottage at last and went to bed, alone and my mind in a turmoil of self-hate, as it had so often been. I couldn't sleep and the moon came clear, its shadows moving slowly across the tiny room with its sloping ceiling close under the eaves.

Two days later I took over the Mary Jane in Balta Sound. She was a typical island fishing boat, her wooden hull painted black, two tallish masts and a neat little white wooden wheelhouse. The crew were all Shetlanders and she stank of fish. We hosed her out and scrubbed her down, but in the three and a half months I operated her for the Sandford Supply Coy we never entirely got rid of the smell and I suspect that everything we carried out to Deepwater IV, particularly the meat, became tainted in the course of the passage.

In all that time I had no word from Gertrude. Ian had delivered the Land Rover back to her, and when she had read my letter, she had just taken the keys and slammed the door in his face. I hadn't expected her to understand. How could she when I didn't understand myself? All the labour of getting that trawler back into service, the problems and difficulties we had faced together, the shared experience of that one night, all thrown away. I had asked her to phone me, but I knew she wouldn't. It was finished — an episode. The reality was here, on this scruffy boat, with a bunch of men who, among themselves, talked a language that was almost foreign, even Jamie, the mate, who came from Yell.

At first we loaded at Toft on the Mainland side of Yell Sound. Later, when Ian learned that the police were satisfied I had shipped out in some trawler, we loaded direct at Lerwick to save the cost of the truck journey north. He was careful with his money, the only new piece of equipment on the boat a ship-toshore radio. And he had a signwriter paint the name of his company on each side of the wheelhouse. He was inordinately proud of the fact that he was chairman and managing director of The Sandford Supply Coy Ltd.

It was a fairly good summer for weather, and with not even a gale to relieve the monotony I seemed to live in a sort of vacuum, unconscious of the world outside. Once, when we were in Lerwick, I took a taxi out to The Taing, but the house was locked, the voe empty, so presumably it was true what Jamie had heard, that the Duchess had gone back to her old trade of fishing, and Gertrude with her.

We listened to the radio a lot, and sometimes I heard the news, but it didn't seem real — little but gloom and violence, and North Sea oil the only ray of hope. They seemed to think the drillers could magic the stuff ashore and in the Utopia that would follow, inflation and unrest would disappear in a cloud of fairy smoke.

At the end of August, I think it was, Ian came on the R/T to tell me North Star had drilled another dry hole. And the very next day, on our way into Lerwick, I heard on the radio that half the board of VFI had resigned. A fortnight later the results of the DTI enquiry came right at the beginning of the news bulletin; the Company's licence to operate as a bank under Section 123 revoked and the report such a damning indictment that I wondered where Villiers would find the money to go on drilling, his VFI shares almost worthless now and his financial reputation equally low.

And then Deepwater IV reached her planned depth in a dry hole and we stayed with her on stand-by for the three days it took them to clear the seabed and move to the nearby Cormorant field. She was on summer contract only up here in northern waters, for she was one of the new generation of drilling ships that maintain station over the drill site with variable direction screws linked to a computer beamed on the seabed. No cumbersome equipment like North Star, no anchors, no cables and winches. It was impressive to see the economy of time as she moved from Dunlin to Cormorant, the divers down in their bell the instant she was locked on to the seabed sonar and no supply ships risking men's lives and costing money to anchor her.

As soon as she was spudded in we were relieved by a large trawler. The Deepwater contractors were operating for a different consortium now and a spanking new supply ship, straight from a Norwegian yard, began ferrying sealed containers of food with the drill pipe and other equipment. We were out of a job and Ian ordered us back to Balta Sound.

During the whole of this period I had only seen him twice. On each occasion he had been in Lerwick for a meeting of the Zetland Council and he had had little time to spare for us, coming on board for a quick look around and then leaving in a hurry as soon as I produced my list of requirements. But at Balta Sound he sat down in the wheelhouse and went through my whole list, agreeing almost everything. 'Have you had a win on the pools or what?' I asked him. 'I've been badgering you for new warps, new anchor chain-'

'Think I didn't look the boat over before I chartered her?' My sarcasm seemed to have caught him on the raw, for his voice was tense as he went on, 'You've never worked an island fishing boat before. Distant water, that's all you've known, and a wealthy company to foot the bills.' He leaned towards me, speaking very loudly the way some people speak to a foreigner. 'I grew up in the post-war years when every penny counted and everything was scarce. If you wanted something, then you looked around until you found it, or made do with something else, even though it was rusty as hell or half-rotted through with damp. That's the world I grew up in, and that's why I don't throw my money around.' And then with something near to a sneer he added, 'But I don't expect you to understand that. Your world was very different. You never had to 'scrimp and save, not in the home you grew up in.'

'Not then,' I said. 'But I've made up for it since.'

He grinned and that made me like him a little better. 'Well, nobody gets it good all the time, not even men like Villiers. They say he's bust if North Star doesn't hit it with the next hole.'

'Then you'll have two boats out of a job.'

'Oh, not me. I got other jobs lined up for them. And there's always the fishing to fall back on.' He got to his feet. 'Let's have a word with Harry Priest now.'

'He says he needs at least a week to do a complete overhaul on that clapped-out old engine of ours.'

'Well, he can have it — a week, but that's all.'

'What about spares? Or is that the owner's responsibility?'

'No, it's mine now,' he said. 'The boat's no longer under charter. I've bought her.' There was pride in the way he said it, an air of cockiness, and I laughed, seeing him in his own imagination already halfway to rivalling the big Greek ship-owners.

'Who's paying for it?' I asked. 'Your father?'

'The old man?' He shook his head. 'Borrow from the masses, that's what he says. Banks, insurance companies, pension funds. Or from the oil companies. Never risk your own capital. He's a shrewd old devil. But just not interested, not for himself, anyway.'

'Is it that easy to borrow money now?' I was thinking of all the problems we had had with the Duchess.

He grinned at me. 'It is so long as the boats earn more than my backer charges in interest.'

I asked him if his backer was a local man, but he shook his head. 'A property dealer from the south who likes playing around with boats.' There was a note of envy in his voice. 'It's just a leisure occupation, like birdwatching is to some of the visitors I used to have. Goes out periodically and tries new ways of fishing whenever he's up in Shetland on business. Owns some land on Sullom Voe, and with all the oil companies negotiating for terminal facilities — well, it helps my being on the Council.'

'Is that how you met him, through your work on the Council?'

'No, it was the old man. He put me in touch with him.' But when I asked his name, he closed up on me and got to his feet. 'None of your business,' he said sharply as though afraid I was about to steal the source of his capital. He poked his head out of the wheelhouse door, calling for Harry Priest.

He was about two hours on board and when I saw him over the side — we were anchored off at the time — he said, 'See Harry keeps at it. A week, that's all you've got. Then you'll relieve Island Girl.' I stared at him and he nodded. 'That's right. On stand-by to North Star. I've had to send the other boat down to Lerwick for repairs. Damaged herself alongside one of the supply ships and sprang a leak.' He jumped down into the row boat. 'See you in a few days' time.'

That night I lay in my bunk listening to the lap of the water against the wooden sides, conscious of the quiet on board, with all the crew, except Priest, gone to their homes, and wondering who wanted me back with North Star, and why. An accident, Ian had said. The Island Girl's relief boat damaged. And he had bought the Mary Jane. On the old man's advice? Was Ian Sandford just an unwitting pawn in a game he didn't understand, or was it all in my imagination, the feeling that I was cast in the role of scapegoat?

In the week that followed, as Priest overhauled his engine and new gear came aboard, I thought a lot about that half-brother of mine and the strange father we shared. I could have taken time off and gone to see him at Burra Firth, but I didn't. Somehow I couldn't face him again, that twisted face. The fact is I was scared of him.

We sailed on 3rd October and Ian came down to see us off with two bottles of Scotch and instructions that all R/T communications were to be handled by Jamie.

'Does Fuller know who's skippering this boat?' I asked him.

'No. And if he did he wouldn't care. He's got other things to worry about, with men leaving and difficulty with mud and other supplies. Everything is in short supply and Star-Trion has to compete with companies that carry a lot more weight.' He shrugged when I asked him why men were leaving. 'They say the rig's bad luck and the man driving them a Jonah."

'Ed Wiseberg, you mean?'

'That's right. And Villiers's name stinks.'

'You realize my name is on the ship's papers,' I said.

He laughed. 'Nobody's going to look at them. Not with the heat on and those that have agreed to stick it out on North Star hell-bent to grab the bonuses they've been promised.'

It was getting late in the season, too late, I thought, for an old rig anchored in those waters. North Star was farther north and a lot farther west than Trans-ocean III when she went down. 'They must pull out soon.'

But he shook his head. 'Not till they've drilled hole No. 3. There's even talk that they'll stay out there all winter if necessary.' He finished his whisky and pushed open the door of the wheelhouse. 'Anyway, not your worry, and not mine.' He held out his hand to me, something he had never done before. 'Have a good trip and stay off the R/T. It gives them confidence if they hear only Shetland voices.'

It was a dull grey morning with a light rain falling as we headed out round The Nev, turning north to take the tide round the top of Unst. The glass was falling, the forecast bad, and by nightfall we were bucking a heavy sea. It was dawn before we sighted North Star, the rig slowly coming up over the horizon and the waves breaking in a white smother of foam against the columns of her 'legs'. Long before we had reached the eastward anchor buoys, Island Girl met us, the skipper wishing us joy of it over the loudhailer as he steamed past. I left Jamie to talk to him, keeping out of sight until he was well past us, headed for Scalloway with the wind behind him.

We had an uncomfortable week of it, doing the round of the buoys, rolling our guts out and lying hove-to head-to-wind as a series of small fronts passed through. Rattler did not come out once during the whole week. The sea was too rough for her to lie stem-on to the rig, and anyway they were fishing for a broken bit. We heard about it over the radio, van Dam trying to explain the hold-up to Fuller. And then, late on the Monday morning, when they had started drilling again, I picked up Villiers's voice, clear and very controlled, wanting to know how long before they reached depth, and van Dam answering, 'Two weeks maybe if ve don't 'ave no more trouble.' Information like that, given over an open line to London, indicated the urgency of Villiers's situation.

Nobody had any time now for lifting and re-laying the windward anchors. I had Jamie check with the barge engineer on duty. It hadn't been done since they had spudded in on the new location, and when I did manage to get a proper fix, I found they were well to the west of the first drill position.

The water was deeper, the risk greater. And the summer gone now. They were into the period of deepening depressions and stronger winds. No time for a small supply ship like Rattler to be fooling around with anchors. And it would probably mean hanging off the drilling string in case North Star dragged. A man as desperate as Villiers must be to go on drilling into the start of winter would hardly tolerate such an apparently unnecessary delay.

The wind turned northerly at the end of the week, and when Island Girl relieved us on the Saturday morning the sky was clear and cold with cross-seas breaking on the westerly swell. She came close alongside and the skipper shouted across to Jamie, 'Ye're to proceed to Rispond in north-west Scotland to pick up some equipment. Ian Sandford's orders. There'll be a lorry on the jetty there at 19.00 hours tomorrow evening. Three cases. And you're to deliver them back to Burra Firth. Okay?'

Jamie nodded and swung the helm, turning away to the south. Fortunately we had Chart 1954 on board and Jamie knew the place — 'A wee gut they used to call the Port o' the North. Ah knew a man once who could remember the time when they sailed open boats oot of Rispond round John o' Groats and all down the east coast to Great Yarmouth for the fishing. Aye, they wore like Vikings, hard boggers, all of them.'

Rispond was a tiny inlet on the north-western point of Loch Eriboll, completely sheltered from the north and east. The distance was about 150 miles. I had the engineer check our fuel. There was plenty to get us there, but not enough to get us back to Burra Firth. 'We'll be able to take on diesel at Kinlochbervie,' Priest said. They all seemed to know the area.

Running south that evening, the crew grumbling about how they could have been coming into Scalloway with the prospect of four days ashore, I wondered why Ian was sending one of his boats all the way to Scotland to pick up a few cases when it would have been so much cheaper to ship them up in the steamer from Aberdeen. And why such a tiny, unfrequented little gut? 'You go in on the top of the tide,' Jamie had said. 'You've got to. An' if ye can't load the cases fast, then ye're stuck there for twelve hours dried out alongside a bit of a stone jetty.'

I didn't like it. Kinlochbervie would have made more sense, unless there was something about those cases and secrecy of prime importance. But at least we were running, with the cold north wind up the old girl's skirts, and we made fast time of it, arriving at the entrance to Loch Eriboll shortly after 15.00. The wind had backed westerly and we lay hove-to under the lee waiting for the tide to make. The sky had already clouded over, and as the daylight began to fade, mists came down thick over the flanks of Creag na Faoilinn to form a black mass at the bottom of the loch.

Shortly before seven o'clock we began closing the entrance to the little bolthole, nosing very slowly into the gut till we could see the small stone jetty and a trade van waiting. At least Ian had got his timing right, the tide now almost at the full, but even at high water it was still only a gut. The rocks closed in on either side as we crept forward watching the echosounder. And then we were through the rocks and there was a house, a nice house standing white beyond the jetty, with a gravel drive and a bit of a lawn right beside the water.

A man got out of the van as our bows touched the stonework. He took our warps and told us to hurry. He sounded nervous. 'There's the cases.' He had the doors open before we had made fast, and when we had got the cases aboard he made me sign for them and then he was into his van and away.

'A mick,' Jamie said and spat.

I looked at the cases. All three of them had handle with care stencilled in black across the top and marine electronics on the side. 'Better get them below.' They weren't heavy enough to contain explosives, but all the same I wanted them out of sight. Time enough to consider what was in them when we were out of the gut. I let Jamie handle her and he worked her on a springer round the end of the jetty until our bows were facing outwards, and then we steamed out on a stern bearing, the break of our wash against the rocks unpleasantly loud.

We lay the night under An t' Aigeach and in a cold green cloudless dawn we hugged the coast round Cape Wrath, taking advantage of the constant west-going stream, and carried a fair tide southward to Loch Inchard. Coming into Kinlochbervie, Sutherland looking a wild land with the great humps of Arkle and Ben Stack looming over the end of the loch, I was very conscious that I was in mainland Britain now, not in the remotest islands of the north. It was the first time in over four months and I felt suddenly uneasy as the little port opened up to the north and we turned in to drop our hook astern of two Scottish trawlers. There were others moored along the quay, a line of buildings, and more activity than I had expected.

I sent Jamie ashore to see about re-fuelling and he came back with the information that the two trawlers anchored ahead of us were waiting to re-fuel and more expected that evening. 'Ah told him we'd only be alongside a few minutes, just for water and fuel, and he agreed to squeeze us in if those two boggers don't take all afternoon.'

We had a meal and hung around waiting until shortly after five when the second of the two trawlers pulled away from the quay and we were signalled in. We had barely got the fuel line aboard when a brand new trawler with flared bows steamed in, a sister ship close behind her. They had fish to land and they lay close off the quay, their engines throbbing gently in the evening stillness.

By six we were anchored off again. There was a Mission for Deep Sea Fishermen on the quay and I sent the crew ashore in the boat. They needed a break, and I wanted to be alone. As soon as they had gone, I went down into the hold. It was dark down there, the fish smell lingering, and in the beam of my torch the three cases looked strangely menacing, alone there in the dark hollow of that empty space. I stood staring at them for a long time, wondering what the hell they contained, where they had come from?

