THE BLACK LAKE OF STUBBENKAMER.
Without asking permission (for I knew that at such a time it would
not be acceded to me), I selected Phadrig Mhor, and six of our
musketeers who were western islemen, and consequently accustomed to
boating; and having procured a long, light, and sharp boat (one of
the many that lay moored and now unclaimed beside the deserted mole),
we pulled softly out into the Sound, and, favoured by the obscurity
of the night, passed undiscovered between the gallies and gun-barges
of Wallenstein.
My men were all M'Donalds, and were stout and active as mountain
deer; they were all armed with sword and pistol, dirk and musket, and
had left their plaids and all their heavier trappings behind them.
We pulled straight across, towards the rocky isle of Rügen, which is
indented by innumerable bays and inlets, so that we had no fear of
finding a place wherein to conceal our boat. This island, which is
one of the largest in the Baltic, and was famous of old for the
bravery and valour of its inhabitants, the Rugii, who worshipped the
barbarous idol Hertha, rose in dusky and broken outline ahead, as the
twinkling lights of Stralsund sank in the midnight mist astern.
My sturdy Celts soon shot their light boat across the narrow Sound;
we ran it into a small creek, which lay a few hundred yards to the
left of the landing-place near Oldevehr, and there concealed it among
the thick underwood that overhung the rocks.
Ascending the narrow and now untrodden pathway that led directly to
Bergen, the little capital which lies nearly in the centre of the
isle, we struck off immediately, by a road which Father Ignatius had
described to me, as leading to the lurking-place of Bandolo, and
which, though a small and obscure track, my followers, to whom I
imparted my purpose and all the bearings of the place, found with the
instinct of true Highland foresters.
This island, where in after years our regiment achieved one of its
most brilliant victories, measures about thirty miles each way; but
so deeply are its rocky shores embayed by the sea, that no part can
be further than three miles from the shore. Ruden, a little islet
now lying in der Rugische Bodden, and anciently a part of it, was
rent from the mainland by a tempest in the fourteenth century, when
the sea burst through the isthmus, and formed a deep channel, through
which the largest vessels can sail. The centre of the isle was so
fruitful, that it was called the Granary of Stralsund, but now it was
all desolate; the cattle and horses had been shot or carried off; the
fields lay untilled; the farm-houses were burned or otherwise
destroyed; and all the inhabitants had fled to Pomerania, save a few
miserable beings who lurked in the half-ruined town of Bergen, or
Gingst, a village of linen-weavers, or Arcona, where o a stupendous
rock there stands an ancient castle of the Vandals, containing the
temple of their four-headed god, Sivantevite, in whose service were
kept three hundred horses of spotless white; and whose worship was
abolished by Waldemar of Denmark, when he conquered the island in
1168.
Aided by the rising moon, and guided by the landmarks, having
frequently studied, during leisure hours at Stralsund, an old map of
Pomerania and its islands, drawn by the geographer Ortelius, I led my
party directly to that part of Rugen in which Father Ignatius had
given me reason to believe Bandolo was lurking, like one of those
wild wolves whose baying broke at times upon the solemn stillness of
the midnight sky.
Unseen and in silence, we passed various little hamlets, such as
Casnevitz on the right, Landau on the left, and Bergen, which lay
fifteen miles distant from Stralsund, and was then diminished to
about a hundred houses. By one of the country people (who speak a
species of Sclavonian) we were directed to turn round the angle of a
bay which lay on our left; the waves of the sea were dashing on our
right, and we threaded our way along a narrow granite ridge, which
leads to the wooded peninsula of Jasmünde, the northern extremity of
which was that remarkable chalky cliff, six hundred feet high above
the sea--the Stubbenkamer, the highest peak of which is named the
Kœningstuhl, or King's-chair. We had now reached the north-east
point of the isle, and were more than four-and-twenty miles from
Stralsund. The hour was about two in the morning; and thus, thanks
to our sturdy limbs and thews, we had got over a devious and
difficult route in an incredibly short space of time.
