Page 62 of A Scot in the Storm
“Rory.”
“Ye hear it, too.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
She tapped her paper. “A few minutes.”
“That’s nae the bearing.”
Her eyes were already fixed on the housing.
“It’s starting in the bearing.”
They crossed the room together. Heat met Rory’s hand before he touched the metal. Not enough to burn, but hot. He pressed two fingers to the outer housing and drew them away again.
The lanolin gleamed around the shaft. At the edge of the cradle, the bronze showed the first faint discoloration where the grease had begun to cook under the heat.
“Douse the lamp,” he said.
“Wait. The shaft might release if we take the weight off first.”
“Douse it.”
She moved for the mechanism as the bearing bound. It happened between one tick and the next.
One moment the shaft was turning, rougher now but still moving. The next it stopped so suddenly that silence rang through the lantern room.
The gear train froze, the lens stopping mid-arc, the beam fixed itself north-northeast over the water. Over the reef.
For half a heartbeat neither of them spoke. Then Abigail whispered, “No.”
Rory was already moving. He caught the drive weight and took the strain against his shoulder while trying with his other hand to force the mechanism backward, to ease pressure off the locked tooth, to give the swollen bronze room to move again.
Nothing. The shaft had seized in the cradle as if forged there.
Below them, sharp through the wind and stone, the harbor station bell began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
By the third peal Rory was on the stairs.
“Captain!” Ewan shouted from the yard below, torch in one hand, men gathering behind him in shirtsleeves and half-buttoned coats.
“A cutter off the point. Her lights were there and then she?—”
“I saw.”
“The beam stopped.”
“I know. Gig. Now.” They were in the harbor gig inside eight minutes.
Rory took the stern as Ewan crouched forward with the lantern. Davey set himself to the first oar with a face like carved granite, with Duncan and two others behind him. They pulled hard into the water while the harbor bell rang and the fixed beam from the tower pointed over the reef.
Even though he’d told everyone it was only a test, not to rely on the light, the cutter had been running by the sweep.
