behind a mass of crapelike cloud. The dark figures of MacPherson and
the stranger were distinctly seen. The place of their meeting was a
green fairy ring, covered with rich grass, which waved solemnly in
the breeze. Close by it towered three gigantic granite blocks,
spotted with green lichens, silent, grim, and lonely, for they were
Druidical obelisks; and in the middle of this circle of Loda lay the
"mossy stone of power," the altar of other times. MacPherson was on
his knees; the dark man towered over him, threatening and commanding,
but what he said, the trembling sergeant knew not, though all around
was deathly still, save the trembling of the wiry pine foliage; for
at times a tremulous motion will agitate a wood, even when the breath
of the wind has passed away. Wan, white, and ghastly, the rays of
the sinking moon poured over Benoch-corri-va aslant, and threw the
shadows of the Druid stones, and of those who lingered there, far
beyond the ancient circle.
A cloud passed over her face, veiling everything for a moment.
When again the still white moonbeams fell on the fairy ring and the
Druid stones, no one was there.
The place was lonely and silent
Full of terror and awe, the sergeant rushed back to the bivouac to
tell what he had seen; but for a time his lips were sealed, for he
heard the voice of the captain, who had reached the night-fire before
him, ordering the whole to stand to their arms and prepare to march.
Evan MacPherson was deadly pale; his manner was wild and excited; but
the strictness of discipline, and the known severity of his
character, alike forbade inquiry or remark. The arms were unpiled in
silence, knapsacks were strapped on, and just as the light of
daybreak began dimly and faintly to eclipse the waning moon, the
Strathspey men proceeded on their march, which lay across the
Grampians, and through Glen Bruar towards Blair Atholl.
A dead silence pervaded the ranks: if any spoke, it was in a whisper,
and each man suggested to his comrade that Evan Dhu of Ballychroan
had sold himself to the Evil One. If further proofs were required
than those afforded by this night-interview, Sergeant Hamish Grant
and the piper, Donald Bane, were ready to aver on oath that in every
place around the fire and across the forest towards the fairy ring
whereon the foot of that mysterious visitor had trod, the grass was
scorched and withered. Their clansman, the corporal, who was
somewhat sceptical on this point, suggested that these black spots
might have been caused by the birch and pine sparks from their
watchfires, but old Hamish indignantly repelled the idea; and the
future career of Evan of Ballychroan more than corroborated all that
was averred to have taken place on that eventful night, in the
haunted Forest of Gaich.
About the end of September, MacPherson, with his Strathspey men,
joined the regiment, which embarked on the 27th October for the West
Indies, forming part of the expedition of twenty-two thousand one
hundred and fifty-nine infantry, and three thousand and sixty
cavalry, led by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and destined to reduce the
isles of St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad. Tempestuous weather
succeeded the embarkation, and on the 29th the wind blew a hurricane,
which drove many of the Indiamen and transports from their anchors,
dismasted some, and bulged others on the beach. The expedition was
thus delayed until the 11th November, when again the whole fleet,
consisting of three hundred sail, put to sea; but the flagship
_Impregnable_ was stranded on a sand-bank, and unable to proceed;
other disasters succeeded; the _Middlesex_, with five hundred of the
Black Watch on board, had her bowsprit and foretopmast carried away
by the _Undaunted_ when off the Isle of Wight, and was thus left
astern of the whole squadron; which had no sooner cleared the British
Channel, than it was dispersed by another dreadful tempest, which
totally disabled the _Commerce de Marseilles_, a
hundred-and-twenty-gun ship (French prize), having the 57th Regiment
on board, and caused the loss of several transports and many hundred
lives. The admiral was driven back to Portsmouth, and his fleet,
after being long tempest-tossed, and scattered over the stormy winter
sea, reached Barbadoes in detail.
In the Black Watch, this strange series of disasters were secretly
but unanimously attributed to the malevolence and interference of the
Devil. The mysterious meeting in the Forest of Gaich was remembered,
and Evan of Ballychroan was viewed with anything but favour by the
soldiers under his command; yet he did his duty bravely and
cheerfully, and was stern and severe as ever when any fault or
dereliction of orders occurred. The superstitious dread with which
his mountaineers regarded the events of the voyage need not excite
surprise, when we remember that, about the same period, the crew of
one of his Majesty's crack frigates flatly refused to sail until the
captain thereof sent his black tom-cat ashore, or had its ears and
tail docked, to alter its feline aspect.
