JOHN SCARLETT COMES ASHORE
Kate's sojourn on the island had given her back all her girlish spring
of carriage and swift grace of movement. Fleet and light as a goat she
sped over the short turf and threaded the sharp shark's fins of the
black basaltic ridges, her eyes fixed upon the shifting groups on the
shore.
Was her love lying there dead before her, or at least in utmost danger
of his life? The men stood so close together, all looking inward
and downward, that Kate was among them before any one saw her come.
She cleft a way through the shouldering press, and there on the wet
pebbles of the beach, dragged just a few yards from the shore on which
a back-draught from the smooth glides and rattling currents of the
tide-race of Suliscanna had cast him, lay the body of John Scarlett.
Kate gave a sharp cry, half of disappointment and half of relief. Her
love it was not; but his friend it was. And if this were John Scarlett,
where would Wat Gordon be by this time--of a surety lying deep in the
green heave of some far-reaching "gloop," or battered against the cruel
cliffs of the "goës," into which the surges swelled and thundered,
throwing themselves in bootless assault upon the perpendicular cliffs,
and fretting their pure green arches into delicatest gray lace of foam
and little white cataracts which came pouring back into the gloomy
depths along every crevice and over every ledge.
John Scarlett lay with his broad chest naked and uncovered, for his
coat and waistcoat had already become centres of two separate quarrels,
shrill and contentious as the bickerings of sparrows over the worm
which they hold by either end and threaten to rend in pieces.
Patterns of muskets and sword-blades were wrought upon the
veteran's breast in a fashion which was then common to all men of
adventuring--land travellers and seafarers alike. The old soldier's
arms and breast were a mass of scars and cicatrices, both from his many
public campaigns and from his innumerable excursions upon the field of
private honor.
"This has been a man indeed," said one of the men that stood by;
"many a knife has been tried on that skin, and many, I warrant, gat
deeper holes and deadlier cuts than these in the making of this pretty
patchwork."
"He is an enemy of the chief, that is beyond a doubt," said another;
"for he is not a man of the isles, and our Lord Murdo forbade the
coming of any else. It will be safer to stick him with a gully-knife
before he comes to, lest a worst thing happen us."
And it is likely that this amiable intention might have become the
finding and conclusion of the meeting, but that at that moment Kate
pierced the throng and threw herself down on the salt, clammy pebbles
at John Scarlett's head. She put her hand upon his heart, but could not
feel it beat. Before long she was reinforced by Mrs. McAlister, who
arrived panting. She swept the men unceremoniously aside with her arm,
and addressed them in their own tongue, in words which carried insult
and railing in the very sound of them.
The two women had not worked long at the chill, sea-tossed body of the
master-at-arms before John Scarlett opened his eyes and looked about
him.
"Bess Landsborough!" he said, without manifesting the least surprise,
"what for did ye no' meet me at the kirk stile of Colmonel, where I
trysted wi' ye?"
"John Scarlett!" cried Mrs. McAlister, "I declare in the name o' a'
that's holy, Jack Scarlett, the King's Dragoon--what in the world
has brocht ye here, lying bare and broadcast on the cauld stanes of
Suliscanna?"
"I cam' seekin' you, Bess," said John Scarlett, easing himself up on
his elbow with a grimace of pain. "I heard in Colmonel that ye had
kilted your coats o' green satin and awa' wi' John Hielandman. So I
e'en cam' round this gate to see if ye had tired o' him."
"And I see that, dead or alive, ye can lie as gleg as ever--certes,
there never was a dragoon that was single-tongued, since Satan made
the first o' that evil clan oot o' the red cinders of hell!" answered
Mistress McAlister, vigorously.
"Weel, Bess, it skills little," replied Scarlett, rising slowly to
a sitting posture. "But if ye would prevail on these honest men to
withdraw a little and not glower at my nakedness, as if they had never
in their lives before cast eyes on a man that has had a wash, it is
greatly grateful I will be, and forgive you that little mislippen about
the tryst."
As John Scarlett turned himself about, he pressed Kate's hand sharply
to intimate that he desired her to pretend complete ignorance of
his person and purpose. But the fear which now had become almost a
certainty, that she had seen her lover go down in the tide-race of
Suliscanna, dominated her heart. She was scarce conscious of the
meeting of John Scarlett and his ancient sweetheart, but continued
to gaze steadily and with straining eyes out upon the smooth and
treacherous swirls of the Suck.
