Urgency snapped in every communication as Mackinnon’s colleagues rousted emergency services into action. Police, fire services, medical triage units, all were alerted and the region’s media sources informed.
In the vast bureaucracy that was the Commission, these initiatives were classified as ‘local’, a characterisation which applied osmotic pressure to prevent information reaching the highest layer of organisation. Insulated, great ones of the Commission were kept at room temperature. There was no-one who wished to disturb the directorate, particularly on a Sunday.
Isolation is the Achilles heel of every powerful elite. The Chancellor of the Exchequer who was accused in Parliament of being a rich boy who did not know the price of milk was suffering a political deathblow, not recognised by many at the time.
And so, while telephone networks glowed with activity, the Commission hierarchy were taking advantage of a fine morning to play golf.
In forest north of Strontian, the fire spread on a steadily expanding front. A police barrier had been manned to divert traffic away from the B-road running beside Loch Shiel, the road being now blocked by burning trees. Its continuation, an asphalt track that twisted over the shoulder of terrain from Polloch to Strontian, much of that terrain afforested, had become the sole access to the cantonment.
The loneliness of the hamlet at Polloch had held considerable appeal for both Commission planners and the local population who understandably wished to prevent travelling labour becoming familiar with daughters of farm and croft.
A prudent Commission had situated their nest of hutments below the row of bothies and next an area of marshy ground where a fist of Loch Shiel had punched into the mountainous rampart that towered above its shore. These hutments were further from the forest and more defensible against wildfire. Beside them was a solitary stand of pine.
While the timber houses roared with fire, Mackinnon ordered the men to rest, and telephoned for food and water to be collected at Strontian then sent over the hill. In the hiatus, men recovered strength and watched arms of the fire begin to take hold in the ground cover that stretched from the bothies to the area of hardstandings on which the hutments rested.
Silas leaned forward from the seat of his Enfield, shocked by what he was witnessing, in real fear that he should fall under suspicion. He had fought fire with elemental passion. In the terrible heat and acrid smoke Silas had no conscious thoughts beyond that fight, at one with the men sweating and cursing beside him. Guilt had only come as he withdrew, and increased with each step he took in retreat.