CAPTOR AND CAPTIVE
Nevertheless, such a panoply is love that Wat's heart did not fail him.
He waited till the flare of torches and the tumult of men's voices had
withdrawn up the hill over which my Lord of Barra took his way to the
house which he occupied during his infrequent visits to the island--a
rude strength of stone consisting merely of three or four chambers
which had been built after the castle on the rocks below had fallen
into disrepair.
Wat swam ashore, keeping well to the right of the landing-place, where
two or three men were still busied about the boats, securing them with
ropes and getting out what bits of property had been left in them.
Wat could not but feel a cold chill strike through his heart when
he remembered that the possession of these boats by the islanders,
together with their perfect knowledge of all the different states of
the tide, would render his position upon the islet of Fiara infinitely
more dangerous.
"All the more reason," quoth undaunted Wat, "for us to make the attempt
this very night."
So, keeping as before to the short heather above the paths, he made his
way silently upward towards Scarlett's dungeon and the dwelling of his
love.
He found Bess Landsborough eagerly waiting for him. She dragged him
sharply away from the cottages.
"Gang back," she whispered, shaking him almost roughly, as though he
were to blame; "ken ye not that the chief has come and there will no'
be a sober man on the island this nicht? Even my Alister, if he were
to come across ye before morning, would think no more of sticking a
knife in ye than of breaking the back of a foumart[E] with a muckle
stane."
[E] Weasel.
"I know that," said Wat, with composure, "and that is the reason why I
am going to take both Kate and Scarlett with me to-night."
"The laddie's fair raving," said the woman; "the thing's clear
impossible. It canna be dune. Ye will hae to wait--some nicht when they
are a' sleepin', maybe."
"I'm not going back alive without Kate McGhie," said Wat. "I cannot
leave her with the cruel ravisher, Murdo of Barra--"
"Hoot, laddie," said Bess, "the chief will no' do the lassie ony harm.
He's ben the hoose wi' her the noo."
Wat, who had been crouching behind a rock beside Bess Landsborough, at
once sprang up and took his dagger bare in his hand. He was setting off
in the direction of the hut with the intention of breaking in upon the
colloquy of captive and captor, when Bess sprang on him and pulled him
down with all the weight of her body about his neck and exerting the
utmost strength of her brawny arms.
"Deil's in the laddie! He gangs aff like a spunk o' pooder laid on
a peat. The laird's but talkin' wi' the lass in the kitchen, wi' my
man Alister sittin' on the dresser, and half the rascaldom o' the Low
Countries (well are they designate!) waiting at the door. A word or twa
will do your lass little harm, unless she is o' the weak mind, and my
lord can persuade her to marry him by the guile of his tongue."
Wat grunted contemptuously. This was the last thing he was afraid of.
"I want," he said, "whatever arms ye can furnish me with, some food of
any portable sort--and a rope."
"Save us, laddie!" said Bess, holding up her hands; "ye might just as
lief ask me this nicht for the Earldom of Barra."
"I must have them," said Wat, firmly, "if I have to forage for them
myself."
"Aweel, I can but do my best," said the woman from Colmonel,
resignedly; "but I kenna where I shall get them."
Very cautiously they made their way back to the cottage of Alister.
"Wheesht!" said Bess; "lie cowered behind that stone. They are on their
road away. For this nicht surely your lass will be left at peace."
"And after that it will not matter," said Wat, looking cautiously over
the edge of the bowlder, "for either we will be safe out of this evil
isle, or else she and I will be where Barra and his devils can trouble
us no more."
When Bess and Wat reached the dwelling of the son of Alister, they
found it fallen strangely silent and dark. Bess went in boldly and
promptly. Presently her voice was heard in high debate, and after a
pause her husband, as if driven with ignominy from his own house,
stumbled past Wat, and began clambering like a cat up the steep rock
to the castle dungeon as easily as if he had been walking on a grass
meadow by a water-side.
No sooner was he safe out of the way than the door of the hut opened
circumspectly.
"Here!" said the mistress of the dwelling, in a far-reaching whisper.
Wat went up to the door-step. Bess Landsborough put out a hand, guided
him through the murky intricacies of her outer room, and pushed him
into that in which he had met his love the evening before.
Kate was sitting fully dressed on her bed with her head in her hands.
She looked up with a sharp little cry as he entered.
