is the London club-house in which we could have been so quiet as we
are here, especially in such weather as this. Think of the noise in
the streets; think, I say, of the eternal thunder of the carriages of
all kinds, the hackney-coaches, stage-coaches, omnibusses, and cabs,
with the Cherokee yelling, and whooping of the drivers, uttering
strange and horrible oaths; and, to complete the instrumental part of
this mechanical concert, to have it grounded with the grating double
bass of the huge carts, drays, and waggons. The mellow roar of the
Aven is like the soft music of a flute, compared to so terrific a
combination of ear-rending sounds. Then think of the crowd of dull
and damp fellows, dry to talk to, but wet enough to the touch, who are
continually coming in and going out, restless and unhappy--miserable
when condemned to the house, and yet more wretched when out in the
rain--giving you hopes of enjoying a glimpse of the fire at one moment,
and then shutting you out entirely from it at the next, with persons
so steeped, as to make the very evaporation from their bodies, by the
heat, fill the room with clouds of steam,--talking, and chattering,
and recognizing each other--disputing about politics, or the merits
of the last opera, or opera singer, or ballet, or dancer. In vain
you try to have some rational talk with some sensible man, or to
listen to something of the greatest possible interest, which he has
to tell you--for you have hardly begun so to do, when up comes some
fool of a fellow, who, at some unfortunate time or another, has sworn
eternal friendship to you, and who now, to your great discomfiture,
as well as to the imminent peril of your good temper and manners,
breaks boisterously in upon your tête-a-tête, to prove to you how
well he keeps his oath, by nearly shaking your hand off, or perhaps
dislocating your shoulder, by loudly protesting how rejoiced he is
to see you, and by most heroically sacrificing himself, and his own
valuable time, in kindly bestowing his fullest tediousness upon you,
that he may give you the whole history of his life since he last saw
you. Then, suppose you sit down to read some important speech, or
leading article, in your favourite newspaper, or something which you
wish to devour out of some much-talked-of pamphlet or review of the
day, it is ten to one but you experience a similar interruption from
some such kind and much attached friend. But the height of your misery
is only attained, when you come to take refuge in the writing-room,
in order to write a letter of more than ordinary importance, and
requiring great care in the arrangement of its subject, as well
as in the choice of its expressions. Then it is, that among those
employed at the different tables, you are certain to find some two
or more idle scribblers, who go not there really to write, but who,
notwithstanding, waste more of the writing materials belonging to
the club, than all the rest of its members put together, in order
to give themselves importance, by an affectation of much business,
and high correspondence. Amongst these there is probably one, who,
after allowing you to get down to the bottom of your first page, and
fairly into your subject, suddenly, and as if accidentally descries
you, and rushing across to salute you, rivets himself on the floor
close to your chair, and goes on ear-wigging you with his important
secrets, whilst he is all the time curiously drinking in your's,
from your half-written letter, which lies open before him. Or, if you
should have the good fortune to escape from such a jackal as this,
then you will find the other men of his kidney, who may be sitting
at the different tables with the affectation of writing, carrying
on such a battery of loud talk across the room, as altogether to
distract your attention. In vain do you try to control your thoughts
within their proper current. They are continually jostled aside by
some half-caught sentence, which sets your mind working in some wrong
direction, merely to have it again driven off at a tangent into some
other, which is equally foreign to that subject to which you would
confine it. In vain do you rub your brow, cover your eyes, and gnaw
your pen; every thought but the right thought is forced upon you,
until at last, in utter despair, you start to your feet, snatch up
your blotted and often corrected letter, tear it into shreds, commit
it to the flames, and, seizing your hat, you abruptly hurry homewards,
duly execrating, as you go, all club-houses, and those many men of
annoyance with which clubs are so universally afflicted.
Grant.--Your picture is a lively one, Clifford, and in its general
features most just. Though our London clubs have many advantages, this
lonely house of Inchrory is certainly better for our present purpose.
