The Maggie by James Dillon White Page B

somewhere.’
    â€˜Are you serious? How on earth could you know that there was . . .’
    The Skipper said vaguely, ‘Well, there’s the time of year, and a bit of a nip in the air after the heat, and the way the wind’s fallen away . . . You might call it a seaman’s instinct.’
    Marshall looked round briefly at the perfectly clear sky. Then he strode angrily back to his seat in the bows. ‘Fog!’
    Within the hour the sea was layered with fog as thick as cotton wool. From the aft hatch the bows were invisible, and from the forward hatch they couldn’t see the wheelhouse. Marshall, who knew enough about the sea to recognise their danger, groped nervously about the deck. He could barely see across the width of the boat. Up in the bows he saw the distorted figures of the mate and the boy. He watched them distractedly. While the mate took soundings with a line, the boy was picking lumps of coal from a bucket beside him and throwing them with all his might into the grey nothingness ahead. After each throw he listened for the plop as the coal hit the water.
    Marshall asked nervously, ‘What are you doing that for?’
    Hamish, the mate, turned with a grin. ‘Radar!’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    The boy explained. ‘So long as it plops, we’re all right. But if it rattles . . .’
    Marshall said, ‘If it rattles, what?’
    â€˜Then we’ll know we made a mistake.’
    Trying to mask his fear by action Marshall groped slowly back to the wheelhouse. He was hardly reassured by the fact that the Skipper was quite unperturbed. He had already decided that MacTaggart was a madman.
    â€˜I’m taking her into Fiona Bay,’ the Skipper explained calmly. ‘To beach her. It’s all right, sir. It’s what she was built for.’
    â€˜But what makes you think you’re going into Fiona Bay and not on to some rocks?’
    The Skipper paused to listen to the plopping of the coal. Then he said, ‘Ach, weel, I’m not sure I could explain it to ye. Ye just know.’
    When the fog lifted, as suddenly as it had fallen, the Maggie was indeed safely beached, but in a position that made her appearance even more ludicrous than usual. She was high and dry on a sandbank, half a mile from the sea and half a mile from the shore. It would be hours before she could float from her indignity with the incoming tide.
    Marshall, who had fallen asleep in the captain’s cabin, was suddenly conscious that the engines were not going. He sat up with a startled expression, thinking that perhaps the boat had been abandoned, or was sinking. He looked at his watch, leaped up and tried to peer through the porthole. But it was too dirty for him to see anything at all, except that the mist had cleared. Scrambling clumsily from the bunk he clambered up on to the deck.
    He looked wildly round and saw the Skipper with McGregor and the boy talking quietly in the bows. The mate was asleep on the hatch. On all sides the sand stretched desolately away.
    Marshall came up to them furiously. ‘It’s almost four o’clock. Why didn’t you wake me?’ Then, before the Skipper could speak, ‘All right, it doesn’t matter.’ He spread out his map. ‘Show me where we are on here.’ As the Skipper indicated, ‘Right. Where’s the nearest place with a telephone?’
    The Skipper said, ‘Weel, ye could walk back to Inverkerran, but that’s over the hill there. It would be quicker to go to Loch Mora – here.’
    Marshall said, appalled, ‘But that’s almost ten miles!’
    The Skipper shrugged sympathetically. Marshall furiously folded his map, shoved it in his pocket again and strode across the deck to the side of the ship. ‘All right. Let’s get going.’
    The Skipper looked at him doubtfully. ‘Were ye wanting me to come with you, sir?’
    â€˜You don’t think