Son Of The Storm

by Rob McCubbin

Forced to leave their family home in Scotland, Andie and Jessie battle the conditions on board the sailing ship to Australia in 1851, only to find themselves and their dreams dashed on the razor sharp rocks of barren King Island. Will Jessie's unborn baby survive?

ISBN 1-59431-532-9 Romance / Saga

Cover Art by Shelley Rodgerson

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.



Dedicated to all McCubbins near and far, past, present and future.

“Lang may yer lum reek…”



Where the tapestry of fact has holes, it has been patched with the warp and weft of possibility.

Rob McCubbin



“The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.”

~H.W. Van Loon, The Story Of Mankind



With thanks to Billy McCubbin, who got me started on this journey, also Margaret Clark, Kerri Lee, Margaret Slater, Dr. Harry McLeod, the residents of Currie on King Island, the late Jack Loney, Padge Loney, the late Ian Davies, Alan Craig and all my friends who read, suggested, criticized and supported me in my endeavors.

Chapter One.

Pain ripped his shoulders. Its talons dug deep into his neck as he tried to roll away. Salt water poured into his screaming mouth, filling lungs with a deadly chill. Waves pummeled his body into submission. His mind blurred and tumbled as he rolled over on the sweat-soaked mattress.

A chilling fog wrapped itself around the orderly stone buildings of Penpont Village. Wisps of peat smoke straggling from the cottage chimneys told of dying embers in the grates; the smell of smoke mixed into the ever-present odor of damp heath. Timbers creaked as they shrank away from the cold air. A chained dog howled its unease into the night.

Gradually a larger, more menacing smoke cloud joined the threads of chimney fumes and voices were raised in panic. The village struggled to rouse itself to the danger. In Penpont House, perched on the hill overlooking the hamlet, a night-gowned figure moved anxiously through the narrow doorway towards his bed.

“Jamie! Jamie! Wake up man. There’s a fire yonder in the village.”

James heard this dimly through the swirling waves of the ocean in his mind. He stirred his lank frame, rolled over and sank back into the waves. A shock of reddish hair swam past his eyes, dragging a face with it.

Andie’s face!

He reached out feebly, but couldn’t feel anything except the cold press of the water. Drifting in the no-man’s land between sleep and waking, he let the swirl of the tide sway him this way and that. He looked for Andie’s face again, but it had gone—swept away from him, separated, vanished…lost.

The flowing waters eddied around him, holding him, comforting him. A flame flickered in the mirror of the water as it swept towards him.

Strong hands grabbed him roughly and he surfaced again. “Come, Jamie, come!” he heard his sister’s urgent voice. “Quickly. Ye’ll be needed down there.”

His dry tongue pushed a foul taste out through parched lips, his mouth having been open to his snoring. Gritty eyes tried to open and focus. He forced his legs around to the ground and held his head in his hands as he came back from his nightmare, struggling to make sense of it all. Was it still a dream?

“Here’s yer coat and trews, man,” his sister broke in. “Yer snoring woke me up, right through the wall. I had to go on the loo in the corner, and it was then I saw the flames flickering on the windowpane. It looks like young Alan McMath’s cottage that’s going up in smoke.”

Struggling into his trousers, James could now hear the calls of the villagers, torn from their sleep to battle the fire. He blinked his eyes to clear the sleep from them. True enough, through the tiny window, he could see the cottage in flames. He donned an old gray coat over his nightshirt before heading to the door.

“Get some buckets from the shop, Isabella. We’ll need ‘em at the river. I’ll go see if Alan and Moihra are safe,” he instructed, his voice now steady. With a nod of her tousled head, she left the room quickly to grab her dress.

Tucking the long ends of the striped shirt into his trousers, he stumbled down the stairs into the night, poked his feet into the boots standing at the door, and ran along the rough stony path to the other end of the village. The flames were now flaring high into the sky as the tinder-dry thatch caught hold with a whoosh.

Sparks flew into the night and burning debris rained around the handful of anguished villagers looking on. Some were trying to get close to the building, shielding their screwed-up faces with their arms, but the fierce heat drove them back, making them look like twisted gingerbread men dancing against the flames.

“John!” he yelled at one man as he drew near, fear making a lump in his throat, “are Alan and Moihra out of there?”

“Aye, thank the good Lord,” the black shape silhouetted against the flames cried, “They’re over there with the widow Kirkpatrick. She be checkin’ the lass over, as she’s coughin’ somethin’ awful, her havin’ got a right lungful o’ smoke. And poor Alan, he’s got burnt hands from pullin’ off the thatch to try and stop it.”

James stumbled over to the other group, cursing his stiff left knee as he went. He recognized the broad shoulders of his brother, and grasped his arm. “What have you done to put it out?” he asked.

“Nothing can be done about it, I’m afeared. It’s got too fierce a hold already. It’ll just have to burn down to the walls. Wi’ no buckets but this wee one, we’ve had a Deevil of a job to try and douse it.” Despair in his voice, George turned back to the fire, his shoulders drooping.

“I’ve got Isabella getting more buckets from Andie’s shop. It’s a pity he’s away in Dumfries or he’d be helpin’ here now, but she knows where he leaves the latchkey. Och, and here she comes, indeed.”

Isabella appeared around a nearby corner, her black skirts swirling behind her. She got as close to a run as her ample weight would allow. Her face had lost its normal smile, being now red with exertion and she panted hard as she swung the rope-handled pails around towards the two men. The brothers took the wooden staved buckets from her as she sank to the ground, her bosom heaving with exhaustion.

