I stood on the hillock clothed with its stunted saughtrees and waited
for the day that was mustering somewhere to the cast, far by the frozen
sea of moss and heather tuft. A sea more lonely than any ocean the most
wide and distant, where no ship heaves, and no isle lifts beckoning
trees above the level of the waves; a sea soundless, with no life below
its lamentable surface, no little fish or proud leviathan plunging and
romping and flashing from the silver roof of fretted wave dishevelled
to the deep profound. The moorfowl does not cry there, the coney has no
habitation. It rolled, that sea so sour, so curdled, from my feet away
to mounts I knew by day stupendous and not so far, but now in the dark
so hid that they were but troubled clouds upon the distant marge. There
was a day surely when, lashing up on those hills around, were waters
blue and stinging, and some plague-breath blew on them and they shivered
and dried and cracked into this parched semblance of what they were
in the old days when the galleys sailed over. No galleys now. No white
birds calling eagerly in the storm. No stiver bead of spray. Only in its
season the cannoch tuft, and that itself but sparsely; the very bluebell
shuns a track so desolate, the sturdy gall itself finds no nourishment
here.
The grey day crept above the land; I watched it from my hillock, and
I shrunk in my clothing that seemed so poor a shielding in a land so
chill. A cold clammy dawn, that never cleared even as it aged, but held
a hint of mist to come that should have warned me of the danger I faced
in venturing on the untravelled surface of the moor, even upon its safer
verge. But it seemed so simple a thing to keep low to the left and down
on Glenurchy that I thought little of the risk, if I reflected upon it
at all.
Some of the stupidity of my venturing out on the surface of Rannoch that
day must have been due to my bodily state. I was not all there, as
the saying goes. I was suffering mind and body from the strain of my
adventures, and most of all from the stormy thrashings of the few days
before--the long journey, the want of reasonable sleep and food. There
had come over all my spirit a kind of dwam, so that at times my head
seemed as if it were stuffed with wool; what mattered was of no account,
even if it were a tinker’s death in the sheuch. No words will describe
the feeling except to such as themselves have known it; it is the
condition of the man dead with care and weariness so far as the body is
concerned, and his spirit, sorry to part company, goes lugging his flesh
about the highways.
I was well out on Rannoch before the day was full awake on the country,
walking at great trouble upon the coarse barren soil, among rotten
bog-grass, lichened stones, and fir-roots that thrust from the black
peatlike skeletons of antiquity. And then I came on a cluster of
lochs--grey, cold, vagrant lochs--still to some degree in the thrall of
frost Here’s one who has ever a fancy for such lochans, that are lost
and sobbing, sobbing, even-on among the hills, where the reeds and the
rushes hiss in the wind, and the fowls with sheeny feather make night
and day cheery with their call But not those lochs of Rannoch, those
black basins crumbling at the edge of a rotten soil. I skirted them as
far off as I could, as though they were the lochans of a nightmare that
drag the traveller to their kelpie tenants’ arms. There were no birds
among those rushes; I think the very deer that roamed in the streets of
Inneraora in the Novembers blast would have run far clear of so stricken
a territory. It must be horrible in snow, it must be lamentable in the
hottest days of summer, when the sun rides over the land, for what does
the most kindly season bring to this forsaken place except a scorching
for the fugitive wild-flower, if such there be?
These were not my thoughts as I walked on my way; they are what lie
in my mind of the feelings the Moor of Rannoch will rouse in every
stranger. What was in my mind most when I was not altogether in the
swound of wearied flesh was the spae-wife’s story of the girl in
Inneraora, and a jealousy so strong that I wondered where, in all my
exhausted frame, the passion for it came from. I forgot my friends left
in Dalness, I forgot that my compact and prudence itself called for my
hurrying the quickest way I could to the Brig of Urchy; I walked in an
indifference until I saw a wan haze spread fast over the country in
the direction of the lower hills that edged the desert I looked with a
careless eye on it at first, not reflecting what it might mean or how
much it might lead to. It spread with exceeding quickness, a grey silver
smoke rolling out on every hand, as if puffed continually from some glen
in the hills. I looked behind me, and saw that the same was happening
all around. Unless I made speed out of this sorrowful place I was caught
in the mist Then I came to the full understanding that trouble was
to face. I tightened the thongs of my shoes, pinched up a hole in my
waist-belt, scrugged my bonnet, and set out at a deer-stalker’s run
across the moor. I splashed in hags and stumbled among roots; I made
wild leaps across poisonous-looking holes stewing to the brim with
coloured water; I made long detours to find the most fordable part of a
stream that twisted back and forth, a very devil’s cantrip, upon my
way. Then a smirr of rain came at my back and chilled me to the marrow,
though the sweat of travail a moment before had been on every part of
me, and even dripping in beads from my chin. At length I lifted my eyes
from the ground that I had to scan most carefully in my running, and
behold! I was swathed in a dense mist that cut off every view of the
world within ten yards of where I stood. This cruel experience dashed
me more than any other misadventure in all my wanderings, for it cut
me off, without any hope of speedy betterment, from the others of our
broken band. They might be all at Urchy Bridge by now, on the very
selvedge of freedom, but I was couped by the heels more disastrously
than ever. Down I sat on a tuft of moss, and I felt cast upon the dust
by a most cruel providence.
