THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.
Rob Roy and his followers being now left to themselves by the sudden
dispersion of the MacKenzies and MacRaes, while the Rosses, Munroes,
and others were still in arms against them, and while General
Wightman's troops, though retreating, covered the main roads that led
to the Perthshire highlands, were thus compelled to linger near the
shore of Loch Duich and in the castle of Eilan Donan for a few days
ere they could set out on their return home.
In the historical account of Rob Roy and his clan, we are told
briefly, that after Glensheil, "he and his party plundered a Spanish
ship, after it had been in possession of the English, which so
enriched him that he went to the braes of Balquhidder, and began
farming."
The details of this affair are as follows:--
On the night after the battle, Rob, on learning that Duncan nan
Creagh and other MacRaes were wandering over the field, dirking and
plundering the wounded, went there to drive them off, and to save as
many as possible of the poor fellows.
The early June morning dawned brightly in the dewy glen, which was
dotted thickly with red and yellow coats, among whom lay nearly
thirty Spaniards; and Rob saw with regret the body of Captain Dawnes;
it presented a deplorable spectacle, for both his eyes were shot out,
and his face was a mass of blood.
Near him was a Spanish officer, seated half upright against a large
stone; his dark-olive face was pale, ghastly, and sorrowful. As Rob
approached, he raised his head, and opened his black and now
lack-lustre eyes with a vacant stare, as if the poor fellow sought to
assure himself that blindness and death had not yet come upon him.
His uniform was blue, richly laced with silver, and on his left
breast was the gold and eight-pointed cross of Malta. He had
received two bullet wounds in the body, and appeared to be sinking
fast.
As Rob Roy, like most of the loyal Highlanders, was perhaps more a
Catholic than a Protestant, the cross upon the breast of the dying
Spaniard excited his interest, and stooping down, he asked in English
if he could assist him.
"_Aqua--aqua!_" (water--water!) muttered the sufferer, hoarsely, and
then added in good English, "Water, for the love of Heaven!"
"Run to the linn, Greumoch, and fill your quaich," said Rob, raising
the sufferer against his knee; "our forefathers lie under the shadow
of the old cross on Inchcailloch, and they died believing in it as
the sign of redemption unto men, so it would ill become us to neglect
the stranger, who, with the cross on his breast, dies here for King
James VIII. Quick, Greumoch, dash in some whisky too--it comes not
amiss to the Saxons, and won't to the Spaniards!"
As soon as it was brought, he applied the quaich of cool spring water
and usquebaugh to the parched lips of the wounded officer, whose
tongue seemed to have become baked and hard by loss of blood and a
night of agony.
Rob now proposed to have his wounds looked to and the blood stanched;
but there were no surgeons near, and the Spaniard shook his head
sadly, as if to indicate that their efforts were useless, and his
eyes dilated wildly when Greumoch approached him with a bunch of wild
nettles, the old Highland panacea for all manner of cuts, stabs, and
slashes.
Then the Spanish cavalier smiled sadly, for he knew that he was
mortally wounded, and felt death in his heart.
"What is your name--your rank?" asked Rob, kindly.
"I am Don José de Santarem, a Knight of Malta."
"A relation of the Spanish colonel?"
"I am his brother; but Alonzo has left me to my fate."
"Upbraid him not," said Rob; "he has been sorely pressed by the men
of Culcairn and Morar Chattu, and is far down the glen by this time."
Had Rob said that he was "sorely pressed by the Medes and Persians,"
it would have been quite as intelligible to the Spaniard, who
said,--"Senor Escosse, could you get me a priest?"
"A priest!" reiterated Rob, with perplexity.
"That I may confess me before I die."
MacGregor shook his head. "The priests are all banished or in their
graves," said he; "the faith of our forefathers is proscribed here
now--even as the Clan Alpine are proscribed by the Parliament and
paper courts of the Lowlanders."
"No priests?" sighed the Spaniard, with a start.
"Not one," said Rob, on which Greumoch, who knew a little English,
whispered,--
"Maybe Paul Crubach might do--he was mighty near being a priest once."
"No--no," said Rob. "Yet there is the parish minister of Glensheil."
But the Spaniard shook his head with disdain, and the blood spirted
anew from his wounds.
"My forefathers lie buried in the chapel of our old castle at
Quebara, in Alava--each under marble, with helmet, sword, and gloves
of steel above his tomb; but I, a brother of St. John of Malta, must
lie here among heretics, and, it may be, in earth that is
unconsecrated otherwise than by the blessed dew of heaven!"
"Nay," said Rob, earnestly; "this shall not be! You are dying, my
brave man--I can see death in your face, for I have seen it in the
faces of too many not to know it now; but I swear that you shall lie
in consecrated earth."
