Two’s Company: A Short Story. Patrick O’Brian

      I

      The tender puffed busily away from the lighthouse to the relief ship. The two men who were left at the base waved for a long time; the ship was the last they would see of the outer world for three months. The lighthouse was almost the most lonely in the world: it guarded a dangerous reef in the cold northern seas. There were a few little barren groups of rock jutting out from the sea near it, but never a blade of grass grew there. Now and then a few wandering seals would come there, but usually they stayed away. The ships that passed kept far out in the clear sea, so that they were only vagrant ghosts to the men in the tower.

      One of them, Ross, was a big broad Scotsman, and the other a thin tall Irishman called Sullivan. They had knocked about all over the world, often quarrelling, but sticking together, although they were as different as any two men could well be. Ross was a fairly typical Lowland Scot, hard, and very silent; he had red hair and a great jaw. Sullivan, on the other hand, loved a jest, and he had the gift of a free-running tongue born in him. They were both educated men, oddly enough; Sullivan had been to Trinity, and Ross to St Andrews, where he had lived on Homer and a barrel of salt herrings. They had been to sea for a long time together before they had got this job, and at one time they had owned a small tramp steamer between them, but it had literally fallen to pieces when they were in the Islands, gathering bêche-de-mer.

      They went up the spiral staircase to their room at the top. The lower part of the tower was filled with machinery for working the light, and with great stores of oil. Round the top of the tower was a platform, and at the bottom was another, considerably larger. The two men had been on the lighthouse before for a week, so that the other keepers could show them everything. They had bunks to sleep in, and one fairly large round living-room. There was a wireless set, but as the rocks all around and the great mineral deposits under the sea set up a great deal of electrical disturbance, it was not much use.

      At first the two men were kept busy the best part of the day, for the tending of the lamp was not a simple matter, but after about a week they arranged things so that quite half the day was their own. They played innumerable games of chess, but Ross nearly always won, and Sullivan took a dislike to the game; he said there was no joy in it, and took to spending a good deal of his time fishing from the top platform, from where he could see deep into the water. There was a certain amount of kelp growing about the submerged reefs, so the fish came there, but usually Sullivan caught only little fish. It was late autumn when they had first come to the lighthouse, and as winter approached the migrating cod came past the reefs.

      Sullivan was leaning over the rail one morning with his line held loosely between his fingers, when it was suddenly jerked away and went over the rail as if a shark had been on it. He had time to put his foot on the end of the line before it was all gone, and he began to haul it in. He pulled a cod to the edge of the lower platform, but he saw that even the stout sea line that he was using would not stand the weight of the fish. He shouted to Ross, who popped his head out of the round window.

      ‘I’ve got a whale!’ he shouted. ‘Go down to the bottom platform and haul him in.’

      Ross sped down the iron staircase and lugged out the cod by its gills, then he clasped the fish to his bosom and brought it in. They had cod for every meal until it went bad.

      In the evenings they used to sit about the stove, for it was very cold at times, and talk; Ross did not say much unless he was arguing, but Sullivan could talk for two. They had not been there three weeks before there was a storm. Not an ordinary storm by any means, but a great roaring storm so strong that the spray of the waves was flung as high as the light itself. The roaring of the sea was so loud that they had to shout to one another to make themselves heard. All night the storm went on, but it faded away with the coming of the sun.

      They went out on to the platform, holding tight to the rail, for the wind had not yet abated very much.

      Suddenly Ross pointed down. Without a word Sullivan leaned over the rail, and saw the huge body of a whale wedged between a spur of rock and the concrete of the lower platform. The great seas had put it there after beating its life out against the rocks. There was a heavy swell on the sea, but no broken water, so they went down to the lower platform and looked at the whale for some time.

      ‘We’ll never be able to move it,’ said Ross. A storm-blown kittiwake flew by, and settled on the whale. Before dusk about twenty other birds were there, and in the morning a great host of gulls screamed over the huge carcass. All through the day more birds came; apart from the gulls, there were a fair number of little auks, strange birds with shrill voices. At first the men rather enjoyed the noise, it was so different from the endless rumble of the sea; but after a day or two, as they were leaning over the rail, watching the cloud of birds, Sullivan said, ‘That screaming is getting to be rather too much for me.’

      ‘Ay,’ replied Ross.

      With the gulls there came many sharks. The first on the scene was a big basking shark, fully thirty feet long; Ross saw it resting on the surface by the submerged part of the reef. After a little while it glided down through the water under the carcass and, turning on its back – Ross saw the gleam of its white belly – tore away a great strip of blubber.