hatred, and the Great Beneficence smiles at us, at our cleverness, or
it may be the Great Furies, however you will have it. Anyway, Nature
has merely to move and our grandest plans may crinkle up like a feather
held to a "cruisie," the rude lamp, fed with dried splinters of
fir-wood, or mutton tallow and a wick, which our Highlanders used for
lighting.
But that was not in my thoughts when I came to the top of the last hill
dividing our strath from the Black Colonel's. My estimate was that if
I got there by break of day and waited I should, being in a high eyrie
with a wide view, see him come from the opposite direction. My
information from my scouts was that he would travel alone, a fit thing,
having regard to his mission at the Dower House, Corgarff.
Tired and hungry, I looked about for a rock which would shield me from
the wind, and got out my fodder. It consisted only of "whisky bukky,"
oatmeal rolled with whisky, not delicate stuff to eat, but easily
carried and sustaining. Haggis is better food for the march, because
it is tastier and still harder to digest, so even more lasting, as the
Highlanders, for whose war sustenance it was, perhaps, invented, knew,
but on leaving Corgarff Castle I had just taken what I could lay my
hand upon.
While I ate I half-marvelled at the splendour of the scene about me,
half-rehearsed my catechism with the Black Colonel, when he should
appear. I would put it to him as a gentleman that he must not intrude
upon the Forbes ladies, and, indeed, must frankly abandon his designs
there. If reason failed, then we might be driven to solve the knot by
a single combat, as the custom of the Highlands permitted, and, indeed,
sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France. Why
not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute
to plain manliness? Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane,
the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by
the name of diplomacy, high diplomacy, I believe.
The tradition of single combat went back into the very mists of time in
the Highlands; and merely the form varied. There was Cam-Ruadh, the
early red-haired man of tradition, who, fallen prisoner among a batch
of hostile "kern," or outlaws, was offered his liberty if he could make
so many good arrow-shots. He drew and drew, with much seeming
innocence, on the arrows of his captors, and wove a circle of stabs in
the ground about the target, but never did he hit it; oh, no!
They jeered at him when he came to the last arrow possessed by the
company, saying he had better reserve it for himself and save them the
trouble of making an end to him. Instead, he sent it, as he could have
sent the others, straight into the middle of the target, and flew there
almost with it. Before the outlaws could realize the logic of events
he had gathered all the arrows under his arm, put one to the string of
the bow and cried, "I am Cam-Ruadh, who never misses, never before
until now, and you who are without arrows had better take leg-bail,"
which they quickly did.
Nearer in time was the duel of valiant Donald Oig with the chief of a
band of "broken men" who had a grudge against him. Donald was a famous
swordsman, and the chief had no active relish to try skill with him.
But, again, it was the custom of the country, and the invitation could
not be refused if the chiefship of the "broken men" was to be held,
because here was a test of both courage and honour.
He was a slim fellow, however, this head raider, one with the false
doctrine, as ancient as human nature, that if you succeed it matters
little how. When, then, he and Donald Oig stood up to fight he
exclaimed, "Shake hands on it, first!" But he gripped the extended
right hand hard, intending, with it thus prisoned, to strike a foul
blow and close, in his own favour, a duel which had not begun. Swift
of instinct and eye, Donald saw this, caught out his dagger with his
left hand, and stabbed the foul fighter. The rest of the "broken men,"
being witnesses of it all, had nothing to complain about, and Donald
went his way.
While my thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket
flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness
familiar enough among the Scottish mountains. The heavens passed
behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red,
angry bursts. The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked
down into the valley, two thousand feet beneath me, I saw a great
thunderstorm on the march, the very panoply of havoc.
It moved as if it were an army going to war, with scout-like horns
thrust out in front and on either side. These were constantly shot by
fangs from the mass of lightning in the clouds, themselves a hell of
angry colours, There was the inky black of the outer sheath, next a
seam of half-black, half-orange, then a depth of iridescence which
constantly changed its hues, and, finally, a molten pot boiling and
rolling in august wrath.
