Chapter Seven #2
Alan Clarke went near the cliff edge, and Meg noticed that an iron railing had been installed there.
Men worked noisy cranks and pumps to guide the stout ropes and hoses that snaked over the edge.
Clarke picked up a hose fitted with a funnel end and shouted into it, put it to his ear for a reply, and called out to the men on the machinery.
They worked furiously to spool in the ropes and hoses.
He beckoned to Meg and Norrie, who approached the iron railing. “Careful! Dougal Stewart will be cross with me if you fall into the sea.”
Leaning against the railing with a secure grip, she saw that the ropes and hoses dropped down into the sea. As the men steadily winched the ropes and hoses upward, the surface of the water began to bubble.
“Here he comes,” Clarke said. A platform surged out of the sea, swaying on ropes.
A monstrous creature rode the planks, saturated, swollen, pale. The large head was a glass and metal sphere, and the creature’s arms and paws were enormous. Water gushed from the beast to pour off the platform as the ropes drew it higher.
“What in the wee man is that!” Norrie exclaimed.
“A diver!” Meg gasped, astonished. She had seen them in engraved illustrations, but never in reality. “Is that Mr. Stewart?”
“Aye,” Alan Clarke said. “He went doon the deep to examine the base of the rock.”
“Huh!” Norrie said. “Mother Elga was right. He is a kelpie for certain.”
Meg blinked at him. Norrie grinned and bent to watch the diver rise higher.
As the platform neared them, Meg glimpsed Stewart’s lean, now-familiar face behind the glass porthole windows set in the brass helmet.
Three valves, attached to the hoses, snaked toward the bellows.
Two, she realized, pumped air into the helmet so he could breathe.
The third hose ended in the funnel that Alan Clarke had used as a speaking tube.
Diving was common enough, she knew, in salvage and bridge and dock construction. The Matheson Bank had financed such ventures on Scotland’s east coast, and she had contributed to the building fund. It made sense that divers would be necessary in a lighthouse project.
Necessary, she thought, and very dangerous. She pressed her lips together, concerned, suddenly wanting only to see that helmet off him, see him take a breath of fresh sea air.
“Please hurry,” she murmured, while Norrie glanced at her.
The platform drew level with the cliff, and men grabbed the ropes to swing it inward to safety.
Two held it steady while two others took Dougal by the arms to support him as he walked, his steps slow and cumbersome.
The diving suit, helmet, boots, and weighted belt must be an enormous burden out of the water, she thought.
With help, he sat on a ledge of the rock while one man unscrewed the helmet and another man unbuckled the heavy gauntlets.
When helmet and gauntlets were lifted away, Dougal emerged, reaching up to tousle his hair and rub his face.
He coughed, took a drink of water from an offered ladle, and glanced up.
“Miss MacNeill! Welcome to Sgeir Caran.”
Meg felt a wash of gratitude, sudden and clear, to see him safe. “Greetings,” she said.
Her cheeks heated in the cool sea breeze as she met his piercing green gaze. Seven years ago, he had risen out of the sea, and again today. Mother Elga’s kelpie was real, in a sense.
“Hey there, Norrie,” he was saying. “Give me a minute to get out of this gear.”
“You will need more than a minute, laddie!” Norrie said with clear admiration.
Stewart looked at Alan Clarke. “Evan?”
Clarke gestured toward the edge. “They’ve got him now.”
Then Meg saw that another platform being hoisted up with a second diver. He rose to the edge and stepped out with assistance, wearing a similar suit and gear. An array of tools lay on the platform beside him. With help, he stomped forward, dripping water, to sit near Dougal Stewart.
“Two kelpies!” Norrie said. “We need not worry about the kelpies of Sgeir Caran. They are here!” His eyes twinkled.
“Kelpies?” Stewart asked, wiping a hand over his damp brow. Meg frowned.
When the second diver’s brass helmet was lifted away, he sucked in breaths, rubbing his face as Dougal had done.
His hair was black and curling, his eyes a beautiful hazel, his cheeks lean and dusted with dark whiskers.
He murmured to Dougal, and acknowledged Norrie and Meg with a polite nod as Stewart introduced them.
“Miss Margaret MacNeill and her grandfather, Norrie MacNeill of Caransay. This is Evan Mackenzie of Glencarron.”
“Pleased leased to meet you. Welcome to the rock.”
“Welcome out of the deep!” Norrie said. Meg could see her seanair was enjoying this.
“Mr. Mackenzie,” Meg said. He looked familiar somehow. His answering smile transformed his lean and serious countenance. He looked at her so astutely that Meg wondered if he had met her as Lady Strathlin. She stepped back and turned to watch the sea and the birds flying around the rock.
When both divers were divested of their belts, heavy outer gear, and leaden boots, they stood as men, acting like they were knights in armor being assisted by their valets.
Meg watched, noticing that they wore several layers of thick woolen underclothing beneath the suits, for the sea would be very cold.
Evan Mackenzie was a bit taller than Dougal Stewart, slender and powerful.
