THE EARL'S DARING.
Dione, then: Thy wrongs with patience bear;
And share those griefs inferior powers must share;
Unnumbered woes mankind from us sustain,
And men with woes afflict the gods again."
_The Iliad_, Book V.
A few chapters back we left the Earl of Ashkirk alone upon the
solitary beach near the cavern, on the morning of that day which
beheld his unhappy sister for the first time an inmate of the Castle
of Edinburgh.
His more bitter feelings of hostility to James had been soothed, for
the monarch possessed the charm of the Stuart race--that charm which
won the hearts of all whom they addressed; but, being still
unforgiven, Lord Ashkirk felt himself an outlaw, with the axe of the
doomster hanging over his head, while he had to suspect a spy or a
foeman in every man he met.
With his eyes fixed on the island castle where his mother and Sybil
Douglas of Kilspindie were imprisoned,--with all his thoughts centred
there, and bent on visiting and freeing them from the thraldom and
captivity of a Hamilton, he walked along the sandy shore, revolving a
thousand rash but gallant plans and projects.
He was buried in deep thought, and gradually his head sank upon his
breast.
A draught of water from a spring, a bannock and a piece of cheese
received at a cottage where he tarried, and, in the hospitable
fashion of the olden time, asked for it without shame and obtained it
with a welcome, sufficed him for food; and, retracing his steps, he
wandered westward up the margin of the broad river, until he reached
the little kirktown of Wester-Kinghorn (which now bears another
name), lying behind the Burnt-island, nestling under the brow of
hills that are upheld by basaltic columns, whose summits have been
scorched by volcanic fire, and whose rifted sides have repelled the
waves of the antediluvian world.
On the high and rocky island, which, though it has now become a
promontory, was then completely surrounded by the sea at high water,
stood a tower belonging to the Duries of Durie.
Crossing the sandy neck or isthmus while the tide was low, the earl
concealed himself among the copsewood which covered the island on the
eastward, from whence he had a view of Inchkeith, distant about three
miles, reddened by the setting sun which covered with a golden tint
the calm, broad waters of the Firth.*
* Firth, from _Fiord_; not _Frith_, from _Fretum_, as Dr. Johnson
erroneously supposed.
The wood was in full foliage, and cast a pleasant shade upon the
rocks, which were spotted with grey lichens or covered with verdant
moss. Here passed the day; and evening came, with silence and
darkness, for even the stillness of that lonely isle became more
still. The wild bees and the buzzing flies forsook the caps of the
closing flowers for their homes in the hollows of the old pine-tree;
the notes of the mavis and merle died away; the deer came no more to
drink of the stream that trickled from the rocks, and the foliage of
the isle became moist with the falling dew.
As if in contrast to the storm of the previous evening, the night
came on clear, cloudless, starry, and beautiful.
Avoiding that side of the isle which was overlooked by the Duries'
castle of Ross-end, the earl sought the beach, where a few
fisher-boats were moored to rings in the rocks of a lonely creek.
The place was deserted, and not an eye beheld him. His resolutions
and execution were brief: selecting the smallest, he sprang on board,
cast off the painter, and seizing a pair of oars, each one of which
would have required an ordinary man to handle it, he pulled away from
the shore with a strength and activity that the sturdiest of our
fisher-wights might have viewed with satisfaction and envy. Though
as accomplished a knight as ever rode to battle, the earl was
somewhat of a seaman, for his father's castle in Forfarshire looked
down on Lunan Bay.
He was master of the little bark both by sail and oar; and knowing
somewhat of the dangerous navigation of that stately river, avoiding
those perilous rocks known as the Gunnel, on gaining the mid-stream
he set the brown lug-sail, which the unsuspecting proprietor had
prepared for the little fishing voyage of the morrow, and, favoured
by the ebb-tide, the current, and a soft west wind, bore with the
speed of a seagull straight down towards Inchkeith.
If the wind freshened, he had a thousand chances to one of being
swept helplessly out into the German Ocean; but the bold earl never
thought of that.
Alone in the middle of the broad and rapid Firth, its aspect seemed
to him magnificent, as the deep red light that lingered behind the
western Ochills tinged all its waves with a purple hue; but their
foam became a shower of silver, and white as winter frost, when it
broke against the shining cliffs, whereon rose the castle at the west
end of the island.
As the earl had resolved on freeing his mother and Sybil from their
captivity, his natural boldness prevented him from seeing any
difficulty in achieving this project, though he was alone in the
enterprise, armed only with his poniard and an old sword which he had
picked up in the brawl of the preceding night, and though the castle
was commanded by Sir James Hamilton of Barncleugh, with a small but
chosen party of soldiers.
"If a Seton could fear, I should certainly be afraid now," said the
earl, on seeing how the waves burst in foam on all sides of the
Inch--one moment sinking low, to show the reefs, which rose like
jagged teeth above them, and the next dashing in torrents against the
black volcanic bluffs. "Tut! by the pope! what a mouthful of
salt-water!" he added, as the spray was blown in his face, when he
dashed his boat through the breakers, and then, running along the lee
of the shore, struck his sail and slowly crept near the little creek,
which there forms the only landing-place; for on the east rushes the
whole current of the Firth, and on the west breaks the thundering
force of the German Sea.
