Launch

A few summers ago, Strellitz decided he would celebrate the solstice by using a large catapult of ancient Greek design to hurl a hundredweight of molten iron half a mile into the sea just off the harbour. The trajectory would pass above the rusty old caravan belonging to Troutie and his paramour Dr. Bratwurst, and although it was unfortunate there would be a launch on the same day from the Forbes Boatyard nearby, mathematics is mathematics. Gravity isn’t going to change, said Strellitz to himself, so I just have to make sure the wind speed and direction figure in the calculations. And to back up his optimistic view, there had been a whole series of successful test-flights, properly documented, each trial involving a payload of breeze-blocks, with no greater problem than a skewered Russian trawler and a moderately surprised whale.

In a bungalow just a couple of hundred yards down the shore road, Curare Jim pulls on a frayed pair of black ankle-wellies and bounds off his armchair, inadvertently dropping last week’s Sunday Post, open at The Broons, on the floor, where Bruno immediately seizes it and rips the entire paper page by page into a neat pile of quarto sheets all within the space of 25 picoseconds. Jeepers O’Reilly, says Curare Jim, but does nothing to stop Bruno from running off with all the news including The Doc Replies and Holiday on Nothing into the little patch of garden and round the back of the polytunnel, a wonderful source of lettuce all summer long, though to Bruno that was a matter of little import, he being more interested in positioning an object of contention between himself and another person in such a way that the latter would be unable to perceive exactly what he was up to, except that it would be both inconvenient and disreputable.

Are you coming, demands Memus44, looking back as he opened the garden gate. Curare Jim shouts on the dog and they all three take their time walking down Shore Street towards the boatyard, Bruno enjoying the many olfactory surprises encountered at almost every step, while the two lads comment on the way the full tide is coming right up to the old road itself and surging with a wonderful magical glassy power against the land, like a metaphorical ram and yowe.

Up ahead, the new trawler on the slip is silhouetting itself attractively against the sky, and the crowds on the Old Harbour pier can be made out, their shouts and cheers audible. Over to the east, the New Harbour is engaged in a project all of its own, gradually sliding down into the cold North Sea over an extensive period of a century or so, but nobody is cheering. Or if they were, thought Memus44, the sound would be very very low indeed.

Strellitz hauled the wire bowstring back and caught it on the cocking-lever. He’d constructed the bolt from a purloined telephone pole, and not far from the catapult, an electric fan was sending a blast of air into the furnace. Once he judged that the melt was at the right temperature, Strellitz carefully aimed a heavy pinch-bar at the base of the furnace, where the exit-hole was stopped by a large lump of clay.

We’re late, says Curare Jim, for the ship is moving slowly. Then it gathers speed, and the harbour waters break in every direction like a herd of jumpy stirks. After a while the displacement spreads all round the harbour, and, says Memus44, although Curare Jim looks dubious, probably the gravitational effects will swell right out to the stars.

Bruno gives a little flick of the eyes towards Memus44, the kind of gesture dogs do when they need to check on your mood and current intentions, and somehow Memus44 gets the impression that Bruno knows perfectly well that people are writing articles in New Scientist about us all being a holographic projection in numerous dimensions from a point somewhere outside wherever it is we are now, or as some wits in the village were wont to put it, up Mac’s hole in America.

By the time they join the crowd, the new ship is still bounding up and down in the old harbour, but the surge and slap of the green glassy water is beginning to quieten.

Aye aye, Fyvie, shouts Memus44 to an ancient fisherman calmly puffing away on his pipe, one of those jobs with a silvery metal cap on the bowl, from which a vast blue cloud of Bogie Roll smoke is rising over the pier, enveloping a flock of geese passing overhead. The old man grins silently in reply. Nobody has the slightest idea what Fyvie thinks; people just see the way he walks calmly up and down the village street, and conclude he’s probably happy enough not to be aboard some pitching deck in stormy weather, with fish and fish scales and fish guts underfoot and seawater blowing in from waves six times the height of the wheelhouse.

The fired clay shattered, and immediately a glowing, sparkly gush of iron jetted out under pressure, splashing into the payload container. The wooden bolt immediately burst into flames, and while the iron was still bubbling violently, Strellitz slammed the lid shut in a shower of sparks, ran over to the string-pull, took a final glance at missile’s intended arc of sky, and yanked on the trigger.

With a mighty thump and swish, the thick wire ropes jerked into frighteningly fast action, impelling the bolt high into the air, trailing a thin plume of smoke from the burning tarry wood that mingled with the bogie roll cloud rising from the pier.

In a short time the geese, their senses compromised by inhaling bogie roll smoke at anaesthetic concentrations, dimly realised they were squarely in the path of an incoming missile with insufficient time to take evasive action. Knocked completely off-target, the telephone pole and its warhead of molten iron, accompanied by a dozen sizzling geese, slammed into Troutie’s caravan. The impact immediately drove the burning vehicle over the pier-edge into the chilly sea. Wails emerged, but the flames rapidly turned to a welter of steam and hissing bubbles as the vehicle turned turtle and sank. Spluttering and evidently not pleased by this sudden interruption of their domestic life, Troutie and Dr. Bratwurst popped up at the surface and struck out for the weedy shore.

Shaking his head sadly, Strellitz picked up his clipboard and ticked another box.

Copyright © Donnie Ross 2010