There is an unconsciousness that is not wholly dead, where a man feels
numbly and the body lives without the brain. I was beyond speech or
thought, and yet I felt the upward or downward motion as the way lay in
hill or glen, and I most assuredly knew when the open air was changed
for the close underground. I could feel dimly that lights were flared in
my face, and that I was laid in some bed on the earth. Then with the
stopping of movement the real sleep of weakness seized me, and for long
I knew nothing of this mad world.
* * * * * * *
Morning came over the moors with birdsong and the glory of fine
weather. The streams were still rolling in spate, but the hill-pastures
were alight with dawn, and the little seams of snow were glistening like
white fire. A ray from the sunrise cleft its path somehow into the
abyss, and danced on the wall above my couch. It caught my eye as I
wakened, and for long I lay crazily wondering what it meant. My head was
splitting with pain, and in my heart was the same fluttering nameless
fear. I did not wake to full consciousness; not till the twinkle of sun
from the clean bright out-of-doors caught my senses did I realise that I
lay in a great dark place with a glow of dull firelight in the middle.
In time things rose and moved around me, a few ragged shapes of men,
without clothing, shambling with their huge feet and looking towards me
with curved beast-like glances. I tried to marshal my thoughts, and
slowly, bit by bit, I built up the present. There was no question to my
mind of dreaming; the past hours had scored reality upon my brain. Yet I
cannot say that fear was my chief feeling. The first crazy terror had
subsided, and now I felt mainly a sickened disgust with just a tinge of
curiosity. I found that my knife, watch, flask, and money had gone, but
they had left me a map of the countryside. It seemed strange to look at
the calico, with the name of a London printer stamped on the back, and
lines of railway and highroad running through every shire. Decent and
comfortable civilisation! And here was I a prisoner in this den of
nameless folk, and in the midst of a life which history knew not.
Courage is a virtue which grows with reflection and the absence of the
immediate peril. I thought myself into some sort of resolution, and lo!
when the Folk approached me and bound my feet I was back at once in the
most miserable terror. They tied me, all but my hands, with some strong
cord, and carried me to the centre, where the fire was glowing. Their
soft touch was the acutest torture to my nerves, but I stifled my cries
lest some one should lay his hand on my mouth. Had that happened, I am
convinced my reason would have failed me.
So there I lay in the shine of the fire, with the circle of unknown
things around me. There seemed but three or four, but I took no note of
number. They talked huskily among themselves in a tongue which sounded
all gutturals. Slowly my fear became less an emotion than a habit, and I
had room for the smallest shade of curiosity. I strained my ear to catch
a word, but it was a mere chaos of sound. The thing ran and thundered
in my brain as I stared dumbly into the vacant air. Then I thought that
unless I spoke I should certainly go crazy, for my head was beginning to
swim at the strange cooing noise.
I spoke a word or two in my best Gaelic, and they closed round me
inquiringly. Then I was sorry I had spoken, for my words had brought
them nearer, and I shrank at the thought. But as the faint echoes of my
speech hummed in the rock-chamber, I was struck by a curious kinship of
sound. Mine was sharper, more distinct, and staccato; theirs was
blurred, formless, but still with a certain root-resemblance.
Then from the back there came an older being, who seemed to have heard
my words. He was like some foul grey badger, his red eyes sightless, and
his hands trembling on a stump of bog-oak. The others made way for him
with such deference as they were capable of, and the thing squatted down
by me and spoke.
To my amazement his words were familiar. It was some manner of speech
akin to the Gaelic, but broadened, lengthened, coarsened. I remembered
an old book-tongue, commonly supposed posed to be an impure dialect once
used in Brittany, which I had met in the course of my researches. The
words recalled it, and as far as I could remember the thing, I asked him
who he was and where the place might be.
He answered me in the same speech--still more broadened, lengthened,
coarsened. I lay back with sheer amazement. I had found the key to this
unearthly life.