There was only one way to find out, and I got a hammer and cold chisel and went to work. They were nail-fastened and no possibility of breaking into them without it showing. But by then I didn't care. I had to see what was inside.

The result was puzzling. The first case contained what appeared to be some sort of radio equipment, a grey metal box with tuning dials, and an electrical lead neatly coiled, the whole thing carefully packed in a moulded plastic container. The second contained a completely sealed torpedo-shaped object. There was a large towing eye at one end. It was swivelled and had an electrical socket in the centre of the eye. The case also contained a heavy reel of plastic-coated wire, one end of it fitted with a watertight plug.

I stood there for a long time staring down at those two pieces of equipment. In the light of my torch, against the rough boards stained black with fish oil, they had a deadly, futuristic gleam. Or was that my imagination again? Explanations leapt to mind. I knew nothing about electronics, but the torpedo was obviously for towing behind a vessel, and the other for sending or receiving some sort of signal. It could be some advanced scientific way of locating a shoal of fish, in which case Marine Electronics was a fair description. I was remembering what Ian had said about his backer trying new ways of fishing, remembering too what had happened out there by North Star in June. It was four months ago now, but the memory was still vivid. This sort of equipment could equally be for locating something on the seabed — an anchor, for instance, or a well-head after the rig had left the site, or broken adrift.

In the end I packed them back in their cases and nailed the boxes down again. I did it as neatly as I could, but the marks of the chisel were there for anyone to see, and the wood was split in places. I didn't bother about the third case, and when I went up on deck, glad to be in the fresh air again, I was sweating. Several more trawlers had come in. I lit my pipe and sat on the bulwarks, staring across at the fights on the quay, thinking about North Star out there to the west of Shetland. A trawler was pulling away from the quay, another nosing into the vacant berth, but my mind was so engrossed in considering whether the equipment we carried in our hold was connected in any way with the future of the rig that it was some time before the shape of that trawler registered as familiar. And then suddenly I was on my feet, staring across the water at her as she moored alongside the quay.

She was against the lights, in silhouette, her hull black as the water that separated us. But when you have worked on the hull of a ship, when you know every inch of her, you cannot mistake her lines. No doubt at all — it was the Duchess lying there against the quay. And my boat ashore, no means of getting to her.

I forgot about Marine Electronics after that. I was thinking of Gertrude, of what I would say to her when we met. Would she slam the door in my face? And if she didn't, what then? All the explanations, the fight to try and clear myself. Nothing else would do. I knew that. And suddenly I realized she was the crossroads in my life. She was the focal point of all my doubts, the centre around which I could rebuild my life — if I had the guts.

The boat came back about ten o'clock. By then the Duchess was anchored off and I had drunk a lot of whisky. I decided to leave it till morning. In the morning I would be sober enough and clearheaded enough to face her. But when I went across to her in the cold grey light of dawn her decks were deserted. The other trawlers had all gone or were getting under way, but the Duchess lay there silent and asleep.

Nobody answered my hail, and when I climbed on board and went through the starboard gangway into what had been my cabin, it was empty. Her things were there, her clothes in the locker, but the bunk had not been slept in. I routed Johan out and he stared at me as though I were a ghost.

'Where's Gertrude?' I asked him.

'Ashore,' he growled.

'At the hotel?'

'No. She is gone to Inverness.'

I felt at a loss, utterly deflated. The confrontation for which I had prepared myself was suddenly not there. 'What the hell's she doing in Inverness?'

'A message we have over the R/T when we are fishing.' And there was hostility in his voice as he added, 'It is about you, so we have to haul our gear and come in here.'

'About me?'

'Ja.'

'What was the message?'

'That is for Gertrude to say.'

I hesitated. But it was obvious I wouldn't get anything more out of him. The relationship I had so carefully built up with the big Norwegian was gone now. I left him and went back to my boat. I didn't even bother to leave a note. I had nothing to say and not much hope that he would have delivered it anyway.

We sailed immediately, and as we motored out, I could see the crew of the Duchess — my crew, all the old faces — standing on the deck staring at us. We passed less than half a cable from her, her hull showing streaks of rust, her superstructure dirty with lack of paint, and there was a green fringe of weed along her waterline. I would have given anything to be back on board her.

It was a grey dirty morning with cloud low on the Sutherland hills, and it stayed grey all the thirty-nine hours it took us to raise the light on Muckle Flugga. The time would have been about ten-thirty, a pitch black night, and we lay hove-to with a good offing till dawn. By then we had the tide against us so that it was an unpleasant passage until we were out of the stream and into the quiet of Burra Firth. Ian came off as soon as we had anchored to check the cases. I left him to go down into the hold on his own, and Jamie followed him.

A few minutes later he came storming up into the wheelhouse, banging the door to behind him. 'There's two of them been broken into. Jamie says it was you.'

I nodded. He had discovered it when they had lashed the cases down on our way out of Loch Inchard.

'Why did you do it?'

'They might have contained contraband, or explosives.'

'Explosives!' He snorted. 'You have the most fertile imagination.'

'Why send me all the way down to Scotland for them?'

'If you own a ship, you might as well make use of her,' he snapped. 'And it's not for you to query your orders, or break into cargo. You'd no right.'

'It would have been a lot cheaper to have them sent up on the boat from Aberdeen.'

'And a lot slower.'

'Why the hurry?'

'Because Dillon is due up here this weekend. He's my backer. He's had this equipment made specially and he wants to try it out.'

'Where?'

'How should I know? Wherever there's fish, that's where.' He turned to the door and a shaft of watery sunlight showed as he opened it. 'I've told Jamie the men can go ashore as soon as they like. They're due a few days' rest.'

'What about the cases?'

'They'll remain on board. An engineer will be out shortly to install the equipment. And don't go monkeying around with it when the crew have gone and you're on your own.'

He left me then and I sat there smoking my pipe and wondering what sort of a man Dillon would prove to be and how he was going to get a weekend's fishing with the crew gone to their homes and only myself on board.

Later I went out to see the men away in the boat. The sun was glinting on the water and the old man sitting on the bench outside the hotel. The left side of his face was in shadow so that he looked like any harmless old gentleman taking the sun. He was so still I thought he must be asleep, but when I looked at him through the glasses, I could see his eyes watching me below the hooded lids and his lips were moving as though he were mumbling something to himself.

I could have hailed him and asked to be brought ashore. Was that what he wanted? I could almost feel him willing me to come to him. It would have been the natural thing for me to do, but in other circumstances. What would be the point now? To resume our probing of each other? I sat on the deck in the sunshine, my back against the side of the wheelhouse. It was warm and I closed my eyes. But I couldn't sleep. Too many thoughts were chasing through my mind.

The sun went in and I wished I had gone ashore to stretch my legs on the steep slopes behind the hotel. I could have walked across Mouslee Hill to Goturm's Hole, perhaps had a word with Robert Bruce. Bored with myself, I went into the wheelhouse and switched on the R/T. Almost without thinking I turned to the frequency used by North Star. But there was no traffic. Probably I was too far away, and I began idly playing with the dial, picking up scraps of talk, but all very faint. And then suddenly a voice said through a blur of static, '.. ready for me.' I was almost on the frequency for the Norwick voice channel and something about that voice made me hurriedly adjust the tuning. I went too far and missed something, but then the same voice came in loud and clear;'… the hurry? Where are you speaking from?'

I knew who it was then, that slight lisp.

'The ferry. Have Ian meet me in the Land Rover. And he's to take the boat back to Lerwick, tell him. As a member of the Council, that's where he should be now. Got it?' And then a different voice came on — 'Thank you, Norwick. That's all. Over and out.'

I switched the set off and stood there, thinking about that scrap of conversation. Dillon presumably. And in a hurry to get to the Mary Jane. Why? I was still thinking about that when the inflatable came alongside. Ian was at the outboard and another man in the bows. He was young with a wisp of a beard and shoulder-length hair blowing in the breeze under a grey woolly cap. He looked like a student, his eyes magnified by round glasses as he handed a metal toolcase up to me. 'The old man wants to see you,' Ian said to me as the engineer climbed aboard.

I hesitated, torn between a desire to talk to the man who had come to install the equipment and the urge to get ashore. 'All right,' I said and got my anorak from the wheelhouse. But when I joined him in the boat he knew nothing about the telephone conversation. He had only just got back from Harolds-wick.

We landed on the little beach at Fiska Wick and walked to the hotel. The old man was waiting for me in the room where we had talked before. There was a peat fire still glowing in the grate and the single window looked out on to the green slopes of the hill behind. He fixed Ian with his eyes, a hard, flat stare, waiting until he had left and the door closed behind him. Then he turned to me and said, 'It's some months now since we had our first talk. Now it's time for you to reach a decision.'

He was silent a moment, trying no doubt to think how best to put it to me, but I didn't give him the opportunity. 'Was that Dillon on the phone a while back?'

He looked surprised, and when I explained that I had picked up the conversation on the boat's radio, he said:

'Then you know?'

'What?'

'That North Star has struck oil.'

CHAPTER THREE

The news came as a shock. We had had our first flurry of snow the previous evening and there had been a drift of white on Hermaness Hill as we had come into Burra Firth. Winter here, and North Star striking oil, everything suddenly come at once and my father demanding I make a decision. What decision? But I knew. I could see it in his cold blue Nordic eyes. 'Who is this man Dillon?' I asked him. And I think I knew that, too.

'You'll be meeting him in a few hours.'

'A property man, Ian said, with an interest in fishing. But it's not fishing, is it? The equipment in those cases-'

'You broke into them — why?' I don't think he expected an answer, and after a moment he said, 'Sit down.' He waved me to a seat on the far side of the fire, then slumped into the wing chair. 'There's no more time.' His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper and there was a look of weariness on his face. 'I wish '\ now you hadn't come.' He gave a little shrug. 'I suppose it was inevitable, but…' He took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, twisting his mouth around it. 'I could have wished it had been some other time.'

'It's North Star. Is that what you're trying to tell me?'

He didn't answer, sitting there watching me. 'You have to make up your mind now.'

'What are you planning to do?'

But he ignored that. 'I've given you a job, kept you clear of the police-'

'What are you planning to do?' I repeated.

That's not for me to say. It's not my plan. Once, yes — but I only came into this because of Ian and the hotel here.' That twisted smile again. 'I hardly expected the two of you.' And then he said, 'I'm getting old, you see. And it's been a hard life.' He seemed to brace himself. 'But I'm still alive. Very much alive. And he's right. We can do a lot with this rig. It's a very good situation, if it's handled right. And it will be.' His eyes were closed, his voice very quiet, and I had the feeling he was talking to himself.

'Is Ian in on this?'

His eyes flicked open. 'Good God, no. Of course not.' He made a dismissive movement of the hand. 'Money. That's all he's interested in. It's the be-all and end-all of his existence.' The weariness was back in his voice. 'Anna was like that, under the skin, under the lovely bloom of youth-' He shook his head. 'Perhaps that's why I didn't marry her. So pretty, so sweet, but under the skin — nothing, no love of poetry, no inkling of the ideological turmoil, the reaching out to the stars…' His voice faded.

'Yet you wrote to her — from Spain.'

'Oh, yes.' He smiled. 'She showed it to you, did she?'

I nodded.

'And asked you for money?'

'I hadn't any.'

He smiled at me, and the twisted mouth made a mockery of it. 'You're different, aren't you? Different stock. And you had it as a child. Money, I mean. You could afford to turn your back on it. Nobody can buy you.'

'Did you buy Ian?'

'Ye-es. I suppose you could call it that.'

'To what end?' And when he didn't say anything, I told him how we had sighted Island Girl that night the rig had had her windward anchor cables cut. 'There was no other vessel there, so Ian must have been responsible-'

But he shook his head. 'Ian wasn't on board.'

'Dillon?'

He nodded.

'It's not fishing he's interested in then — it's sabotage.'

There was a long pause, and he sat there, drawing on his cigarette and staring at me. 'It's a rough world,' he said very quietly, the peculiar lisp coming through strongly. 'Some day man will learn to organize it so that he can live in peace. But not yet. You have to accept that. You have to accept the reality of the world in which you live.' He leaned forward, his voice urgent. 'Life is a battlefield, a political struggle, you see. And we're all a part of that struggle. We take sides, get involved-' His cigarette stabbed at the air. 'You. Me. All of us. You made your decision. You involved yourself — just as I did. And now — you can't escape that involvement now.'

He paused, breathless, and I said, 'What are you trying to tell me? That I should be a party to locating a wellhead and then destroying it?' His eyes widened slightly and I thought I had guessed the purpose of that equipment. 'A man calling himself Stevens followed me into Foula, when I was skipper of the Duchess and we had the North Star contract. He said what you've just been saying. He said Villiers was vulnerable, capitalism at its worst, and that there was political advantage to be had out of it. And with Ian on the Zetland Council-' My God! He had manipulated it all so cleverly. 'And you a Shetlander,' I cried. 'You were born on the west coast. Are you prepared to see the whole of that coastline scummed with oil, a massive pollution that will destroy the livelihood-'

'I tell you, it's a rough world,' he said sharply. 'And there are always sacrifices. Think of the loss of life in the war, twenty million in Russia alone, the destruction, the appalling conditions.'

'And this is war.'

He nodded slowly. 'As good a name for it as any.'

'And I'm to be in the front line, with you. Bringing unnecessary pollution-'

'Michael, you can't help yourself.'

'I bloody well can.' I had got to my feet and stood over him, hating him for what he was, for what life had done to him. 'You're so twisted in your mind it's a pity that shell didn't kill you.'

He sat very still, looking up at me, and there was something almost pitiable in his expression. 'You didn't mean that.' And when I remained silent, the two of us staring at each other, his face gradually hardened. 'That's your answer, is it?' He got slowly to his feet, reaching for his stick. 'I had hoped…'

'That I'd co-operate?' The anger and disgust in my voice seemed to touch him on the raw.

'That you'd have more sense,' he snapped at me. And then that strange, disfigured face softened again. 'Would you like some lunch? It's almost time.'

'No thanks,' I said. 'I'll go for a walk.'

He nodded. 'Good idea. Give you a chance to think it over.'

'There's nothing to think over.'

'No?' He smiled. 'Well, maybe not. But just remember what I've said. There's no escape, the police against you and your ship the only one they know was there when the cables of that rig were cut. Go for your walk and think it over. Your liberty, your future…" He left it at that, still smiling and a devil lurking in his eyes, as though in me he saw a reflection of himself. 'Come back not later than five. Dillon will be here then and we'll be running tests in the firth before dark.' And he added, 'The North Star strike is only a rumour based on core samples flown to Aberdeen. There's still some time yet.'

Still time. I went out on to the track and walked slowly back to Fiska Wick. The little beach was empty, the inflatable gone, and the water was like lead under a leaden sky. I went out on to The Ness where I could see the Mary Jane lying like a black rock against the pale glint of the water. She was swinging to the tide, the inflatable snugged against her side, and the cases were all on deck, the engineer and another man opening them up and getting the equipment into the wheelhouse.

I watched for a while, but it was cold and no way of getting out to her, so I turned to the slopes behind and began climbing Mouslee Hill, regretting now that I had refused the offer of lunch. Still time, he had said, and I could claim that he misled me. But it wouldn't be true. Where a decision is required the fault lies always in ourselves. From my experience of the sea I should have known that mistakes compound to produce disasters. The mistake I made that afternoon was to do nothing.

