Lord of the Isles (Coronet Books) Read Online Free PDF Page B

had to row hard to win progress. It took half-an-hour to negotiate that half-mile, which was galling—save in recognition that it would no doubt have taken the undermanned Norse craft considerably longer.
    In the open Sound beyond, as his leading vessel swung eastwards, Somerled scanned the waterway keenly for shipping. All he saw in the bright morning sunlight were a few small fishing-boats. It was early yet.
    They could hoist sail now, with the wind favourable, but Somerled still kept his oarsmen hard at it, so that they drove down-Sound at a spanking pace. Almost at once, after leaving the loch-mouth, they passed a headland on the left where the ruins of a large hallhouse rose on a shelf above the cliff, like fangs. That man eyed it sombrely. As well he might, for this was Ardtornish, his old home, from which the Norsemen had driven his father, mother and self all those years ago, the last of the Thane of Argyll’s houses left him by the invaders. One day, he would build up Ardtomish again, he promised himself.
    Five miles down the Sound, keeping fairly close to the north or Morvern shore, they approached a much wider water, seeming almost an inland sea so landlocked did it appear, bordered by the mountainous bounds of Lorne and Appin, Mull, Lochaber and Morvern, blue slashed with shadow in the morning sunlight. Perhaps ten miles across, this vast basin, the Firth of Lorne, represented a veritable hub of seaways, for into it, like the spokes of a wheel, entered the Sound of Mull, the Sound of Kerrera and the large sea-lochs of Etive and Creran and Linnhe, as well as lesser ones. Like a spearhead thrusting down into this from the north was the long narrow island of Lismore, the Great Garden, green, fertile and low-lying, here dividing the mouth of Loch Linnhe into two channels, the Linns of Morvern and Lorne. Northwards into the first, Somerled turned his longships.
    He was all vigilance, for this was, as it were, the main highway of the southern Inner Hebrides, or Sudreys as the Norse called them, as well as of much of the fretted mainland coast, the most favoured and sheltered navigation route through a sea notorious for its hazards equally with its beauty, of sudden storms and cross-winds, of overfalls and whirlpools, littered with a myriad of skerries, islets and reefs. It had been busy indeed before the Vikings came; but their devastations and massacres had depopulated the land and driven peaceful shipping from the sea-lanes. Nevertheless, the Norse themselves would use these waters inevitably, to a great extent, and it behoved wise men to sail warily—although, to be sure the sails of all three ships bore the black spread-winged raven device of the Norse and so would not be assumed to be dangerous.
    Only two or three more fishing-boats dotted the sparkling waters.
    A little less speedily, for the wind was now abeam not behind them, they beat up the long eastern coast of Morvern, close inshore to be the less conspicuous. They could see all often miles ahead here, but there was no sign of the escaped vessel. Somerled grew anxious that they had guessed amiss. He had hoped to have seen it in the distance. But to turn back now would be profitless; for if the escaper had in fact made for Mull, to Aros or one of the other havens therein, by now it would be too late, the Mull Norsemen would be roused, and they might find themselves confronted and outnumbered. They had to go on.
    Past the northern tip of the eleven-mile-long Lismore they still had some four miles to go, the fishermen told them, before Loch a’ Choire opened. The Morvern shore was steep, bare and fairly featureless here, so that the loch-mouth should have been evident—but was not. Apparently it was round a small headland which itself was not obvious. The loch was not large, they were informed, more like an elongated bay one-and-a-half miles deep, with Kingairloch at its head.
    Despite this warning, they were surprised when they came on the loch-mouth, a