knoweth me? I'll die like an Englishman this day, or I'll know the
reason why!" and turning, he sprang in over the bulwarks, as the
huge ship rolled up more and more, like a dying whale, exposing
all her long black bulk almost down to the keel, and one of her
lower-deck guns, as if in defiance, exploded upright into the air,
hurling the ball to the very heavens.
In an instant it was answered from the _Rose_ by a column of
smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of
the defenceless Spaniard.
"Who fired? Shame to fire on a sinking ship!"
"Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice up from the maindeck. "He's like
a madman down here."
"Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my
own brother. Cut away the grapples aloft, men. Don't you see how
she drags us over? Cut away, or we shall sink with her."
They cut away, and the _Rose_, released from the strain, shook her
feathers on the wave-crest like a freed sea-gull, while all men
held their breath.
Suddenly the glorious creature righted herself, and rose again, as
if in noble shame, for one last struggle with her doom. Her bows
were deep in the water, but her afterdeck still dry. Righted: but
only for a moment, long enough to let her crew come pouring wildly
up on deck, with cries and prayers, and rush aft to the poop, where,
under the flag of Spain, stood the tall captain, his left hand on
the standard-staff, his sword pointed in his right.
"Back, men!" they heard him cry, "and die like valiant mariners."
Some of them ran to the bulwarks, and shouted "Mercy! We surrender!"
and the English broke into a cheer and called to them to run her
alongside.
"Silence!" shouted Amyas. "I take no surrender from mutineers.
Señor," cried he to the captain, springing into the rigging and
taking off his hat, "for the love of God and these men, strike!
and surrender _á buena querra_."
The Spaniard lifted his hat and bowed courteously, and answered,
"Impossible, señor. No _querra_ is good which stains my honor."
"God have mercy on you, then!"
"Amen!" said the Spaniard, crossing himself.
She gave one awful lunge forward, and dived under the coming swell,
hurling her crew into the eddies. Nothing but the point of her poop
remained, and there stood the stern and steadfast Don, cap-à-pie
in his glistening black armor, immovable as a man of iron, while
over him the flag, which claimed the empire of both worlds, flaunted
its gold aloft and upward in the glare of the tropic noon.
"He shall not carry that flag with him! I will have it yet, if I die
for it!" said Will Gary, and rushed to the side to leap overboard,
but Amyas stopped him.
"Let him die as he has lived, with honor." A wild figure sprang out
of the mass of sailors who struggled and shrieked amid the foam,
and rushed upward at the Spaniard. It was Michael Heard. The Don,
who stood above him, plunged his sword into the old man's body:
but the hatchet gleamed, nevertheless: down went the blade through
headpiece and through head; and as Heard sprang onward, bleeding,
but alive, the steel-clad corpse rattled down the deck into the
surge. Two more strokes, struck with the fury of a dying man, and
the standard-staff was hewn through. Old Michael collected all
his strength, hurled the flag far from the sinking ship, and then
stood erect one moment and shouted, "God save Queen Bess!" and the
English answered with a "Hurrah!" which rent the welkin.
Another moment and the gulf had swallowed his victim, and the
poop, and him; and nothing remained of the _Madre Dolorosa_ but a
few floating spars and struggling wretches, while a great awe fell
upon all men, and a solemn silence, broken only by the cry
"Of some strong swimmer in his agony."
And then, suddenly collecting themselves, as men awakened from a
dream, half-a-dozen desperate gallants, reckless of sharks and eddies,
leaped overboard, swam toward the flag, and towed it alongside in
triumph.
A BRAVE SCOTTISH CHIEF
Anonymous
This is the story of the life of Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun,
in the province of Galloway, Scotland. Earlstoun is a bonny place,
sitting above the waterside of the river Ken. The gray tower stands
ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and
dear to the hearts of those who had dwelt in it, when they were
in foreign lands or hiding out on the wild wide moors. It was the
time when Charles II wished to compel the most part of the people
of Scotland to change their religion and worship as he bade them.
Some obeyed the king; but most hated the new order of things, and
cleaved in their hearts to their old ways and to their old ministers,
who had been put out of their churches and homes at the coming
of the king. Many even set themselves to resist the king in open
battle rather than obey him in the matter of their consciences. It
was only in this that they were rebellious, for many of them had
been active in bringing him again to the throne.