Author.--Gentlemen, unless you mean to enact here the part of some
of those London club-annoyance-givers, which you, Clifford, have
so well described, I think you had better drop your conversation,
and allow Mr. Macpherson to proceed with his story.
Clifford.--I stand corrected;--then allow me to light a fresh cigar;
and now, Mr. Macpherson, pray go on with Serjeant John Smith.
THE LEGEND OF SERJEANT JOHN SMITH'S ADVENTURES CONTINUED.
You will remember, gentlemen, that when I was interrupted, I was about
to follow John Smith on his march with Captain M'Taggart. Well, you
see, Prince Charles Edward chanced to be at this time at Kilravock
Castle, the ancient seat of the Roses. Thither the sagacious captain
thought it good policy to present himself, with the motley company,
the greater number of the individuals of which he had himself
collected. There he received his due meed of praise for his zeal,
with large promises of future preferment for his energetic exertions
in the Prince's cause. But although the Captain thus took especial
care to serve himself in the first place, he made a point of strictly
keeping his own promise to John Smith, for he did present him to
the Prince, along with some five or six other recruits, whom he had
cajoled to follow him, somewhat in the way he had cajoled John. But
this their presentation was more with a view of enhancing the value
of his own zeal and services, for his own private ends, than for the
purpose, or with the hope of benefiting them in any way. The Prince
came out to the lawn with M'Taggart, and some of his own immediate
attendants. The men were presented to him by name; and John Smith was
especially noticed by him. He spoke to each of them in succession;
and then, clapping John familiarly on the shoulder,--
"My brave fellows," said he, "you have a glorious career before
you. The enemy advances into our very hands. I trust we shall soon
have an opportunity of fighting together, side by side. Meanwhile, go,
join the gallant army which I have so lately left at Culloden, eagerly
waiting the approach of our foes. I shall see you very soon, and I
shall not forget you." So saying, he took off his Highland bonnet;
and, whilst a gentle zephyr sported and played with his fair curls,
he bowed gracefully to the men, and then retired into the house.
"She's fichts to ta last trap o' her bluids for ta ponny
Princey!" cried John, with an enthusiasm which was cordially responded
to by shouts from all present.
M'Taggart then gave the word, and the party wheeled off on their
march in the direction of Inverness, in the vicinity of which town
the Prince's army was encamped. Their way lay down through the parish
of Petty, and past Castle-Stuart. As they moved on, they were every
where loudly cheered by the populace--men, women, and children, who
turned out to meet them, and showered praises and blessings upon them;
and this friendly welcome seemed to await them all along their route,
till they joined the main body of their forces, which lay about and
above the mansion house of Culloden.
John Smith would have much preferred to have placed himself under the
standard of the Mackintosh, whom the Smiths or Gowe, the descendants of
the celebrated Gowin Cromb, who fought on the Inch of Perth, held to be
their chief, as head of the Clan-Chattan. But M'Taggart was unwilling
to lose the personal support of so promising a soldier. Perhaps
also he began to feel a certain interest in the young man; and he
accordingly advised him to stick close to him at all times.
"Stick you by me, John," said he--"stick close by my side; I shall
then be able to see what you do, as well as to give a fair and
honest, and I trust not unfavourable report of the gallant deeds
which your brave spirit may prompt you to perform. Depend upon it,
with my frequent opportunities of obtaining access to the Prince,
I can do as much good for you, at least, as any Mackintosh."