For a little an insatiable curiosity, the ardour of the scholar,
prevailed. I forgot the horror of the place, and thought only of the
fact that here before me was the greatest find that scholarship had ever
made. I was precipitated into the heart of the past. Here must be the
fountainhead of all legends, the chrysalis of all beliefs. I actually
grew lighthearted. This strange folk around me were now no more
shapeless things of terror, but objects of research and experiment. I
almost came to think them not unfriendly.
For an hour I enjoyed the highest of earthly pleasures. In that strange
conversation I heard--in fragments and suggestions--the history of the
craziest survival the world has ever seen. I heard of the struggles with
invaders, preserved as it were in a sort of shapeless poetry. There were
bitter words against the Gaelic oppressor, bitterer words against the
Saxon stranger, and for a moment ancient hatreds flared into life. Then
there came the tale of the hill-refuge, the morbid hideous existence
preserved for centuries amid a changing world. I heard fragments of old
religions, primeval names of god and goddess, half-understood by the
Folk, but to me the key to a hundred puzzles. Tales which survive to us
in broken disjointed riddles were intact here in living form. I lay on
my elbow and questioned feverishly. At any moment they might become
morose and refuse to speak. Clearly it was my duty to make the most of a
brief good fortune.
And then the tale they told me grew more hideous. I heard of the
circumstances of the life itself and their daily shifts for existence.
It was a murderous chronicle--a history of lust and rapine and
unmentionable deeds in the darkness. One thing they had early
recognised--that the race could not be maintained within itself; so that
ghoulish carrying away of little girls from the lowlands began, which I
had heard of but never credited. Shut up in those dismal holes, the
girls soon died, and when the new race had grown up the plunder had been
repeated. Then there were bestial murders in lonely cottages, done for
God knows what purpose. Sometimes the occupant had seen more than was
safe, sometimes the deed was the mere exuberance of a lust of slaying.
As they gabbled their tales my heart's blood froze, and I lay back in
the agonies of fear. If they had used the others thus, what way of
escape was open for myself? I had been brought to this place, and not
murdered on the spot. Clearly there was torture before death in store
for me, and I confess I quailed at the thought.
But none molested me. The elders continued to jabber out their stories,
while I lay tense and deaf. Then to my amazement food was brought and
placed beside me--almost with respect. Clearly my murder was not a thing
of the immediate future. The meal was some form of mutton--perhaps the
shepherd's lost ewes--and a little smoking was all the cooking it had
got. I strove to eat, but the tasteless morsels choked me. Then they set
drink before me in a curious cup, which I seized on eagerly, for my
mouth was dry with thirst. The vessel was of gold, rudely formed, but of
the pure metal, and a coarse design in circles ran round the middle.
This surprised me enough, but a greater wonder awaited me. The liquor
was not water, as I had guessed, but a sort of sweet ale, a miracle of
flavour. The taste was curious, but somehow familiar; it was like no
wine I had ever drunk, and yet I had known that flavour all my life. I
sniffed at the brim, and there rose a faint fragrance of thyme and
heather honey and the sweet things of the moorland. I almost dropped it
in my surprise; for here in this rude place I had stumbled upon that
lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale.
For a second I was entranced with my discovery, and then the wonder of
the cup claimed my attention. Was it a mere relic of pillage, or had
this folk some hidden mine of the precious metal? Gold had once been
common in these hills. There were the traces of mines on Cairnsmore:
shepherds had found it in the gravel of the Gled Water; and the name of
a house at the head of the Clachlands meant the "Home of Gold."
Once more I began my questions, and they answered them willingly. There
and then I heard that secret for which many had died in old time, the
secret of the heather ale. They told of the gold in the hills, of
corries where the sand gleamed and abysses where the rocks were veined.
All this they told me, freely, without a scruple. And then, like a
clap, came the awful thought that this, too, spelled death. These were
secrets which this race aforetime had guarded with their lives; they
told them generously to me because there was no fear of betrayal. I
should go no more out from this place.