There were things I could have done. I could have gone into Haroldswick and phoned the police, or made an anonymous call like the bombers do. I could have gone aboard the ferry and radioed to North Star direct. Or I could have simply gone to Bruce's cottage and lain low there, watching to see what happened. But instead, I did nothing. I couldn't make up my mind.

I walked west across the backs of the hills to the high bold cliffs of Tonga, not a soul to be seen, not even Bruce, and conscious all the time of the solitude, the remoteness of this wild northern land, and of my own isolation. I stood for a while on the peat moss slopes above Tonga Stack, which is joined to the land, and north and south of me there were other, isolated stacks with the seas breaking against them. Birds everywhere, the air flecked white and shrill with their cries. And below me the water seethed, a chill northwesterly wind churning the flood tide into a welter of overfalls. The wildness and the solitude were overwhelming.

It was not the place to consider the merits of political activities and the role of economic warfare in an industrial society. Here only the elements counted. Nothing else. I walked south across Libbers Hill and Sneuga, as far as the brough on Flubersgerdie, and all the time I was walking I had the feeling that nothing beyond the peat moss hills and the distant glimpses of granite cliffs had any reality under that vast expanse of grey sky. Here was nothing made by man, nothing controlled by man. All was free and uncontaminated, and power lay in the wind, in the drive of the great depressions endlessly marching up to the white fish grounds from their birthplace far out in the Atlantic.

I was tired and hungry, and no nearer a decision, when I came down the slopes above Fiska Wick, the Mary Jane looking like a toy ship in the pale slash of the firth. The inflatable was back on the beach, the Land Rover backed up and two men loading cardboard boxes. They were the same two I had seen when I had first come to Root Stacks and they were waiting for me as I came down the beach.

'Will you be going aboard now?' the Irishman asked. They were standing in the water in their sea boots, ready to push off. 'The old man said to take you out if you wanted.'

'Has Dillon arrived?'

But he only motioned me to get in, the two of them holding the tubed sides to steady the boat. It was only when we were under way that I realized they had their own gear with them. 'You're going out tonight then?' I had to shout to make myself heard above the noise of the outboard.

The quiet bearded man nodded. He was lying sprawled across the stores, spray whipping over him as the laden boat slapped into the wavelets. 'If everything works all right.'

I asked him what his name was, but he just stared at me. He had a soft, gentle face, very full in the cheeks. He didn't look like a seaman, more like an intellectual — a teacher, possibly a writer or a lecturer. And there was a tenseness about him, his brown eyes staring.

The engineer was waiting for us as the outboard died and we came alongside. There was a big fair man with him. They called him the Swede and the way he grabbed the painter and made us fast I knew he was used to boats.

I gave them a hand with the cases, and when it was all on deck, the outboard started up again, the Swede casting off and the inflatable swinging away from the side and heading back for the Wick. I went straight to the wheelhouse, but the door was locked.

The engineer stood watching me. 'Where's the key?' I asked him.

'In my pocket.'

'Give it to me,' I said. 'You don't keep me out of my own wheelhouse.'

He backed away at the tone of my voice. 'You don't give orders. You're not the skipper now.' He said it with the truculence of a young man who resented all authority.

I held out my hand. 'Give me that key.' But the Swede moved between us, and his hand closed on my arm, holding me gripped. 'Nobody goes into the wheelhouse now, only Mr Dillon.'

I stepped back and the grip on my arm relaxed. 'When will Dillon be here?' I asked.

The man with the beard glanced at his watch and said in a voice that was as gentle as his manner, 'Any minute now.' The engineer brushed past me. 'I got to get the engine warmed up.' And he disappeared down the after-hatch. The other two began humping the stores below and I went with them to the little galley. The diesel started into life as I was cutting myself a hunk of bread and some ham.

I was still eating when I heard the outboard alongside and the clatter of feet on deck. I poked my head up out of the after-hatch to see the Swede making fast. The outboard stopped abruptly and a dark face with lank black hair appeared above the bulwarks. He might have been a South American Indian, or perhaps he was Arab — it was difficult to tell against the leaden glimmer of the water as he vaulted on board. And then he leaned over to help my father up.

The old man steadied himself against the wheel-house, looking at me and breathing a little fast. 'I was told you were here.' The grimace of a smile came and went. 'I'm glad.' And for the first time I saw a glimmer of warmth in his eyes. He turned at the sound of a voice and his hand reached out to my arm, a restraining gesture. I could see Paddy's face as he stood holding the boat alongside and another man just swinging his leg over the bulwarks, his back towards me. He was wearing a dark blue anorak with a Shetland wool cap on his head. 'Dillon,' the old man murmured in my ear, and there was a note of warning. The man turned and I was looking at the hard set face, the cold elusive eyes I had last seen at Foula. 'You know each other I think,' my father said.

Dillon nodded, staring at me stonily, and I thought He smiled, but I couldn't be sure, the tight-lipped mouth compressed. 'So you're coming with us?'

My mouth was dry and I didn't answer, wondering if he knew how the sight of him affected me — the feeling of being trapped.

His wandering gaze appeared to fasten on my father. 'He's your responsibility,' he said. 'Not mine.' There was a note of censure in his voice. Then he turned to me, the hard mouth smiling grimly as he said, 'No doubt we'll find a use for you.' He seemed amused, but there was a tenseness about him, and then the engineer was there and the two of them went into the wheelhouse. In less than ten minutes the inflatable was lashed to the stern, the anchor up, and we were moving down the firth, the man with the dark Indian features in the wheelhouse connecting up the electronic gear.

Just beyond The Fidd they streamed the little torpedo like a tin fish from the stern, letting it out on a Terylene line and unreeling the wire connecting it with the transmitter. We motored almost to the entrance, then slowed to take bearings.

The old man came and stood beside me. 'You don't like him, do you?'

The straight line of our wake was bending now as the Mary Jane swung away in a wide circle. 'No,' I said.

'You should try to hide your feelings more.'

'Why?'

'He's one of our top men.'

We were standing in the shelter of the wheelhouse facing the stern and I watched as we completed the turn. 'What's his background?'

'A professional, like myself. But the right age. And the right time, too — democracy finished, all the countries of the West, even America, degenerate and vulnerable.'

We were headed north again, the speed picking up and the beat of the engine increasing. 'Where's he come from?' I asked. 'What nationality?'

'Scots-Irish. Started in the Midlothian coalfields. Moved to Liverpool docks. He's politically astute and quite ruthless. Remember that and do what he says.'

I thought I detected a note of respect, of envy even, as though in the pecking order of that shadowy world to which they both belonged my father knew his place.

The wake was straightening out now and I kept my eyes on the pale taut line to the submerged torpedo. Somebody joined us from the wheelhouse, but I didn't shift my gaze. If the marine electronics gear was some sort of an impulse transmitter, then I knew what to expect and I wanted to see it. The light was fading, the clouds very louring, and suddenly our wake erupted in a jet of spray, the sea heaving beneath it. Then the shock wave of the seabed explosion hit the soles of my feet as it had done that night in the Duchess out by No. 2 buoy.

I turned my head. It was Dillon standing beside me, a quiet look of satisfaction on his face. Our eyes met and he nodded. 'North Star,' he said, and there was tension in his voice. 'The charges are already laid.' And he added sharply. 'A job you could have done.'

'The anchor cables again?' I was thinking of the rig adrift in a big sea and the driller working in a frenzy to disconnect the marine riser. 'There are safety devices,' I said.

'Pipe rams, blind shears, the whole emergency disconnect drill.' He nodded. 'I haven't wasted my time in Aberdeen. I guess I know almost as much as a driller about how the blow-out preventer works. But it takes time, and there's always the human factor.'

'So you're going for pollution. You're going to try and flood the whole sea with oil.'

He looked at me, that thin-lipped smile, and a sardonic note in his voice as he said, 'Still worrying about moral principles?' He clapped me on the back, the only time I had seen him in high good humour. 'With luck we'll set that rig adrift at the critical moment when they're testing for pressure, and you can watch it.' The smile vanished, tension in his voice again. 'But don't try to interfere. And stay out of the wheelhouse.'

Darkness was falling as we turned west under Muckle Flugga. We were very crowded with only two on watch and the tiered bunks all occupied. I couldn't sleep for thinking how utterly defenceless that rig was, a sitting duck to the heterogeneous group we had on board. The forecast had not been very good, a cold front passing through and a deepening depression moving in from the Atlantic. About 02.00 I went up on deck. The wind was nor'nor'-westerly Force 4, a beam sea and the old girl rolling like a cow.

I found the man with the dark Indian face clinging to the rail capping of the bulwark and shivering uncontrollably. He was moaning, and when I asked him if he was all right, he only groaned and retched with a rasping empty sound into the back of a breaking wave as it rolled under us.

'What's your name?' I asked him.

'Paulo,' he gasped.

'Where's your home?'

'Mexico.' He pronounced the 'x' as an 'h' so that I didn't get it at first. And when I asked him what he was doing over here, he looked up at me, his face green in the starboard navigation light, his teeth showing in the flash of an exhausted smile. 'You are not a freedom % fighter or you know. We are international, like a — a club, eh?' The boat swooped sickeningly on the long Atlantic swell, twisting and rolling as her bows ploughed into the sea, white water creaming past. Stars showed through ragged gaps in the clouds and it was cold.

I got him into the wheelhouse and he leaned shivering against the side of it. Paddy was at the wheel, nobody else there. 'This your first trip?' I asked him.

He shook his head, speechless.

'You're the electronics expert, are you?'

He stared at me uncomprehendingly. The bows slammed down, spray slashing at the windows, and above the roar of the water I heard Paddy's voice — 'You're not supposed to be here.'

I looked at him, at the tough, low-browed, unimaginative features. 'He might have gone overboard.'

'Sure and he never has. He's always sick the first few hours.'

'He's done this trip before, has he?'

There was no answer and I turned to the Mexican. 'How many times?'

He was still shivering, his brown features a sick grey. 'Two times,' he murmured.

'Why? What do you do?' He frowned in concentration. 'You're an expert — at what?'

'Ah, si.' The teeth flashed. 'Explosives. I am trained in explosives.'

I glanced at the impulse transmitter at the back of,the wheelhouse and the vessel yawed as Paddy left the wheel. 'You better get out now.'

We stared at each other, but he was a compact, powerfully-built man. 'Watch your helm,' I said as the bows fell away in the trough, the top of a swell breaking against our starboard side, solid water crashing against the wheelhouse.

'Okay. You steer then.'

I took the wheel and he lit a cigarette, standing right behind me.

'You've been a trawlerman, have you?' I asked.

'Coasters.' But he wouldn't say what run or where he came from, and after a while I handed the wheel back to him and went below to my bunk. That short spell at the helm, the feel of the boat under my hands, had relaxed me and I slept.

I woke to a change in the motion. It was just after 06.30 and we were hove-to. The light was on and I heard somebody moving in the bunk below me. I stayed there, wrapped in the cocoon of my blankets, my eyes closed and unwilling to stir. Twelve hours. Just about the time we should reach North Star. But there was no movement on deck and when I did open my eyes all the bunks were occupied, only my father getting into his clothes. 'Are we there?' I asked him.

'Not yet. We wait here till nightfall.'

'And then?'

'We relieve Island Girl.'

So I still had a whole day. I closed my eyes again, sleepless now and wondering what the hell I was going to do. What could I do? And cutting the rig adrift wouldn't necessarily result in massive pollution. I didn't know much about drilling operations, but I had seen the blowout preventer panel in the toolpusher's office. I had seen how quickly they had been able to operate the pipe rams to hold the drill string suspended in the hole that night the windward anchor cables had been cut. There had been a strong wind then. Now there was very little. I knew that by the feel of the boat. She was rolling to the swell, but that was all. I turned over, away from the light, and dozed for a while.

It was eight-thirty when I finally got up, only two of the bunks occupied now and the ship still hove-to with the engine running slow. There was coffee on the galley stove, eggs and bacon beside the pan. I was just sitting down to my breakfast when Paulo came down.

'Feeling better?' I asked him.

He nodded. 'Okay now.'

'What's happening on deck?'

'Nothing. They wait to make a radio telephone to the other sheep.'

'What time?'

'Nine-thirty.' He went past me, through the door we had cut in the bulkhead to the hold. He had a torch and a plastic case that looked as though it contained tools. I finished my breakfast, then went through into the hold to see what he was up to. He was crouched over a butane gas cylinder, screwing a plug into the head of it where the control valve is normally sited. Just behind him was another cylinder with two wires trailing from it. 'What is it — a depth charge?' It had to be something like that.

He looked up at me, puzzled. 'Detonator,' he said, pointing to the head of the cylinder he was working on.

'An underwater bomb?'

His eyes shifted nervously, the whites showing in the torchlight. 'Bomb — yes.'

'What's it for?' I was thinking of the force that would be generated by gelignite, or even a home-made explosive, packed into such strong cylinders, and the inflatable still with us, lashed to the stern. They could float the cylinders down in that, and if they were detonated against the riser when oil was coming up the pipe on full pressure… I was suddenly very scared, seeing in my imagination the vast explosive burn-up, the whole rig engulfed in a searing mass of flame. 'Christ Almighty,' I exclaimed. 'You can't. Just think…' I had reached down, gripping hold of his shoulder. 'There are more than sixty men-'

But he had leaped from under my grasp, a reflex action like a coiled spring triggered at the touch of my hand. The torch blinded me, but I saw the knife in his hand, heard the tension in his voice as he hissed, 'You go please.' He was poised like a man cornered.

'It's all right,' I said soothingly. 'I didn't mean to alarm you.'

But he just stood there, the steel blade of the knife glinting in the torch beam, and in the silence I could feel the tautness of his nerves. I turned with deliberate slowness, anxious not to upset him further as I moved to the bulkhead door, the skin crawling between my shoulder-blades.

,Back in the galley I glanced at my watch. It was % almost nine-thirty and I got my anorak and went up on deck to find the sun glimmering through a layer of cirrus. The wheelhouse door was closed, but through the glass side-panel I saw they were all there and Dillon with the mike of the R/T transmitter to his mouth. I slid the door open and heard his voice: '… Island Girl. Mary Jane to Island Girl. Come in, please, Island Girl. Over.'

No answer. He tried again, and then loud and clear over the loudspeaker came a Shetland voice identifying himself as Island Girl and asking why the hell they hadn't been relieved that morning.

'We'll be with you some time tonight,' Dillon said. 'I'll call you again at 19.00 hours. What's the weather like out there? Over.' He knew damn well what the weather was like, for we must have been just over the horizon from the other boat, but he waited while Island Girl's skipper talked about a heavy swell with a layer of cirrus overhead and the morning's weather bulletin forecasting a series of depressions moving in from the Atlantic. Then he asked what was happening on the rig. 'There's rumours ashore that they've struck oil. Over.'

'Aye, there's been a great coming and going these last two days. They've been running an electrical log and getting ready for what they call a drill stem test to check the pressure and rate of flow of the oil. Did you not listen to the news this morning? It seems the Company announced the strike officially late last night.' But when Dillon asked him whether they had started testing yet, he answered, 'Not yet. But there was a helicopter flight came in yesterday with service company lads. They're running a gun down the hole and there's a bloody great steel boom rigged out over the side. Ed Wiseberg was on the R/T to us a few minutes ago warning us to keep clear of it from noon onwards, so I reckon you'll see some fireworks when you arrive this evening.' And he added, 'Who's that I'm talking to? It's not Jamie?'

'No, it's his relief' Dillon said. 'Jamie and his lads were due for a bit of a break.'