Before us lay a wooded valley covered by dense timber, and darkened
by the richest foliage. This was the forest of Jasmünde, which
supplied all Rügen with fuel. Beyond it rose the headland called the
cape of Stubbenkamer, against whose base of rock the Baltic rolled
its waves; and between us and the moon, like a deep basin girdled in
by the wooded hills, lay the _Black Lake_, overlooked by the cavern
which, as the Jesuit had assured me, was occupied by Bandolo, and lay
directly _opposite_ the path by which we approached its bank.
"Softly now, Phadrig," said I; "we are right upon the trail of the
wolf; keep under the foliage, for although the lake is a quarter of a
mile broad, he may detect us by the light of that beautiful moon."
"Some one has passed this way but a short time ago," said Phadrig,
who was on his knees, examining like a Highland huntsman, the pathway
which was covered with grass.
"Ah!--and in what direction?" I asked.
"Towards the water; for in that way the pressure lies, and the leaves
and twigs on each side are tossed in that direction."
"You have sharp eyes, Phadrig! can you detect any thing more?"
"Only, that the footmarks are those of a man by their weight and
size."
"Good--we are on the scent, then!"
"A barefooted man," added one of our soldiers; "see, Sergeant Mhor
M'Farquhar, the blades of grass are neither broken nor cut by brogue
nor boot, but just pressed flat."
"Eachin M'Donuil is right, sir," said Phadrig, erecting his tall
figure; "and moreover," he added, sinking his voice, "at every second
footmark there is the angular indent of a musket-butt. I will
therefore say that the man has been armed, barefooted, and weary, and
leaned on his gun as he walked towards the loch side; but there we
lose the track."
"He has either swum over, or gone round by the water-side," said I,
"for the cave lies opposite."
By stooping down, we could perceive under the dark brow of a wooded
cliff, and close to the water, a darker spot, which we had no doubt
was the identical and primitive habitation we were in search of.
"Let us separate," said Phadrig; "I will go round by the left, with
Eachin M'Donuil and his brother; if you, Captain Rollo, will take the
right, with their two comrades."
"Very good, Phadrig, and we will steal softly towards the cavern,
which must be our meeting-place. Look once more to your muskets and
powder--be wary, as if you were tracking a wild bull by the shores of
Lochindall or the Mull of O'e at home in Isla--and every man of you
shall have a piece of gold to string at his bonnet-lug for this
night's work, and more."
We separated, and, diving into the coppice, crept stealthily round
the lake, pausing frequently to listen to any passing sound; but all
was still as the grave. Over the bare scalp of the Stubbenkamer, the
cold white moonlight streamed into the silent and wooded hollow,
silvering the leaves, and the still, waveless surface of the lake.
Not a branch stirred, for the wind was breathless, and the fleecy
clouds were floating unmoved in the wide blue sky.
As we crept round with panther-like steps, and with that noiseless
motion which the foresters of the Highland woods naturally acquired,
like the Indians of America, by their habits of war and hunting, my
mind was fully occupied by the anticipation of capturing Bandolo, and
meting out upon his head the punishment which his life of atrocity so
well merited, and which I believed no human hand could make
sufficiently severe, there recurred to me a story (concerning this
very lake in the wood of Jasmünde) which I remembered to have read in
Cluverius; and which, if I had related it to my followers, might have
put them all to flight; for although they were fellows who would have
faced Satan himself by daylight, the same personage in the dark was
quite another matter.
Cluverius asserts that this Black Lake is of wondrous depth; that it
is bottomless; and, though teeming with fish, is the abode of demons,
who will not permit either boats to swim on its surface, or nets to
sink into its waters, which, like the wood around them, were sacred
to the goddess Hertha, and her brother Nikelas, on whose altars the
early Christians were yearly sacrificed. Cluverius relates, that in
his own time some of the Rugii brought a boat to the lake, one
evening, and returned next day with the intention of fishing; but,
lo! to their astonishment, it had disappeared. After a long search,
the boat was discovered, thrown on the top of one of the most
gigantic beech-trees, and dangling far beyond their reach. As they
shrunk back, they muttered one to another--
"'Tis the devils of the Stubbenkamer who have done this!"