Among those who thus went out to fight were William Gordon and his
son Alexander. William Gordon was a grave, courteous, and venerable
man, and his estate was one of the best in all Galloway. Like
nearly all the lairds in the south and west, he was strongly of the
Presbyterian party, and resolved to give up life and lands rather
than his principles. Now, the king was doubtless ill-advised, and
his councillors did not take the kindly or the wise way with the
people at this time; for a host of wild Highlanders had been turned
into the land, who plundered in cotter's and laird's hall without
much distinction between those that stood for the Covenants and
those that held for the king. So in the year 1679 Galloway was
very hot and angry, and many were ready to fight the king's forces
wherever they could be met with.
So, hearing news of a revolt in the west, William Gordon rode away,
with many good riders at his back, to take his place in the ranks
of the rebels. His son Alexander, whose story we are to tell, was
there before him. The Covenanting army had gained one success in
Drumclog, which gave them some hope, but at Bothwell Bridge their
forces were utterly broken, largely through their own quarrels, by
the Duke of Monmouth and the disciplined troops of the government.
Alexander Gordon had to flee from the field of Bothwell. He came
home to Earlstoun alone, for his father had been met about six miles
from the battle-field by a troop of horse, and as he refused to
surrender, he was slain there and buried in the parish of Glassford.
Immediately after Bothwell, Alexander Gordon was compelled to go into
hiding with a price upon his head. Unlike his father, he was very
ready-witted, free with his tongue, even boisterous upon occasion,
and of very great bodily strength. These qualities stood him in
good stead during the long period of his wandering and when lying
in concealment among the hills.
The day after Bothwell, he was passing through the town of Hamilton,
when he was recognized by an old retainer of the family.
"Save us, Maister Alexander," said the man, who rememhered the
ancient kindnesses of his family, "do you not know that it is death
for you to be found here?"
So saying he made his young master dismount, and carried away
all his horseman's gear and his arms, which he hid in a heap of
field-manure behind the house. Then he took Earlstoun to his own
house, and put upon him a long dress of his wife's. Hardly had
he been clean-shaven and arrayed in a clean white cap, when the
troopers came clattering into the town. They had heard that he and
some others of the prominent rebels had passed that way; and they
went from door to door, knocking and asking, "Saw ye anything of
Sandy Gordon of Earlstoun?"
So going from house to house they came to the door of the ancient
Gordon retainer, and Earlstoun had hardly time to run to the corner
and begin to rock the cradle with his foot before the soldiers
came to ask the same question there. But they passed on without
suspicion, only saying one to the other as they went out, "My
certes, Billy, but yon was a sturdy hizzie!"
After that there was nothing but the heather and the mountain cave
for Alexander Gordon for many a day. He had wealth of adventures,
travelling by night, hiding and sleeping by day. Sometimes he would
venture to the house of one who sympathized with the Covenanters,
only to find that the troopers were already in possession. Sometimes,
in utter weariness, he slept so long that when he awoke he would
find a party searching for him quite close at hand; then there was
nothing for it but to lie close like a hare in a covert till the
danger passed by.
Once when he came to his own house of Earlstoun he was only an
hour or two there before the soldiers arrived to search for him.
His wife had hardly time to stow him in a secret recess behind the
ceiling of a room over the kitchen, in which place he abode several
days, having his meals passed to him from above, and breathing
through a crevice in the wall.
After this misadventure he was sometimes in Galloway and sometimes
in Holland for three or four years. He might even have remained in
the Low Countries, but his services were so necessary to his party
in Scotland that he was repeatedly summoned to come over into
Galloway and the west to take up the work of organizing resistance
to the government.
During most of the time the tower of Earlstoun was a barracks
of the soldiers, and it was only by watching his opportunity that
Alexander Gordon could come home to see his wife, and put his hand
upon his bairns' heads as they lay a-row in their cots. Yet come
he sometimes did, especially when the soldiers of the garrison
were away on duty in the more distant parts of Galloway. Then the
wanderer would steal indoors in the gloaming, soft-footed, like
a thief, into his own house, and sit talking with his wife and an
old retainer or two who were fit to be trusted with the secret. Yet
while he sat there, one was ever on the watch, and at the slightest
signs of king's men in the neighborhood Alexander Gordon rushed
out and ran to the great oak tree, which you may see to this day
standing in sadly diminished glory in front of the great house of
Earlstoun.