The thought put me into a new sweat of terror--not at death, mind you,
but at the unknown horrors which might precede the final suffering. I
lay silent, and after binding my hands they began to leave me and go off
to other parts of the cave. I dozed in the horrible half-swoon of fear,
conscious only of my shaking limbs, and the great dull glow of the fire
in the centre. Then I became calmer. After all, they had treated me with
tolerable kindness: I had spoken their language, which few of their
victims could have done for many a century; it might be that I had found
favour in their eyes. For a little I comforted myself with this
delusion, till I caught sight of a wooden box in a corner. It was of
modern make, one such as grocers use to pack provisions in. It had some
address nailed on it, and an aimless curiosity compelled me to creep
thither and read it. A torn and weather-stained scrap of paper, with the
nails at the corner rusty with age; but something of the address might
still be made out. Amid the stains my feverish eyes read, "To Mr M----,
Carrickfey, by Allerfoot Station."
The ruined cottage in the hollow of the waste with the single gnarled
apple-tree was before me in a twinkling. I remembered the shepherd's
shrinking from the place and the name, and his wild eyes when he told me
of the thing that had happened there. I seemed to see the old man in his
moorland cottage, thinking no evil; the sudden entry of the nameless
things; and then the eyes glazed in unspeakable terror. I felt my lips
dry and burning. Above me was the vault of rock; in the distance I saw
the fire-glow and the shadows of shapes moving around it. My fright was
too great for inaction, so I crept from the couch, and silently,
stealthily, with tottering steps and bursting heart, I began to
reconnoitre.
But I was still bound, my arms tightly, my legs more loosely, but yet
firm enough to hinder flight. I could not get my hands at my leg-straps,
still less could I undo the manacles. I rolled on the floor, seeking
some sharp edge of rock, but all had been worn smooth by the use of
centuries. Then suddenly an idea came upon me like an inspiration. The
sounds from the fire seemed to have ceased, and I could hear them
repeated from another and more distant part of the cave. The Folk had
left their orgy round the blaze, and at the end of the long tunnel I saw
its glow fall unimpeded upon the floor. Once there, I might burn off my
fetters and be free to turn my thoughts to escape.
I crawled a little way with much labour. Then suddenly I came abreast an
opening in the wall, through which a path went. It was a long straight
rock-cutting, and at the end I saw a gleam of pale light. It must be the
open air; the way of escape was prepared for me; and with a prayer I
made what speed I could towards the fire.
I rolled on the verge, but the fuel was peat, and the warm ashes would
not burn the cords. In desperation I went farther, and my clothes began
to singe, while my face ached beyond endurance. But yet I got no nearer
my object. The strips of hide warped and cracked, but did not burn. Then
in a last effort I thrust my wrists bodily into the glow and held them
there. In an instant I drew them out with a groan of pain, scarred and
sore, but to my joy with the band snapped in one place. Weak as I was,
it was now easy to free myself, and then came the untying of my legs.
My hands trembled, my eyes were dazed with hurry, and I was longer over
the job than need have been. But at length I had loosed my cramped knees
and stood on my feet, a free man once more.
I kicked off my boots, and fled noiselessly down the passage to the
tunnel mouth. Apparently it was close on evening, for the white light
had faded to a pale yellow. But it was daylight, and that was all I
sought, and I ran for it as eagerly as ever runner ran to a goal. I came
out on a rock-shelf, beneath which a moraine of boulders fell away in a
chasm to a dark loch. It was all but night, but I could see the gnarled
and fortressed rocks rise in ramparts above, and below the unknown
screes and cliffs which make the side of the Muneraw a place only for
foxes and the fowls of the air.
The first taste of liberty is an intoxication, and assuredly I was mad
when I leaped down among the boulders. Happily at the top of the gully
the stones were large and stable, else the noise would certainly have
discovered me. Down I went, slipping, praying, my charred wrists aching,
and my stockinged feet wet with blood. Soon I was in the jaws of the
cleft, and a pale star rose before me. I have always been timid in the
face of great rocks, and now, had not an awful terror been dogging my
footsteps, no power on earth could have driven me to that descent. Soon
I left the boulders behind, and came to long spouts of little stones,
which moved with me till the hillside seemed sinking under my feet.