The night had now come on, and solemn stillness reigned upon the isle.
The gates of the square tower which crowned its highest summit were
closed; but here and there a red ray glimmered from the deep windows
of its dusky mass.
"One of these lights," thought the earl, as he gazed upward, "may
shine on my dear Sybil's dark glossy hair and snow-white brow."
The tide was low, and he ran the boat into a little cavern which lay
near the creek; it was, in reality, but the top of a deep chasm in
the rocks, having a clear sandy bottom, where he could distinctly
perceive the layers of dark pebbles, of bright shells, and waving
sea-weed, far down below, when the clear moon rose above the
Lammermuir, to shed its radiance on the heaving water.
Resolving to wait till midnight, when all the inhabitants of the town
most probably would be asleep, and when, with more security, he could
make a reconnaissance of the isle and the barbican wall, the earl
guided his boat into the narrow little fissure, which is one of many
that perforate the island. While endeavouring to prevent its jarring
on the flinty rocks, he was greatly alarmed by perceiving a human
figure spring off a shelf of the volcanic wall, and plunge heavily
into the deep dark water of the chasm, which penetrated, he knew not
how far, into the heart of the island, but which, as it receded,
became more appalling by its utter obscurity and subterranean
character.
Incident to the age, rather than the man, the earl's supernatural
fears of kelpies, gnomes, and water-spirits, now became altogether
secondary to the dread of having been discovered by some human
denizen of the place. He felt for his poniard, and paused. Behind
him yawned the pointed arch of the cavern, with the distant sea-beach
shining in the moonlight; before him lay rocks and water buried in
darkness. He lingered, oar in hand, scarcely daring to breathe, but
heard only the ripple of the rising tide as it chafed on the walls of
the chasm.
Suddenly, another sound smote his ear, that as of a diver rising to
the surface; then came a hard breathing on the water, and the
regulated plashing as of some one swimming away into that very
obscurity which the earl's eyes ached with regarding, but failed to
penetrate. His hair bristled, and his heart quailed with momentary
terror of a spirit, or evil thing; but from that very terror he
gathered a courage, and, by his oar and hands, feeling the rocks on
each side, shot further in his sharp-prowed boat, intent on
overtaking the swimmer, and discovering whether it was a man or
devil; but he had not gone twenty yards when the chasm terminated in
a sheer wall of rock; and again he paused to listen. The dash of the
water had ceased.
He thought he heard other sounds, like those of footsteps clambering
up the rock; but feared he was mistaken, for all became immediately
still, and he heard only the murmur of the water as it boiled among
the reefs without.
"Tush!" thought he, reddening with shame at his own alarm; "it has
only been some poor seal or sea-dog basking on the rocks in the
summer moonlight. By midnight the moon will be in the west--till
then let me sleep, for these last two nights I have never closed an
eye;" and looping a rope round a pinnacle of rock, he securely moored
the boat, and reclined within it to sleep.
Such was the effect of the weariness oppressing him, that in three
minutes he was buried in profound slumber, rocked by the motion of
the boat, which gently rose and fell on the undulations of the water;
for though around the isle the swell was heavy, the waves being
broken by the jutting of the rocks at the cavern mouth, they rolled
gently and smoothly into its dark recesses.
Now while the earl all unconsciously was sleeping, this little cavern
of the sea was filling fast; for as the rising tide on the German
Ocean met the downward current of the Forth, the water rose rapidly
against the impending walls.
Ashkirk knew not how long he slept, when he was suddenly awakened by
an unusual sound, and, on attempting to rise, struck his head with
violence against the stone roof of the cave, close up to which his
boat had floated on the rising tide.
His situation was fraught with danger and horror.
Moored fast to a point of rock now far beyond his reach, the boat was
wedged between the top of the cavern and the surface of the swollen
water, leaving him thus imprisoned, coffined, as it were, in utter
darkness, and with the deadly fear that the whole of this now
submarine grot would be covered by the gurgling tide, in which case
he would assuredly be drowned, "and die the death (as he thought) of
a rat in a drain."
The partial gleam of moonlight which had illuminated the mouth of
this frightful trap had now passed away, and the darkness within and
around it seemed palpable and opaque. He could no longer discern
where the entrance lay, and his heart sank in the fear that the water
had risen over it. He now heard the wavelets rippling, with a
thousand hollow echoes, in the fissures and recesses, and gurgling
with a sucking sound as they filled each in succession, and rose
towards the gunwale of his boat, which had become perfectly immovable.
And the tide was still rising!
He found that he could not survive ten minutes longer. Already the
air was stifling, and the necessity of making one desperate struggle
for life became immediately apparent. Lying almost on his back, he
groped breathlessly around him, and discovered a vacant shelf of rock
upon his right. Clambering within it, he found with joy that it led
to an inner and upper cavern. He had scarcely left the boat when,
with a hoarse gurgle, the tide rushed in and filled it.