“Four is all he had in the store,” she gasped. “I think…he’s away for more…at the moment.”

“Never mind,” said James, his blue eyes summing up his sister’s condition, “we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. Here, George, take these down to the water and we’ll try to put an end to this fire before it catches hold of young Billy’s cottage next door. Get Alec and Fergus to give ye a hand, man.”

With that under way he turned around to see young Alan comforting his wife as she sat with a cloak thrown over her nightgown, sobbing into her hands. Married only two years, they had built their life up around their cottage, her pride in it barely exceeding his own.

“Och, dinna fash yerself lassie, we can put a new thatch on. The stone walls will stand, ‘tis only the thatch and our furniture.” His blistered hands plucked at her sleeve as if to focus her attention as he spoke.

“And everything we have in the world, ye silly man!” she returned heatedly, wrenching her arm away. “I told ye to blow out the candle stub before ye come to bed. But, oh no. Ye had to fall asleep in yer chair, didn’t yer! It’s a wonder we’re not all burned to a crisp!” And she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“Hush, Moihra. It’ll be all right. I’ll make it up to ye, somehow. I’ll git a better job.”

“And how are ye plannin’ to do that, with jobs as scarce as they are? Ye fell asleep in yer chair ‘cause ye were worn out from workin’ all day. And where do we sleep while ye build us a new cottage?”

“I’ll not be knowin’ that at this minute, but somethin’ will come up, ye’ll see,” and young Alan chewed his lip in despair as his eyes returned to his blazing cottage.

James moved over and laid his hand on his arm. “You’ll be staying with our family until you find your feet again. My brother Andrew has a spare bed at the back of the wee shop, and I know he’ll not turn you away. He’s due back in a day or two, so we’ll tuck you up in there for now.”

His words were interrupted by a crash as the thatched roof finally gave way and toppled in on itself creating a seething furnace inside the low stone walls of the croft. Flames shot high into the air, ignoring the puny spouts of water from the bucket brigade, and a blast of heat made all cringe before it as the fire searched and found more to devour.

Moihra wailed in anguish as she saw her home destroyed in front of her eyes. Two of the shawl-clad village women squatted by her and put their arms around her to soak up some of her pain as she rocked back and forth in her agony. Tears forced their way through clenched eyelids and trickled down her smoke grimed cheeks. Her lips shuddered with each jerky intake of breath. Fingers clenched and unclenched as she tore at her ‘kerchief in dismay. Her normally stoic manner was gone, revealing a frightened, lost soul in its wake.

The heat was intensifying, and with the wind change, billowing smoke swept around to cover the women like a shroud. Isabella, struggling to control her breathing, sat next to Moihra, her arm around her friend as if to keep the tragedy from touching her. But the smoke grew even more pungent as it eddied around them.

“There, there, now. We’ll leave it to the men-folk to finish up here, and I’ll be takin’ ye off to Andie’s shop. Ye’ll be needin’ yer rest. Tomorrow will be a big day for ye.” With that, she led Moihra, sobbing loudly, off into the darkness.

Meanwhile James was in the bucket line, handing the wooden vessels from one to the other, trying hard not to slop the contents out before handing them on. Their faces blackened from the flying soot, the villagers passed the buckets down the line like machines, their arms aching, knowing full well that the fire must not spread to the rest of the cottages. Having lived all their lives cheek by jowl with the others in the village, this catastrophe felt as if it had happened to their own kinfolk.

Young Alan was at the head of the line, aiming jets of water onto the fiercest spots of the inferno, which was dying down now as the encircling stone walls slowly strangled its air supply. Bright eyes gleaming out from blackened face, mingled tears of anguish and smoke irritation running down his cheeks, his squinting gaze targeted each finger of fire before he hurled the water at it, gratified to see the burst of ashes, smoke and steam rise from each attack.

Knee deep in the Scaur Water, the tributary that runs into the River Nith, George McCubbin filled the empty pails and handed them up to the bucket brigade on the bank as the burn gurgled and sloshed its way past him.

“‘Tis a good thing the Thornhill Doctor says to bathe these old legs often. It seems I am doin’ just that!” The memory of the accident on Glengar Hill flashed through his mind. Lying in the river overnight. Broken legs twisted under him. The pain diminished somewhat by the frigid water. His brother Andrew finding him in the shallows the next day. Being carried home on Andie’s back, arms around his shoulders, numb toes dragging on the heath.

Settling his twisted legs a little more comfortably on the pebbly bottom of the burn, he filled the next bucket, holding it by its rope handle. Handing it up to young Sandy McNith, his upturned face was the first to feel the light misty rain that started to fall out of the flame-lit night sky. “Rain it is, and may the Good Lord be thanked!” he shouted, his eyes wide with delight.

The others took up the cry as the heavens opened onto the remains of the small cottage, now smoking and steaming as the hot rock walls spat back at the cold drenching rain.

“Aye, well, ye can all take a rest and we’ll let God have his turn at puttin’ it out, eh?” suggested James, leading by example. Men, women and the older children wearily put down their pails, eyes like diamonds in their black faces as they sank slowly to the ground, watching the soaking rain complete the task they had started.

“Young Alan,” coughed the elder McCubbin, his strong arm dragging the lad away from the horrifying sight. “You come along with me down to the shop, and we’ll get you tucked away for the night. You’ll need some cream on those hands of yours. The rest of you get along home now. We’ll see what there is to do in the morning.”