'So you've a different crew, eh?' And the voice went on, 'Have you a man called Randall with you? I heard there was, 'cos the trawler Duchess of Norfolk arrived last night with Gertrude Petersen on board asking for him. Is he there now? Over.'

The mention of Gertrude, the memory of that explosives expert crouched over the cylinders… I flung the door back, Dillon denying my presence and my voice shouting, 'I'm here. Randall. Tell Ed Wiseberg…' But Dillon had dropped the mike.

'Grab him.'

I saw Paddy with his head low and out of the corner of my eye the big Swede, and I leaped at Dillon in the grip of fear and a sudden terrible desire to smash him before they got me. I saw his hand reaching into his anorak, his eyes widening, and then he ducked. My fist caught him on the side of his head, slamming him back against the radio. I saw him fall, a shocked, surprised look on his face, and then a hand gripped, ray shoulder, swung me round and something exploded in my belly. The Swede was a blurred image as I doubled up with the pain and then his fist crashed into my jaw and I lost consciousness.

The next thing I knew I was being dragged to my feet and a voice, Dillon's voice, said something about the chain locker. I saw my father, the twisted side of his face, and his eyes hurt, as though in doing what I had I had done him a personal injury. He looked at me and didn't say a word. No attempt to stop them as I was dragged out of the wheelhouse. Unconsciousness closed in on me again, the pain in my guts overwhelming, and when I came to it was in darkness with the hard feel of the anchor chain under me and the occasional slam of the bows reverberating through my head, a hanging length of chain sliding across my body.

I don't know how long I lay there in a half coma, dimly conscious of the salt sea smell of the stowage locker and of the links damp and hard against my limbs. It was freezing cold and I thanked God for my anorak, conscious of the roll and swoop as the boat lay motionless, head-to-swell, but conscious of little else until I had recovered sufficiently to drag myself to my feet.

And with consciousness I cursed myself for my stupidity, for the blind rage which had sent me for Dillon. I should have gone for the impulse transmitter. I should have found something with which to smash it. And I cursed myself for not having thrown those cases overboard. Guessing what they were, why in God's name hadn't I got rid of them when I could, instead of delivering them to Burra Firth? The excuse of time. Time on my side. Christ! All my life I seemed to have been living on borrowed time, and Wiseberg, Stewart, men I had met — a total of more than sixty — all at risk. And myself to blame, their executioner. No, not their executioner. But a party to it.

I stood there, in the blackness of the sea-stinking hole, the chain coming down through the hawsepipe, coiled like a cold steel snake under my feet. And nothing I could do. Nothing. Nothing. Shut in behind a thick barred wooden door, in a space I couldn't even stand up in properly, my head bowed by the wooden deck beams.

I sank back on to the dank hard bed of the steel links, breathing deeply, easing the pain until it was no more than a numb ache. Time passed slowly, the luminous dial of my wristwatch the only visible companion in the darkness, and nothing there that I could use on the door. Nothing to do but wait. And waiting, my mind focused incessantly on that scene in the hold, the cylinders with wires trailing from the detonators. A freedom fighter — my God! What sort of freedom was that, to roast sixty innocent men alive! Increasingly, as the power to think returned, my mind dwelt on the Duchess, the knowledge that she was out here, fishing in these waters — and Gertrude asking for me.

At irregular intervals one or other of the men who had jumped me came into the hold to check the door and make certain I was still there. The first few times I answered them, demanding water, food, anything to get a brief respite from the cramped hole. But they.didn't even reply and the next time I stayed silent. It was Paddy, and he called me several times. Then he % went away and a few minutes later he came back with the Swede, the door opening and the beam of a torch blinding me. I hesitated, and then, as I moved, the door slammed in my face.

Shortly after midday the door was opened again and a mug of beer with a thick wadge of ham and bread was set down in a coil of the chain, the Swede watching me all the time. I tried asking about the weather, anything to get them talking, but they didn't answer. I knew the weather was worsening. There was considerably more movement, the bows lifting and falling so violently that at times I had to grip hold of the chain, otherwise my body was left suspended for an instant to be slammed down on the hard steel links as we hit the troughs. Sometimes I thought I could hear the wind. I could certainly hear when the seas broke, could feel them, too, as the vessel staggered, flinging me against the wooden side of the chain locker. It was after a particularly bad slam that the ship came alive with the prop turning, the sound of it merging with the increased power from the engine to produce a steady vibration transmitted through the timbers.

All the rest of that afternoon we were under power in order to stay head-to-wind, and slamming into it like that, the swoop and plunge of the bows became unbearably, exhaustingly violent. I no longer cared about anything. All my energies were set on keeping myself from being battered to pieces. And then, when I thought I could stand it no longer, the vibrations of the engine increased and the vertical movement eased, changing to a slow, deep roll. We were under way, with the seas almost broadside, and through the thickness of the hull I could hear the water hissing and creaming past.

The time was eight thirty-four. It would be dark now and I thought of the rig again, wondering how long it would be before we reached it and what was happening on that huge platform. Half an hour later the beat of the engine changed. It was no longer under power and we lay wallowing with occasional waves breaking aboard. I thought we had arrived, but then I heard the sound of a much more powerful engine. I could hear it very plainly, a solid, throaty roar, magnified by the fact that I was lying below the waterline. That, too, slowed and I thought I heard, very faintly, the sound of a hail and voices shouting. They were still shouting when the churn of a propeller close alongside drowned all sound, merging with the heavy beat of an engine's exhaust so close beside me and so loud that it seemed like a hammer drill attacking the walls of my prison. I thought my eardrums would split, it made such a thundering noise. Then it faded into a churning of water close alongside. We lay wallowing in its wash, and after a while we got under way again.

I thought it was Island Girl that had come alongside us and that we had now taken over the stand-by duty from her. But time passed and we held our course, rolling wickedly with the waves breaking against us on the starboard side, so that I knew we were steering south. We stayed on the same course for almost three hours, then the engine slowed and I heard the beat of another boat passing us to port, and after that it was all I could do to save myself from injury, for the seas were big now and we were headed straight into them, the fall and crash of the bows sudden and very violent. I heard the sound of movement on deck, orders being shouted, but only vaguely through the din of the waves. And then we turned and the roll threw me against the side.

I was still lying against the side, clutching the links of the chain under me, desperately trying to hold myself there, when I felt the first explosion through the timbers at my back, not heavy, more like a sharp tap against my shoulders. But I knew what it was, and lying there in the dark I could visualize the scene on deck, the fishing lights probing the darkness for the anchor buoys and that wicked little torpedo trailing astern, sending its impulses through the water to some submerged receiver on the end of a trailing wire that went down 500 feet to the explosive device grappled to a cable on the seabed.

Clinging to the links, I counted the minutes on my watch — four, five, and at five and a half the second tap of a detonation hit the timbers. Two of the anchors gone, the windward ones presumably. And then we were turning, but not into the seas — away from them, downwind. Footsteps in the hold and the door opening, the beam of light dazzling after the darkness. 'On deck.' A hand grabbed hold of my arm, hauling me to my feet, pulling me out of the locker and I was so cramped and exhausted I could hardly stand.

They dragged me up the narrow companionway that led direct into the wheelhouse and forced me to stand, propped against the closed door. I saw Dillon's face, but only as a blur, the wheelhouse lit by a weird glow. It shone on my father's twisted face, and I blinked my eyes, weeping after the long darkness. 'You heard the anchor cables go,' Dillon said. 'You heard, did you?'

I nodded, wondering what he wanted of me, and desperately trying to recover myself. I was sore all over, a deep ache.

'Your ship has cut numbers One and Four.' Your ship! What did he mean by my ship? His face was strangely lit, a livid red, his cheek puffed and a scab of dried blood on the side of his head where I had slammed it against the R/T transmitter. Slowly I turned, my weeping eyes narrowed against the glare. The bows swung wildly, the break of a wave lashing the windows, and suddenly I saw it, heaving and tossing in the glass panel opposite, Dillon's face no longer red, his head in silhouette.

It was the rig. It rose up out of the wildness of the seas no more than three cables away, towering above us and lit the way I had so often seen it, like a factory complex with the tall finger of the derrick climbing into the night, a tier of ruby lights. But now, from the very top of it, a long gas jet streamed in the wind, and at deck level, thrust out from the side of the platform at the end of a steel boom, a huge tongue of burning oil, a great flare of flame like a dragon's breath, pulsed into the night, spray jets of water shooting out in a lurid flare. " The moment we've been waiting for.' Dillon's voice was tense, his eyes glowing with a deep inner excitement. 'Only two anchors holding her, the wind around thirty knots, gusting forty, and yours the only ship here.'

I looked at my father, sitting wedged in the corner of the wheelhouse, a crumpled, silent figure. Quite ruthless. His words came back to me as Dillon's voice, tight with tension, said, 'We're turning now for the final run. And when we cut those two remaining cables she'll go, just like that.' He banged his hand on the flat of the ledge we used as a chart table, and the boat completing its turn, his face was lit again by the red flaring of the oil, the skin shiny with sweat, his eyes glowing. 'They won't have time to disconnect or operate the kill and choke. And at the end of it all it's you they'll blame.' And he added, 'But once you're in the inflatable you won't care. You won't care about anything, you'll be too frightened.'

My mind was slow and confused, unable to grasp his meaning, still thinking of the rig and the cold ruthless drive of this man who could see the killing of so many men, a group of fellow workers, the destruction of the rig, as justified, as part of the struggle…

'You could have done it for us,' he said. 'You could have done it, so easily. And I asked you. I came to you-'

'I'm not a murderer,' I said, my voice strained and hoarse.

'You think it's murder?' His voice had risen. 'How can it be murder when you're fighting a war?' The man at the helm reported 'On course', but he took no notice. 'Korea, Vietnam, Angola — a soldier doesn't call it murder when he destroys defenceless villages, or a pilot when he bombs a town, spreads napalm and burns up innocent children. And if anybody dies out there, it'll be their own fault. They've got safety rafts, scrambling nets-'

They're testing,' I said, cutting short his outburst of self-justification. 'There's oil flowing up from thousands of feet down, under pressure — and this ship's a floating mine.'

'And who will they blame? — not me.' He laughed, but no mirth in it and his eyes cold with contempt. 'I gave you the chance to prove yourself. Think of Villiers, with the oil flowing and his shares booming. He'll make millions out of this. Is that the sort of world you want?'

'Destruction doesn't build a new world,' I said.

'What do you care about a new world? You're not a fighter. You're not one of us. You're nothing. A little shit of a bourgeois radical who can't make up his mind which side he's on. Radicals!' He spat the word out. 'Get him into the boat.'

The old man stirred in his corner. 'He's my son,' he said, but hands were gripping my arms, the wind roaring in, solid with spray, as the door slid back. I was thrust out into the gale and I saw a buoy in the spotlight, riding the crest of a breaking wave, and right below me the inflatable bouncing alongside. The vessel rolled in the trough, hands thrusting me against the bulwarks, and above the noise of the sea I heard a voice say, 'Let him be.'

A wave rolled under us, the deck heaving and I turned on the Swede as the roll caught him off balance, hitting out at him, and in that moment I saw the old man standing in the gap of the wheelhouse door. 'Let him go.' The grip of their hands relaxed. I was suddenly free, the twisted side of my father's face lit by the oil flare, the deep gash a lurid red, his voice saying, 'He comes with us.' He was facing Dillon, and Dillon saying, 'No. He takes his chance, and whether he survives or not doesn't matter — he gets the blame.' The bows crashed down, a roar of water, the ship staggering under the impact and his voice whipped away in the wind:'… out of this. You were only brought into it because you're a Shetlander and knew…' The rest I lost as another gust hit us, the ship leaning away from it and the old man clutching at the door frame, not looking at Dillon now, but at me. I thought his lips framed the words 'my son' again, but there was no determination, no fight — only acceptance.

I shall never forget that helpless, hopeless look on his face, a man acknowledging his own son, yet acquiescing in his destruction. There were tears in his eyes and the wind tore them away. And that's all I remember — that and Dillon's face and the fist in my guts as I tried to wrench myself free of them. And then the hard top of the bulwarks against the small of my back, a voice high in the wind saying, 'Over the side,' and I was falling, the black plastic fabric of the boat coming up at me on a crest. It was half-full of water and for a moment I lay clutching at the smooth rolled air cushions as the wave broke over me, lifting me almost to the level of the deck. The Swede was fumbling at the painter, the nylon cord difficult to handle, a riding turn.

In that moment, with the Swede right above me, holding a torch and working at the cord with his other hand, the meaning of Dillon's words dawned on me, the reality of my situation suddenly very clear. A wave broke under me, lifting me in a smother of foam, and I heard the Swede call to Paulo, saw him reach out his hand for the knife, and in that moment I dived for the bows, gripping the cord, shortening up on the painter. That torch was my only hope. The next wave broke hissing behind me, the inflatable lifting me to the bulwarks again, the Swede sawing at the cord, and on the crest of that wave I reached out and grabbed hold of the torch.

The boat fell away in the trough, my whole weight on his arm, and the fool didn't let go, the trawler rolling and his body coming with the roll, sprawling over the side to hit the airtight slippery curve beside me as I fell back. The nylon cord parted, the Mary Jane's hull sliding past, faces looking down, the whole scene vivid and red in the glare.

I lay in the water, gasping, and the Swede's face close beside me disappeared, his hand scrabbling at the drum-tight curve of the fabric. Then suddenly I was alone, the boat's engine, a distant beat in the wind, gradually fading. It was quiet then, the wind almost soundless as I drifted with it, and only the hiss of the wave crests.

I didn't even feel the shock wave as they cut No. 3 cable. Sprawled in the bottom of the boat, my fingers gripping the slats of the floorboards and my head lifted to peer over the side, I saw the Mary Jane steaming across the line of the buoys, and twisting round I could see the rig growing in size, the gas jet high in the sky, the oil flare licking the night. Soon I could hear the roar of that flame, the sound of the power plant, the whole factory blaze of the giant structure going on about its business, apparently oblivious that only one of the windward anchors remained. And the wind and the sea sweeping me towards it, to pass I thought just seaward of that blinding, searing tongue of flame now looking like a beautiful frilled monster with the spray-jets gleaming red, a glorious coloured ruff, a mouth wide open, pouring out fire.

Already I was only catching glimpses of the Mary Jane, and then, when she, too, was on the top of a wave, I thought she had turned and was heading north, "and at the same moment a klaxon blared on the rig. I could hear it even above the wind, the platform so close above me now. The gas flare at the derrick top was snuffed out, the tongue of flame at the end of its boom flickered, withdrawing itself into the darkening circle of spray. Suddenly it was gone, the sea black, and only the lights of the rig to show the white of the waves rolling under me.

I was almost abreast of the rig then, drifting fast downwind to pass a cable, perhaps a cable and a half, to the north. Then for a while the rig seemed stationary again. Spotlights picked out the underside of the platform, the round fat columns with the waves breaking against them and the big tubular bracings smothered in foam. I could see the guidewires leading down to the seabed and the casing of the marine riser, and guidewires and riser were no longer vertical. They were slanting away from the wind, the angle increasing. And I was moving down past the rig then, the whole huge structure held anchored by a 20-inch casing reaching down almost 600 feet to the BOP stack on the seabed.

And then it snapped and the rig was moving with me, the guidewires trailing, men crawling like monkeys high in the night, releasing scrambling nets, checking the winch drums at each of the four corners of the platform. The rig stayed with me for perhaps ten minutes, the time it took to drift over her downwind anchors, to drag the cables, and then she held and I was being swept past it again.