Now it stands alone, all the trees of the forest having been cut
away from around it during the subsequent poverty which fell upon
the family. A rope ladder lay snugly concealed among the ivy that
clad the trunk of the tree. Up this Alexander Gordon climbed. When
he arrived at the top he pulled the ladder after him, and found
himself upon an ingeniously constructed platform built with a
shelter over it from the rain, high among the branchy tops of the
great oak. His faithful wife, Jean Hamilton, could make signals to
him out of one of the top windows of Earlstoun whether it was safe
for him to approach the house, or whether he had better remain hidden
among the leaves. If you go now to look for the tree, it is indeed
plain and easy to be seen. But though now so shorn and lonely, there
is no doubt that two hundred years ago it stood undistinguished
among a thousand others that thronged the woodland about the tower
of Earlstoun.
Often, in order to give Alexander Gordon a false sense of security,
the garrison would be withdrawn for a week or two, and then in the
middle of some mirky night or early in the morning twilight the
house would be surrounded and the whole place ransacked in search
of its absent master.
On one occasion, the man who came running along the narrow river
path from Dalry had hardly time to arouse Gordon before the dragoons
were heard clattering down through the wood from the high-road.
There was no time to gain the great oak in safety, where he had so
often hid in time of need. All Alexander Gordon could do was to put
on the rough jerkin of a laboring man, and set to cleaving firewood
in the courtyard with the scolding assistance of a maid-servant.
When the troopers entered to search for the master of the house,
they heard the maid vehemently "flyting" the great hulking lout
for his awkwardness, and threatening to "draw a stick across his
back" if he did not work to a better tune.
The commander ordered him to drop his axe, and to point out the
different rooms and hiding-places about the castle. Alexander Gordon
did so with an air of indifference, as if hunting Whigs were much
the same to him as cleaving firewood. He did his duty with a stupid
unconcern which successfully imposed on the soldiers; and as soon
as they allowed him to go, he fell to his wood-chopping with the
same stolidity and rustic boorishness that had marked his conduct.
Some of the officers came up to him and questioned him as to his
master's hiding-place in the woods. But as to this he gave them no
satisfaction.
"My master," he said, "has no hiding-place that I know of. I always
find him here when I have occasion to seek for him, and that is
all I care about. But I am sure that if he thought you were seeking
him he would immediately show you, for that is ever his custom."
This was one of the answers with a double meaning that were so much
in the fashion of the time and so characteristic of the people.
On leaving, the commander of the troop said, "Ye are a stupid kindly
nowt, man. See that ye get no harm in such a rebel service."
Sometimes, however, searching waxed so hot and close that Gordon
had to withdraw himself altogether out of Galloway and seek quieter
parts of the country. On one occasion he was speeding up the Water
of Æ when he found himself so weary that he was compelled to lie
down under a bush of heather and rest before proceeding on his
journey. It so chanced that a noted king's man, Dalyell of Glenæ,
was riding homeward over the moor. His horse started back in
astonishment, having nearly stumbled over the body of a sleeping
man. It was Alexander Gordon. Hearing the horse's feet, he leaped
up, and Dalyell called upon him to surrender. But that was no word
to say to a Gordon of Earlstoun. Gordon instantly drew his sword,
and, though unmounted, his lightness of foot on the heather and
moss more than counterbalanced the advantages of the horseman, and
the king's man found himself matched at all points; for the Laird
of Earlstoun was in his day a famous swordsman.
Soon the Covenanter's sword seemed to wrap itself about Dalyell's
blade and sent it twirling high in the air. In a little while he
found himself lying on the heather at the mercy of the man whom he
had attacked. He asked for his life, and Alexander Gordon granted
it to him, making him promise by his honor as a gentleman that
whenever he had the fortune to approach a conventicle (church meeting)
he would retire, if he saw a white flag elevated in a particular
manner upon a flagstaff. This seemed but a little condition to
weigh against a man's life, and Dalyell agreed.
