The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy

  The first two hounds in the slips were salukis, their delicate, slim, silk-soft grace and feathery coats somehow making them appear far too gentle to kill even a mouse. Both were experienced; though they came from different kennels they adapted their movements to each other on the coupling leash, and though they strained lightly upon it they were not dragging their handler behind them.

  The first hare, pure white, started from a patch of snow-free heather some twenty yards ahead of them. I was surprised that the hounds were not immediately slipped, for I had never seen salukis in action, and I was totally unprepared for their performance. The slipper allowed the hare a full sixty yards’ start before he unleashed the now wildly straining hounds. The speed of their take-off was breath-taking, unimaginable; it did not seem possible that any living creature could possess that ferocious acceleration. A fine spray of powdered snow rose in the wake of their flying forms as, running neck and neck at unguessable speed, they relentlessly overhauled the fleeing hare. He had been running straight, ventre á terre, but when after a quarter of a mile the hounds were no more than twenty yards behind him he changed tactics and began to dodge and to twist. It was here that the extraordinary teamwork of the two hounds became apparent; neither rushed in to the kill, each headed the hare as it turned until the moment came when one hound had the perfect opportunity. Then there was one swift chop of those long and deceptively slender jaws, and the hare was dead. It was a striking display of speed, skill and precision, and the salukis had certainly killed more cleanly than would the hare’s natural enemies.

  The next pair in the slips were deerhounds. We were on higher and harder ground now, near to the crest of a long rounded ridge where the snow lay thinly among scattered stumps of burned heather. This time the hare started nearly eighty yards ahead, and the hounds were slipped on the instant. If the salukis’ take-off had been amazing, that of the deerhounds was positively awe-inspiring. Their great backs arched, their mighty thigh muscles thrusting, their long necks straining forward, they came racing diagonally across my front at something like fifty miles an hour, and the thunder of their flying feet hitting the hard ground was like the sound of furiously galloping horses. Their speed seemed to me even greater than that of the salukis, and to have a quality of irresistible impetus, like the sweeping downward rush of a stooping eagle.

  It was only when they began to close on the hare that I realized how the deerhounds were handicapped by comparison with the salukis. This couple were as clever a combination as their predecessors, and manoeuvred the zig-zagging hare with the same perfection of timing, but their great height was against them. Time and time again the hare would have been within jaws’ range of one or the other, but in the split second that it took to reach down a yard and more the hare had tacked again. That hare escaped, as did many others, both from salukis and deerhounds, sometimes simply by outrunning the hounds, sometimes by tactics, and sometimes by slipping into a hole or a hillside crevice.

  When Hazel’s turn came she astonished me as much as she did her previous owners, who were present. She showed an astounding turn of speed for a middle-aged matron; on her first course she outran her younger partner, and, with complete disregard for team spirit, killed the hare single-handed. During the two days she was slipped four times and killed three hares, but only once did she make the least attempt to cooperate with the other hound, and on her final slipping, seeing the hare running up a steep slope, she gave up after three hundred yards and came walking quietly back with a reproachful expression on her face. She clearly felt that too much was being demanded from a woman of her age, more especially under the prevailing weather conditions. The bitter, biting east wind never ceased, and bore upon it flurries of fine fluttering snow. Hazel wanted to be stretched out, as was her wont, on a sofa before a log fire; her killer instinct, like my own, had diminished with age, though she had remained an exhibitionist, and had satisfactorily demonstrated that she was still worthy of admiration in the physical field.

  At length it was Dirk’s turn. I had been prepared for failure, but not for farce. He was coupled with another, younger, deer-hound, and from the first moment he seemed unable to coordinate his movements with those of the hound to which he was linked. When the hare was started and the couple slipped, Dirk simply did not see the quarry. His partner shot off in pursuit, and he seemed mildly puzzled by this; he followed for a few yards and then turned back and began to prance and gambol in an aimless, amiable way up and down the waiting line. He appeared particularly fascinated by the female humans who were being literally dragged helter-skelter across the moor by uncontrollable couples of his own species who had sighted the hare and would answer to no word of command. Overt laughter from all sides prompted me to apologize to the judge, who replied, ‘Well, if he has no other function he is at least the perfect court jester.’