Lying there, clinging on to the slats, my head twisted sideways watching the rig, I was too scared of what might happen to think of myself. At any moment I had expected the whole structure to be engulfed by flames. But something had given them the few moments they'd needed to choke the oil flow. Maybe Dillon had been so tense, so disturbed by the loss of the Swede overboard, that he had mistaken No. 1 buoy for No. 2. That would explain the quick turn and the northward run. Whatever it was, the rig was safe — for the moment. No drill hole run amok and blazing oil, nobody roasted alive in a holocaust of fire.

It was only then that I remembered the torch, my urgent reason for grabbing it, and I shone it up at the small figures loosening the nets high above me. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. I kept flicking it on and off until my thumb ached with the pressure and I was losing sight of the rig in the troughs. It was when I stopped sending that hopeless SOS that I realized I was shaking with cold, the water I was lying in warmer than the wind blowing through my sodden clothing.

I never saw her come up on me out of the night. She was just suddenly there, a trawler with her fishing lights on, her spotlight swinging back and forth across the waves. I began using the torch again and for long minutes I thought she'd never see me. Then very slowly she began to turn, her bows swinging till they pointed straight at me and she was growing larger.

v She lay-to a short distance to windward, rolling her side decks under and drifting down on me, smoothing the seas out and blocking the wind. A heaving line came rushing through the glare of her lights, missed "me by a few feet. Another whistled straight across me and I grabbed it, wrapping it round my body as the rusty steel plates of her side rolled down on top of me. Then the line tightened round my chest, dragging me into the sea and yanking me up to swing in a blinding crash against the ship's side. I remember nothing after that until I found myself sprawled on the deck and Johan's bearded face hovering over me.

CHAPTER FOUR

I remember putting my hand up to my head, blood on my fingers, and Johan saying, 'It is Gertrude you must thank.' And the next thing I knew I was on a bunk with the light in my eyes and they were pulling off my clothes. I felt dazed and I wanted to be sick. A voice, a long way away, said, 'He's coming round.' It was Gertrude's voice and I tried to raise myself, wanting to ask about the fishing boat, but I couldn't form the words. Instead I was sick, leaning over the edge of the bunk and retching up seawater.

I was shivering then and Gertrude said, 'You are all right now.' Blankets were heaped on top of me and I tried to push them away, thinking of the old man and Dillon, the Swede's hands scrabbling, and the little torpedo, echoes to the seabed, the anchor cables exploding — a kaleidoscope of impressions with the blurred vision of Johan's bearded face and Gertrude looking down at me with huge eyes full of pity. And at last I found my voice, heard myself say, 'The radar. Get that boat on the radar.'

'It's all right. The rig is all right and no need for you to worry.'

'It's not all right.' A big hand thrusting me back, myself struggling — 'Stop them — if those bastards blow the last four anchors…'

And Gertrude's voice: 'Relax. Nothing you can do.'

But I knew there was. If the rig went adrift… If they succeeded… 'It's a lee shore,' I gasped. I saw it in my mind, the rig stranded and battered on Foula, or on the Mainland shore of Shetland. And the disaster blamed on me. The boat gone, nobody else but me… 'Get me some clothes.' I pushed the blankets back, holding on to my stomach and forcing myself up on my elbow.

'You can't, Michael.'

'Some clothes. Quick, for Christ's sake.' I swung "my legs off the bunk, forcing myself up stark naked, thinking only of that deadly, dangerous little man and what he had planned. Not the others. The others didn't matter, not even my father. It was Stevens, Dillon, whatever the cold-hearted bastard liked to call himself. 'Some clothes, damn you,' I said, through gritted teeth.

A jersey, trousers, carpet slippers much too large for me; somehow I got into them and dragged myself through the door to the bridge. Lars was at the helm, Henrik at the Decca. Beyond them the rig wavered, a lit tower block canted at an angle and rising and falling in the glass of the windows as the Duchess steamed at slow ahead into the waves. The bows fell away and I lurched down to push Henrik away and watch the sweep lighting the screen in its steady radial circling.

'It is all right,' Gertrude said again. She was close behind me. 'It is holding on the other anchors.'

The screen, blurred by the break of the waves, was difficult to read, my head throbbing, my eyes not focusing properly. 'Where's that boat now?' I asked Henrik. 'Is that it over the bows?'

'No. Is a buoy, I think. The boat is starb'd bow.'

I waited till the sweep swung round through northeast and there it was, out beyond the pinhead blips of the two buoys, beyond the first distance circle. I reached for the telegraph, rang for full ahead. The bell answered just as a voice crackled out of the loudspeaker. It was Ken Stewart calling on us to stay by the rig and patrol the buoys of the four anchors that were still holding. 'Is Randall able to talk now?'

I reached for the phone. 'Randall here.' And I told him briefly what had happened, how his own standby boat had cut the four windward cables by trailing a sonic beam transmitter. 'She's out by Nos. 5 and 6 buoys, but we're going after her now. She won't cut any more cables, and we'll keep after her.'

By then we were almost on top of the two buoys and the blip was moving away to the north, fast. He wanted us to stay by the buoys, of course, but I ignored him, blowing into the engine-room voice pipe and calling for maximum revs. I was remembering the Mexican fixing the cylinders in the hold, the powerful engines of that other vessel hammering at the wooden sides of the chain locker, and Gertrude behind me said, % 'No. No, there's no need for that.' A hand fell on my shoulder, gripping me tight, and Johan said, 'You hear what Gertrude said.' His voice was thick and obstinate, and still gripping me, he reached out for the telegraph and put it back to slow again.

I think I was crying then. Crying with frustration. Certainly there were tears in my eyes as I faced Gertrude, telling her how I had been set adrift, Dillon intending my body to be the only evidence and my father acquiescing. The scene was still so vivid, my anger, my hatred of that man so intense that when I turned on Johan, hitting out at him, there was a wild-ness running through me. He was a beer-drinker, too fat in the belly, and that is where I hit him. Gertrude screamed at me, but then the voice pipe whistled and I picked it up and heard Duncan asking what the hell was going on. But I couldn't answer, my legs suddenly weak and buckling under me. I heard Gertrude say something, but her voice was a long way away, and then I was being lifted up and the next thing I knew I was on the bunk again and she was holding a mug of something hot to my lips. 'Drink it. Then you feel better. You shouldn't have hit Johan.' Her voice was reproachful.

'Tell him I'm sorry,' I murmured. I don't know whether it was exhaustion or the sedative she had mixed with the drink, but I was asleep before I had finished it.

When I woke dawn was just breaking and we were running before a big sea. I knew that by the swooping corkscrew motion, the pitch of the engines, the occasional sound of a wave breaking aft. It meant that we had left the rig and were headed east for Shetland. I closed my eyes again. Nothing I could do about it now. Nothing I could do about anything, and I was tired. God! I was tired.

I didn't wake again until Gertrude brought me some food on a tray. It was past nine then and when I asked her where we were she said, 'Approaching Papa Stour. It is blowing very hard, so we go to Aith. It is nearer and soon we will be under the lee.'

'What about the rig?'

'When we leave it is dragging, but not much, and they have sealed off the drill hole. The choke and kill, that is what Ken Stewart call it, and they do that before the marine riser casing broke. So eat your food. There is nothing to worry about.'

It was eggs and bacon and a mug of coffee. Just the smell of it made me hungry. 'I haven't thanked you,' I said. 'If you hadn't been standing by North Star-'

'It is not me you have to thank. It is your wife.'

'Fiona?' The coffee was thick and sweet in my mouth as I gulped at it. 'What the hell's Fiona got to do with it?' I was staring at her, seeing her large-mouthed competent face, thinking how comfortable and practical she was in comparison with Fiona. 'I don't understand.'

'She did a very wonderful thing — for you.' She spoke very softly, a note of sadness, almost of pity in her voice. 'She loves you I think very much.'

'It's finished,' I said. I didn't want to talk about % it, not with her. I began eating, feeling confused and wondering what was coming.

'For you maybe,' she said quietly. 'But not for her.' There was a long pause, and then she said, 'She is something to do with those men on the fishing boat I think.'

'Probably.' I was remembering how she had followed me to Hull, what she had said the last time I had seen her, in the corridor outside the court. 'What happened to the boat?' I asked.

'You don't have to worry about the boat. It made off to the north.'

'You didn't follow it.'

'No.'

Would the police accept that? Would they accept that there had been a boat and that it was Dillon, not me, who was responsible for cutting the cables? I was still thinking about that and eating at the same time when she said, 'You do not want to know what Fiona did?'

'Does it matter?'

'Yes, Michael. It does matter.' And she went on, a note of urgency in her voice, 'Listen please. We came into The Taing and there was a letter for me, from Aberdeen. She wanted to see me urgently, about you. A matter of life and death, she say, and God help me I think she is just dramatizing. So I don't do anything until we are fishing off the Hebrides and I get a telegram from her over the R/T. A telegram is something I cannot ignore, so we put into Kinlochbervie and I telephone her. We arrange to meet in Inverness the next day. And it is there she tells me what is going to happen.'

'About the rig?'

'Ja.' And she nodded, her fair hair falling over her face. 'But it is not only about the rig. She is convinced the man in charge of the operation will make it look so that you are responsible. She is afraid for you. She thinks perhaps it is your dead body-'

'Did you report this to the police?'

'No, that was a condition she made. She was concerned for you, not the rig.'

'Surely you warned Ed Wiseberg?'

'Yes. As soon as we reached North Star I talked with him by loudhailer. I tell him something is planned to happen to the rig. But he thinks the Duchess is there to cause trouble — to frighten the men or something. He tell us to Eff Off.' She smiled. 'He is very tense, you know, already occupied with his testing. So then I ask the stand-by boat if you are on board or perhaps on the relief boat. But they don't know anything about you, so we stay around the rig, watching. And when it is dark and the relief boat arrive, we keep downwind of her with our lights turned off.'

'She told you I was going to be put in a boat?'

'No, she don't say that. But Johan and I, we think it is possible. We just don't know what is going to happen, only that we must stay in the vicinity of North Star. Then Ken Stewart say there is a torch blinking an SOS in the water and that's how we come to pick you up.' And she added very quietly, 'So you don't 3S6 owe your life to us, but to Fiona.' She was gazing at me wide-eyed, waiting for some reaction.

But there was nothing I could say, and I went on eating, feeling helpless, propped up in the bunk and thinking of Fiona risking her liberty, perhaps her life, because of something that was finished, dead, buried in the past. What the hell could I say?

She sat there waiting until I had finished my food, then she took the tray and stood there, holding it in her hand and looking down at me. 'Do you want me to send a message? I know where she is staying.'

'Tell her I'm safe,' I said.

'I already send a telegram to say that. But she will expect something more — a message from you.' She reached down to the locker beside the bunk and handed me a writing pad and ballpoint. 'You think it out. We will be in Aith in about an hour. Then you can send it yourself.'

She left me then, apparently thinking my reluctance due to her presence. I stared at the pad, knowing there was nothing I could say that wouldn't encourage Fiona to think there was still something left of our marriage. She loves you, I think, very much. It was Gertrude I wanted to think of, not Fiona — Gertrude who had brought her trawler north, to stand by the rig in the hope of finding me. And she had done that after three months without a word from me, knowing that I was somehow involved.

One hour, she had said. Then we would be in Aith, tied up at the pier. I thought of all the telex messages being sent out by North Star — to Fuller, to the Aberdeen office, to Villiers in London. And the news broadcasts. It would have been on the radio this morning. TV would have it by midday, newspaper presses rolling the story out, a rig broken adrift and suspected sabotage. Aith might only be a small place, but it was on Mainland, and once we were in, press, reporters, police, they would all be there.

A wave crashed aft as we were pooped, but I barely noticed it. I hardly heard the strange noises the hull made as the plates worked under the pressure of the seas. I had one hour, just one hour to myself to get a clear statement down on paper. I was still tired, my head throbbing, but I knew it had to be done. And, once I had started, I found myself writing fast and with concentration, so that I barely noticed the decrease of movement, the growing quiet as we came in under the lee.

I hadn't quite completed it when I felt a bump on the starboard side, the sound of feet on deck and voices. We were alongside, and a moment later Gertrude came in followed by a tall, stooped figure in a tweed jacket. 'Inspector Garrard,' she said. 'He wants to see you alone.'

The inspector came forward, ducking his head to avoid the steel angle irons of the roofing. 'Before the reporters get at you,' he said. He waited for Gertrude to leave, then pulled up a chair and sat down, opening his briefcase. 'Since I'm not sure whether you're one of the villains or not I suppose I ought to caution you.'

'You want a statement, is that it?'

He nodded. 'Yes, I'll need a statement.'

'I've just been writing it for you,' I said and handed him the pad.

'Good. That saves a lot of time.' He took it and there was a long silence as he read it through. When he had finished, he said, 'With what Mrs Petersen has told me and the messages we've had from North Star, this is about what I had expected.' He hesitated, smiling slightly. 'We kept tabs on you, of course. From the moment I had them release you from the Hull Central Station we've been following your movements, but at a distance. The trouble was we weren't sure exactly who was involved and how it would be done. We hoped you'd lead us to that. But then it all happened too. quickly.'

It was a shock to realize that this quiet academic-looking man had been making use of me so deliberately. But my reaction was only one of relief. 'What about Dillon?' I asked.

'His real name is McKeown. Until now he's always worked in the background. We've been trying to-'

'Yes, but what's happened to him? Where is he now?'

He shrugged. 'You're probably right in saying they've destroyed the fishing boat after transferring to another vessel.'

'But you don't know. You don't know what's happened to them.'

He shook his head. 'A navy ship is out there now, searching. But I'm afraid we moved too late.' And he added, 'We've pulled in Sandford, of course. He doesn't seem able to tell us much, but what he has told us tends to corroborate your statement.'

He stayed there for about half an hour, asking questions and checking my answers against information in a file from his briefcase. Finally he rose. 'I have to be getting back to Lerwick now. Like you, I wish we knew what happened after the rig's cables were cut. But it's been a bad night out there. North Star has dragged about three miles and one of the remaining anchor cables snapped under the strain. But the forecast is for less wind, so the rig should hold. And Villiers arrived by plane this morning. He's in Scalloway now. He'll want to see you. Also, the media. They'll want the story, too.' He put the file back in his briefcase and snapped it shut. Then he stood looking down at me and I sensed a sudden awkwardness. 'One other thing. Mrs Petersen said she told you your wife was in Aberdeen.'

I nodded, something in his expression warning me so that I think I knew what was coming.

'You saw her in Hull, at your hotel. And she was in court that day. We kept track of her after that, so we knew where to pick her up for questioning.' He hesitated. 'I'm sorry about this, Randall, but I had a call from the Aberdeen police just before I left Lerwick. When they went to her lodgings last night, they found she'd been taken to hospital that morning suffering from an overdose of barbiturate.'

He didn't have to tell me. I knew from the expression on his face. 'Dead?'

'Yes, I'm afraid so. She was dead on arrival at the hospital.'

I didn't see him go. I just lay there staring at the rusting paint of the roofing, thinking of Fiona alone in some wretched boarding house. Was it my fault? Was I to blame? If I'd been there, if I hadn't left her… If I'd gone back to her that night when she had come to my hotel room… But it wouldn't have been any use. I knew that. It was something in her make-up, the restlessness, the nervous vitality, the constant shifting from one cause to another. And drugs her only solution. Poor Fiona! I should have wept for her, but my eyes were dry and I felt no loss, only a sense of relief that it was over.