The two of them together were equally beautiful men. Meg caught her breath to see them.
Watching Dougal, she felt a ripple of feeling that was mysterious and exhilarating, some secret chemistry she could not deny, though she could pretend to feel nothing. Yet she thought of his appearance on the rock years ago, when he sat shivering and half nude beneath her plaid.
“Forgive me,” Dougal said, nodding to her, “for being improperly dressed.”
She shook her head. “Hardly improper here, where it’s part of this world.”
Norrie lifted a sleeve of the diving suit. “That’s a heavy thing to wear! Needs a strong man to stand up in this. What keeps the water out?”
“It is made of rubber sandwiched with waxed canvas,” Dougal explained.
“Very heavy, aye, with lead boots and the belt and helmet and all, it is near impossible to wear on land. Underwater it’s not bad at all.
The boots and lead weights on the belt help sink us and keep us down, or we’d float back to the surface too fast and suffer for it. ”
“When a man goes doon the deep, he must come up slowly or he could die,” Clarke said.
“It sounds quite dangerous,” Meg said.
Dougal shrugged. “A bit.”
Alan snorted. “Very dangerous, miss. That is why Dougal Stewart likes it so well. He has a reckless streak. But when he dives, he must go slow and careful. No mischief.” He grinned at Dougal.
“Reckless, are you, sir?” Norrie asked.
“No more than others,” Dougal answered. His gaze sought Meg’s, a flash of green fire. She returned it directly, boldly.
“How deep can you go in that gear?” Norrie asked.
“A hundred eighty feet without difficulty. I’ve been down nearly two hundred, though it’s not generally done.”
“A man canna go deeper than that and live in this gear,” Clarke said.
Meg looked at him. “Do you dive, too, Mr. Clarke?”
“I leave that to Stewart and Mackenzie.”
She glanced at Evan Mackenzie. “You like the risk as well, then?”
He paused toweling his hair and smiled. “I suppose I do.”
“Mackenzie has been doon the deep and climbs high mountains too,” Clarke said.
“I prefer mountains. They tend to be drier,” Mackenzie said, while Dougal laughed.
Now Norrie was examining the helmet. “The air comes in here?”
“Aye, through the hoses,” Dougal said. “Clean air flows in here, and exhalations escape here.” He pointed to the valves. “The other is a speaking tube.”
“It takes a team for one man to go doon safely,” Alan said.
“The men on the pumps are essential,” Evan said. “Our lives are literally in their hands.” He stood. “Dougal, I’ll be in the office. I need to draw what we saw down there so we can assess the condition of the rock.”
“Good. I will show our guests around the site.” He took Meg’s elbow to guide her with him, speaking to Norrie and Alan Clarke. The subtle thrill of his touch made her catch her breath as she went with him.
“Evan Mackenzie of Glencarron?” she asked Dougal. “Isn’t that region held by the Earl of Kildonan?”
“Aye. He is the earl’s heir and a viscount himself, though he does not generally use his title, not in the work he does as an engineer.”
“I have heard of his father—the man is notorious. Much despised in the northern Highlands with a wretched reputation for cruelty in clearing his people from his lands to allow for more sheep.”
“You are aware of that?”
“I remember my grandfather, my mother’s father, speaking of it. He strongly disapproved.”
Dougal nodded. “Evan wants nothing to do with his father. But lately the earl has been quite ill. When he is gone, Evan will be earl—though he does not want a single stick or a coin from his father. He feels it would be tainted. But he cares about the estate and the people of Kildonan and will do his best. Still, he prefers his work designing bridges and docks. A brilliant engineer and the last to admit it. We attended university together, along with my cousin, Aedan MacBride.”
She nodded, having heard of MacBride’s work in engineering along the byways of Scotland. Having financed some of that work herself, Meg knew more about bridge and road projects than Dougal Stewart could imagine.
“Mackenzie is an expert in the new science of geology. I asked him to advise on the state of the foundation rock here.”
“Both of them are master divers,” Alan Clarke said, walking beside them. “But there is none so skilled at Dougal Stewart. Born to the sea, he was. We can hardly keep the lad out of the water, though he has had his share of trouble in it.”
“Trouble?” Meg asked.
Dougal shrugged. “Shipwrecked once or twice. If you will excuse me, Miss MacNeill, I should change into dry clothing. If you will wait, I can show you more of what we are doing here.”
“Mr. Clarke showed us quite a bit. You may need to rest. Go on,” she said. “We are fine. We know Sgeir Caran too.”
He gave her a curious glance at that, then walked across the roof of the rock toward the strange iron barracks where Mackenzie had gone.
Shipwrecked. Meg narrowed her eyes. That was part of the reason he was so adamant about his lighthouse. He had mentioned his parents losing their lives in the sea. Had he been involved in a shipwreck too?
He had promised they would talk, though she dreaded it. Now she was impatient for the chance to learn more about him. So far, he had surprised her at every turn.
Even so, she could not forgive him so easily for the past.