  The second time, he was coupled with a very beautiful blonde saluki bitch. He was clearly anxious to make closer acquaintance with her than their parallel position in the slips permitted. When the hare was started she was far faster off the mark than he, and, being left behind in the first twenty yards, he suddenly seemed to have no further doubts as to what this sport was about. It was quite clearly a competitive sport – to see whether a deerhound dog could catch an attractive saluki bitch and reap his reward. At first he never even saw the hare, and when he did he ignored it; it had nothing to do with him – the bitch was his business. He had the heels of her, and after a couple of hundred yards they were nose to tail – his nose, that is to say, remaining jammed under her tail, while both were racing at forty or fifty miles an hour. The bitch completely ignored this intimate and inappropriate contact, and contrived to kill the hare on her own, despite these whirlwind attentions from her unwanted partner. When she returned, trotting quietly with the dead hare in her jaws, Dirk came prancing back beside her, patently proud of her prowess, but in human eyes in deep disgrace mitigated only by his powerful potential for comedy.

  After this second farce, I apologized again to the judge who said, ‘If he’s ever going to course at all he’ll have to learn now. He’s got the strength and the speed, but he thinks it’s just a bitch hunt. From now on you have my permission to slip him at any hare in reasonable range, no matter what other hounds are officially in the slips. That’s the only way he can learn what he’s supposed to do.’

  The long line began to move again, wheeling across a vast boggy flat where the snow clustered thick in the heather tufts, and the inch-deep water crackled and crunched underfoot as the ice splintered among the sphagnum moss. Far away from me hares were started and killed by other hounds, too far away for me to slip Dirk and risk a further farce. Low in the wind, beating their way against the finely falling snow, came a herd, of whooper swans, dazzlingly white against the deep blue-grey sky, the golden bugles of their voices lingering long on the bitter air. Grouse whirred up from the heather, cackling as they lifted and let themselves be swept away on the wind in a great curving are, but as yet there was no hare at which I dared slip Dirk. My foot was periodically painful, and I began to wish that this were all over, and like Hazel, that I could return to some cheerful fireside away from the chilling cold and miserable physical discomfort of this bleak and wintery moorland.

  Then, as we left the frozen flat bog and began to ascend a slope, I saw before me a patch of long heather, sharply and darkly distant from the bare snow-dusted ground surrounding it, and I was instantly certain that it held a hare. I readjusted the rope through Dirk’s collar and prepared it for instant release. The hare started twenty yards ahead, pure white against the background of dark heather, and for the first time Dirk really saw it and knew what was required of him; it was my fault that I snarled the rope and delayed his pursuit. He took off like a meteor while the hare was still in sight, mounting an horizon slope, and it was seven long minutes before we saw him again. The line stood still, awaiting word from the judge, and when at last they reappeared, the hare leading and Dirk a panting thirty yards be
hind, both were heading straight back for the line of hounds. Both hare and hound were exhausted, and any fresh hound unleashed could have killed in seconds, but the judge called to me to take in my hound and the hare went free as he deserved. He passed through the line of straining predators, crossed a deep peat-bog ditch, and was finally lost to sight in a flurry of snowstorm. But Dirk’s reputation was restored; he had pursued a long course without flagging, and he lost the name of Court Jester.

  The day after the meeting was over the snow began to fall in earnest, big white flakes drifting down from a still and silent sky, and we crept slowly back towards Camusfeàrna, the Land Rover rescuing en route, with her winch, a number of cars that had become helpless in a pale frozen white world.

  It was not until after our return that I realized that the mortgaging of the lighthouses had become a mirage, and that only a miracle could now save Camusfeàrna from closure.