The door opened and Gertrude came in. 'He told you, did he?' Her eyes were enormous and I saw they were full of tears. 'I'm sorry, Michael.'

'There's nothing to be sorry about,' I said, and I meant it, remembering the lost years and what her life had been.

'How can you say that?' And she went on, 'You don't see her as I saw her that day in Inverness.' Her voice was trembling with emotion. 'She was so lost, so alone — and frightened I think. But not for herself. For you.'

I got out of the bunk then, going to her, shocked that it was she, not me, that was crying for Fiona, and I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that Fiona was all right now, the long internal struggle over. But she pushed me away, swallowing her tears and saying in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, 'There are people, journalists, wanting to see you. They are in the bridge. I came to tell you.'

I got dressed and went through into the bridge and saw them there, rain beating at the windows and the hills on either side of the little port lost in cloud. It was still raining when the last of the reporters left, but the clouds had lifted slightly so that the long bank of Burgins was just visible and the island of Papa Little at the end of the voe. I was just going below for lunch when a taxi drew up and Villiers got out, standing bare-headed in the rain talking to the driver, a bright red anorak slung carelessly over his shoulders. Two other taxis followed, nosing between the houses. He glanced at them, his hair already wet, his square jaw jutting angrily. Then he turned, walking quickly on to the pier, climbing over the bulwarks and coming straight to the bridge.

'Randall.' He held out his hand. 'Glad to see you safe. I saw Inspector Garrard on the road. He showed me your statement. You're lucky to be alive.' He glanced round the empty bridge. 'Where's Mrs Peter-sen?' And when I told him she was below, he said, 'I'd like to see her please — both of you. I've got to get out to the rig and in this weather yours is the only boat can get me there.'

He didn't waste time. As soon as I had called Gertrude and we were both of us with him in my cabin, he said, 'Now, can we come to some arrangement? We've got an ocean-going tug on the way, but it won't be there for another twenty-four hours at least. George Fuller got me a Met. forecast just before I left Scalloway. There's a break coming in the next six to eight hours, but there's another Low moving in and worse to follow. Did Garrard tell you we've had one man killed and two injured? Apparently they had been winding a new cable on to No. 2 winch drum with the intention of trying to hold the rig on a spare anchor when the cable got out of control. Unfortunately, it was Ken Stewart who was swept over the side. The other two men, they're all right — one has a broken arm, the other cracked ribs. But with Stewart gone, there's nobody I trust on board to handle navigation if the rig starts drifting again.' He was looking straight at me. 'How fit are you? I want somebody out there with me who can take charge in an emergency.'

'I'm all right,' I said. 'But how do you think you're going to get on board? Even if there is a break, there'll still be a hell of a sea running.'

He nodded. 'I appreciate that, but it's something I've got to try.' He hesitated. 'We already owe you quite a lot — you and Mrs Petersen. But there's no stand-by boat with the rig now and this is the only trawler in the area big enough to stay by North Star till the tug gets there. You can state your own terms, but don't let's waste any time. Okay?'

The terms we agreed covered any damage, gave us a hefty bonus if the Duchess stayed by the rig until it was re-anchored, and provided for a long-term charter thereafter at favourable rates. I called to Johan to get the crew up and we cast off with the TV cameras set up on the pier taking pictures and the producer shouting for Villiers to come out on to the deck. Gertrude was already writing out the charter agreement and it was signed before we were in to Swarbacks Minn and meeting the full force of the north-westerly wind. The tide had only just turned against us and I took her through the Sound of Papa, a big sea running as we came out from under the lee of Papa Stour.

It was no more than twenty-five miles to North Star's new position, but it took us almost six hours. Twice Villiers talked to the rig and on each occasion Ed Wiseberg was not available. The anchors were still holding apparently, but they had done nothing further about the spare anchor and I got the impression they were simply waiting for the tug to arrive. I don't know who he was speaking to, Sparks probably, but on the second occasion I heard him say, 'Well, for Christ's sake tell Ed I want to talk to him. He's got to get that bloody anchor rigged and over the side, then he's got to think of some way of getting us on to the deck.' I didn't hear any more for our bows fell off the top of a breaking wave and a great burst of spray crashed against the bridge. Then he was beside my chair, leaning over me, peering down at the chart folded on my knees. 'How far off now?' His voice was tense, anger only just controlled.

'A little over five miles.'

He glanced at his watch. 'Another hour?'

'More,' I said.

'Then you must increase the revs.' And when I shook my head, he said, 'It's past five already. At this rate-' Our bows slammed again and he was sent % flying across the bridge. But he was back at my side almost immediately. 'It's useless to ask Ed how he's going to get us on deck. You got any ideas?'

'We'll see what the sea conditions are like when we get there.'

I put down my pencil and looked at him then. He wasn't scared, only very determined, almost desperate to get on the rig. 'You any good at jumping and clambering up heights?' I asked.

'I've done a bit of rock climbing. Why?'

They've got scrambling nets. I remember seeing them being unrolled as I was drifting past the rig. With a bit of luck Johan could get the ship in close enough for us to jump. That is if you're prepared to risk it.'

I was looking at him, but all he said was, 'Good God! As simple as that. Why the hell couldn't they think of it?'

'Because they're not seamen,' I told him. And then, sensing that he was a man who needed to have action in mind, I said, 'Half an hour from now, get on the blower to them and have them unroll the nets. And we'll want oil. Tell them to have some containers full of oil ready to pour into the sea on the windward side.'

There wasn't much light left when we finally raised the rig. Visibility was less than a mile in steady rain, so that we saw it as a blur of light, the factory blaze just as I had seen it so many times, except that the tier of red warning lights on the derrick were no longer vertical, but tilted at a slight angle. I had Johan take us in close. The nets were down, hanging like a wide mesh curtain below the catwalk that ran the length of the crew's quarters. Unfortunately, the nets faced north, almost into the wind. I was looking at the seas cascading through the columns, a welter of foam and broken water, trying to estimate the height of the waves against the meshes of the net. 'There's a hell of a rise and fall,' I said.

'What about the oil?' he asked.

'It won't make any difference to the height of the waves, but there could be a little north-going tide left, so it may help. Tell them to start pouring it — but slowly, so that it spreads, and not on to the nets.'

I had already briefed Johan and he was on direct engine control. 'You think you can do it without the ship slamming against the columns?' I asked him.

'Ja. But can you make the jump?' He was laughing. v I looked at Villiers. 'You realize, if you miss, there's not much chance of being picked up?'

He nodded. 'It's the same for you.'

I looked at Gertrude. 'If either of us misses the net and falls into the sea, you'll only search clear of the rig. You're not to take any chances with the ship. Is that understood?'

'Of course.' She was looking at me searchingly.

'Are you fit enough, Michael?'

'I'm fine,' I said.

She nodded, accepting my assurance. 'Good.' And that was all, no argument, no doubts, both of us in harmony, knowing what the risks were. 'You'll make it all right,' she said smiling. 'Both of you.'

'I put you right into the net,' Johan said.

And he was as good as his word. He took the Duchess in a wide, slow turn upwind of the rig, and when she was stern-on to the waves and drifting down on to it, Villiers and I went up into the bows. Neither of us had life-jackets. We had both decided the restriction of movement outweighed the safety factor, but crouched on the stem of the boat, clinging to a ring bolt, I wasn't so sure. The wave height averaged fourteen feet, but it seemed much more, the movement very violent, a vertical lift and fall that was like riding the National on a giant steeplechaser.

It seemed an age that we were clinging there, the rig gradually appearing to lean over us as the slant of our drift brought us under the superstructure, the net coming closer. And then suddenly we were falling off the top of a wave and the net was there, right above us, bulging, wide-meshed and streaming water. The bows touched it, dragging it taut, then something caught, tearing a gap in it, and we were rising again. I felt the screw going full astern and I yelled to Villiers to jump, saw him lean out and grab hold. And then we were on the net, both of us clambering like spiders in a web as the bows fell away beneath us. The net sprang tight under my hands and I clung there, not moving, feeling it rip again. Then suddenly it was slack, the trawler backing clear and another wave rolling in, water licking up to my sea boots and my body being swung under the rig, into the welter of foam thrashing through the columns and the cross-bracings.

It was like that all the time we were climbing, our bodies swung back and forth, faces peering down at us, our arms aching, the roar of the sea and the damp smell of metal, the reek of oil. Then at last hands reached down, gripped hold of my arms, and a moment later I was standing exhausted on the catwalk beside Villiers. 'Not as bad as I feared,' he said, his dark, handsome features streaming water from the spray, his dripping anorak globuled with oil. He turned to one of the men who had hauled us on to the catwalk. 'A complete change of clothing for both of us and a pot of coffee,' he said. 'In the barge engineer's office, I think. I want Ed there and Ken's assistant — what's his name?'

'Hans. Hans Smit.' The high voice, the old-maidish manner; it was Lennie, the sick bay attendant.

'Another Dutchman, eh? Well, get those clothes quick, and a couple of towels.' Villiers nodded to me and led the way into the quarters, ignoring Lennie, who seemed scared and wanting to tell him something.

It was quiet in the barge engineer's office, no sound of the sea, only the hum of the power plant. 'You reckon they can get that spare anchor rigged without any more casualties?' he asked me as we stripped off our clothes.

'Let's get a forecast first,' I said. 'And then we'll need to know when the tug will arrive and whether she can start the tow in the sea conditions then expected. There are three anchors still out. If we get another one rigged, that's four to retrieve or cut loose before the tow can start.'

A galley hand came in with coffee, followed almost immediately by a lean, sallow-faced man of about % thirty with a crew cut and heavy horn-rimmed glasses. 'Hans Smit,' he said. 'Sorry I am not there, Mr Villiers, when you come up, but I am talking vit the tug. Conditions are no good. It vill be at least twenty-four hours before he is here and he thinks he must go through Pentland Firth, zo it vill even then depend on the tide.'

Villiers nodded. 'What's the latest forecast?'

But Smit didn't know. The last weather chart he had seen was for noon. 'But is improving all the time, I think.'

'What's the helicopter situation then?' Villiers asked. 'Has Ed arranged to fly the drill crews off?'

'No. Nothing has been decided. You see-'

"'Where the hell is Ed?' I could tell by the tone of his voice that his patience was running out. 'I want to see him — now.'

Smit's mouth opened, a look of surprise giving place to doubt. 'Didn't Lennie tell you?'

'Tell me what?'

And at that moment the sick bay attendant came in with towels, a bundle of freshly laundered clothes, overalls, gloves and safety helmets. Smit turned to him. 'Didn't you tell Mr Villiers?'

Lennie shook his head, looking nervously round the room. 'I tried, honest I did. But I couldn't seem 'What is it?' Villiers demanded. 'Where is Ed?' And Smit answered awkwardly, 'Ve don't know.

Ve think-' He gave a shrug. 'But that is just a guess.

The last I see of Ed is at midday when he is eating alone in the mess. Ve don't know what happened to him.'

'He's disappeared? Is that what you're telling me?' Villiers's voice sounded incredulous. 'You've searched-'

'Ja. Ve search the whole goddam barge. Everywhere.' Smit shook his head.

'When was this? When did you discover he was missing?'

'Ve don't discover he is missing. You see, it is not like that. There are so many places on the rig, so many things he could be checking. Zo, it is not until I don't see him for several hours-' He shrugged again, an expression of helplessness. 'Then I start enquiring. That was about vife this afternoon. He is in his office for a short time after the midday meal. Then as far as I haf been able to discover, the last person to see him is one of my engineers, who is checking No. 5 winch. Max says he saw him by No. 4. That is close to the stairway leading down under the rig.'

There was a long silence then, and I was thinking of the last time I had seen Ed Wiseberg, sitting at his desk with the papers in front of him and that paragraph underlined in red, his luck run out, and now, on top of all his record of things gone wrong, this rig — possibly the last rig he would ever get — cut adrift and dragging, a barge engineer killed and two men injured. And Villiers, his boss, the man who owned North Star, who had given him the job, coming out in a trawler to risk his life jumping for the scrambling nets. I could see him walking down that iron stairway, the same stairway that I had gone down to my waiting boat, walking perhaps with that cocky swagger, but not into a calm sea — into a roaring inferno of breaking waves. It was as good a way to end it as any, and I glanced at Villiers.

His face was set, the shadow of this new disaster showing in the sag of his shoulders, in the shocked look of his eyes. 'Start searching again,' he said in a hard, tight voice. 'Have every man on board who is in charge of anything search his particular area and report back to you when he has done so.'

Smit nodded and went out quickly, obviously glad to escape, glad of the excuse to do something instead of just standing there trying to explain the loss of the top man on the rig. Lennie scuttled out after him and Villiers turned to me. 'Not much hope, I'm afraid.' All the vigour and decisiveness had gone from his voice. 'And they'll blame me, of course. At Scalloway, there were about half a dozen of them, reporters, and their questions…' He shook his head. 'I could tell by their questions what they were thinking.' He picked up a towel and began drying himself vigorously. 'Get some clothes on and we'll go to the radio room and see about that forecast.' It cost him an effort to make even that show of decisiveness and I knew that Ed Wiseberg's disappearance had hit him very hard indeed.

The latest Met. information was that the next depression was moving in from the Atlantic faster than expected and would reach us probably by midnight. It was already 976 millibars and still deepening, wind Force 8, gusting 9, possibly more. Two further depressions were building up in the Atlantic, one of 988 and the other 982 millibars. We were still in Telecommunications when Smit reported that all areas of the rig had been thoroughly searched and no sign of Wiseberg.

'Are you sure they've checked everywhere?' Villiers asked. 'All the compartments with doors that could lock or jam?'

Smit nodded. 'I go down in the lift and search the torpedo compartments myself. All storerooms, refrigerator plant, ve even open the store on deck for sea safety equipment — he is nowhere on the barge.'

Villiers didn't say anything. He didn't thank him. He just stood there, staring at the bank of radio equipment. In the end he sat down and drafted a telex message to Ed Wiseberg's wife. He read it through, made several corrections, then handed it to the operator. 'Send that right away please.' And we went to the galley for a meal, which he ate quickly, hardly saying a word.

Afterwards I went up on to the helicopter deck. It had stopped raining and the wind had fallen right away. I could see the trawler's lights quite clearly bobbing up and down about four cables to the south of us. I was there about half an hour, thinking of the big Texan toolpusher, and about his wife and the sons that had been born in different oil areas of the world, a strange, wandering life. It must have required a lot of courage for him to end it in this alien element, going down into the seething surge of the waves beneath his last rig. And Fiona, the two of them so different, each seeking a way out.

I felt sad and depressed as I turned at last to go below in search of Smit. The wind had already backed into the south-west and increased a little. It was raining again and I could no longer see the lights of the Duchess. I found the Dutchman in the radio room talking to Sparks and I suggested he get the spare cable and anchor ready just in case. Then I went in search of Villiers.

He was in the barge engineer's office again, standing at the table with Chart 1118B spread out in front of him. 'If the remaining cable broke,' he said, 'how far {Jo you reckon we could drift in twenty-four hours?'

'Depends on the wind force.'

'Of course. Say an average over the whole period of thirty knots and the general direction westerly.'

I had joined him at the table, staring down at the chart. 'I have a pretty good idea of the drift of a trawler. But this thing.' I shook my head. I just didn't know. 'The windings must be colossal.'