But this long succession of mishaps by sea, and upon the events which
preceded the voyage, were forgotten by the Strathspey men, when, on
the 9th of February next year, the _Middlesex_ ran into one of the
harbours of Barbadoes, and the clear brilliant sky and blue waters of
the Caribbean Sea were beaming around them; and then the charming
greenness and fertility of this place, the most eastern of these
lovely Indian isles, made all long for the shore, eager to disembark,
and to escape the vertical heat of a tropical sun blazing on the
decks of a crowded transport.
Brigades were now detailed to attack and reduce the principal isles
of the West Indies. General Whyte, with the brave 39th ("_Primus in
India_"), the Sutherland Highlanders, and the old 99th, sailed
against Demerara and Berbice, which he captured almost without
resistance; while Brigadier-General Moore (the future hero of
Corunna), with our old friends the 42nd and other troops, sailed to
favour the French in St. Lucia with a visit and found themselves off
the Pigeons' Isle on the 27th April, when they were ordered to land
at a little sandy bay, into which the bright blue water ran in
glittering ripples, under shadowy foliage of the most luxuriant and
brilliant green.
The landing was made by the troops in four divisions, at four
different points; and the first man who leaped ashore was Evan
MacPherson of the Black Watch. His company followed with a loud
hurrah! and when the four united columns advanced against Morne
Fortunée, the principal military post in the island, on officers
desirous of leading the forlorn hope being requested "to enclose
their cards to the brigade-major," the first on the list for this
perilous work was the Captain Dhu!
This caused his men to consider and have serious doubts of the affair
during the halt in Gaich; for, at Sergeant Grant said, a man who had
really sold himself to the Devil would have chosen some less
dangerous trade than soldiering; and, moreover, would not have been
in such a deuced hurry to risk promotion to a warmer climate than the
West Indies.
"But how if his life be charmed," suggested the corporal, "and his
skin proof to shot and steel? we have heard of such things in the
Highlands. Like Claverhouse, he may have his _appointed time_."
"Lambh dhia sinn!" exclaimed the sergeant; "so have we all."
But the corporal's opinion was not given without finding due weight;
and it caused the unfortunate captain to be more closely watched than
ever.
Ere nightfall the troops were all under arms, and on the march to
assault the great fort of the island; and when, as usual in such
cases, old Rawlins the quartermaster was made custodier, _pro temp._,
of all the rings, watches, and purses of the officers, that they
might be safe with him in the rear, it was remarked that MacPherson
retained his own valuables. "Ballychroan is a cool fellow," said the
officers; "he has quite made up his mind to escape scatheless."
The eve of the tropical sun is brief and beautiful; in the forcible
lines of Scott--
"No pale gradations quench his ray,
No twilight dews his wrath allay;
With disclike battle target red,
He rushes to his burning bed;
Dyes the wild waves with bloody light,
Then sinks at once--and all is night!"
So sank the disc of the West Indian sun into the burning Caribbean
sea, and sudden darkness veiled the march of the troops, while the
pipes of Donald Bane, and other kilted minstrels of the Black Watch,
woke the echoes of the fertile valleys and green cocoa-groves, as the
corps formed the avant garde of the midnight movement, which brought
the troops close to Morne Fortunée, in the attack on which MacPherson
charmed all by his rashness and headlong bravery.
By a mistake of the black guide, General Moore found himself
entangled with the French outposts two hours before the other columns
came up. An immediate encounter ensued. The 53rd Regiment drove
back the enemy; and here Evan MacPherson, ever foremost in danger,
leaving his own ranks, pushed on with the English corps, as the
dispatch of Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie, its commander, relates;
and after a hand-to-hand conflict, slew the French Republican
general, piercing him through the body with such force that the long
fluted blade of the Highland claymore would not come forth; so that
he had actually to place his feet upon the corpse before he could
withdraw his weapon. Spurning the body off his sword, he uttered one
of his old ferocious oaths of passion and blind fury.
The outpost was carried; by daybreak the other columns came up, and
with the loss of fifty grenadiers Morne Fortunée was completely
invested.
After this, five companies of the Black Watch, the Black Rangers
under Malcolm of Lochore (a Fifeshire gentleman, who had a powerful
presentiment that he would that day close his earthly career), the
55th Regiment, and the Light Company of the 57th, were ordered to
assault the battery of Secke which was close to the outworks of Morne
Fortunée, and, by a dangerous flank-fire, enfiladed the approach
thereto.