On the night of the 14th of April then, John Smith lay with M'Taggart
and his company, among the whin and juniper bushes in the wood of
Culloden, where the greater part of the Jacobite army that night
disposed of themselves. Whatever might have been the ill-provided
state of the other portions of the Prince's troops, that with which
John was now consorted, had no reason to complain of any want of those
refreshments which human nature requires, and which are so important
to soldiers. Large fires were speedily kindled; and the Pensassenach's
great sow, with all her little pigs, and the poor woman's poultry
of all kinds, together with some few similar delicacies which had
elsewhere been picked up here and there, were soon divided, and
prepared to undergo such rude cookery as each individual could command;
and these, with the bread and cheese, and other such provisions,
which they had carried off from the Pensassenach, as well as from
some other houses, enabled them to spread for themselves what might
be called a vurra liberal table in the wilderness. But the savoury
odour which their culinary operations diffused around, brought hungry
Highlanders from every quarter of the wood, like wolves upon them,
so that each man of their party was fain to gobble up as much as
he could swallow in haste, lest he should fail to secure to himself
enough to satisfy his hunger, ere the whole feast should disappear
under the active jaws of those intruders. The liquor was more under
their own control. The flask was allowed to circulate through the
hands of those only to whom it most properly belonged by the right of
capture. John, for his part, had a good tasse of the Pensassenach's
brandy; and the smack did not seem to savour the worse within his lips,
because it was prefaced with the toast of--"Success to the Prince,
and confusion to the Duke of Cumberland!"
After this their refreshment, the men and officers disposed themselves
to sleep around the fires of their bivouac, each in a natural bed
of his own selection, John Smith, being a pious young man, retired
under the shelter of a large juniper bush, and having there offered
up his evening prayer to God, he wrapped himself up in his plaid,
and consigned himself to sleep. How long he had slept he knew not;
when, as he turned in his lair to change his position, his eye caught
a dim human figure, which floated, as it were, in the air, stiff
and erect, immediately under the high projecting limb of a great fir
tree, that grew at some twenty paces distant from the spot where he
lay. The figure seemed to have a preternatural power of supporting
itself; and as the breeze wailed and moaned through the boughs,
it appeared alternately to advance and to recede again with a slow
tremulous motion. John's heart, stout as it was against every thing
of earthly mould, began to beat quick, and finally to thump against
his very ribs, with all manner of superstitious fears. He gazed and
trembled, without the power of rising, which he would have fain done,
not for the purpose of investigating the mystery, but to take the
wiser course of looking out for some other place of repose, where
he might hope to escape from the appalling contemplation of this
strange and most unaccountable apparition. He lay staring then at it
in a cold sweat of fright, whilst the faint glimmering light from the
nearest fire, as it rose or fell, now made it somewhat more visible,
and now again somewhat more dim. At length, an accidental fall of
some of the half burnt fuel, sent up a transient gleam that fully
illuminated the ghastly countenance of the spectre, when, to John's
horror, he recognised the pale and corpse-like features of Mr. William
Dallas, the packman, whom he had left so ingeniously inserted into
the sack, and deposited in the Pensassenach's lint-pot. Though the
gag was gone, the mouth was wide open, and the large, protruded,
and glazed eye-balls, glared fearfully upon him. Though the light
was not sufficient to display the figure correctly, John's fancy
made him vividly behold the sack. He would have spoken if he could;
but he felt that the apparition of a murdered man was floating before
him. His throat grew dry of a sudden. He gasped--but could not utter a
word. He doubted not that the packman had been forgotten by Morag, and
that, having fallen down into the water through cold and exhaustion,
the wretch had at last miserably perished; and he came very naturally
to the conclusion, that he who had put the unfortunate man there, was
now doomed to be henceforth continually haunted by his ghost. Fain
would he have shut out this horrible sight, by closing his eyes, or
by drawing his plaid over them; but this he was afraid to do, lest
the object of his dread should swim towards him through the air, and
congeal his very life's-blood by its freezing touch. Much as he loved
Morag, he had some difficulty in refraining from inwardly cursing
her, for her supposed neglect of his express injunctions to relieve
the packman from the pool. As he stared on this dreadful apparition,
the flickering gleam from the faggot sunk again, and the countenance
again grew dim; but John seemed still to see it in all its intensity
of illumination. No more rest had he that night. Still, as he gazed
on the figure, he again and again fancied that he saw it gradually
and silently gliding nearer and nearer to him. The only relief he had
was in fervent and earnest prayers, which he confusedly murmured,
from time to time, in Gaelic. He eagerly petitioned for daylight,
hoping that the morning air might remove all such unrealities from
the earth. At length, the eastern horizon began to give forth the
partial glimmer of dawn; but John was somewhat surprised to find,
that, instead of the apparition fading away before it, the outlines
of its horrible figure became gradually more and more distinct as it
advanced, until even the features were by degrees rendered visible. But
although John, by this time, began to discover that his fancy had
supplied the sack, he now perceived something which he had not been
able to see before, and that was, a thin rope which hung down from the
horizontal limb of the fir tree, and suspended, by its lower extremity,
the body of the poor packman by the neck. John was much shocked by
this discovery. But he could not help thanking God that he was thus
acquitted of the wretched man's death; and after the misery that he
had suffered from the supposed presence of the apparition of a man who
had been drowned through his means, however innocently, the relief
he now experienced was immense. He called up some of his comrades
to explain the mystery; and from them he learned, that Mr. Dallas
had been caught in the early part of the night, in the very act of
attempting to carry off Captain M'Taggart's horse from its piquet,
and that he had been instantly tucked up to the bough of the fir tree,
without even the ceremony of a trial.