"_It was not the devils,_" cried a terrible voice from the bosom of
the lake; "_but only my brother Nikelas and I._"
"We can only suppose," adds Cluverius, "that the unclean spirits,
being wroth at the abolition of their worship, still love to play
their tricks where idolatry was practised of old."
After considerable labour in piercing the thick barriers of tangled
briers, furze, and roots of old and decayed trees, that encircled the
lake, but shrouded from Bandolo's eye by the foliage with which our
dark green tartans blended, crawling on our hands and knees, and
dragging our muskets after us, we softly approached the low brow of
rock that overhung the water, and in the face of which there yawned a
cavern, having a mouth like some low rustic arch, against the piers
of which the water chafed in tiny riplets; but the recesses of which
probably pierced the profundity of the Stubbenkamer.
A sound like the croak of a crow announced to us, that our comrades
were within pistol-shot on the opposite side; a McDonald replied by
another sound like the whirr of a partridge, these being the signals
agreed upon. Suddenly a wild and haggard figure came forth from the
chasm. It was Bandolo--the assassin of Gabrielle!
My breath came thick and fast, and I heard the click of locks as my
men cocked their muskets. We were within twenty feet of him, yet he
saw us not. He leaned with his hands crossed and his chin resting on
the muzzle of a long Spanish musket, which I thus supposed to be
unloaded. He was pale and ghastly; for wounds, want, fatigue, and
danger, had wrought their worst upon him. His coal-black hair hung
in matted elf-locks around his neck, and over his eyes and ears; a
thick beard bristled on his chin; his hollow and glistening eye gazed
with a wild and unsettled expression, alternately on the sailing
moon, and the deep still waters of the placid lake. He was almost
nude, having nothing upon him but the tattered remains of a shirt and
a pair of breeches. His brown and muscular arms and legs, from knee
downwards, were bare; his breast was also bare, save where crossed by
the belt of a cartridge pouch, and the fluttering rags of what had
been a shirt. He was the very personification of a hunted wild
beast--of a devil cast out from the society of devils--or of what he
was, a wretch against whom all men had lifted up their hands, and
whose hands were uplifted against all men.
One of my soldiers blew his match, and the red glow caught Bandolo's
haggard eye. He uttered a growl, snatched his musket, and, rushing
on one side, was confronted by the towering figure of Phadrig Mhor,
with his Lochaber axe upraised, and the barrels of two muskets
levelled right at his head.
Gnashing his teeth with rage and astonishment, he uttered a bitter
curse, and turned to the other side, between the lake and rocks, but
was there met by the brass orb of my target, my uplifted claymore,
and two musket-barrels also levelled straight at his head. Uttering
a howl of wrath and fury, he made a motion as if to leap into the
lake, and then, changing his intention, rushed into the cavern; and
now we were somewhat puzzled, for we knew not the depth or the
windings of the place, from the recesses of which he might easily
shoot us all down by his deadly aim if we entered; for the reflection
of the moon from the lake would enable him to fire with terrible
precision while we could not give him back a shot in return.
There was a pause. Eachin M'Donuil stooped down and fired into the
cavern at random; at the same moment a ball from Bandolo grazed his
head, and the double report reverberated among the woods and in the
far recesses of the granite rocks in which the fissure yawned.
"Dia! this will never do," said the islesman, as he drew back to
reload; "it is always darkest under a lamp. We may be within arm's
length of this fellow, and yet not see him."
"Let us all rush in," said I; "he cannot knock us all on the head.
Come, my boys! with a good cause and a day's pay one may face the
devil!"
But they were too wary; and, brave as they were, drew back, saying--
"And if _you_ are shot, Captain Rollo, who will tell the marshal why
we left Stralsund?"