  11

  So Far From Home

  That was the autumn of 1965; the final, decisive blow came early in the New Year of 1966. Jimmy Watt, who had been in charge of the whole changing household and its ever-increasing ramifications for eight long years, decided, not unreasonably, that he must now leave us and make some life for himself elsewhere. Having made this difficult decision he was generous enough to give five months’ notice, and was thus prepared to remain in charge of Camusfeàrna and its tiny but complex empire until May 1966.

  This was the death-knell of the old Camusfeàrna. Nobody but Jimmy, with his long experience of all our practical problems, and his unique ability to tackle them with a supreme and well-justified self-confidence – problems ranging through household supplies from distant towns to maintenance of buildings and of boats of all types and sizes, vehicles of many sorts, the management of otters, dogs and humans – could have kept the place alive. I recognized his own absolute necessity, as a young man of exceptional talent, to form a creative life of his own; but I recognized, too, that I had allowed him to become irreplaceable. (I remembered, too late, an incident long ago during the war. I had been pleading with my commanding officer to retain a specialist assistant who had received posting orders to another establishment. My commanding officer appeared to give the matter serious thought and kindly consideration. He doodled on his blotter for a minute or so, and then said, ‘You mean he’s literally indispensable to you in your branch of our work?’ I fell instantly into the trap, and said, ‘Yes, Sir, just that.’ He replied, ‘Then he must certainly go. We can’t afford to allow anyone to become indispensable in SOE.’ But, I protested, I was in the present circumstances myself indispensable, and had personally trained my assistant. ‘Then we must certainly take immediate steps to see that all your knowledge is committed to paper. I shall inform HQ and ask for a typist and two trainees. I appreciate that this will mean extra work for you, but I have no alternative.’) Unfortunately I had failed to learn that lesson, that now returned after so many years to put an unequivocal end to all my plans and projects. It would mean finding zoo homes for the otters, and the final closure of the place as it had been, for the house could not stand without its corner-stone.

  When I had assimilated the facts I visualized this weary task as being difficult but not impossible; I thought in my innocence that the right homes could somehow be found for all the animals; and that, however painful after eighteen years, I could transfer my loyalties and my interests from Camusfeàrna to somewhere else, perhaps to Kyleakin Lighthouse island, and make for myself a new life, with the eider experiment as a temporary focus of interest. Much of my zest, however, had gone with the knowledge that the Camusfeàrna epoch was over.

  With research still necessary to complete details of Lords of the Atlas, I left Scotland for North Africa in February 1966. Two employees, under the nominal supervision of Jimmy Watt, were to prepare the Kyleakin island for the eider experiment; the creation of freshwater pools, flat beaches made from concrete, nesting boxes on the Icelandic plan, and the erection of flag-poles and bunting. Both employees left before my return and with their work incomplete, so the eider experiment was never attempted. The magic that had once glossed the world of Camusfeàrna had been wearing thin for a long time; now only the base metal of mistakes showed through, bare and ugly.

  When I left Camusfeàrna in February 1966 there were, as I have said, still three employees – Jimmy, and the two temporary assistants working at Kyleakin. During my absence in Morocco the three were joined at Camusfeàrna by a young lady who had previously typed some of my manuscripts, and who now wanted temporary asylum in Scotland from personal problems. She came there in the spring of 1966, while I was abroad, with her seven-year-old daughter and an unimaginable host of wholly unexpected livestock (donkeys; ponies; miniature poodles and Great Danes; cats and geese; and a curious and enchanting breed of dogs which was the result of crossing the great woolly Old English sheepdog with the slim, silky, slender and shy Shetland sheepdog) and the casual copulations of this curious community resulted in a spectacular population explosion. At one moment there were, to say nothing of other species, twenty-six dogs. Camusfeàrna became an Animal Farm, where the four-legged ruled with an exigent and destructive dictatorship; the house had entered upon a new and more visible phase of its decline.