The young Prince Charley was in the field by an early hour on the
morning of the 15th, and being all alive to the critical nature of
his circumstances, and by no means certain as yet how near the enemy
might by this time be to him, he judged it important to collect,
and to draw up his army on the most favourable ground he could find
in the neighbourhood. He therefore marched them up the high, partly
flattish, and partly sloping ridge, which, though commonly called
Culloden Moor, from its being situated immediately above the house and
grounds of that place, has in reality the name of Drummossie. He led
them to a part of this ground, a little to the south eastward of their
previous position in the wood of Culloden, and there he drew them up
in order of battle. There they were most injudiciously kept lying on
their arms the whole day, and if Captain M'Taggart's men had feasted
tolerably well the previous night, their commons were any thing but
plentiful during the time they occupied that position. It was not in
the nature of things, that subordination could be so strictly preserved
in the Prince's army, as it was in that of the Duke of Cumberland. I,
who am well practeesed in the discipline of boys, gentlemen, know
very well that it would be impossible to bring a regiment of them
under immediate command, if the individuals composing it were to
be collected together all at once, raw and untaught, from different
parts of the district. It is only by bringing one or two at a time,
into the already great disciplined mass, that either a schoolmaster,
or a field-marischal can promise to have his troops always well
under control. By the time evening came, the officers, as well as
the men of the Prince's army, began to suffer under the resistless
orders of a commander to whom no human being can say nay. Hunger,
I may say, was rugging at their vurra hearts, and as they all saw,
or supposed that they saw, reason to believe that there was no chance
of the enemy coming upon them that night, many of them went off to
Inverness and elsewhere, in search of food. M'Taggart himself could
not resist those internal admonitions, which his stomach was so
urgently giving him from time to time, and accordingly, John Smith
conceived he was guilty of no great dereliction of duty, in strictly
following the first order which his captain had given him, viz., to
"stick by his side," which he at once resolved to do, as he saw him
go off to look for something to support nature.
But the captain and his man had hardly got a quarter of a mile on
the road to Inverness, when they, with other stragglers, were called
back by a mounted officer, who was sent, with all speed, after them,
to tell them that they must return, in order to march immediately. The
object of their march was that ill-conceived, worse managed, and most
unlucky expedition for a night attack on the Duke of Cumberland's
camp at Nairn, which had that evening been so hastily planned. Hungry
as they were they had no choice but to obey, and accordingly they
hurried to their standards. The word was given, and after having been
harassed by marching all night, without food or refreshment of any
kind, they at last got only near enough to Nairn just to enable them
to discover that day must infallibly break before they could reach
the enemy's camp, and that consequently no surprise could possibly
take place. Disheartened by this failure, they were led back to their
ground, where they arrived in so very faint and jaded a condition,
that even to go in search of food was beyond their strength, so that
they sank down in irregular groups over the field, and fell asleep for
a time. Awakened by hunger after a very brief slumber, they arose to
forage. M'Taggart, and some of his party, and John Smith amongst the
rest, went prowling across the river Nairn, which ran to the south of
their position, and there they caught and killed a sheep. They soon
managed to kindle a fire, and to subdivide the animal into fragments,
but ere each man had time to broil his morsel, an alarm was given
from their camp. Like ravenous savages they tore up and devoured
as much of the half raw flesh as haste would allow them to swallow,
and hurrying back, they reached their post about eight o'clock in the
morning, when they found that the Duke of Cumberland was approaching
with his army in full march.