As they advanced to the attack, MacPherson, being senior volunteer
for the forlorn hope, led the stormers. He seemed wild with
excitement; his cheek was red, and his dark eyes sparkled with a
fiery glow.
Followed closely by six men carrying a scaling-ladder, with his sword
clenched in his teeth, and bearing in his arms one of those huge
grass-bags which are often used in such affairs to prevent stormers
from being hurt by falling into the trenches, and which, for this
purpose, are filled with freshly cut grass, he rushed forward at the
head of the forlorn-hope-men, nearly all of whom were swept away by a
rolling fire of grape, canister, and musket-shot. He tossed his
grass bag into the trench, and seizing the ladder, shook off the
dying men who clung to it, and with his own powerful hands he erected
it at once against the slope of the stone bastion, uttering shouts of
rage and triumph as he ascended.
Pell-mell a cheering mass of the Black Watch and 55th men
intermingled followed him.
The fire concentrated upon this point was terrible; it seemed the
very crater of a volcano, vomiting flame and missiles, and bristling
with points of steel. Lieutenant James Frazer of the Black Watch,
and Donald Bane, now the pipe-major, fell dead. The former was
caught in the arms of Sergeant Grant just as he was falling over the
bastion, and many more were killed and wounded. MacPherson received
several cuts and scars; but he seemed to be regardless alike of
danger and pain. On the old sergeant falling in the embrasure
stunned by a blow from a musket-butt, the captain snatched the
halbert from his hand to replace his claymore which, had been broken
on a musket-barrel, and armed anew, he hewed a passage into the
battery, which was carried in triumph; but not until the brave
Malcolm of Lochore was slain by a grape-shot (thus fulfilling his
solemn presentiment) and many of his Rangers had perished by his side.
MacPherson's bonnet had been denuded of its gay plumage by
musket-shot, his plaid and uniform had been cut and pierced by sabres
and bayonets; yet he had but three wounds of consequence, and when he
presented to General Moore the tricolour which he had pulled down
from the battery, the brigadier said,
"By my soul, Captain MacPherson, you seem to bear a charmed life."
To this the captain replied only by one of his strange laughs, as he
tore a Frenchman's tricoloured sash into strips to bind up the wounds
in his sword-arm, for he had received two bayonet-stabs and a
sword-cut in the affair.
But though the battery of Secke had thus fallen, Morne Fortunée was
yet untaken; and when the Vizie, a fortified ridge under its guns was
to be mined and carried by assault, MacPherson again volunteered for
service in the front.
The local features and scenery of these isles, torn as they were by
convulsions of nature into deep gorges covered with bosky thickets,
or invaded by abrupt cliffs and bluffs, made the operations of the
troops, who were cross-belted for weeks consecutively, severe and
harassing. The hardihood and power of endurance which are
characteristic of the Scottish Highlanders, rendered the Black Watch
of the greatest service, while, on the other band, the cavalry of the
expedition were soon totally unfit for duty, and the 28th Light
Dragoons gradually disappeared altogether.
"St. Lucia presents a chequered scene of sombre forests and fertile
valleys, smiling plains and towering precipices, shallow rivers and
deep ravines;" but the chief of all its hills are the huge pyramidal
Pitons, two sugar-loaf shaped masses of rock, which from their base
in the blue ocean to their summits in the sky are ever covered with
waving foliage of the most brilliant green. The steep and rugged
nature of the country and its pathless woods, where of old the
painted Carib lurked, presented innumerable difficulties to the
soldiers and seamen, who had to drag the battering guns from the
beach into position against Morne Fortunée; but on the 17th May a
sufficient number were in readiness to open a fire against the Vizie,
or fortified ridge, which had been strengthened by palisades,
earthworks, and bastions of stone, on which the French had mounted
some of their heaviest guns.
It was proposed to undermine one of these bastions, and Evan
MacPherson, who had volunteered for the engineering department,
discovered--no one knew how--an arched place almost immediately under
it; and he at once resolved to turn this vault to the best advantage.
It was small and domed with stone, having been an oratory hewn out of
the hill-side in the days of the Sieur de Rousselan, a French
Governor of St. Lucia, who died in 1654, and who was much beloved for
his gentleness even by the fierce Caribs, one of whose women he had
married.
