Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart Page B

across the moor. Not that it mattered (I told myself again) one way or the other, but now that my brother’s arrival was postponed at least until Monday, it would be good to have something of the story checked. And of course, if the object did happen to be the flyaway tent, its owner would need it back.
    It was not a tent, nor indeed any sort of camping equipment. It was an old plastic sack, probably used by a farmer and left outside to blow away. And it could have blown a good distance in last night’s gale. I regarded it with distaste, decided that the rain would have washed it reasonably clean, then dragged it clear of the bog myrtle and looked around me for somewhere to dump it out of sight.
    A fox’s earth, long abandoned, and not taken over by birds or rabbits, provided the dumping-ground. I stuffed the sack down out of sight, and straightened, to see that my search had brought me above a cleft in the moorland through which a glimpse of the western machair could be seen.
    It was a lovely stretch of shore, white sand and sheep-grazed turf backed by a stretch of flat, flowery meadowland. Even from where I stood I could see the white and yellow of dog-daisies and hawkear blowing in the sea-breeze like coloured veils over the green.
    No sign of a tent, but over to the left, just showing, was a clump of trees thickly planted and apparently sheltered from the worst of the weather, and, standing up from among them, the chimneys of a house.
    The Hamilton house, presumably. Taigh na Tuir. A big house, with no smoke rising from the chimneys. And – I walked another few yards and craned my neck to see – no sign of life in the little bay beyond, with its boathouse and jetty.
    Across from the bay, beyond a narrow stretch of water, was a small island, an islet, rather. It was long and low, humped at the northern end and tapering to the south into flat rocks washed by the sea. Just below the hump I could make out – I have good eyes – the dark outline of what must be the ruined broch, and beside that, in its shelter, was a speck of bright, alien orange. A tent. He had found his tent and had already moved to the broch island.
    The oystercatcher had come back, and was wheeling noisily over the lochan. ‘So what?’ I said to it. So what indeed. Whatever the facts, both men had gone about their affairs, and would presumably not trouble me again. Forget it; get back to something more reasonable in the way of fantasy fiction. Another chapter today would see me nicely into the second half of my story, and this evening I would talk to Crispin and get things sorted out with him. And tonight . . . Well, I had noticed that on both front and back doors of the cottage there were stout and serviceable bolts.
    As I squelched my way back round the lochan’s edge towards the road, I saw the diver. Unmistakable, even though I had never seen one before; a big bird, brown and grey with a red throat, low in the water, where the wind-rippled surface managed to camouflage it in the most extraordinary way. When I had passed the lochan earlier, there had been no sign of it. It must be nesting, and now my near approach had driven it off the nest.
    The thought had hardly occurred to me before the diver, with a weird-sounding cry, left the water in a noisy take-off, and flew seawards in alarm. And there, two paces in front of my feet, was the nest.
    Two huge eggs, greenish-brown like the sedge, with a matt surface mottled like moss, lay in a shallow depression on the very edge of the loch, with a distinct sloping runway leading to the water, so that when alarmed the bird could slide invisibly off the eggs into a deep dive, to surface many yards away from its well-camouflaged home.
    I glanced around me, quickly. No one in sight; of course there wasn’t. No one to see my interest in this spot on the lochan’s edge. I stooped quickly and laid the back of a gentle finger against one of the eggs. It was warm.