Sometimes I was face downwards, once and again I must have fallen for
yards. Had there been a cliff at the foot, I should have gone over it
without resistance; but by the providence of God the spout ended in a
long curve into the heather of the bog.
When I found my feet once more on soft boggy earth, my strength was
renewed within me. A great hope of escape sprang up in my heart. For a
second I looked back. There was a great line of shingle with the cliffs
beyond, and above all the unknown blackness of the cleft. There lay my
terror, and I set off running across the bog for dear life. My mind was
clear enough to know my road. If I held round the loch in front I should
come to a burn which fed the Farawa stream, on whose banks stood the
shepherd's cottage. The loch could not be far; once at the Farawa I
would have the light of the shieling clear before me.
Suddenly I heard behind me, as if coming from the hillside, the patter
of feet. It was the sound which white hares make in the wintertime on a
noiseless frosty day as they patter over the snow. I have heard the same
soft noise from a herd of deer when they changed their pastures. Strange
that so kindly a sound should put the very fear of death in my heart. I
ran madly, blindly, yet thinking shrewdly. The loch was before me.
Somewhere I had read or heard, I do not know where, that the brutish
aboriginal races of the North could not swim. I myself swam powerfully;
could I but cross the loch I should save two miles of a desperate
country.
There was no time to lose, for the patter was coming nearer, and I was
almost at the loch's edge. I tore off my coat and rushed in. The bottom
was mossy, and I had to struggle far before I found any depth. Something
plashed in the water before me, and then something else a little behind.
The thought that I was a mark for unknown missiles made me crazy with
fright, and I struck fiercely out for the other shore. A gleam of
moonlight was on the water at the burn's exit, and thither I guided
myself. I found the thing difficult enough in itself, for my hands
ached, and I was numb from my bonds. But my fancy raised a thousand
phantoms to vex me. Swimming in that black bog water, pursued by those
nameless things, I seemed to be in a world of horror far removed from
the kindly world of men. My strength seemed inexhaustible from my
terror. Monsters at the bottom of the water seemed to bite at my feet,
and the pain of my wrists made me believe that the loch was boiling hot,
and that I was in some hellish place of torment.
I came out on a spit of gravel above the burn mouth, and set off down
the ravine of the burn. It was a strait place, strewn with rocks; but
now and then the hill turf came in stretches, and eased my wounded feet.
Soon the fall became more abrupt, and I was slipping down a hillside,
with the water on my left making great cascades in the granite. And then
I was out in the wider vale where the Farawa water flowed among links of
moss.
Far in front, a speck in the blue darkness, shone the light of the
cottage. I panted forward, my breath coming in gasps and my back shot
with fiery pains. Happily the land was easier for the feet as long as I
kept on the skirts of the bog. My ears were sharp as a wild beast's with
fear, as I listened for the noise of pursuit. Nothing came but the
rustle of the gentlest hill-wind and the chatter of the falling streams.
Then suddenly the light began to waver and move athwart the window. I
knew what it meant. In a minute or two the household at the cottage
would retire to rest, and the lamp would be put out. True, I might find
the place in the dark, for there was a moon of sorts and the road was
not desperate. But somehow in that hour the lamplight gave a promise of
safety which I clung to despairingly.
And then the last straw was added to my misery. Behind me came the pad
of feet, the pat-patter, soft, eerie, incredibly swift. I choked with
fear, and flung myself forward in a last effort. I give my word it was
sheer mechanical shrinking that drove me on. God knows I would have lain
down to die in the heather, had the things behind me been a common
terror of life.
I ran as man never ran before, leaping hags, scrambling through green
well-heads, straining towards the fast-dying light. A quarter of a mile
and the patter sounded nearer. Soon I was not two hundred yards off, and
the noise seemed almost at my elbow. The light went out, and the black
mass of the cottage loomed in the dark.
Then, before I knew, I was at the door, battering it wearily and yelling
for help. I heard steps within and a hand on the bolt. Then something
shot past me with lightning force and buried itself in the wood. The
dreadful hands were almost at my throat, when the door was opened and I
stumbled in, hearing with a gulp of joy the key turn and the bar fall
behind me.