"Kate," he whispered, "it is I--Wat."
Whereat she ran to him with a sob of relief that was very sweet to
hear, and nestled with her head on his broad shoulder.
"Oh, thank God you have come! All will now be well."
Wat did not feel so sure of that, but, nevertheless, he caressed the
clustering curls and held his love to his bosom, murmuring little
meaningless words which Kate felt were better to listen to than much
wisdom.
Presently Bess Landsborough brought Wat a pair of pistols, a double
flask of powder, and a bagful of bullets.
"We must see about getting John Scarlett out of his prison," she said.
"I have the victuals all ready. There is a rope behind the dike at the
corner that looks to the sea. But ye had better get John Scarlett out
first, and then ye can all three lend a hand at the carrying--save us!
What's that?"
Bess Landsborough sprang sharply out of the inner room to the door
which gave upon the moor.
"Hide ye, Wat Gordon," she said; "here comes some one to visit us."
Kate made Wat lie down between the compacted heather of her couch
and the outer wall of the hut. Then she threw a coverlet deftly over
him. Wat grasped his dagger bare in his right hand to be ready in any
emergency, but his left found a way almost of its own accord through
the heather, till in the darkness it rested in Kate's as she sat on the
edge of the bed.
"My Lord of Barra," they heard Bess Landsborough say, without, "have
ye forgotten aught? We thought you gone to repose yourself after your
journey."
"Go find your husband and bring him hither, mistress!" commanded the
stern voice of Barra.
"It's no' very like that Bess will gang far frae hame to seek her man,
or ony ither man; there's mair than eneuch men in Bess's hoose this
nicht!" said Mistress McAlister, under her breath. But with apparent
obedience she went out--only, however, to ensconce herself immediately
behind the door. She wanted, she said to herself, to "see their twa
backs oot o' the kitchen without bloodshed."
Barra advanced boldly to the inner door which opened into Kate's
chamber. He paused a moment and knocked lightly. The girl sat still
and silent, but her hand gripped that of Wat closer to her side with
a quick, instinctive thrill, which made that very true lover clutch
his dagger and curse the man that could so wring with terror his sweet
maid's heart.
"May I have a moment's private audience with you, Mistress Kate?" said
Barra, from the outer room.
Kate did not answer a word.
The master of the island swung back the door and revealed his tall,
slender figure, in his usual dress of simple black, standing in the
doorway of the outer room. He stooped his head and entered as he did
so. The girl instinctively moved a little nearer to Wat and clasped his
hand more firmly. A little stifled cry escaped her. Wat cleared his
dagger-hilt and made ready to spring upon his enemy. My Lord of Barra
in all his checkered life had never been nearer death than he was at
that moment. For Wat Gordon was deciding exactly where he would strike
his first blow.
"I did not come again hither to alarm you," said Barra, "but that
I might more fully vindicate myself alone with you than I could do
in the presence of so many witnesses. That which I have done--your
transporting from Holland and your seclusion here--I have done with
full warrant and justification, not hastily nor yet without due
authority."
"I know of no authority," said Kate, at last, speaking firmly, "which
could warrant the seizure of a maid who never harmed or offended you,
the carrying her off gagged and bound like a felon, sailing with her
to another country, and there interning her upon a lonely isle till it
should please you to come for her, like a jailer to a captive."
"My lady," said Barra, not without a certain respect in his voice,
"I am well aware that I cannot expect you to take my word, for the
circumstances are not ripe for me to tell you all. But I ask you to
believe that neither disrespect nor passion, nor yet any selfish
jealousy, prompted me to these so strange expedients. But on the
contrary, a genuine desire for your happiness, and the direct request
of those most deeply interested and intimately connected with you."
"And who may they be?" asked Kate, looking at him contemptuously; "I
know none who have the right to give you leave to carry off a young
maid from her friends at dead of night, with as little ceremony or
mercy as Reynard does a gray goose out of the farmer's yard."
"Your father and your mother--are not they authority enough?" answered
Barra.
The girl gazed at him in cold disdain.
"My father," she said, "never in his life crossed my will by word
or deed. It was, indeed, by his permission and with his help that I
went to Holland. And as for my mother, she has been dead and in her
resting-grave these twenty years!"
"Nevertheless I had the permission and encouragement of the noble
lady, your mother, in that which I have done, though I admit that of
your father was a little more belated. That is what I wanted to say.