I was somewhat at a loss how to proceed, for to besiege Bandolo in
the cavern and starve him out, would be a tedious and dangerous
process; as we would have to starve ourselves in the first place, and
run the risk of being killed or captured if any of the Imperialists
paid the isle a visit from the Duke of Friedland's camp; but Phadrig
and our four M'Donalds were well versed in all the tactics of
mountain warfare, and prepared at once to smoke him out. While two
kept guard with their muskets cocked, the others hewed down a
quantity of decayed wood, and hurled over bundles of withered grass
and the last year's leaves. In the midst of these I threw a flaming
match, ignited by snapping a musket; the leaves, grass, and branches,
shot up into a flame, and upon that flame we threw a vast number of
branches freshly hewn from pine-trees. Phadrig continued to cleave
down the resinous boughs and green saplings, and these, which were to
smoulder, were mingled with drier branches to burn, thus the fire and
smoke rapidly increased together. As they rose, they were caught by
the arch of the fissure, into which they were rolled by a west wind
that blew across the Black Lake.
The wooded amphitheatre, of which its placid waters seemed to form
the arena, glowed in light; the leaves of the distant trees reddened
in the gleam, and a long line of wavering fire streamed from the
narrow rocks across the bosom of the lake, whose woods and waters
were all unchanged, as when the priests of Hertha raised their
flaming altars by its wild sequestered shore.
The M'Donalds continued this work in grim silence, which they
interrupted only by a low and fierce remark in Gaëlic; for these four
men were the sole survivors of the clan Donald of Eigg, nearly the
whole of whom were smoked to death in a great cavern by M'Lean of
that Ilk.*
* Their bones may still be seen, strewing the floor of this cavern in
Eigg, one of the Western isles.
I now applied my sword to the work, and hewed away with right
good-will, heaping branches of every kind upon the flame below us;
the rocks soon became blackened, and the flame, as it licked their
granite faces, scorched off the grass and flowers. The smoke rapidly
became a dark volume, stifling even to ourselves, and now day began
to dawn on the bare scalp of the Kœningstuhl.
For nearly an hour the fire had burned, and Phadrig was beginning to
express fears that Bandolo was no longer in the cavern, but had
escaped by some secret outlet; when, lo! I heard a wild and
despairing cry, followed by the discharge of two muskets, and,
escaping both, Bandolo darted out of his lurking-place, scattering
the blazing brands with his bare feet; and with his eyes starting
from their sockets, his face pale as fear, fury, and wrath could make
it, his long black hair streaming on the wind, his long musket
brandished aloft, butt uppermost, burst out through the smoke and
flame, and with a thousand red sparks adhering to his hair and
tattered garments, fled like a dun deer up the side of the wooded
hill.
Unwearied by our long march from Oldevehr, and being refreshed by the
halt at the cavern mouth, and the cool morning air, we sprang away in
pursuit, dashing up the ascent like true mountaineers, or like the
Luath and Bran of other times. Bandolo frequently paused and
staggered round to fire a shot at whoever chanced to be foremost in
pursuit; but whenever he halted, we either threw ourselves flat among
the long rank grass, or darted behind the nearest tree, for the mossy
trunks of the firs and ashes grew thickly on the sides of the
Kœningstuhl.
As we followed him in a half circle, keeping about a hundred yards
apart, and thus forming a radius of six hundred yards, he soon found
the impossibility of outflanking us on either side; and had to
abandon what was evidently his wish, to descend again towards that
wooded hollow from whence we had driven him. He was now compelled to
continue his flight towards the Kœningstuhl, whose bare chalky
scalp we could perceive above us, gilded by the rising sun, as we
left the woods behind, and pursued this frantic and desperate man to
the very summit of the mountain, which, being hewn into two halves by
some mighty convulsion of nature, has formed an abrupt precipice
above the chafing waves, and is named the Stubbenkamer--or most
northern promontory of Rugen. Before him lay the wide expanse of the
Baltic ocean, gleaming in purple and yellow, as the sun arose from
its shining waters, then dotted by many a distant sail, bearing away
towards the far-off gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. At his feet yawned
an abyss, where the waves foamed on the reefs of chalky rock, and
behind were six strong and active men, all armed to the teeth, and
bent on his destruction.
Poor wretch! on every side was death, and in his heart--despair!