Here, for three nights preceding the seventeenth of May, the Captain
Dhu, with ten soldiers of the 27th Regiment, worked to lay a mine,
which, when fired, would blow the whole upper work, with its men,
cannon and shot into the air. In the dark they crept to and fro on
their hands and knees, reaching the place unmolested it is true, but
not _unseen_; for on the third night they were attacked by the
French, and a terrible close combat with bayonets and pistols took
place in the dark. Most of MacPherson's men were slain and cruelly
butchered by the infuriated French; but him they could neither kill,
capture, overcome, or drive out of the vault.
Plying his broadsword with both hands, he swept aside the charged
bayonets and clubbed muskets like dry reeds by a winter brook; the
wounds he inflicted were terrible! Lights were now brought, and in
the red blaze of torches, and the ghastly green glare of fire-balls,
his tall and muscular form was seen towering over a pile of fallen
men who encumbered the slippery and gory floor, towering like an
infernal spirit or destroying angel, his sword-blade and his eyes
flashing together, his swarthy cheek a deep red, and his black hair
waving in elf-like locks.
"_C'est le diable!_" exclaimed the French, and precipitately retired,
leaving the vault, but only to adopt measures more sorely to destroy
him. Piles of straw, damp hemp, tar-barrels, and powder were flung
in. Then fire was applied, and thus all the miserable wounded were
suffocated or burned alive, with the corpses of the dead. Even the
Captain Dhu did not come forth after this; and at midnight his
regiment, with the 27th or Inniskillings, and the 31st or
Huntingdonshire Foot, commenced the attack on the fortified ridge of
the Vizie without him; and his company was led by Lieutenant Simon
Frazer, who was afterwards so severely wounded at the capture of St.
Vincent.
Six days the fighting continued, and an unceasing fire was exchanged
between the British battery and the fort, until the 27th Regiment, by
a desperate exertion of bravery, effected a lodgment within five
hundred yards of the French works, where they repulsed a furious
sortie of the enemy, and maintained their ground almost over the very
place where the miners had been destroyed. This movement proving
successful, the French capitulated on the twenty-sixth May, and from
that day the Isle of St. Lucia became a British colony, after the
loss of one hundred and ninety-four officers and men killed, and five
hundred and fifty-four wounded, according to the nominal return; but
that document was in error by _one_; for among those returned as
slain six days before the capitulation, was the Captain Dhu.
When the interment of the dead took place, the fatal mine was
explored, and it presented a dreadful scene, being full of dead
soldiers, half scorched, roasted, decomposed, and covered with black
festering wounds, while the pavement was so slippery with blood and
hideous slime, that the fatigue party could scarcely bear out the
remains of their comrades to their hastily-made graves under the
fatal guns of Morne Fortunée.
The 27th found old Bill Hook, the corporal of their Pioneers,
literally burned to a mere piece of charcoal; and the remains were
alone identified by a brass tobacco-box which the deceased was known
to possess.
One body, fearfully blackened by smoke, and having the uniform
scorched off it, a sword in its fingers calcined by the fire to a
mere stripe of rusty iron, was borne out and laid upon the grass in
the bright sunshine; and then with a shout of astonishment old Hamish
Grant and others recognised the famous Captain Dhu!
"It is MacPherson, Black Evan of Ballychroan!" they exclaimed; and
the whole regiment crowded to gaze on what they believed to be the
remains of this brave but terrible fellow.
"Quick--let us bury him!" said some of the soldiers.
But louder cries of astonishment rose from all, when he began to move
and breathe; and then, like one awakening from a long trance, opened
his eyes and gazed wildly about him.
For six days he had survived the horrors of that dark and terrible
vault! The surgeons were promptly on the spot, and no means were
left untried to restore MacPherson.
"Oich! oich!" muttered the Strathspeymen; "leave him to himself--the
hour of his end is not yet come." Sergeant Grant, who was ordered to
see if the vault was now cleared of dead bodies, entered it slowly
and with some reluctance; but in a moment after he came forth with a
bound, as if he had been shot from a mortar, leaving his bonnet
behind him; his grey hair was on end, his eyes dilated, and his
usually nut-brown and weather-beaten cheek was deadly pale with
terror.
"What the devil is the matter now?" asked several officers.
"The Devil himself is the matter," gasped the sergeant.
"How--what have you seen?" asked General Moore, laughing.
Hamish could not explain himself in English; but to the Black Watch
who crowded about him he related that, on entering the
_black-hole_--for so they named the mine--he had seen in the further
end thereof the figure of a man, and believing he was some Frenchman
who had found concealment there, he drew his sword and approached.
