THE FIERY CROSS
Wat and Scarlett found themselves landed in a country which to all
intents was one both savage and hostile. It was not indeed Barra's
country, but the danger was scarcely less on that account. They were
strangers and Sassenach. Wat carried gold in his belt, more than many
a Highland chief had ever seen at one time in his life--gold which at
Perth or Inverness could be exchanged for a prince's wealth of swords
and daggers, pistols and fighting-gear.
It was in a little land-locked bay that they were disembarked. Great
slaty purple mountains stretched away to the north; a range of lower
hills, cut down to the roots by the narrow cleft of a pass, warded
the bay to the east; while to the south the comrades looked out
on a wilderness of isles and islets, reefs and spouting skerries,
which foamed and whitened as the black iron teeth of the rock showed
themselves, and the slow swell of the Atlantic came lumbering and
arching in.
Wat and Scarlett sat down on the shore, which stretched away lonely and
barren for miles on either side of them. They watched the boat return
to the ship, as she lay with her sails backed, and shivering in the
wind, waiting only for the crew to come on board before sailing for the
south.
A slight figure could be seen immediately above the bulwark on the
land side. Wat rose to his feet and waved his hand. The white speck
signalled a reply, and Kate McGhie, the maid of his love, carried the
heart of gold away with her to the lands of the south, and the spaces
of the sea widened every moment between the truest lovers the world
held.
Scarlett and Wat sat a long time watching the ship dwindling into a
mere tower of whiteness in the distance, the seas closing bluer and
bluer about her, and the whole universe growing lonely behind her,
wanting the Beloved.
At last Scarlett spoke.
"Lad, have ye had enough of adventures," he said, more sadly than
was his wont, "or are ye as keen after them as ever? It seems that
we have now put ourselves in every man's ill graces, so far as I can
see. Whether James or William bear the gree to us signifies not a jot;
for if James, then the first king's man that comes across us holds
you for the old outlawry in the matter of wounding my Lord Wellwood,
and me for taking your side when I brought you the king's letter to
Brederode; and if William wear the crown, lo, for prison-breaking and
manslaughter--aye, and for desertion of his army, both you and poor
silly John Scarlett are alien and outlaw in all the realms of the
Dutchman. I tell you we are doomed at either end of the stick, Wat, my
man."
"And faith, I care not much," quoth Wat, watching with wistful eyes
the _Sea Unicorn_ vanishing with the one thing that was dear to him on
earth.
"Care or no care," said Scarlett, "it is time for us to be on our feet!"
So Wat, rising obediently, kissed his hand behind his companion's back
to the white tower which was now sinking in the utmost south.
As soon almost as the two adventurers had left the sand and shingle
of the shore, they found themselves upon the short heather of certain
rough, moorish foothills. No house pleasantly reeking was to be
discerned--not so much as a deer nor even a wandering sheep in that
wide, wild place.
So Wat and Scarlett fared forth straight to the east, keeping mostly
parallel with the shores of a fine loch, which stretched inward in the
direction of the notch in the hills which they had seen from their
landing-place.
It was towards evening when the two friends came to the summit of a
little knoll and stood looking down upon a curious scene. Beneath them,
scattered among the _débris_ of some prehistoric landslip, lay a small
Highland village--if village it could be called--of which each house
or hut was built against the side of a great bowlder or rock fallen
from the hill-side. The cottages were no better than rude shelters of
turf and stone, roofed with blackened heather and scattered at every
conceivable angle, as if they had been dredged forcibly out of the
bottom of a reluctant pepper-pot and had taken root where they fell.
In the centre, however, was a kind of open space--not levelled nor
cleared of turf and stones, but with all its primeval rocks sticking
through the scanty turf, blackened and smoothed by the rubbing they had
received from the fundamental parts of innumerable generations of goats
and children.
In this space a dozen men in rude kilts and plaids of ancient faded
tartan were collected, arguing and threatening with as much apparent
fierceness as though some one of them was to be killed during the next
five minutes. A small army of women hovered on the outskirts and made
independent forays into the affray, catching hold of this and that
other valiant discourser, and, if she got the right hold and purchase,
swinging him forthwith out of the turmoil--only, however, to return to
it again as soon as her grasp relaxed.
There was, therefore, a centre of disturbance of which the elements
were entirely male--while contemporary, and on the whole concentric,
with it revolved a number of smaller cyclones, of which the elements
were about equally male and female. Fists were shaken here and there in
all of them, and voices rose loud and shrill. But from the heart of the
darker and more permanent quarrel in the centre there came at intervals
the threatening gleam of steel, as this one and that other stooped and
flashed the _skein dhu_, plucked out of his garter, defiantly in the
face of his opponent.
In the very midst Wat could see a thick-set man who carried over his
shoulder a couple of ash-plants rudely tied together. This contrivance
was of small dimensions, and the sharpened ends were burned black and
further stained with blood and what looked like red wax.
The man who carried it had no other weapon--if this could be called a
weapon--which appeared as harmless as a boy's sword of lath. Yet as
the little man thrust it towards this one and that, the strong men
of the circle shrank back instantly with the greatest alarm, shaking
their heads and girning their teeth, as Scarlett said, "like so many
wull-cats on a dike."
There seemed to be no end to this bloodless but threatening quarrel,
which blackened and scattered for all the world like a swarm of bees
whirling abroad on a July day, when the good-wives run beneath with
iron pots and clattering skellets to settle the swarm ere it has time
to leave the farm-town. But suddenly out of one of the largest and most
distinguished of the houses--one not much, if anything, inferior to a
Galloway "swine ree"--there issued a tall, dark man, who walked with an
air, swinging his tartans and rattling the gold tassel on the basket
hilt of his claymore.
He made straight for the thickest of the quarrel, and so soon as he
arrived there he knocked this disputant one way and hurled another
that, like a schoolmaster unexpectedly descending upon unruly boys.
And it was ludicrous to see these stalwart Highlandmen sprawling on
the ground, holding their ears, which had been smitten so suddenly and
with such a mighty buffeting; for the fierceness on their faces when
first they felt the blow faded into instant desire to get out of the
way--even culminating in a kind of satisfied good-humor so soon as they
set eyes on their chastiser, as though it were not less than an honor
to be smitten by such a hand.
In ten seconds the quarrel was no more, and the very men who had warred
and debated were to be seen most valiantly retiring behind their wives'
petticoats out of reach of the chilling eye-glances and hard-buckled
fists of the tall, dark peacemaker.
He, on his part, strode directly to where stood the little man with the
blackened cross of ash-plants, and, taking this article unceremoniously
out of his hand, he thrust it into those of the nearest bystander, and
pointed with his hand in the direction of the knoll on which Wat and
Scarlett had their station.
As he did so it was evident that he observed their presence for the
first time, and his hand dropped quickly to his side.