WE SAIL FOR THE ELBE.
The culverins of the _Unicorn_ and _Crown Royal_ fired a salute to
the chief of Strathnaver as we embarked, on the first day of October,
though contrary winds delayed us till the tenth, when we set sail. I
have an indistinct recollection of feeling then a suffocating sense
of sorrow--the more bitter and suffocating because pride compelled me
to repress it--sorrow at finding myself fairly adrift from my old
parental home; and the pressure of my father's hand, the first kindly
pressure it had ever bestowed on mine, yet lingered there; and, amid
the din and hurry of the embarkation, I still seemed to hear his
parting blessing, mingled with the obstreperous lamentations of old
Dominie Daidle, to whom I promised to bring a real metal horologue
from Germany, which was then famous for that new invention.
The anchor was weighed, and the sails spread; the sun was setting
behind the mountains; the shores of the Black Isle receded fast, the
figures on the beach lessened to small black dots, and then faded
away. My father's tower grew less and less, while the old chapel of
St. Regulus, where my mother lay in her dark and narrow home, had
long since disappeared. There was a roar and din of voices around
me, and it seemed sad and strange, that the good being who had loved
me so dearly should know nothing of this eventful day, which threw me
on the world like a leaf on the blast; but, as I gazed upwards on the
blue sky, I hoped that her eye was still upon me.
The waters of the Firth were gleaming in gold, and the clouds cast a
purple shadow on their bosom.
The deep green or russet-brown tints of the hills gradually became
blue, and as I lay against a culverin, watching--with a heavy
heart--the setting sun and the receding shore, I felt like the
hundreds around me, very sorrowful and very sick.
I knew that when again the sun whitened our sails, we should see
those old familiar hills no more. The wind favoured, and as the
strong current which is ever passing in, or flowing out between the
steep Sutors, ran with us, the two ships rolled heavily. On our
larboard lay the old town of Cromartie, and as we passed, a great
copper bombarde, which belonged to the provost, was repeatedly
discharged in our honour. A flag was displayed at the ancient cross,
which was then at the town-end; though I had heard my poor mother
tell me, that its place, was wont to be the centre of the royal
burgh, before the sea swallowed up one half its streets, the ruins of
which, covered with seaweed, were visible to us as we passed along
the shore.
The cavern of M'Farquhar's Bed seemed to open and shut again as we
shot past it; we were soon between the stupendous brows of the
Sutors, against whose shining rocks vast sheets of snow-white foam
were hurled by the Murray Firth, though within the bay we were
leaving--perhaps for ever--the water was smooth as a mountain lake.
Being sharply built, and swift sailers, our ships glided through the
narrow passage like shafts from a bow, and almost immediately the
shores of the inner firth, the town of Cromartie, Craigrollo with its
tower--already diminished to a speck--vanished from our view; and,
like an ocean-gate fenced by the Sutors, two mighty towers of rock,
with a narrow stripe of water between, was all that remained of the
place we had left. The tide was ebbing, and the sunken reefs, known
as _The King's Seven Sons_, were showing their naked and ghastly
heads above the foam; there, as Mhona Toshach told me, the seven sons
of a king had perished by shipwreck.
The features of the shore lessened and changed in hue and aspect,
while the deep green water was thrown up beneath our bows in spray,
leaving under our quarter galleries a long track of white froth on
the ocean path behind us; but no sooner were the vessels clear of the
Sutors, than a very sensible alteration in their motion made us
remember that they were ploughing the stormy waves of the Firth of
Murray, amid whose waters I saw the hills of Cromartie, reddened by
the last flush of the sun that had set, sink gradually low and melt,
as it were, away.
Till darkness settled on the northern deep, the sides of the ships
were lined with soldiers, who gazed with sad and eager eyes at the
last blue stripe of their native land; many wept, and uttered
emphatic ejaculations of sorrow, with all the poetical energy of
their native Gaëlic.
Though feeling far from comfortable in many respects, I drew to the
side of M'Farquhar, who, being accustomed to boating expeditions on
the vast lochs of the Great Glen, kept his feet manfully; and, as the
shore and the daylight had faded away together, he was now gazing by
the light of the moon on the large silver brooch which fastened his
tartan plaid.
"A love gift, Ian?" said I.
His dark eyes flashed in the moonlight, as he replied with one of his
honest smiles--
"Yes--the brooch of Moina Rose, which she gave me before we parted at
the chapel of Gill Chuimin. If I should be slain, Philip, you will
take it back to Moina, by the hills that look down on Loch Oich?"
"I will, Ian; but if I, too, should be slain----"
"Chut! then some other brave fellow will surely live to do so.
There is Munro of Culcraigie, or Mackenzie of Kildon, or our kinsman,
Phadrig Mhor, for we cannot all be knocked on the head. My poor
Moina!"
"Take care you do not forget her among the blue-eyed Danish damsels."
"Forget!" reiterated Ian, with honest warmth; "I swore by the great
Chief of the universe, and by our fathers' graves in Iona, to be
faithful and true to Moina, and, as we dipped our hands together in
St. Chuimin's well, she pledged the same to me. Nay, nay, Philip,
judge me not, as you would by a rake-helly student of the King's
college."
Ian kissed the brooch, which is the dearest gift of a Highland love;
for, among the mountains, the bridegroom gives his bride, not a ring,
but a brooch, engraved with some heraldic device, or affectionate
inscription, and as the same gift served for many generations, those
love-tokens became priceless reliques of remembrance, by their
hallowed and enduring associations, and such was the brooch of Moina.
It had been her mother's, and Ian was to wear it until he returned to
espouse her in Kill Chuimm.
"And why did you leave her, Ian?"
"Eighteen months ago--fully six months before I was so happy as to
know and to love her, at a great hunting match on the braes of
Lochaber, I unfortunately pledged my word to Sir Donald that I would
go with him to Germany. Like a generous gentleman, he offered to
release me from my promise; but a hundred of my people expected that
I was to lead them, and I alone; thus it would ill become M'Farquhar
to keep his sword in the scabbard when he had pledged his word to
unsheath it. I could have made Moina mine before I left the hills of
our race; for a missionary priest, who acts as chaplain to her
family, Sheumas Stiubhart, or James of Jerusalem, as the Lowlanders
call him, offered to unite us secretly at Kill Chuimm; but I would
not run the risk of leaving Moina a wedded mourner, a widowed bride,
like the dames of Fingal's warriors, who spent half their time
sitting upon the seashore, with hair unbound and harp in hand,
looking towards the ocean for the return of their absent spouses.
Thus, if in three years and three days I come not again, I will hold
Moina free to be wooed and free to won by another."
Ian's voice quavered, though he endeavoured to assume an air of
bravado, but I saw through the sickly effort.
"From your gay manner yesterday, Ian, I deemed you happiest of the
happy; but, doubtless, every heart has some inward sorrow which the
eye sees not."
"True, true, the loudest laugh does not always come from the lightest
heart."
"Thank God!" said I, observing how his dark eye glistened, "that I
have no regret of this kind to render yet more sad this day of
parting with my home."
"Be happy, Philip," said he; "for all who love you truly are
here--myself and the hundred brave men of your mother's name, who
follow the banner of Mackay."
"And you will return in three years?"
"If alive, I will return in one year, despite the offers of our
Lowland Chancellor, who has promised me a feudal charter of my
hereditary estate, to be granted under the Great Seal at Holy rood,
on the day we enter Prague. Dioul! as if M'Farquhar valued the
right that was held otherwise than as it was won, by the edge of the
sword. Nay, nay, as Donald of the Isles said, I hold my lands by
_this_ (laying his hand on his claymore), and not by a sheepskin."