Now, the cavalier was an exceedingly honorable man and valued his
spoken word. So on the occasion of a great conventicle at Mitchelslacks,
in the parish of Closeburn, he permitted a great field meeting to
disperse, drawing off his party in another direction, because the
signal streaming from a staff told him the man who had spared his
life was among the company of worshippers.
After this, the white signal was frequently used in the neighborhood
over which Dalyell's jurisdiction extended, and to the great credit
of the cavalier it is recorded that on no single occasion did
he violate his plighted word, though he is said to have remarked
bitterly that the Whig with whom he fought must have been the
devil, "forever going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and
down in it."
But Alexander Gordon was too great a man in the affairs of the
Praying Societies to escape altogether. He continually went and
came from Holland, and some of the letters that he wrote from that
country are still in existence. At last, in 1683, having received
many letters and valuable papers for delivery to people in refuge
in Holland, he went secretly to Newcastle, and agreed with the
master of a ship for his voyage to the Low Countries. But just
as the vessel was setting out from the mouth of the Tyne, it was
accidentally stopped. Some watchers for fugitives came on board,
and Earlstoun and his companion were challenged. Earlstoun,
fearing the taking of his papers, threw the box that contained them
overboard; but it floated, and was taken along with himself.
Then began a long series of misfortunes for Alexander Gordon. He was
five times tried, twice threatened with torture--which he escaped,
in the judgment hall itself, by such an exhibition of his great
strength as terrified his judges. He simulated madness, foamed
at the mouth, and finally tore up the benches in order to attack
the judges with the fragments. He was sent first to the castle of
Edinburgh and afterward to the Bass (an island), "for a change of
air," as the record quaintly says. Finally, he was despatched to
Blackness Castle, where he remained close in hold till the revolution.
Not till June 5, 1689, were his prison doors thrown open, but even
then Alexander Gordon would not go till he had obtained signed
documents from the governor and officials of his prison to the
effect that he had never altered any of his opinions in order to
gain privilege or release.
Alexander Gordon returned to Earlstoun, and lived there quietly
far into the next century, taking his share in local and county
business with Grierson of Lag and others who had hunted him
for years-which is a strange thing to think on, but one also very
characteristic of those times.
On account of his great strength and the power of his voice, he
was called "the Bull of Earlstoun," and it is said that when he
was rebuking his servants the bellowing of the Bull could plainly
be heard in Dalry, which is two miles away across hill and stream.
THE ADVENTURE OF GRIZEL COCHRANE
By Arthur Quiller-Couch
At Edinburgh, almost under the shadow of the spire of St. Giles's,
in the pavement between that old cathedral church and the County
Hall, the passer-by will mark the figure of a heart let into the
causeway, and know that he is standing on the "Heart of Midlothian,"
[Footnote: The title of one of Sir Walter Scott's romances.] the
site of the old Tolbooth. That gloomy pile vanished in the autumn
of 1817; as Mr. Stevenson says, "the walls are now down in the
dust; there is no more _squalor carceris_ for merry debtors, no
more cage for the old acknowledged prison-breaker; but the sun and
the wind play freely over the foundations of the gaol;" this place,
"old in story and name-father to a noble book." The author of that
same "noble book" possessed himself of some memorials of the keep
he had rendered so famous, securing the stones of the gateway, and
the door with its ponderous fastenings to decorate the entrance of
his kitchen-court at Abbotsford. And this is all that is left.
But in the summer and autumn of 1685 the Tolbooth held prisoners
enough, notwithstanding the many gloomy processions that were from
time to time walking to the axe and halter in the Grassmarket; and
in a narrow cell, late one August evening, two persons were sitting
of whom this story shall treat. These two were Sir John Cochrane,
of Ochiltree, and his daughter Grizel--here on the saddest of
errands, to visit her father in prison and help in his preparations
for death.
For Sir John, a stout Whig, had been one of the leaders of Argyle's
insurrection; had been beaten with his troops by Lord Ross at
Muirdykes; had disbanded his handful of men, and fled for hiding to
the house of his uncle, Mr. Gavin Cochrane, of Craigmuir; had been
informed against by his uncle's wife, seized, taken to Edinburgh;
had been paraded, bound and bareheaded, through the streets by
the common executioner; and then on the 3d of July flung into the
Tolbooth to await his trial for high treason. And now the trial,
too, was over, and Sir John was condemned to die.