The position chosen by the Prince as that where he was to make his
stand on that memorable day, the 16th of April, was by no means very
wisely or very well selected. It was a little way to the westward
of that which his army had occupied on the previous day. Somewhat
in advance, and to the right of his ground, there stood the walls
of an enclosure, which the experienced eye of Lord George Murray
soon enabled him to perceive, and he was at once so convinced that
they presented too advantageous a cover to the assailing enemy,
to be neglected by them, that he would fain have moved forward with
a party to have broken them down, had time remained to have enabled
him to have effected his purpose. But the Duke of Cumberland's army
was already in sight, advancing in three columns, steadily over the
heath, from Dalcross Castle, the tower of which was seen rising
towards its eastern extremity. The Highlanders were at this time
dwindled to a mere handful, and some of the best friends of the cause
of the Stewarts who were present, and perhaps even the young Prince
himself, began to believe that he had been traitorously deserted. But
the alarm had no sooner been fully spread by the clang of the pipes,
and the shrill notes of the bugles, than small and irregular streams
of armed men, in various coloured tartans, were seen rushing towards
their common position, like mountain rills towards some Highland lake,
and filling up the vacant ranks with all manner of expedition. Many a
brave fellow, who had gone to look for something to satisfy the craving
of an empty stomach, came hurrying back with as great a void as he had
carried away with him, because he preferred fighting for him whom he
conscientiously believed to be his king, to remaining ingloriously
to subdue that hunger which was absolutely consuming him. No one
was wilfully absent who could possibly contrive to be present, but
yet the urgent demands of the demon of starvation, to which many of
them had yielded, had very considerably thinned their numbers, and,
in addition to this source of weakness, there was another obvious one,
arising from the physical strength of those who were present being
wofully diminished by the want they had endured, and the fatigue they
had undergone. But with all these disadvantages the heroic souls of
those who were on the field remained firm and resolute.
John Smith's military knowledge was then too small to allow him to form
any judgment of the state of affairs, far less to enable him to carry
off, or to describe, any thing like the general arrangement of the
order of battle on both sides. He could not even tell very well what
regiments his corps was posted with: he only knew this, that according
to the order he had received he stuck close to Captain M'Taggart. He
always remembered with enthusiasm, indeed, that the Prince rode through
the ranks with his attendants, doing all that he could to encourage
his men, and that when he passed by where John himself stood, he
smiled on him like an angel, and bid him do his duty like a man.
"Och, hoch!" cried John, with an exultation, which arose from the
circumstance of his not being in the least aware that every individual
near him had, like him, flattered himself that he was the person
so distinguished.--"Fa wad hae soughts tat ta ponny Princey wad hae
mindit on poor Shon Smiss? Fod, but she wad fichts for her till she
was cut to collops!"
But John had little opportunity of fighting, though he appears to have
borne plenty of the brunt of the battle. There were two cannons placed
in each space between the battalions composing the first line of the
Duke of Cumberland's army, and these were so well served as to create a
fearful carnage among the Highland ranks. To this dreadful discharge
John Smith stood exposed, with men falling by dozens around him,
mutilated and mashed, and exhibiting death in all his most horrible
forms, till, to use his own very expressive words,--"She was bitin'
her ain lips for angher tat she could not get at tem." But before John
could get at them, the English dragoons, who, under cover of the walls
of the enclosure I have mentioned, had advanced by the right of the
Highland army, finally broke through the fence, and getting in behind
their first line, came cutting and slashing on their backs, whilst
the Campbells were attacking them in front, and mowing them down like
grass. Then, indeed, did the melée become desperate, and then was it
that John began to bestir himself in earnest. Throwing away his plaid,
and the little bundle that it contained, he dealt deadly blows with
his broad-sword, everywhere around him. He fought with the bravery
and the perseverance of a hero. At length his bonnet was knocked from
his head, and although he was still possessed with the most anxious
desire to obey Captain M'Taggart's order to stick to his side, he was
surprised on looking about him to find that there was no M'Taggart,
no, nor any one else left near him to stick to but enemies.