Ah! it was a spectacle to watch, those thunder-clouds come through the
glack, or rift, dividing the falling hill on which I stood, from the
rising one beyond. Down in the valley ran a stream and a track used by
cattle-drovers, and, as my eye went there, I thought I saw a tall
figure. Certainly, for he looked up and, during a moment, we were both
silhouetted in the radiance of light which the thunder-clouds, now
massed into one huge bank, drove before it. If I saw that solitary
figure it was likely he would see me, as we were the only living things
in the landscape, and like turns to like, even making mutual
communication, although witchcraft was the word for that then, and the
mention of it dangerous.
Presently the terrific cloud ate up the spot where I had seen the man,
for its base was in the valley and its top above my altitude. Never
had I beheld such a thunder-cloud, but it was awe, a worship of the
forces of Nature, which filled me, not fear. Why should I, a young,
healthy man, with good nerves, be afraid, since the excessive tumult
was below me, and I was a privileged spectator. Quickly, however, the
cloud must burst, and then the sluices of heaven would indeed be open.
How would it fare with myself and the figure lost in the valley?
That thunderstorm and the consequent flood became events in our local
history, and to me a quick personal adventure. The rain came down,
first in a thick shower, then in torrents, finally in sheets. The fall
was so solid that it seemed to half-scotch the lightning and half-dull
the roar of the thunder. Actually, for I record truly, the drops leapt
up again in splashes as they struck the ground beside me, and in an
instant I was soaked, though that was no unusual experience in our
adventurous climate.
The thunder-cloud had now taken command of the whole firmament, so
swiftly had its violence of contagion spread. Here, verily, was a
rainfall on a great scale, and as it settled to business a sort of
darkness spread over the land. I must seek shelter, and I would find
it on the levels rather than on the exposed heights.
Therefore, I started for the valley, picking my way as best I could in
the black deluge. You will scarce believe me if I again tell you that
the rain-water ran down the hill-side with me, inches deep. It took
gravel and stones with it, and scoured away the bedding of large rocks
which, thus released, joined in the downward plunge. Some folk thought
it was the Flood of the Bible come again as prophesied, and, at all
events, the comparison gives a notion of it. The stream, which I had
seen an insignificant stripe below, met me, a roaring river. Its
waters had already overflowed the whole valley. Now you only saw the
tops of hillocks or trees, for all else was a gurgling waste of waters.
Over those waters came a cry which caught me, even in my sorry plight,
because it was human. Wild birds, beaten to the ground by the storm
and then engulfed in the waters, were screeching as they drowned.
Hares and rabbits, and a fox, wherever he came from, all went past me
on a floating tree, and they were squealing for mercy, not from each
other, but from the elements. The other sound I had heard, however,
was quite different, and I listened for it again.
Ah! there it was! And as I bent to the level of the flowing waters and
looked towards its source, I saw a man marooned on one of the hillocks
which the flood had left unsubmerged. Evidently he had seen me first,
for he was waving his hands and making signs with them. He was in keen
alarm about his predicament, but method governed his alarm, and it was
for me to discover it.
Clearly he was a prisoner on the island, in so far that he could not
wade or swim through the roaring dam which divided us. Clearly, also,
the water was rising by miraculous draughts upon the rain, and soon his
refuge would be drowned, and he swept from it. What was to be done by
me to save him, for action must be rapid?
He was beckoning up-stream with a meaning. Searching with my eye the
meeting-place of land and water, I saw what looked like a boat. Where
could it have come from? There had been an old broad-bottomed craft,
used for fording in spate times, on a pool a mile or so up the glen,
and the flood had brought it down and thrown it ashore. Could I get it
afloat, navigate it to the perishing man, and rescue him?
No sooner said than done! Not at all; things don't happen so, at
least, when anything worth doing has to be done. It took me a toilsome
journey to the boat, and I found it half-full of flood-water. This I
emptied by hauling the boat, as the river rose, on to a shelving rock.
Then I waited for it to float free, having meanwhile got hold of a
long, fir sapling, which, pruned of its branches, I thought to use as a
guiding pole, helm or oar, as the rushing of many waters might demand.