"Have ye a cloak or a plaid, Bess, that I may gird myself with it, and
go decently to my quarters--unless these gentlemen still desire to
finish me here?" asked Scarlett, calmly.
Whereat the wife of Alister drew a plaid of rough brown wool from the
shoulders of the man nearest to her and cast it about him. By this time
Scarlett had managed to stand upon his feet, and even to walk a few
steps along the pebbles of the shore. All Suliscanna was now gathered
about the new-comer, and on the skirts of the crowd the minister and
Alister stood apart with bent brows in anxious consultation.
"It is the chief's order!" said the minister. "We will have to answer
for it with our lives if we do not ward him safely."
"In the vaults of the tower will be the best and securest place,"
answered Alister.
Then, with no more words spoken, Alister McAlister stepped up to his
wife, and, seizing her by the arm, said, "This is chief's business--do
as I bid you, now!"
And Mrs. McAlister knew that the time had come for her to obey. For
well as she could make the burly _dhuine wassail_ do her bidding when
the business was his own or hers, Bess never put her general supremacy
to the test by offering resistance to her husband's will when the clan
or the chief were in question.
"Tell the Lowland man," said Alister, looking his wife straight in the
eyes, "that it is the order of the chief that he be warded till we hear
what is to be done with him. We did not ask him to come to Suliscanna,
and we must see that he does not invite himself quietly away again now
that he is here. He is to bide in the tower at our house-end, and ye
can boil him Lowland brose as muckle as ever he can sup, since ye seem
to be so well acquainted with his kind of folk."
When Mistress McAlister had interpreted this to John Scarlett, the
old campaigner gave the brown plaid a twirl about his shoulders, and
crying, "Content--lead on!" accepted the situation with a soldier's
philosophy.
The ancient tower of Suliscanna, in which Scarlett presently found
himself, was no extensive castle, but simply a half-ruinous block-house
constructed for defence by some former lords of the isle. The upper
part was a mere shell in which Alister's wild goats were sometimes
penned, when for some herdsman's purpose they had been collected in the
vicinity of the huts by the expectation of the spare crystals of salt
when the pans were drawn. But underneath there was a vaulted dungeon
still strong and intact. This subterranean "strength" possessed a door
of solid wood--a rare thing in Suliscanna--brought at some remote
period from the main-land; for, save drif-twood, there is no plant
thicker-stemmed than the blackberry to be found on all these outermost
islands of the sea. This door was secured by a ponderous lock, the
bolt of which ran into the stone for nearly two feet, while the wood
of which it was composed was studded with great iron nails and covered
with hide like a targe. It was the sole article of value which had been
left in the ancient tower when my lord's new house was built farther up
the hill.
The tower stood at the summit of the first ascent of the island,
close beside the cottage of Alister McAlister--of which, indeed, very
characteristically and economically, it formed the gable-end. Heather
bloomed close up to the door of it, and looked into the dungeon at
every narrow peep-hole, so that when Scarlett set his head to one of
these he found himself staring into a fairy forest of rose and green,
in which the muir-fowl crouched and the grasshoppers chirred.
John Scarlett found that during the time he had been conferring with
the representative of the Lord of the Small Isles and his wife Bess
upon the pebbles of the beach, a bed of fragrant heather tops had been
made for him by the clansmen in this arched and airy sleeping-place.
Alister went in with him, glanced comprehensively around, and nodded.
"Now you will be comfortable and make yourself at home," the action
said. And John Scarlett smiled back at his taciturn jailer. For indeed,
except the stone seat which ran round the vault, and the new-laid
bed of heather tops in the corner, the available accommodations of
the Tower of Suliscanna consisted exclusively of an uneven area of
hard-beaten earthen floor made visible by the light of half a dozen
narrow port-holes, which looked in different directions out upon the
moor and through the gable against the dark wall of Bess Landsborough's
house.
Alister locked the dungeon door by turning the huge key with a spar of
driftwood thrust through the head of it like the bar of a capstan. Then
he called to him a shaggy gillie and bade him watch the door on the
peril of his head. Whereupon the red-headed Gael grinned obediently,
pulled himself an armful of heather, and effectually double-locked the
door by stretching himself across the entrance with his hand on his
dirk and his sword naked by his side.