John Smith's spirit was undaunted, so that, seeing he had no one else
to stick to, he now resolved to stick to his foes, to the last drop
of life's blood that was within him. Furiously and fatally did he cut
and thrust, and turn and cut and thrust again, at all who opposed him;
but he was so overwhelmed by opponents, that in the midst of the blood,
and wounds, and death which he was thus dealing in all directions, he
received a desperate sabre cut, which, descending on him from above,
entirely across the crown of his bared head, felled him instantaneously
to the ground, and stretched him senseless among the heather, whilst
a deluge of blood poured from the wound over both his eyes.
When John began partially to recover, he rubbed the half-congealed
blood from his eyelids with the back of his left hand, and looking up
and seeing that the ground was somewhat clear around him, he griped his
claymore firmly with his right hand, and raising himself to his feet,
he began to run as fast as his weak state would allow him. He thought
that he ran in the direction of Strath Nairn, and he ran whilst he had
the least strength to run, or the least power remaining in him. But
his ideas soon became confused, and the blood from the terrible
gash athwart his head trickled so fast into his eyes, that it was
continually obscuring his vision. At length he came to a large, deep
irregular hollow hag, or ditch, in a piece of moss ground, which had
been cut out for peats, and there, his brain beginning to spin round,
he sank down into the moist bottom of it to die, and as the tide of
life flowed fast from him, he was soon lost to all consciousness of
the things or events of this world.
Whilst John was lying in this senseless state, he was recognised by one
of the fugitives, who, in making his own escape, chanced to pass by
the edge of the ditch in the moss where the poor man lay. This was a
certain Donald Murdoch, who had long burned with a hopeless flame for
black-eyed Morag. With a satisfaction that seemed to make him forget
his present jeopardy in the contemplation of the death of his rival,
he looked down from the edge of the peat hag upon the pale and bloody
corpse, and grinned with a fiendish joy.
"Ha! there you lie!" cried he in bitter Gaelic soliloquy.--"The
fiend a bit sorry am I to see you so. You'll fling or dance no more,
else I'm mistaken.--Stay!--is not that the bit of blue ribbon that
Morag tied round his neck, the last time that we had a dance in the
barn? I'll secure that, it may be of some use to me;" and so saying
he let himself down into the peat hag, hastily undid the piece of
ribbon,--and then continued his flight with all manner of expedition.
Following the downward course of the river Nairn, running at one time,
and ducking and diving into bushes, and behind walls at another, to
avoid the stragglers who were in pursuit, he by degrees gained some
miles of distance from the fatal field, and coming to a little brook,
he ventured to halt for a moment, to quench his raging thirst. As he
lay gulping down the crystal fluid, he was startled by hearing his
own name, and by being addressed in Gaelic.
"Donald Murdoch!--Oh, Donald Murdoch, can you tell me is John Smith
safe? Oh, those fearful cannons how they thundered!--Oh, tell me,
is John Smith safe?--Oh, tell me! tell me!"
"Morag!" cried Donald, much surprised, but very much relieved
to find that it was no one whom he had any cause to be afraid
of,--"Morag!--What brought you so far from home on such a day as this?"
"Oh Donald!" replied Morag, "I came to look after John Smith;--oh,
grant that he be safe!"
"Safe enough, Morag," replied Donald, galled by jealousy. "I'll
warrant nothing in this world will harm him now."
"What say you?" cried Morag. "Oh, tell me! tell me truly if he
be safe?"