You do not believe me, I am aware, and I am not able at present more
particularly to unriddle the mystery. Nevertheless, rest assured that a
Lord of Barra does not lie. I bid you good-night. Is it permitted to
kiss your hand? Well, then, with all humble duty and observance, I kiss
mine to you."
With that Barra bowed and went out backward through the narrow door, as
if he had been ushering himself out of a queen's presence-chamber.
In the kitchen he passed Bess Landsborough, who opened on him with a
voluble tale of how she had sought her husband high and low without any
success, and how it was to be supposed that, like the rest, he had gone
to drink his Lordship's health at the muckle house over the hill.
But Barra went by her without a word, and the mistress of Alister
McAlister was left speaking to the empty air. She suddenly ceased as he
disappeared in the dark, and turned for sympathy to Wat and Kate in the
inner room.
"Siccan manners!" she said, indignantly; "they wadna set a Colmonel
brood-sow--to gae by a decent woman like that muckle dirt, and yin,
too, that had just gane on an errand for him. It's true I gaed nae
farther than the back o' the door, but at ony rate he kenned nae
better, and cam' back wi' news for his high michty chiefship. It's fair
scandalous, that's what it is! Wha hae we here this shot? I declare my
hoose is as thrang as a sacrament scailing, when the folk are flocking
to the drinking-booths at Stanykirk holy fair."
The visitor on this occasion proved to be her husband Alister. He was
already somewhat flushed of cheek and wild of eye.
He paused unsteadily in the middle of the kitchen and flung down a
great key on the table.
"Take care of that till the morn's morn," he said. "I would maybe loss
it. I am going out to drink till I be drunk."
And with this simple declaration of policy he strode out as he had
come.
As soon as he had gone, Bess threw a damp turf over the clear peat fire
on the hearth of the outer kitchen, which in a trice raised a dense
smoke and rendered everything within dark and gloomy.
"Come awa'," she said, putting her head into the room where Kate, her
heart beating wildly with the joy of reprieve and the presence of her
beloved, was clinging to Wat's arm, as he stood on the floor with his
dagger still ready and bare in his hand. "Haste ye and come away," she
said; "there'll be time and to spare when ye get him safe to yourself,
my lass, for a hale world o' cuikin' and joein'."
Wat and Kate came out quickly and Bess shut the door behind them.
Outside the sharp air off the Atlantic chilled them like a drench of
well-water on a summer's day, breathing keenly into their lungs after
the close atmosphere of the hut.
They made their way up the steep to the castle. Across the door of the
vault where John Scarlett was confined lay the prostrate body of a
Celt, inert and stertorous.
Mistress McAlister stirred him with her foot, and then turned him
completely over.
"As I thocht," she said, "it is just Misfortunate Colin. It will be
an ill day for him the morn. But he is aye in the way o' mischances,
onyway. He canna keep clear o' them. If a stane were to slip frae a
rock tap in a' the isle, it is on Colin it wad light. If a rope break
at the egg-harvest, 'tis Colin that's at the end o' the tow. I think a
pity o' him, too--for barrin' the drink and the ill luck, he's a decent
soul. But it juist canna be helpit."
So with that Bess undid the door with the key which Alister had thrown
upon the table, and then carefully tucked it into the waist-belt of
Colin the Misfortunate.
"It's a peety," she said; "but after a' it is a deal mair faceable and
natural that the like o' this should hae happened to Colin than to ony
ither man in the isle."
Jack Scarlett lay on his bed of heather tops, wrapped in his plaid, and
slept the sleep of the easy of conscience.
"What's a' the tirrivee?"[F] he growled, when Wat shook him. "Get up
and escape--what's the terrible fyke and hurry? Disturbin' a man in
his first sleep. Surely, ye could either hae comed afore he fell ower
or let him hae his sleep oot. A man's health is afore a'thing when it
comes to my time o' life. And it is no havers and nonsense--far frae't!
But ye hae no consideration, Wat Gordon--never had, ever since I kenned
ye."
[F] Unnecessary disturbance.
So, growling and grumbling as was his wont, old Jack gathered his
belongings together with soldierly practicality, pocketing the remains
of his evening's meal, and bringing all sorts of treasures out of
numberless hiding-places here and there about his dungeon.
"Now I am at your service," he said, as he stood erect.