'What would a trawler's drift be?'

'Ignoring tidal current, about one to two knots — say around thirty to forty miles over the full 24-hour period.'

'And Papa Stour only twenty-five miles to the east of us. We could be on the rocks there in less than twenty-four hours.'

'Not necessarily,' I said. 'Against the windings you have to reckon on the pontoons, the drag of the columns. It could work out about half the drift of a ship, J73 perhaps even less. But if the cables don't break under the strain, then the anchors will hold us — or if they drag, the drift will be slowed until the anchors hold again as we drag into shallower water.'

'So we're all right if the anchor cables don't break?' He nodded thoughtfully. 'Better see if you can organize Smit and his men-'

'I've already advised him to get that spare anchor ready. But I don't think we should drop it unless we're in real trouble, and then only in much shallower water.'

We argued about that for a time. In the end he agreed. But as I was leaving to go on deck, he said, 'So long as nobody gets hurt. I don't want anybody else-'

'Men don't try and get themselves killed,' I said sharply. 'And no good warning them, it only makes them think about it and then they get scared. These things either happen or they don't.'

I left him then and went up to the pipe deck, where the engineers and a whole gang of roustabouts were working in the glare of the spotlights to wind the new cable on to No. 4 winch. It would have been better if they could have rigged it on No. 1 winch, which was facing due west now, but as Smit pointed out to me, it had to be a winch within reach of one of the two cranes, since there was no other way of hoisting a fifteen-ton anchor out over the side.

It was past midnight before they had it all set up, the anchor shackled on and bowsed down to the deck. By then the wind was strong to gale force from the % south-west. We all went down to the mess for coffee, then turned in. Villiers and I had taken over Ed Wise-berg's quarters and he was already occupying the upper berth of one of the two-tier bunks. It was very hot in the cabin, the blowers full on, and he stirred as I switched on the light. 'Everything all right?'

'Blowing hard,' I said. 'And there's a big sea running.' Down here I was more conscious of the movement of the rig, a slow rise and fall, the floor of the cabin sloped and rolling slightly under my feet. 'They've rigged the spare anchor and set a watch on all three cable tension indicators.'

He grunted. 'We'll just have to hope for the best then.'

I switched from the overhead light to my bunk reading lamp, stripped to my borrowed underwear and was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

It was Villiers who woke me, shaking my shoulder and telling me the last anchor cable had just parted. The light was on and he was fully clothed, his rig issue overalls gleaming wet, a safety helmet on his head. 'What's the time?' I asked.

'Just on six-thirty. The tension indicators were showing over three-fifty kips on the dials. I don't know what that is in tons, but it was too much. The first cable parted shortly after four.'

I swung my legs off the bunk, reaching for my clothes. 'You should have woken me.'

'Nothing you could do.'

That was true. 'What's the wind force?'

'Between fifty and fifty-five knots — a lot more in the gusts. And it's coming out of the north-west now.'

So the depression was passing to the north of us and moving away. 'We'll need to fix our position hourly to check the rate of drift.'

'I think Hans is doing that. And the radio operator on duty is getting on to the Met. Office for the latest forecast.'

'And the tug?' I asked.

'Hove-to off the north-east of Scotland. He says the Pentland Firth is out of the question and he can't make the east side of Orkney because it means a beam sea across the entrance to the Firth.'

He waited while I finished scrambling into my clothes and then we went along to Telecommunications. It was the same operator I had met months ago and Hans Smit was still there. He handed me the weather sheet. Depression of 977 millibars almost stationary to the NE of the British Isles expected to clear all areas by noon followed by shallow ridge of high pressure with winds northerly 20–30 knots backing SW as deep depression of 958 moves in from the Atlantic. This depression still deepening and storm or violent storm conditions with hurricane force winds locally expected in sea areas Bailey, Hebrides, Faroes, Fair Isle within next 24 hours.

'Any chance of getting helicopters out before that lot hits us?' I was thinking of all the men we had cooped up on board with nothing to do. And the Duchess out there. She ought to run for shelter, now while she had the chance. % 'Depends what sort of clearance we get when that ridge of high pressure comes through,' Villiers said.

But we never got any clearance, and the ridge of high pressure did not materialize. All that day the depression to the north-east of us stayed almost stationary, and the wind did not lessen, drifting us south-eastward. It was impossible to stand on the helicopter deck, and clinging to the guard rail just outboard of the toolpusher's office, I stared through slitted eyes at the waste of water below. I was accustomed to seeing heavy seas, but from the deck of a trawler, or in the shelter of its bridge. Perched up here, sixty to seventy feet above the water, I was looking down on to. an ocean on the move, long lines of great shaggy wave crests marching endlessly, toppling and bursting; dense streaks of foam streaming out along the direction of the wind. Flurries of rain, and in between the.rainstorms I caught glimpses of the Duchess pitching madly, rolling her guts out, and I thought of Gertrude, worrying about that patch in the hull, worrying about the engines and how long the ship could go on taking it.

Villiers had refused to let me order her to run for shelter. 'She's under charter to stand by us. She's the only boat we've got, the one chance if we're driven on to Shetland. What do you imagine people ashore will say if we let her abandon us?'

That was what worried him most — what people would say. And it worried me, too. The ocean was on the move, wind and water and waves driving us southeastward at somewhere between a knot and a knot and a half. And nobody coming to our aid. Nobody out here except the Duchess. And so I left it to Gertrude and Johan to make their own decisions. I talked to them, I gave them the latest Met. bulletin, our estimates of drift position; twice I had quite a long chat with Gertrude, but at no time did she suggest running for shelter. It was not even discussed.

At one o'clock we listened to the BBC news, and again at six. It was a strange experience, slightly unreal, to hear the dispassionate voice of the announcer stating that the rig North Star, after striking oil, had dragged its anchors and was adrift in heavy seas west of Shetland. And that Vic Villiers, the 'well-known and somewhat controversial head of Villiers Finance & Investment' was himself on board the rig supervising attempts to re-anchor. No mention of sabotage. Nothing about the Duchess or how we had got aboard. Not even a hint of the danger threatening us, the extreme conditions we were facing. It was only in The World at Ten later that evening that the seriousness of our situation was indicated in an interview with the manager of the Aberdeen office and with a Shell expert on North East Atlantic conditions.

By then the depression had moved away and the wind had dropped. The tug took advantage of the lull to cross the entrance to the Pentland Firth. It was now steaming north up the east coast of Orkney. But still over fifty miles away. And still no helicopter had taken off.

Our position at this time was dangerously close to Foula. We had been monitoring our distance off all day, knowing that it lay in the path of our drift and was a major hazard. In the afternoon, when visibility had temporarily improved, we had seen the island quite clearly through the windows of the toolpusher's office. It was then about three miles to the south of us. Visibility closed in again, and after that we relied on radar. There was still two hours of north-going tide and gradually we were pushed clear of it, so that by the time we had listened to the news the north end of the island was almost four miles west of us. No danger now of the tide carrying us south on to the rock shallows of Haevdi Grund, only Foula Shoal still a possible hazard.

For anybody going about his routine business in the body of the rig, or for the drilling crews who had nothing to do now but lie in their bunks, reading, and waiting for the next meal, it was very difficult to appreciate the danger we were in. There was a film being shown that night in the recreation room and Villiers took the opportunity to tell the men what was happening and what was being done on board and ashore to meet the situation. But he did not attempt to explain to them what conditions would be like in the morning. Though he flew his own plane, he still did not have any real idea of what a severe storm in the North Atlantic would be like. He could not even explain to them clearly why the tug was tucked under the lee of Orkney, only forty miles away. To them, that made it four hours' steaming. They talked about it, of course, as they dispersed and went to their bunks. But I could see they had no conception, everything around them so solid, so orderly, themselves cocooned in the hot warmth of the heating plant from the elemental forces building up in the night outside. They were technicians, and in their pride I think they really thought man had nature licked.

We went to the barge engineer's office then. Villiers had called a meeting of senior staff and it lasted just over half an hour. There were clearly only two ways by which we could reduce the speed of our drift. We could increase the seawater ballast, thereby lowering the height of the rig and so reducing the windage, or we could let go the spare anchor. Smit had already experimented with ballast control during the day, but as the waves had increased in height and strength he had been forced to de-ballast for fear the quarters would be stove in. He wanted to use the anchor. The others agreed. Finally, Villiers asked for my opinion.

I didn't expect them to like it. I wanted the anchor held in reserve as a last resort when we reached shallow water. I advised that all personnel be evacuated from the quarters up to the derrick floor and the rig submerged to maximum depth. All day I had been gradually coming to this view. I hadn't suggested it before because of Foula. Until we had cleared Foula it might have increased the danger of our drifting on to the island.

'If I submerged to maximum,' Smit said, 'and this depression becomes as bad as you say, then everything goes — quarters, mess, communications, offices. The deck will be swept clean of pipe. Everything will go.'

'But not the rig,' I said.

He rounded on me then. 'Vat do you know about it?' During the last few hours he had been carrying a heavy load of responsibility and his face was tense and overstrained. 'You know about trawlers. But this is a drilling barge. You don't know anything about drilling barges.' And he turned back to Villiers. 'It is my responsibility.'

'All right, Hans. It's your responsibility, I agree. But what do we do?'

'Let go the spare anchor, now, while it is more quiet.'

'And if the cable breaks?' I asked him.

'Then the cable break. But ve don't know about that until ve try. And you don't know,' he added, glaring at me resentfully. 'You don't even know the breaking strain of a four-inch cable or 'ow many tons the anchor shackles are manufactured to stand.' It was difficult for any of them to realize what a depression of 958 millibars that was deepening could mean in terms of wind force. They were all of them, including Villiers, thinking of damage to equipment and machinery, the problems of replacement, the lost time, and in Villiers's case I am quite certain the financial cost. At this stage their minds refused to face up to the prospect of total loss. They just could not envisage what it would be like stranded on rock in hurricane force winds. How could they, sitting there in the barge engineer's office, no sound of the wind outside, just the hum of the power plant, the movement under their feet no more than the gentle bowing of a colossus to the sea.

And so Villiers agreed to let Hans Smit send the spare anchor overboard, and after that I went into the radio room and asked the operator to call the Duchess for me. It was Johan who answered, not Gertrude, and that made it easier. I told him to make up towards Foula and get into the shelter of the island. 'You speak with Gertrude,' he said. 'That is for her to decide.'

'No, it is for you to decide,' I told him. 'There's nothing you can do for the rig. If anybody is swept overboard he's gone. No hope of your saving him.' And I asked him how the patched plates were standing up to the hammering. He admitted that Duncan had had the pumps going all day. 'There's worse to come,' I told him, 'and you know it.' And I added, 'Once it really starts blowing, you won't be able to make up to the island against it.'

There was a long silence while he thought it out. 'Ja, okay. We lie under Foula. But you talk to Gertrude first. Over.'

'I'll talk to her when you're safe in Ham Voe,' I said. 'Not before. Over and out.' And I cut him off before he could argue further.

Villiers's voice, sharp and angry behind me, said, 'You've no right to dismiss that trawler without reference, to me. It's under charter to stand by us-'

'Under charter?' I had turned and was staring at his tired, handsome face, seeing the selfishness of the man, his certainty that agreements, money, power, were everything. 'Charters don't buy lives,' I said. 'Have you any idea what it's been like in that trawler 38Z today, what it could be like tomorrow? Do you want to stand in the toolpusher's office, with the stability of this huge structure under you, stand in your shirtsleeves in warmth and comfort and watch a little ship founder with half a dozen people on board? Is that what you want?'

'You're thinking of that girl,' he said waspishly.

'Yes, I am. I'm thinking of her, of a Scots engineer named Duncan, of Johan, a big bearded Norwegian, of men who saved my life — and by their seamanship got you on to your bloody useless obsolete rig.'

He was silent then, and I was suddenly sorry for him. 'Do what you like,' he said quietly, the anger gone and his voice lifeless. Then he turned and went quickly out.

The spare anchor was hoisted over just before midnight. The wind speed was then thirty knots, gusting to thirty-seven. I took the reading myself. Unbelievably, the rig was not equipped with a proper anemometer, only a hand speed indicator for the use of the radio operator. Smit and his engineers, the crane driver and quite a little crowd of technicians and drilling crews were gathered round the winch. Villiers was standing a little to one side, a lone figure, his back against the guardrails. Nobody said a word as the needle suddenly came alive, swinging with a jerk round the dial, wavering and settling at around the 300 mark.

The anchor was holding and there was a sigh of relief.

Now that the wind had lessened the seas had become higher, the vertical movement of the rig under our feet considerable. As the crowd drifted off to bed I saw the indicator needle begin to move. Soon it was fluctuating wildly, reflecting the snatch on the cable as the rig rose and fell. Smit stood there watching, his face set. At one point the needle seemed to swing right off the end of its range. I think he was wishing then that he had waited until we were in shallower water, and I left him and went to my bunk, anxious to get some sleep while the going was good.

Villiers came in just as I had put my bunk light out. 'It's holding,' he said. 'But the strain on it must be very heavy.'

'It won't last long,' I told him.

But there I was wrong. It held for almost five hours, for shortly after 01.00 the wind dropped right away. If the helicopter crews, who were supposed to be standing by at Sumburgh, had been quick off the mark, it is just possible they could have snatched most of the men off, for the wind stayed light for almost three hours. Just before first light, however it veered rapidly to 200° and within less than half an hour it was blowing a gale from that quarter.

The next depression was upon us and it had already deepened to 947.

To appreciate the problems we faced that day, it is necessary to realize the large number of men we had on board; also their trades, because, in the event, our lives were to depend on some of the skills we could call upon. On board at that time were: junior toolpusher, assistant barge engineer, 5 rig technicians, 2 motor-men, 2 crane operators, 8 labourers or roustabouts, 2 welders, 2 electricians, 2 radio operators, sick bay attendant, 8 cooks and quarters staff, 2 divers, and two complete drilling teams of 8 men. A total of 52. In addition, there was Villiers and myself and the service company personnel who had been flown out to operate the pressure tests.

According to the log kept by the barge engineer, the anchor cable had finally parted at 05.42. But I didn't see that until shortly after eight. Nobody called me, and when I finally opened my eyes, it was because Villiers had switched on the light. He was dressed and I could see by his face he had been up half the night. 'Couldn't sleep,' he said after he had broken it to me that, we were adrift again.

I dragged on my clothes and dived up the tilted stairway to the toolpusher's office. The wind was already screaming out of the south-west, rain and spray lashing the windows, and intermittent glimpses of the sea showed that the waves were shaggy combers thirty feet or more in height. A hurricane all right. I had brought the hand anemometer up with me and when I held it outside for a moment, clinging to the rail, my eyes half shut against the wind and driven spray, the force of it was already beyond recording. Back in the radio room I got the Duchess on the R/T and talked briefly to Gertrude. They had two anchors out, but even close under Foula the cables were bar taut and the surface of the water being lifted off the voe. 'Will you hold all right?' I asked her.

'Maybe. I don't know. We watch and hope, ja. What about you, Michael?'

'I can have a hot bath or eat myself sick, watch a film show, read a book-' I stopped there, for Sparks was just changing the figures against the Low on the weather chart. It now stood at 941.

And then Gertrude's voice was saying. 'But you have Shetland. It is a lee shore.' There was a pause, and then she said, 'Johan says the tide could help you.' I told her I knew that and she said, 'Fine,' and signed off, wishing us luck. It was the last time I was able to speak to her.