There were neither remedy, succour, hope, nor escape--and now, like a
famished or hunted wolf, he turned and faced us at the verge of the
precipice. Wild, ferocious, strong, and athletic, blackened and
scorched by the fire through which he had passed--he stood, like a
naked Hercules, with his muscular figure towering in full relief
against the brightness of that orient morning sky which spread behind
him.
As we approached him all our muskets were empty, and my men were
deliberately reloading. His we knew to be loaded, and he was
examining the lock and priming as we drew near. He was a deadly
shot, and out of six of us _one_ was certain to fall. I had no doubt
that his last bullet was meant for me; so I covered my breast with my
light Highland target as we advanced, resolving, at all risks, to
rush upon him sword in hand whenever I came near enough. Instead of
levelling his musket against us, he placed the butt upon the ground
and the muzzle under his chin--
"Ha--ha!" said he in a husky voice; "did you think of taking Bandolo
alive? My hour is come--all is confused and terrible! see--there are
other men among you--and women too--dim shadows, with glaring eyes
and bosoms gashed by pistol shots and dagger wounds! (he passed his
hand over his eyes.) Ha, ha, ha! 'tis all a dream--I rave. Look
upon my sufferings--these wasted arms, these tattered rags--these
hollow cheeks, these wounds and bruises--these scorched and blackened
scars! Gloat upon them even as I would have gloated upon your
confusion, shame, and agony in an hour like this; but Bandolo eludes
you thus in death, as in life he has eluded thousands!"
He touched the trigger with his foot--shot himself through the head,
and fell whizzing through the air into the abyss below.
At the moment he did this, we were almost within arm's-length of him;
and never, until my own hour comes, shall I forget the terrible
expression of his ghastly face, and the convulsed heaving of his vast
chest and shoulders. We peered over the giddy verge, where, five
hundred feet below, the white-edged waves were chafing on the chalky
beach; but we could see no trace of the wretched suicide.
And yet, strange though it may appear, he did not then die.
Three days afterwards, Sir Nickelas Valdemar, when cruising off the
Stübbenkamer, perceived the body of a man lying upon the beach, and
sent a boat's crew ashore; and Bandolo (though the sailors knew him
not) was found by them with life still lingering in his shattered
frame. But what was his condition?
The ball, which entered his chin, had passed out through his nose, by
the angle at which he held his head; thus no vital part was injured.
The sea refused to drown him, and had flung him back upon the
shelving shore, and there, with his shattered head and broken limbs,
he lay naked and slowly dying, for the powers of life were
wonderfully tenacious within him. The seagulls and cormorants had
sat upon his breast, and torn the flesh from his face, and the hair
from his temples, yet he could not resist them. Swarms of insects
had buzzed about his wounds, and inserted their suckers, till the
spray of the ocean washed them off, and left its bitter salt to
render sharper yet the gnat and hornet's sting.
We are left to imagine the despairing cries he may have uttered to
God for pity, and to man for help--cries heard only by the wild and
the flitting seabirds; we are left to imagine the burning thirst that
must have scorched his vitals, and the complication of agony endured
by him from so many wounds and sores; and, greater yet than all, the
scorpion's sting of wakened conscience, that, like boiling lead, and
falling drop by drop upon his breast, must have tortured his dying
hours--for they were many.
Why pursue further this revolting description of the wrath and
retribution exercised by fate upon his miserable frame? Blind, for
the gulls had torn his eyes from their sockets; maimed, for his limbs
had been shattered by falling into the shallow water; tortured to
madness by thirst, by the reptiles and salt that festered together in
his wounds--he was found by the sailors of Sir Nickelas, who could
only survey him with horror and astonishment, as he lay dying and
despairing with his battered frame partly merged in the rippling
water.
One, less feeling than his companions, stirred Bandolo with an oar,
and he immediately expired. Then a shot was attached to his heels,
and, dragged off the shelf of rock by a boat-hook, the body was
immediately buried in the sea.
It was not for some months after this, that I learned this terrible
sequel to the story of his fate, and to our adventure on the
Stubbenkamer.