Thus equipped, out I sailed on that uncharted ocean with never a
thought in my head whether I should again see dry land or riot. The
darkness had deepened, but I could still distinguish the hillock and
the man thereon, now up to his waist in the waters, and for those
fading signs I steered. Quickly I was in the flood race, but I kept my
head, otherwise I should not have heard the voice come to me again in
what seemed to be the words, "Hurry! For God's sake, hurry!"
Down-stream I rushed, here shoving from disaster against a tree trunk,
there avoiding a smash with something else. How it was all done I have
not the remotest notion--perhaps it was mere luck--but when I came
level with the hillock I was only three feet clear of it on the near
side.
"Jump," I roared, and the man with outstretched arms jumped strongly,
and I felt a pull which almost upset me, for I had been standing in the
boat. Two hands had caught the gunwale, and the pull of dead weight
swung the heavy, clumsy craft round on a new course without, however,
upsetting it. This took us into shallower waters, and presently the
suction of the main surge got fainter and we were aground on the
moorland edge.
I had not, in the dark, seen the face of my companion at all, and,
trailing beside the boat, he had no opportunity for making himself
known. I stepped out, knee-deep, to find him also a-foot, and seeking
the land.
"Come on," I said, "whoever you may be."
"Yes," he answered; "whoever you may be, you are a friend in need."
I recognized his voice, and exclaimed, nay, shouted in my surprise,
"Jock Farquharson!"
"Yes, Ian Gordon," he said in turn. "Would you rather not have saved
me?"
"God's will be done," said I.
"Amen!" said he.
Dramas of life do end laconically, like that, as death often comes by
casual side-steps.
_XII--Raiders of the Dark_
A man does something in a natural way and it takes the world's ear and
is called heroism. Another man does a like thing, to all purpose, but
the world does not listen to it, or, anyhow, sings him no praises, all
of which we try to explain by saying "Luck."
It is natural for a man to show courage in extremes, for a woman to be
loving, self-sacrificing. Every now and then the Great Bookkeeper
records an example for the common good; and the rest are a lost legion.
We do not know why, and if we did what good would it do us, though the
curiosity for knowledge is inbred, like inability, sometimes, to use it?
News of my rescue of the Black Colonel from the flood got about, and I
was acclaimed as a hero of sorts. He, I fancy, for his own ends,
fathered a glowing account of what happened, and as it passed from
mouth to mouth it grew in glory. He meant to be grateful, and his
gratitude took that form. It was his airy way, for egotism, even when
it is not dislikeable, must ever carry its possessor into the picture.
Perhaps he also thought to please me, and thus to win a point towards
his larger ends, for I knew they would, in no wise, be modified by what
had happened. By them, as he saw his case, he had to stand or fall,
and thus, in this reasoning, he had no choice at all. His bonds, in
that sense, were entwined with coming events, which do not necessarily
cast their shadows before, anyhow when they are events of the heart.
Now, my secret hope for the Black Colonel, the inner prayer which I
hardly whispered to myself, was that he should escape his troubles as a
rebel, by going away to the foreign wars, and there make a new name. I
thought I might help him out of the country, even if it had to be at
the risk of my commission. He would be welcome wherever he found a
British camp across the sea, and no questions would be asked. Truly,
there would be need to ask none, because his repute as a fighting man
among the Jacobites had gone far and wide. By-and-by he could return,
when the feuds of Stuart and Guelph had died down to the dross they
were, though they had made a bloody toll, and sit in the home of his
fathers, not merely unmolested, but honoured by both sides.
I am not going to pretend that my own inclinations were not behind this
plan, for they were. Why should I seek to hide them, even from the
Black Colonel himself; a hopeless thing to try, anyhow. He had one
scheme for getting back to the world, and it struck bitterly across my
path. I offered him another, which would attain his end, and if that
were so, why should he not take it and thank me? I was not
ill-disposed to him personally; certainly well enough disposed to help
him--to help me. When were we to make the reckoning?