There was no Decca Navigator on board. North Star was not a ship. It was not equipped to ride the seas unanchored and alone, and once we lost sight of Foula the rate of drift was largely guesswork. I did some rough calculations, knowing there could be only one answer — total disaster. The rate of drift affected the time, the wind direction the place, but nothing could stop us hitting the rock-bound coast of Shetland — except possibly the speed and direction of the tidal flow.

Smit's view was the same as mine now — evacuate to the derrick floor and submerge to maximum depth. It was the only way to slow the rate of drift, to give us more time. Tugs were gathering, but even if any of them could have got out to us, there was no hope of fixing a towline. But when we reported to Villiers, who was lying stretched out in his bunk, it seemed impossible to make him understand the gravity of the situation. I thought at first he was thinking of the damage to the rig, the difficulty of raising finance, all the problems he would have to face when, and if, he ever got ashore. But it was more than that. He had withdrawn inside himself. In the heat of the cabin, in the warm security of his bunk, he had reached the point where he felt that if he ignored it all the storm would go away.

But even down there, in the depths of the quarters, it was impossible to ignore what was happening outside. The howl of the wind overlaid the sound of the power plant, the crash of the seas pounding at the steel columns of the rig shook the whole structure, the noise of it so loud we had to shout.

Finally he said, 'All right, Hans. Do what you like. You're the barge engineer. It's your responsibility.'

,Hans shook his head, looking bewildered and scared. 'My responsibility, ja. But vith you on board it is impossible that I tell the men to leave their quarters and go up into the vind. They vill not accept it from me.'

Villiers didn't say anything. He just lay there, his eyes closed.

'You must tell them,' Hans said. 'To go out into the vind is like going over the top into battle. And the ballast control engineer, who vill have to leave after he has flooded the torpedo tanks, vill be lucky if he is not killed. They vill do it for you, but not for me — not vith you 'ere on board.'

Villiers didn't answer.

Time was passing, and we had no time. I ripped the blankets off him and yanked him out of the bunk. 'Come on,' I said. 'For God's sake tell them, now.'

He stood there in his underpants looking vague.

'We're more than twenty miles from the coast,' he muttered.

'Seventeen,' I said. 'Nearer sixteen now.'

'It's not necessary.'

'I'm telling you it is.'

But he shook his head, unwilling to accept it.

I grabbed hold of him then. 'Why the hell did you bring me on board if you don't accept what I'm telling you? I need you to advise me, you said. Somebody to take charge in an emergency. All right. The emergency is now and I am advising you. Get the men up to the derrick floor and submerge to depth.'

He stared at me, his eyes blank. And suddenly I knew what it was. He was a financier, not a leader. He could read a balance sheet at a glance, could figure out assets and financial gain like a computer, he could talk a board of directors into submission by the cold logic of figures — but he was no bloody good with men. Last night, telling them about the storm to come, it had been facts and figures, not the reality of a hurricane blast and huge seas. Now, with the prospect of death a cold, terrible battering, he was opting out.

'Okay,' I said. 'You got me on board and my life's at risk. Get dressed now and come to the messroom. I'll do the talking, but you'll be there, and you'll go with them up to the derrick floor. You understand?'

He nodded, accepting it slowly. 'Yes. Yes, of course.' And he began to dress. It was incredible, under orders the blankness had left his eyes.

I told Hans to get every single man on board into the messroom. As an outsider, with Villiers standing there, I thought I could do it. And I did. It was, in fact, easier than I had expected. They weren't seamen, but most of them had lived with the sea long enough to understand its power, and they weren't fools. They could hear the wind, feel the seas thundering against the base of the structure. They were ready for action.

It took almost an hour to get them all up to the derrick floor, with their life-jackets on and the rig submerged to depth. Hans stayed with the ballast control engineer, insisting that it was his duty. It meant two lives at risk instead of one, but they both made it, though they were caught by a wave on the catwalk above the pipe deck and Hans was swept against a crane (and badly bruised.

In that hour, before the rig was down to maximum depth, the galley staff had managed to get food and drink up to the derrick floor, Lennie had collected his first aid kit and blankets, clothes, bedding, the welders had got their equipment up. Every department had thought for themselves and brought whatever they considered necessary. The divers had even dragged their inflatable up. And in that wind it was remarkable that they achieved so much without loss of life, for the work went on after the ballast tanks had started to flood.

In the end, of course, the quarters were left deserted and Sparks closed the radio room. After that we had no means of communicating with the outside world. But somebody had brought a portable up and we huddled round it, listening to the one o'clock news describing the build-up of tugs and ships and aircraft, all waiting to get out to us as soon as the storm had passed. The wind was westerly now. I don't know what the force was. High up on that platform, I felt it was beyond anything I had ever experienced. The forecast had not been specific — hurricane force winds with speeds over a hundred knots. The depression had now deepened to a shattering 938 millibars; worse still, its rate of movement had slowed and it was not expected to clear the north of Shetland before midnight.

The derrick floor, normally a demoniac centre of activity with draw-works roaring, winches screaming, the clatter of tongs and the turntable turning, was now still and packed with men. But not silent. There was more noise on that platform than ever there had been when North Star was drilling, the wind roaring through it, howling at the doors, banging and slamming at the corrugated iron shelter sheets, tearing them loose, whirling them away. And below us, the pipe deck, even the helicopter deck, a welter of foam as the combers roared and broke aboard.

The toolpusher's office was the first to go, the sea breaking it into matchwood, the wind picking it up and hurling bits of it past our refuge. Pipe, and great lengths of casing, were swirled back and forth till the guardrails were torn out of the steel deckplates and they went over the side. The catwalk was buckled and curled up like the slide in a giant child's playground. And all the time we worked to keep large pieces of equipment from breaking loose, to shore up and fasten the flapping shield of iron sheet that was all the protection we had. Everything chaos, and the thuds of the waves thundering beneath the rig, crashing against it, could be felt through our bodies, the movement sickening. The half-submerged rig had a dead feeling. It was like a rock awash.

One of the roustabouts, a man called Wally, was the first to sight land. That was shortly after two o'clock and he only caught a fleeting glimpse of it. I didn't doubt him, because it was downwind of us, just where it should be, and he said it was low-lying. The wind was still westerly by the handbearing compass I had brought with me, and on my calculations, we would go ashore on the West Burra coast, possibly just south of it. I thought perhaps it was Havras Island he had seen, and I wished Johan was with us. He would have known, because the Havras marked the entrance to Clift Sound and the Duchess's home voe of Taing. But, in fact, it must have been St Ninian's Isle.

That brief sighting, the knowledge that we were so near to disaster, finally decided me on a desperate course of action — something I had wanted to do, but had not dared for fear it would kill us all. I looked at Hans, leaning over my shoulder staring at the chart and helping me to hold it flat on the oil-scummed floor. 'The tide turns in just over an hour,' I said, and he nodded, knowing what was in my mind. I knew what he was thinking, too — if only we had that spare anchor, if only we could use it now, now that we were in shallower water. It could have held us till the tide turned.

But then, of course, we could never have got it over the side. There was no electric power, and anyway, the crane nearest to No. 4 winch had already been forced off its mountings, the jib leaning at a drunken angle and banging to and fro. I got up and lurched across to Villiers, who was working with a gang of men to shore up the sides of the driller's office. I told him what I wanted, and he nodded, cheerful and seeming almost to be enjoying himself. 'Okay. Go ahead.' And he turned and continued with his work, seemingly indifferent to the risk and the ultimate cost if we survived.

It seemed an age that the two welders were hanging in their chairs, held by ropes as they worked with their torches to cut through the windward legs of the derrick. They cut them one at a time, and as they worked on the second, the rig was slowly turning. There was a moment when I was sure I had made a terrible error of judgement and that the whole hundred-odd feet of steel would collapse on top of us. Standing there, watching them, I could see in my mind the ghastly result as the weight of the crown wheel crashed down on to the packed group of men around me.

But the rig kept turning, and suddenly there was a rending sound. Somebody screamed a warning. A rope flew and one of the welders swung across our heads, his torch still burning, to be brought up short by the oxygen hose, and looking up, I watched incredulously as the whole Eiffel Tower structure trembled and began to move, the crown wheel and the traveller swinging dizzily across the scudding clouds. The scream of steel on steel, the whip-crack of metal breaking. And then % it was gone, just like that. I don't think any of us really saw it go. One minute it was there, the next there was nothing over our heads.

The tide must have turned about the time the derrick went over the side. And I think the absence of it may have made all the difference, for in that force of wind, the air almost solid with the power of it, the derrick must have been acting as a great sail. At any rate, just over an hour later, we began to hear a deep thunderous noise like an artillery barrage. This gradually got louder until it was an appalling, shattering sound. Visibility was poor, rain and spray screaming past us, so that we seemed almost into the backwash surf of the wave breaks before we saw the land. The roar of sound was so great then that we were just standing there aghast, holding on to whatever we were clinging to, frozen into stillness. And then, downwind of us, through the torn and battered iron sheets, there was a darkening of the waterlogged air, a great mass looming up out of the maelstrom of broken water.

Ever since the barrage of sound had started, Hans and I had guessed what it was — the Atlantic hurricane waves pounding at the near-thousand-foot cliffs of Fitful Head. We both of us knew what that could mean, but now that we could all of us see the towering mass itself, I do not think there was a man among us who did not believe his last hour had come. But though it seemed so near, we were still out beyond the ten fathom line, and the cliffs were moving, sliding past, the rig being carried south-east by the tide at almost three knots. Soon we could see the headland of Siggar Ness, and when the tide swept us past it, there was open sea, wind and tide with us, both carrying us south-east towards Horse Island and the Sumburgh Roost.

It was almost dark then, and as night fell, nothing to see in the pitch black fury, all our senses were in our ears and in the feel of the rig under our feet. I don't know when we hit the Roost. The rig was like a half-submerged wreck and there was such a pandemonium of breaking waves and crashing gear that it was impossible to tell whether the chaos was the effect of the race or shallows. But I didn't care. We were in the clear, and so long as the pontoons did not strike a reef, I was sure a structure as massive as a rig would survive it. And then, suddenly, Sumburgh light came clear of the land, its revolving beam haloed in the wind-driven spray.

The light bore roughly 20°, and within a very short time it was due north of us. I knew then that we were % in the grip of the great tidal race that streams round the southern tip of Shetland. I remembered reading all about it in the Pilot, and on the Mary Jane I had found an old Admiralty tide book: Ships in it frequently become unmanageable, and sometimes founder. Those words had undoubtedly been written with the fishing boats in mind, but the statement: It should be given a wide berth was as applicable now as then.

When we entered the race the tidal flow was with the wind, so that we were moving eastward at a considerable speed. But the Pilot, which I had brought with me from the barge engineer's office, warned that in the Roost the tide only ran eastward for about three hours. There was then a 'still' of about half an hour, after which the tidal flow was westward for nine hours. Thus, we had only a short period of the eastward thrust left. The 'still' came and there was less sea, the light on Sumburgh head blurred and almost stationary, bearing roughly 350°.

That night I was convinced the rig would break up. Shortly after midnight there was a terrible rending of metal, the whole structure shaking to a series of power-hammer thuds. The mud tanks had broken adrift. They went on rumbling and crashing hour after hour as we lay huddled together for warmth, our bodies soaked and shivering with cold. It was a terrible night, and the pounding went on and on.

They finally smashed a way through and went over the side shortly after four. It suddenly seemed almost quiet. The seas were lessening, too, and Sumburgh Light bore north-east. We were out of the Roost.

An hour later we were back in it again. The tide had turned and was carrying us eastward. No rain now, and with visibility much improved, we could check our progress by the bearing of the light. In the space of just over an hour it moved from north-east through north to almost north-west. That was when we were finally spewed out of the Roost by the eastward flow and came under the lee of the land. The wind died away, and the sea with it.

Dawn found us roughly four miles east of Sumburgh Head, a battered wreck being carried slowly northward on the tide. An RAF Nimrod came over, flying low, and an hour later the first tug was coming up over the horizon. We raised a cheer as it steamed close alongside. But though we cheered the tug's arrival, we were too cold, too dazed to do anything about it. The iron staircase to the derrick floor was gone, the pipe skid our only way down. Nobody had the energy to be lowered on a rope, to struggle through the tangled wreckage and get a towline fixed. We had been inactive so long that we clung to inactivity, immobilized by the long, dreadful night, by the memory of our fear, of death so narrowly averted.

It wasn't for another two hours, when there were three tugs and a navy ship milling around us, that men boarded us and one by one we were got down from our refuge, lowered into boats and taken on board the destroyer. Villiers was with me in the naval pinnace and I remember my surprise at the extraordinary resilience of the man, the sudden return of confidence. His square-jawed face was dark with stubble, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from the shattering force of the wind, and his right hand, lacerated by a piece of flying metal, was still wrapped in the bandage Lennie had fixed. And yet he could talk about the future, about the huge possibilities of the oilfield North Star had found.

Maybe it was nervous reaction, words pouring out of him as he thought aloud, but I couldn't help admiring him. If he had had phones beside him, he would have been rapping out orders, raising finance. 'The rig doesn't matter. If we lost half a dozen rigs, the cost of them would still be nothing. I'd still have merchant bankers falling over themselves to lend me money.'

'If you lose rigs,' I said, 'you lose lives.'

But he brushed that aside. 'We didn't lose any. Not during the storm, not one. And the rig is covered by Lloyds. How long do you reckon it will take to get it repaired?'

'I've no idea,' I answered tersely. I didn't care about the rig. I was worrying about the Duchess, anxious to check that she hadn't dragged her anchors and been forced to put to sea in that maelstrom of a night.

He pushed his hand up over his face, rubbing at the caked salt. 'I have to think of the future,' he said. 'What this oil strike means to the company. A lot of reorganization, new management.' He looked at me then. 'Room for somebody like you.' And he added, 'I owe you a lot, Randall. And you've got brains, education, financial training, even shipyard experience. The knack of handling men, too.' The boat was slowing now, manoeuvring to come alongside the destroyer, and he leaned forward. 'Would you like to come down to London for a few weeks, get the feel of things?'

'Whatever for?' I asked dully, thinking of Gertrude.

'I don't know yet. The rig for a start. Somebody will have to be cracking the whip. Then there's the Shetland office. That will have to expand fast. It will be first priority, and I'll need somebody with a Shetland background.' He was thinking aloud. And then he said, 'Anyway, you come down to London with me. I'll be needing men like you.'

I looked at him then, realizing he was serious. 'I'll think about it,' I said. But I knew I wouldn't. Not if I had Gertrude. I might be able to handle it, but I couldn't see Gertrude fitting into the sort of life he was offering me. And Gertrude was all I wanted. That's what the night had taught me. She was the rock I was now clinging to. Without Gertrude I would be adrift again. But together, creating something of our own — a service, up here in this wild, beautiful world we both understood. I was thinking of The Taing, that house, the ship lying off and the voe as I had once seen it, in moonlight from the bedroom window. That was what I wanted, my life worthwhile and with purpose. Not something handed to me ready-made and only to be managed, something not my own.

I clambered up the destroyer's side and asked the lieutenant who greeted us if I could use the ship's R/T.

'You're Captain Randall of the Duchess, are you? Your ship will be up with us in about an hour. And I have a message for you. Will you check with Mr Villiers that she is to resume stand-by duty under the terms of the charter.'

I looked at Villiers, and suddenly we were both laughing.