  At first I learned of all this at second hand, because when I came back to England in May I could not face an immediate return to my home and all that it now entailed. I remained in London and continued my fruitless and increasingly febrile attempts to mortgage the lighthouses. At length I abandoned the idea and put them both up for sale as furnished houses. It seemed that fortune could never come my way again; every piece of news from day to day was of delay, disaster, or death. In the course of forty-eight hours, I remember, I learned of the death of my Pyrenean mountain dog at Camusfeàrna and of a white barb stallion I had bought in Morocco. The dog died because he had been left out all night, tied by a chain to a running line on the field; it was a wild night, and in his efforts to find shelter the dog strangled himself while trying to cross a wire fence. The superb white stallion, who could dance and rear at command, and who loved human beings for themselves, died of neglect and ill-treatment in a squalid foundouk in Marrakech, while in charge of an Arab whom I had trusted implicitly. He died perhaps the worst death an animal can die, and I do not want now to recall the details of an event that made me physically sick. (I was sent, by an English observer, not only a detailed description but coloured photographs.)

  Financial survival now called for full but orderly retreat, and I began to sell our small possessions. I sold the cine-camera (which had cost us almost a thousand pounds) with which we had visualized making a series of documentary films in the Highlands and Islands, for little more than a third of what we had paid for it. This seemed a particular symbol, the first outward acknowledgement of the epoch’s end. The only project left was to close Camusfeàrna as decently as possible.

  I delayed my return to Scotland as long as I possibly could, and it was not until August that I went back to Camusfeàrna and tried to make sick-hearted preparations for the transfer of the otters to a zoo. Jimmy had gone, and there was no employee left at Camusfeàrna; only the young lady and her daughter and her incredible animal menage.

  Richard Frere, who had accomplished the conversion of the lighthouse cottages, had taken over the management both of the company and of my own personal affairs when Jimmy had left in May – because, he said, he liked challenges, and he could scarcely have found a greater one than this. He foresaw clearly the part he would have to play, that of the commander of a desperate rearguard action against insolvency until we could find buyers for Isle Ornsay and Kyleakin. He entered upon the task with the same spirit of enthusiasm that he would have embarked upon the climbing of some cliff previously considered unscalable, and with no illusions as to its difficulties and hardships.

  Camusfeàrna seemed a sad place then and one already greatly changed, but in that sunny late September of 1966 I had one last memorable day in Po
lar Star, which I had decided should be moved the following year to Loch Ness to serve the tourist trade. We had had a week of gales and hurricanes which were about the worst I can remember in all the Camusfeàrna years. Anything that could blow away did so, and my worst fear was that the wooden paling enclosing the otters would fall before the tempest and liberate the otters among the great milling miscellany of undisciplined livestock to which Camusfeàrna was now playing temporary host. The fences held, however, and when the storm subsided it went, as so often, into a flat calm and a cloudless blue sky. Alan MacDiar-maid had returned to our employment for a fortnight, since I was by now the only male at Camusfeàrna, and we had various odd jobs to do at Kyleakin Lighthouse and Kyle of Lochalsh.

  When we left the moorings in the morning I was immediately aware that something was amiss. Both engines started evenly, but the starboard motor appeared to have no transmission to its propeller. On opening the throttle the revolutions rose on the counter, but there was no increase in speed. From inside the boat we were able to establish that the hydraulic transmission from the engine was in order, and we assumed that there must be a dislocation at the propeller shaft. We started north on one engine.

  It wasn’t until we tied up alongside the pier at Kyle of Lochalsh that we found out that the starboard propeller wasn’t there at all; somehow the tremendous punishment the boat had taken during the prolonged storm, the perpetual pitching on the high waves at her moorings, had found a weakness in the work of whoever had fitted that propeller, and it now lay in several fathoms of water below the mooring buoy. (Immediately after our return we began a search for the costly rubber skin-diving suit that we kept at Camusfeàrna against such emergencies. But it was no longer there; it had disappeared, together with much else, and despite lengthy police investigations it was never traced.)