He was seeking to live up to his new pretensions as a head of a clan,
and he had to find the wherewithal on which to do it. The consequence
was that he used Red Murdo for taxing the country in the matter of his
necessaries. If somebody, early some morning while it was still dark,
awoke to ask the question: "Are you come to harry and spulzie my ha'?"
it would most likely be Red Murdo who gave an insolent answer. The
fellow, in fact, got swollen upon the little plunderings which his
master ordered, until he was hard to keep in hand. But this, again,
suited the Black Colonel, because, to push his claims, he found money
handy, there being always smaller fry of the other side of friendship,
who have hungry purses, or none at all.
So Red Murdo, flown as he was with a lowly man's pride, which tends to
an unbalancing, must launch upon an expedition of no common sort. It
embellishes a ballad of which only two lines come to me as I write:
"There's four-and-twenty milk-white nowt, twal o' them kye
In the woods of Glen-Tanner, it's there that they lie."
Beyond what the lines tell of a bold piece of rieving and spulzy by
Jock Farquharson's henchman, and done for him, I need not trouble to
instruct you, because the event only leads into our chronicle as by a
tributary wind. When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it by
direct evidence, you are driven back on motives. They are, in fact,
the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, a
fitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many an
honest Highland rebel.
I sought to keep my soldiers as unseen as a not over-great distance
from Marget and her mother at the Dower House would permit. Naturally
the Hanoverian uniform was a sore sight for their eyes, and even a
personal grief, in that it recalled dear ones who had perished on the
losing side. My desire to spare them was known to my men, who, in the
same spirit, would often walk a mile round not to show themselves to
the desolated inmates of the Dower House.
But it was essential, if anything unusual were to happen there, that we
should know, since it was part of our charge to protect Marget and her
mother from perils incidental to an unsettled country. Therefore, I
had a private understanding with an old retainer of the family that he
was to hasten to me, should protection at the Dower House ever be
necessary.
This he was to do quietly, before giving any general alarm, as that
might not prove necessary, and also because I remembered an old
Highland wisdom, "Never cry fire, unless you want the heather to
catch." Its bearing, as you will grasp is on strifes and feuds set
alive, not on the actual burning of heather, which is done to let
grass, for the sheep beasts, grow without being choked.
Well, on a night which I recall for its dense blackness, there came a
tap, tap, tap, three of them, slowly and distinctly, at the small
window of my room in the Castle. I knew by the method of the
disturbance that it was not an accident, but I was on my feet and
peering hard into the outer darkness before I realized that here was
the prearranged signal of danger at the Dower House.
A hand moved close to the window, signalling me, and I motioned back,
though, on either side, all this was divined, as divination takes place
in the dark, rather than seen at all. I picked up my sword, which
always stood in a certain corner of my room, pulled the door gently
towards me and stepped softly out on to the grass, which grew close up
to the Castle walls.
"Come ye, fast, Captain Gordon," quietly said a figure gliding beside
me, and without another word we made for the Dower House. When I felt
myself beyond ear-shot of the sentry, I asked:
"What's happened--what's wrong?"
"I'm no' exac'ly sure," was the old retainer's answer, "but men hae
been surroundin' the place, as if to attack it. They wakened me, bein'
a light sleeper, because they made sounds different fae' the ordinary.
It was like men crawlin' amon' the grass on a plan, and I slippit doon
for you."
"What had we better do?" I asked formally, and not because I expected
any answer, for I had decided to get into the Dower House without
alarming anybody, if that could be done.
We managed to open a window and step through it, but then the dogs
sleeping inside set up an alarm. This quickly awoke everybody, and the
confusion set affairs moving outside, where I heard a voice that seemed
familiarly like Red Murdo's cry hoarsely:
"Lie close, lie close!"
Presently Marget and her mother, who had both dressed hastily, came to
the stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath.
Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scene
looked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs and
wondering what was to happen outside, I had no desire or time to study
it.
"Who's there?" called Marget, in a not uncomposed but expectant voice,
and I answered, telling in a few words what I knew. Quick in thought
and action she thanked me for coming, and said she would just get her
cloak. She took her mother with her, but in a moment was back again
asking, "How can I be of service?"