How long I sat there I cannot tell; it may have been a full hour or
more, it may have been but a pause of some minutes, for I was in a
stupor of bitter disappointment And when I rose again I was the sport of
chance, for whether my way lay before me or lay behind me, or to left
or right, was altogether beyond my decision. It was well on in the day:
high above this stagnant plain among tall bens there must be shining
a friendly and constant sun; but Elrigmore, gentleman and sometime
cavalier of Mackay’s Scots, was in the very gullet of night for all he
could see around him. It was folly, I knew; but on somewhere I must be
going, so I took to where my nose led, picking my way with new caution
among the bogs and boulders. The neighbourhood of the lochs was a sort
of guidance in some degree, for their immediate presence gave to a
nostril sharpened by life in the wild a moist and peaty odour fresh from
the corroding banks. I sought them and I found them, and finding them I
found a danger even greater than my loss in that desolate plain. For in
the grey smoke of mist those treacherous pools crept noiselessly to
my feet, and once I had almost walked blindly into an ice-clear turgid
little lake. My foot sank in the mire of it almost up to the knees ere
I jumped to the nature of my neighbourhood, and with an effort little
short of miraculous in the state of my body, threw myself back on the
safe bank, clear of the death-trap.
And again I sat on a hillock and surrendered to the most doleful
meditations. Noon came and went, the rain passed and came again, and
passed once more, and still I was guessing my way about the lochs,
making no headway from their neighbourhood, and, to tell the truth, a
little glad of the same, for they were all I knew of the landscape
in Moor Rannoch, and something of friendship was in their treacherous
presence, and to know they were still beside me, though it said little
for my progress to Glenurchy, was an assurance that I was not making my
position worse by going in the wrong airt.
All about me, when the rain was gone for the last time, there was a cry
of waters, the voices of the burns running into the lochans, tinkling,
tinkling, tinkling merrily, and all out of key with a poor wretch
in draggled tartans, fleeing he knew not whither, but going about in
shortened circles like a hedgehog in the sea.
The mist made no sign of lifting all this time, but shrouded the country
as if it were come to stay for ever, and I was doomed to remain till the
end, guessing my way to death in a silver-grey reek. I strained my ears,
and far off to the right I heard the sound of cattle bellowing, the
snorting low of a stirk upon the hillside when he wonders at the lost
pastures of his calfhood in the merry summer before. So out I set in
that direction, and more bellowing arose, and by-and-by, out of the mist
but still far off, came a long low wail that baffled me. It was like
no sound nature ever conferred on the Highlands, to my mind, unless
the rare call of the Benderloch wolf in rigorous weather. I stopped and
listened, with my inner head cracking to the strain, and as I was thus
standing in wonder, a great form leaped out at me from the mist, and
almost ran over me ere it lessened to the semblance of a man, and I had
John M’Iver of Barbreck, a heated and hurried gentleman of arms, in my
presence.
He drew up with a shock, put his hand to his vest, and I could see him
cross himself under the jacket.
“Not a bit of it,” I cried; “no wraith nor warlock this time, friend,
but flesh and blood. Yet I’m bound to say I have never been nearer
ghostdom than now; a day of this moor would mean death to me.”
He shook me hurriedly and warmly by the hand, and stared in my face, and
stammered, and put an arm about my waist as if I were a girl, and turned
me about and led me to a little tree that lifted its barren branches
above the moor. He was in such a confusion and hurry that I knew
something troubled him, so I left him to choose his own time for
explanation. When we got to the tree, he showed me his black knife--a
very long and deadly weapon--laid along his wrist, and “Out dirk,” said
he; “there’s a dog or two of Italy on my track here.” His mind, by the
stress of his words, was like a hurricane.