"Swear this to me!" gasped the Spaniard, writhing his body towards
the speaker, whose hand he grasped convulsively.
"I swear it!" said Rob, pressing his dirk to his lips.
"You vow on your steel, as we do in my country," said the Spaniard,
while his eyes sparkled with an unwonted light; "listen to me--I will
reward you, if I can."
"I seek no reward," said Rob Roy; "you are a Spaniard who came hither
to fight for our king, and against those lumbering louts, the Dutch,
who came from King William's country--bodachs, who know not a stag's
horn from a steer's stump, as the saying is."
"Alas! (_ay de mi!_) how little I thought to die in this wild land,"
said the Spaniard, closing his eyes, while his voice became more and
more husky; "but draw nearer; keep your oath, and I shall reward you.
I had charge of our treasure chest; it contains three thousand
pistoles of Madrid and Malaga."
"And where is this chest?" whispered Rob, very naturally becoming
more interested.
"It is on board a small galley or launch--which--which lies
wedged----"
"Where--where?" asked MacGregor; for the Spaniard's voice and powers
were failing fast.
"Wedged among the rocks, near where we formed a battery--"
"At the mouth of Loch Duich?"
"I know not how you name it--but 'tis there--there!"
"Good; speak on."
"Three British ships of war are hovering off the coast, and that
treasure will become their prize, if you do not anticipate them. The
pistoles are--are--are in a coffer marked with the cross of Malta."
After this, the poor Spaniard relinquished his English, which was
very broken, and began to talk and pray incoherently in Spanish and
Latin, till gradually he became insensible, and in less than an hour
had ceased to exist.
Rob Roy kept his word, and as soon as Don José was dead, he wrapped
him up in a plaid, and conveyed him, with Alpine playing a lament in
front, to Killduich, and there buried him at the east end of that
ancient church, in a grave over which he placed a rough wooden cross,
and above which all his followers fired thrice their muskets and
pistols in the air.
That the Colonel Don Alonzo de Santarem did not endeavour to secure
the military chest before surrendering to General Wightman, was
probably because he was menaced by the Clans of Ross and Munro, who
hovered between him and the sea, and by threatening his little camp,
ultimately enforced his capitulation.
Rob now instantly seized boats, and with half his followers departed
in search of what he termed, "the Spaniard's legacy;" while Greumoch,
with the rest, occupied the castle of Eilan Donan, to await his
return. It was evening now. After a long and careful search--a
search which a dense fog impeded--in a sequestered creek of Loch
Duich, the MacGregors found the craft they sought, partly jammed upon
a reef. She appeared to be the large, half-decked launch of one of
the Spanish frigates, both of which had now put to sea and
disappeared. She lay in a deep chasm of the wild rocks, at the base
of a steep mountain, the sides of which had been bared and rent by
the _scriddans_ of a thousand years--for so the natives term those
water-torrents which at times hurl down gravel and massive stones, in
vast heaps, to desolate the fields, the shore, or whatever may lie at
the foot of these rugged hills in Kintail and Glensheil.
Here dense green ivy covered the brows of the chasm that beetled over
the sea, and under it the hawks, the wild pigeons, and the sea-birds
built their nests. Lower down were holes and fissures, in which the
crabs and lobsters lurked, till the countrywomen came in boats to
drag them out with old corn sickles, or other iron instruments, and
by their songs and voices to scare the sea-dogs from the ledges,
where they lay basking in the sunshine.
The launch was mounted with pateraroes, but how she came to be in
such a situation we have no means of knowing; her crew, which
consisted of some thirty Spanish seamen, though all well armed,
jumped out of her, and fled up the rocks on the appearance of the
MacGregors, as they knew not whether they were friends or foes, and
were scared by their singular costume and bare limbs.
This craft, which was undoubtedly the launch of one of the frigates
(that is, a boat of the largest size, for carrying great weight), had
a kind of half-deck forward; and under the hatch of this, which was
well secured by locks, bars, and iron bands, Rob had no doubt the
money lay. Just as he and a number of his followers sprang on board,
a shout from some of them who were higher up on the rocks drew his
attention to seaward.
The fog had risen now, like the lower end of a thick grey curtain,
showing the offing of Loch Alsh sparkling in silver ripples under the
rising moon, and there, creeping along the shore, were three British
frigates--doubtless the three of which the dying Spaniard had
spoken--under easy sail, with their topsails, white as snow,
glittering in the silvery sheen, though darkness yet obscured their
lower sails and hulls.
Right before the wind they had been standing up Loch Alsh, and
slightly altering their course, were now penetrating that branch of
it which is named Loch Duich.