As he now sat, with bowed head, on the bench of his cell, it was not
the stroke of death that terrified him--for Sir John was a brave
man--but the parting with his children, who would through his
rashness be left both orphaned and penniless (for the crown would
seize his goods), and chiefly the parting with his daughter, who
had been his one comfort in the dark days of waiting for the king's
warrant of execution to arrive.
Between his apprehension and his trial no friend or kinsman had been
allowed to visit him; but now that his death was assured, greater
license had been granted. But, anxious to deprive his enemies of a
chance to accuse his sons, he had sent them his earnest entreaties
and commands that they should abstain from using this permission
until the night before his execution. They had obeyed; but obedience
of this sort did not satisfy the conscience of his daughter Grizel.
On the very night of his condemnation he heard the key turn in his
door; thinking it could only be the gaoler, he scarcely lifted his
eyes. But the next moment a pair of soft arms were flung round his
neck, and his daughter was weeping on his breast. From that day she
had continued to visit him; and now as she sat beside him, staring
at the light already fading in the narrow pane, both father and
daughter knew that it was almost the last time.
Presently she spoke--
"And this message--tell me truly, have you any hope from it?"
It was an appeal made by Sir John's father, the Earl of Dundonald,
to Father Peters, the king's confessor, who often dictated to him,
as was well known, on matters of state. But in the short time left,
would there be time to press this appeal, and exert that influence
in London which alone could stay the death-warrant?
"There is no hope in that quarter," said Sir John.
Grizel knew that he spoke only what was her own conviction, and
her despair.
"Argyle is dead these three days," pursued her father, "and with
him men of less consequence than I. Are they likely to spare me--a
head of the rising? Would they spare any man now, in the heat of
their revenge?"
"Father," said Grizel suddenly, "could you spare me from your side
for a few days?"
Sir John looked up. He knew by her manner that she had formed some
plan in her mind; he knew, too, from her heart, that nothing but
chance of winning his safety could take her from him now, of all
times.
"My child," he said, "you are going to attempt something."
She nodded, with a brighter face than she had worn for many days.
"And what you would attempt," he went on, "is an impossibility."
"Nothing is impossible to a true heart," she said.
"And who will help you?"
"No one." She was standing before him now, and in the twilight he
could see her eyes lit up with hope, her figure upright, and as if
full of a man's strength.
"My girl, you will run into danger--into blame. They will not
spare you, and--do you know the characters of those men whom you
would have to sue?"
She bent and kissed him.
"I am a Cochrane, my father."
Early next morning, before the world was up, Grizel Cochrane was
mounted on horseback and riding towards the border. She had dressed
herself--this girl of eighteen--as a young serving-woman, and when
she drew rein at a wayside cottage for food and drink, professed
herself journeying on a borrowed horse to visit her mother's house
across the Tweed.
By noon Edinburgh was some leagues behind, but she pressed on
through that day and most of the following night.
On the second day after leaving Edinburgh she crossed the Tweed,
and came in safety to the home of an old nurse, on the English
side, four miles beyond the town of Berwick.
"Gude sakes!" cried the old woman, who was standing at her cottage
door and was rather astonished to find the horsewoman draw rein,
leap to the ground, and plant a kiss on either cheek--"Gude sakes!
if it isna Miss Grizel!"
"Quickly, into the house!" commanded her young mistress; "I have
somewhat to tell that will not wait an hour."
She knew the old nurse was to be trusted, and therefore told her
story and her secret. "Even now," she said at the end of her story,
"the postman is riding from London with the warrant in his bag. I
must stop him and make him give it up to me, or my father's head
is the penalty.
"But what use to talk o' this, when the postman is a stout rider,
and armed to boot? How is a mere girl, saving your presence, to do
this at all?"
"Look here."
Grizel unrolled a bundle which she had brought on her saddle-crutch
from Edinburgh; it held a horseman's cloak and a brace of pistols.
"Now," said she, "where are the clothes of Donald, my foster-brother?
He was a slight lad in times syne, and little doubt they'll fit
me."