Now I knew something of the Black Dogs of Italy, as they were called,
the abominable hounds that were kept by the Camerons and others mainly
for the hunting down of the Gregarich.
“Were they close on you?” I asked, as we prepared to meet them.
“Do you not hear them bay?” said he. “There were three on my track: I
struck one through the throat with my knife and ran, for two Italian
hounds to one knife is a poor bargain. Between us we should get rid of
them before the owners they lag for come up on their tails.”
“You should thank God who got you out of a trouble so deep,” I said,
astounded at the miracle of his escape so far.
“Oh ay,” said he; “and indeed I was pretty clever myself, or it was all
bye with me when one of the black fellows set his fangs in my hose. Here
are his partners; short work with it, on the neck or low at the belly
with an up cut, and ward your throat.”
The two dogs ran with ferocious growls at us as we stood by the little
tree, their faces gaping and their quarters streaked with foam. Strong
cruel brutes, they did not swither a moment, but both leaped at M’Iver’s
throat. With one swift slash of the knife, my companion almost cut the
head off the body of the first, and I reckoned with the second. They
rolled at our feet, and a silence fell on the country. Up M’Iver put
his shoulders, dighted his blade on a tuft of bog-grass, and whistled a
stave of the tune they call “The Desperate Battle.”
“If I had not my lucky penny with me I would wonder at this meeting,”
said he at last, eyeing me with a look of real content that he should
so soon have fallen into my company at a time when a meeting was
so unlikely. “It has failed me once or twice on occasions far less
important; but that was perhaps because of my own fumbling, and I
forgive it all because it brought two brave lads together like barks of
one port on the ocean. ‘Up or down?’ I tossed when it came to putting
fast heels below me, and ‘up’ won it, and here’s the one man in all
broad Albainn I would be seeking for, drops out of the mist at the very
feet of me. Oh, I’m the most wonderful fellow ever stepped heather, and
I could be making a song on myself there and then if occasion allowed.
Some people have genius, and that, I’m telling you, is well enough so
far as it goes; but I have luck too, and I’m not so sure but luck is a
hantle sight better than genius. I’m guessing you have lost your way in
the mist now?”
He looked quizzingly at me, and I was almost ashamed to admit that I had
been in a maze for the greater part of the morning.
“And no skill for getting out of it?” he asked.
“No more than you had in getting into it,” I confessed.
“My good scholar,” said he, “I could walk you out into a drove-road in
the time you would be picking the bog from your feet I’m not making
any brag of an art that’s so common among old hunters as the snaring of
conies; but give me a bush or a tree here and there in a flat land like
this, and an herb here and there at my feet, and while winds from the
north blow snell, I’ll pick my way by them. It’s my notion that they
learn one many things at colleges that are no great value in the real
trials of life. You, I make no doubt, would be kenning the name of an
herb in the Latin, and I have but the Gaelic for it, and that’s good
enough for me; but I ken the use of it as a traveller’s friend whenever
rains are smirring and mists are blowing.”
“I daresay there’s much in what you state,” I confessed, honestly
enough; “I wish I could change some of my schooling for the art of
winning off Moor Rannoch.”
He changed his humour in a flash. “Man,” said he, “I’m maybe giving
myself overmuch credit at the craft; it’s so seldom I put it to the
trial that if we get clear of the Moor before night it’ll be as much to
your credit as to mine.”
As it happened, his vanity about his gift got but a brief gratification,
for he had not led me by his signs more than a mile on the way to the
south when we came again to a cluster of lochans, and among them a large
fellow called Loch Ba, where the mist was lifting quickly. Through the
cleared air we travelled at a good speed, off the Moor, among Bredalbane
braes, and fast though we went it was a weary march, but at last we
reached Loch Tulla, and from there to the Bridge of Urchy was no more
than a meridian daunder.
The very air seemed to change to a kinder feeling in this, the frontier
of the home-land. A scent of wet birk was in the wind. The river,
hurrying through grassy levels, glucked and clattered and plopped most
gaily, and bubble chased bubble as if all were in a haste to reach
Lochow of the bosky isles and holy. Oh! but it was heartsome, and as we
rested ourselves a little on the banks we were full of content to know
we were now in a friendly country, and it was a fair pleasure to think
that the dead leaves and broken branches we threw in the stream would be
dancing in all likelihood round the isle of Innishael by nightfall.