She carried a stout walking-stick, and I looked at it as she came down
the stairs to where I stood in the lobby, her mother following. "Yes,"
she said, "my hand lighted on it somewhere, perhaps because it has been
through troubles and wars and is in the presence of more. Shall we say
that the fighting instinct, even in a stick, leaps to the call?" She
laughed quietly, but with a concerned note in the laugh, and I knew she
was thinking of her mother's safety and health, both threatened by this
strange incursion of ill-disposed men.
Wishful as one would be at such a moment to magnify a trifle, in order,
if possible, to occupy an anxious woman's mind, I remarked, "Oh, a
stick can be a very sound weapon in a good hand."
"It's about all that the orders of search and suppression have left us
Jacobites," remarked Marget; "openly confessed, anyhow, for I suppose
there may be a small, concealed arsenal or two, even among our Corgarff
hills."
Nothing, apparently, had happened outside in those tense minutes, and
it was the strain of waiting which made us resolutely talk of
nothing--but a stick. There had been no further cry since the "Lie
close" already mentioned, and it, no doubt, had been a mischance on the
part of Red Murdo. All was silence and black without, and within all
quiet alarm, such as you get when a household suppresses itself in
obedience to some demand.
It was an oppressive silence, this waiting, and I was glad to hear
Marget tap the floor with her sinewy hazel and say merrily, thinking to
lighten her mother's concern, "My grandfather insisted that a stick
with a nob was no stick for a Highland gentleman. It escaped, he would
say, when it was most needed, and that might, at times, leave the best
of Highland gentlemen by the wayside." Joking, under difficulties!
She paused, for there arose a crack-cracking as of men coming closer
among the scrub of heather and fern which surrounded the Dower House,
only it was quite momentary. The stick which she had half-lifted, an
unconscious act of readiness for defence, tapped back on to the floor,
and my sword-point made a sharper rattle, though I was unaware that my
hand had even moved it. The tyranny of doing nothing began to be
intolerable and to insist on an issue, be it what it might.
Think of the situation for me, and although I am, I hope, neither more
selfish nor more cowardly than other men, I could not help doing that.
Here was I, the chief and head of his Majesty's garrison at Corgarff
Castle, standing defence on the door-step of a Jacobite household. Why
was I there at all? What was I there to accomplish? How was I to do
this unknown something and return with composure to my quarters, secure
in my loyalty to King George and his ministers?
Moreover, what had I come out for to see? A mere expedition of
burglary by a band of hungry caterans who took the chattels of friend
or foe indifferently? Possibly that was all. Then I could have
fetched half-a-dozen soldiers and apprehended those same footpads, or,
at all events, driven them to the hills again. But at the head of what
defensive force did I find myself? Why, a few domestics without
resource enough even to escape from the danger, a dear old lady who
anxiously wanted to mother the trouble about her, and a young woman of
nerve and resolve, my only stand-by.
There, for it was a new discovery in our relationship, I realized that
to have Marget by me was a very welcome comradeship, and, somehow, so
natural, that it made the other things of no burden. I was curiously
happy, and could have left matters at that, but what to do, what to do?
There must, in all of us, be an instinct for our keeping, when we are
in danger. Give it headway and you will probably win through, as a
thirsty horse knows how to reach a springwell among the hills. Argue
with it and it says, "Take your reasoned method, your road of the
better judgment, but don't blame me, your natural guardian, if you come
to harm."
With this I got the strong intuition, possibly communicated to my mind
or heart by Marget's nearness, that here was no ordinary raid for
spoilage. Something else of a personal and intimate sort was behind, I
was sure of it, something to which acute danger attached for my dearest
wishes.
When you are, in small authority, set over the people of a locality,
you are apt to develop a small official mind which obscures the power
of seeing, understanding, divining. Such an attitude, as I had
painfully seen in various parts of the Highlands, fretted the great
sore of defeat that lay upon the Jacobites, whereas the effort should
have been to heal it. My own mind I had tried to keep fresh and free
in all my relationships at Corgarff, impelled, may be, by a nature
which liked, possibly out of vanity, to give sympathy. From this and a
mute speaking with one near and dear, I now had my personal reward, for
I understood. Marget was the trophy sought in this dark raid, and she
was to be the Black Colonel's trophy.