Storm at Tempest Cove
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Andy Morgan looked up in surprise as his youngest son came into the kitchen. “Why are you up at the crack of dawn, laddie?” He turned and winked at his three older sons seated at the breakfast table. “I’ll wager it will take the Queen’s own Pipers to get him out from under his bedcover when the time comes for him to sail on the Sea Witch.”
“Aye,” they agreed, laughing.
Jamie smiled at the good-natured teasing. In two more years he would be sixteen. Then he would sail with them. Today, awakened by the noisy morning bustle, he decided to tag along to the dockside to see the others off.
Jamie stood on the wharf watching the disappearing wakes of the Sea Witch and the Dolphin, dreaming of the day he would be on board. The fishing trawlers sailed side by side, joined by the net dragged between them to catch the darting silver herring. When the pairs of trawlers grew small in the distance, Jamie headed for school along the empty street.
The Morgans lived in an isolated fishing village on the northeast coast of Scotland. After the trawlers shoved off, the only ones left in the village were women and children and the old men who sat in the sunshine mending fishnets.
When Jamie returned home that afternoon his mother had on her “worry” face. He knew she was thinking of the weather.
“We’re in for a bad one,” Jamie said, voicing her unspoken thoughts. “Black clouds are rolling in from the sea, and the wind is kicking up a gale.”
“Aye. I’m thinking of those trawlers bobbing up and down like corks on the water.” She sighed. “There’s always this worry about the temperament of the sea, but your father and brothers would never be happy being tied to the land.”
Jamie nodded in agreement.
She shook her head. “The sea is our friend. It gives up its fish to provide us with a living. But then it turns into a cruel enemy on days like this.”
“Da is the first to spot a storm brewing. He’ll be heading for port right now,” Jamie assured her.
A knock sounded at the door. At that moment, the lights flickered and went out, putting the cottage into twilight gloom. Jamie ran to the door.
It was their neighbor, Gordie Snow. Rain dripped off his slicker and formed a puddle at his feet. “It’s bad out there, Mary, but the trawlers are headed for port. Just before the radio quit we got the message that the Dolphin suffered a broken rudder and the Sea Witch has her in tow.”
“Heaven help us! With the power down, the coastline will be in darkness . . . and now the radio gone!” Jamie’s mother shook her head. “Troubles always come in threes. I broke my best pitcher this morning, and my sister has the flu.”
Jamie counted the troubles and came up with five. Had they beaten the superstition, or were they already started on the next three troubles?
He watched Gordie’s brow wrinkle into a deep frown.
“Now don't be putting a bad face on it, Mary. They’re sure to come through this all right.”
Jamie wondered if Gordie believed his own words.
Jamie bent into the wind. His macintosh whipped around him, and his sou’wester seemed ready to fly off his head. The gentle waves of the morning were replaced by high walls of water that collapsed on the shore with a roar like thunder. From the supply shack at the dockside, Jamie took flares to fire into the darkness. Their light would help guide the trawlers into the cove. He wrapped the flares in oilskin and tied them securely about his waist under his rain gear.
A steep cliff rose behind the beach, now hidden by the sheets of rain driven by the wind. Jamie knew the flares would be most visible if shot off from the top of the cliff. It would take him forever to backtrack down the beach, then follow the ridge to the top. He would climb the cliffside. He had done it before, but then the wall was not slick and there was not a twenty-knot gale that could tear him from the face of the cliff.
He started to climb, grabbing the gorse growing in the notches. He pulled himself up hand over hand, groping for each slippery foothold. He ignored the plants’ prickles that tore into his skin. Shaking from his efforts, he dragged himself over the top.
The first three matches he tried spluttered out. On the fourth try he succeeded in firing off two flares. They rose with a loud swoosh, cutting into the black sky in a bright arc of light. It seemed forever before the answering flares shot up at sea. Jamie fired off two more. A series of answering flares from the trawlers showed they had passed by the entrance to Tempest Cove but then changed course and were now headed into the cove. They were almost home.
Jamie
heard voices behind him. He was seized by friendly hands
and lifted onto broad shoulders that carried him back
to the town hall, where the villagers had gathered.
Then followed a feast with toasts to the fishermen and
a toast to Jamie Morgan—for his courage and quick
thinking that helped save the lives of the men of the
village.