We ate our chack with exceeding content, and waited for a time on the
chance that some of our severed company from Dalness would appear,
though M’Iyer’s instruction as to the rendezvous had been given on the
prospect that they would reach the Brig earlier in the day. But after an
hour or two of waiting there was no sign of them, and there was nothing
for us but to assume that they had reached the Brig by noon as agreed
on and passed on their way down the glen. A signal held together by two
stones on the glen-side of the Brig indeed confirmed this notion almost
as soon as we formed it, and we were annoyed that we had not observed it
sooner. Three sprigs of gall, a leaf of ivy from the bridge arch where
it grew in dark green sprays of glossy sheen, and a bare twig of oak
standing up at a slant, were held down on the parapet by a peeled willow
withy, one end of which pointed in the direction of the glen.
It was M’Iver who came on the symbols first, and “We’re a day behind the
fair,” said he. “Our friends are all safe and on their way before us;
look at that.”
I confessed I was no hand at puzzles.
“Man,” he said, “there’s a whole history in it! Three sprigs of gall
mean three Campbells, do they not? and that’s the baron-bailie and
Sonachan, and this one with the leaves off the half-side is the fellow
with the want And oak is Stewart--a very cunning clan to be fighting or
foraying or travelling with, for this signal is Stewart’s work or I’m
a fool: the others had not the gumption for it. And what’s the ivy but
Clan Gordon, and the peeled withy but hurry, and--surely that will be
doing for the reading of a very simple tale. Let us be taking our ways.
I have a great admiration for Stewart that he managed to do so well with
this thing, but I could have bettered that sign, if it were mine, by a
chapter or two more.”
“It contains a wonderful deal of matter for the look of it,” I
confessed.
“And yet,” said he, “it leaves out two points I consider of the greatest
importance. Where’s the Dark Dame, and when did our friends pass this
way? A few chucky-stones would have left the hour plain to our view, and
there’s no word of the old lady.”
I thought for a second, then, “I can read a bit further myself,” said
I; “for there’s no hint here of the Dark Dame because she was not here.
They left the _suaicheantas_ just of as many as escaped from----”
“And so they did! Where are my wits to miss a tale so plain?” said he.
“She’ll be in Dalness yet, perhaps better off than scouring the wilds,
for after all even the MacDonalds are human, and a half-wit widow woman
would be sure of their clemency. It was very clever of you to think of
that now.”
I looked again at the oak-stem, still sticking up at the slant “It
might as well have lain flat under the peeled wand like the others,” I
thought, and then the reason for its position flashed on me. It was with
just a touch of vanity I said to my friend, “A little coueging may be
of some use at woodcraft too, if it sharpens Elrigmore’s wits enough to
read the signs that Barbreck’s eagle eye can find nothing in. I could
tell the very hour our friends left here.”
“Not on their own marks,” he replied sharply, casting his eyes very
quickly again on twig and leaf.
“On nothing else,” said I.
He looked again, flushed with vexation, and cried himself beat to make
more of it than he had done.
“What’s the oak branch put so for, with its point to the sky if------?”
“I have you now!” he cried; “it’s to show the situation of the sun when
they left the rendezvous. Three o’clock, and no mist with them; good
lad, good lad! Well, we must be going. And now that we’re on the safe
side of Argile there’s only one thing vexing me, that we might have
been here and all together half a day ago if yon whelp of a whey-faced
MacDonald in the bed had been less of the fox.”
“Indeed and he might have been,” said I, as we pursued our way. “A
common feeling of gratitude for the silver----”
“Gratitude!” cried John, “say no more; you have fathomed the cause of
his bitterness at the first trial. If I had been a boy in a bed myself,
and some reckless soldiery of a foreign clan, out of a Sassenach notion
of decency, insulted my mother and my home with a covert gift of coin to
pay for a night’s lodging, I would throw it in their faces and follow it
up with stones.”
Refreshed by our rest and heartened by our meal, we took to the
drove-road almost with lightness, and walked through the evening till
the moon, the same that gleamed on Loch Linnhe and Lochiel, and lighted
Argile to the doom of his reputation for the time being, swept a path
of gold upon Lochow, still hampered with broken ice. The air was still,
there was no snow, and at Corryghoil, the first house of any dignity
we came to, we went up and stayed with the tenant till the morning. And
there we learned that the minister and the three Campbells and Stewart,
the last with a bullet in his shoulder, had passed through early in the
afternoon on their way to Cladich.