The first lightning struck and lit up the open sea. In the light, Hamish saw small, sharp, hissing ripples on the surface of the water, as in a film shown at high speed. The wind rose so fast that not even the waves could keep up. Darkness returned, and Hamish ran to the boat, which was tossing restlessly between the buoy and the shore, a green bucket clattering along its deck. Hamish jumped on to the deck, attached the extra ropes, shut the trapdoor securely and put the bucket inside.

It began raining. The water poured over him like a water-fall and made the ground steam. It had been a hot week.

As Hamish MacKay was starting back, lightning struck. Like a bright, fiery nail, it pinned him down. The whole landscape exploded.

Darkness returned, and Hamish was lying there, limbs trembling uncontrollably, momentarily incapable of any action. His hair had been burnt, and his boots had flown off his feet. His muscles were struck by cramp and his pulse throbbed in his throat. Nevertheless, he remained conscious. The boots turned up later among the stones on the shore.

Without hair, eyelashes or shoes, Hamish staggered home and asked Mary to give him a glass of milk. Mary stared at her husband, who smelled of electricity and burnt hair, and rushed out to start the car.

Mary drove Hamish to the hospital in Stornoway. They examined the man’s heart, memory and soles. No serious injuries were found, and Hamish MacKay went back the following morning to clean his bait fish.

During the August storms of 1992, lightning struck for the second time. Hamish MacKay and his fishing companion Timothy McCallum managed to shelter from the storm close to a nearby island, but lightning struck the boat’s aerial. Electrical discharge ran down the sides of the boat and spread along the metal railings over the whole vessel. Hamish burnt his hand on the aft rail. But Tim flew into the sea, propelled by the lightning, and drowned. His body was only found two days later, having drifted into the next bay along.

The boat’s interior was totally destroyed by fire. Fittings flew off the walls, windows exploded, gauges and other electrical equipment splintered apart. Plastics melted, wood burnt. Black, dirty water lapped at the floor, and the air was acrid with the smell of burning. A jagged line, branded by lightning, ran across the whole of the wood-panelled wall. The bucket taken in by Hamish had melted to form a green blob on the cabin floor.