Then a pair of bright, fierce, and terrible eyes, flaring like those
of an owl or snake, met his gaze; and while secret awe and horror
filled his soul, he found himself confronted by a man who was of
giant stature, and whose face was darker than that of a mulatto, with
a beard of raven blackness, and wearing a grey plaid and Lowland
bonnet.
He was the stranger whom they had seen in the Forest of Gaich!
He uttered a thrill laugh, which rung round the vault, and for a
moment rooted the poor sergeant to the bloody pavement; then the
soldier, wild with terror, rushed into the light of day.
The story that a Scottish sergeant had seen the Devil in the mine
occasioned great laughter in the camp, for no trace of his Satanic
majesty--not even the print of a cloven hoof--could be found, when
the 81st Regiment demolished the whole fabric next day, after
dismantling the Vizie.
* * * *
After the capture of Morne Fortunée, a marked change came over the
Captain Dhu. He was subject to fits of profound melancholy and
abstraction, and to gusts of passion and fury, when he drank deep and
became almost mad, exclaiming that he was tormented by fiends--that
the atmosphere was full of flame--that hell was yawning under his
feet, and so forth. His excesses soon impaired his health so
severely, that he was sent home with invalids, on a year's leave of
absence, with a constitution broken by war, wounds, and the
wine-bottle; and with a temper soured and furious, none knew by what.
The transport _Queen Charlotte_, in which he sailed from St. Vincent,
was wrecked in the Irish Channel; and of three hundred souls who were
on board, the Captain Dhu--though but the ruins of what he had been
in bodily strength--alone escaped, being cast ashore, lashed to a
spar; and after many strange and perilous adventures among the Irish,
who were then in arms against the government, in the winter of 1799,
he found himself at home in his native place, the beautiful valley of
the Spey: and now we have reached the last chapter in his mysterious
history--an event which is still locally remembered by the Grants and
others in Strathspey as the DARK DEED in the Forest of Gaich.
On the 11th of January, 1800, being the day preceding Yule, he
summoned a party of gillies, and announced his intention of
proceeding up the mountains to hunt the red deer in that place.
The Badenoch men looked at each other with perplexity and fear--as,
from time immemorial, the Eve of Yule has been the epoch for all
mischief, devilry, and witchcraft in the Highlands; and the scene of
the proposed hunting was just the place that men might be supposed to
avoid at such a time.
"To hunt on Yule Eve--and in the Forest of Gaich!"
Irresolute and unwilling alike to offend or obey, they gazed at each
other in silence.
"Go not forth to hunt to-day," said old Hamish Grant, the sergeant,
who, being discharged after long service, was an occasional visitor
at the house of his old leader.
"And why not to-day?" thundered Black Evan, with a terrible oath.
"Can you ask?"
"What day is it in particular?"
"The Eve of Yule."
"Would you refuse to fight the enemy on Yule Eve?" asked the captain,
scornfully.
"No, Ballychroan," replied the sergeant, proudly; "for on that day in
the year '76 I fought with the Americans on the Delaware."
"And what is Yule to me?" exclaimed the captain, as he drank a deep
draught "Ha! ha! what is that to me? Go I shall, though the
fiend--the accursed fiend--came up from hell with all his legions to
bar the way. Go I shall, Hamish; and go I must?"
"This is most strange!"
"Fatality compels me," said the captain, mournfully and wildly. "Oh,
how few could comprehend the misery of a conviction like this! Fain
would I give up _existence_ if I could receive oblivion in exchange,
but not life--_this_ life at least. Fain would I rest in my grave,
Hamish; but in the grave, even of a saint--yea, under the altar-stone
of Iona--I could not find repose."
"I do not understand all this," said the old sergeant, solemnly; "so
let us consult the minister about it."
"The minister--bah!"
"You never feared death, Ballychroan?"
"Death--no! for he has everywhere eluded me. You have seen me rush
into the breach amid a thousand dangers, and escape them all. I have
flung myself upon the levelled bayonets, and among the uplifted
swords of the enemy; but the bayonets became pointless, the swords
blunted, the bullets harmless as snow-flakes! In the dark vault of
the Vizie, the flames spared me; even the ocean itself repelled me,
when three hundred brave men went down into its greedy gulf; and,
like he who wanders for ever--he who mocked his Saviour on the ascent
to Calvary--I seem to bear a charmed life; but yet, like that more
happy wretch, I cannot live for ever. No, Hamish, no--my days are
numbered!"