As he ascended, a faint red light now flickered on the dark, stony
walls of this slimy retreat; then, indeed, the heart of the gallant
earl began to tremble, as his dread of supernatural beings returned.
He remembered the strange figure which had disappeared so suddenly
into the lower cavern when he first entered it. Again the terror of
the water-kelpie came vividly upon him; for, in that time, all
Scotsmen feared that evil denizen of their native seas and lakes.
Though dark, damp, and slimy, it was evident to the earl that the
water did not usually rise so far as this upper retreat; and as the
light reddened and increased around him, it revealed the solid masses
of whinstone rock which composed the enormous walls of this
subterranean vault. Here and there were columns of basalt, or
perpendicular lava, with masses of sparkling spar, pitchstone, and
porphyry. Still this strange and crimson light brightened and
wavered, dying and growing again, till, overcome by dread of dwarfs
and fairies, or spirits still more fell, several seconds elapsed
before the earl removed his hand from his eyes, and looked steadily
around him.
At the upper end of the grotto, which measured somewhere about twenty
feet square, there burned a fire of wood, green bushes, and crackling
sea-grass; and thereat was seated--neither a witch brewing hell-kail,
nor a wizard working spells; neither a stunted dwarf forging fairy
trinkets, nor some fair water-spirit rising in her naked beauty from
a silver shell, but simply a man roasting one of those wild rabbits
with which the island has in all ages abounded, and who, with his
breath, was blowing aside the smoke, which curled to the upper air
through a chasm in the roof.
Lord Ashkirk paused irresolutely; for, in advancing, he might fall
upon an enemy, and in retiring, he would inevitably fall into the
water, which murmured angrily in the cavern below. The whole aspect
of this subterranean cook was wild and strange; and though he stooped
immediately over the red embers that gleamed on a shelf of basalt,
the intruder failed to discover his features.
Suddenly, something familiar in the attitude flashed upon his memory.
"Sabrino!" he exclaimed, and approached him.
Sabrino--for this mysterious personage was no other--turned round,
and bounded backward with a terror which was ludicrously expressed by
the blue aspect of his usually sable visage, his dilated yellow eyes
and expansive mouth, in the recesses of which he rolled about the
voiceless fragment of his mutilated tongue.
"O--ah!" he stuttered, capering with terror, "O--ah--ees a-mee!"
"Now, by St. Mary! I thought thee the devil himself roasting some
poor man's child. Why art thou not attending my mother in that
rascally old tower above us? How camest thou to be hiding thus, and
in a condition so dilapidated? But, first of all, how is my Lady
Sybil--tush! I waste my time in questioning thee, poor pagan, who
art incapable of Christian speech."
As Sabrino's whole vocabulary consisted of a few guttural sounds, a
vast number of contortions of visage and shark-like grins, which were
seldom very intelligible to any one save the countess or Lady Jane,
who had acquired a knowledge of his meaning by habit, an answer to
the earl's three questions was not to be expected. After his first
terror and the extravagance of his after-joy had subsided, his story,
if he could have told it, might have been related in a few words.
The blow inflicted by the oar had neither killed nor stunned him;
for, luckily, that portion of his frame whereon it fell, namely, his
head, was stronger, by nature, than a casque of steel; thus, he
merely sank to come up again a few yards distant; but he dared
neither to swim after the boat, nor return to the tower where his
mistress was imprisoned, and from which he had been so
unceremoniously repulsed. Full of hatred and fear of the white men
among whom his evil fortune had cast him, the unhappy black page had
found this shelter when pursuing a rabbit by moonlight among the
rocks. Externally, a thick clump of whin-bushes concealed the
fissure that gave admittance to this upper grotto, where, for
fourteen days, Sabrino had lurked, coming forth only at night to pick
up fuel and shell-fish, crabs, mussels, whelks, and other _debris_ of
the ocean on the beach, and to catch the wild rabbits as they slept
among the long reedy grass in the moonlight.
During the day he remained close in his retreat; for he knew well
that Sir James Hamilton's men in the tower would have thought as
little of shooting him, by bow or arquebuse, as of winging a Solan
goose.
In these fourteen days, much of the original savageism of the
African's aspect and disposition had returned. He looked wild,
haggard, and strange, as his glassy eyeballs, and the gold earrings
with which the countess had adorned his large ears, glittered in the
light of the embers. On his thick woolly head was a cap or crown,
which he had woven of seaweed, and ornamented with the crabs' claws
and the cockleshells of his late repasts; his once gay doublet of
white satin slashed with scarlet silk and laced with gold, his tight
white hose and trunk breeches, together with the metallic collar of
thrall, which had the Countess Margaret's arms and cipher engraved
thereon, were all wofully changed in aspect, the former being torn to
rags, and the latter encrusted with salt by the saline atmosphere of
the Firth.
All this and much more the poor mute endeavoured to explain by signs,
which were totally unintelligible to the Earl of Ashkirk; who,
however, understood one point of the narrative, the necessity of
remaining closely concealed.
As Sabrino, to avoid discovery, had to cook all his viands in the
night, another rabbit was put to the spit before his fire, on which
he threw some of the driftwood and dried seaweed procured from the
creek; and there can be little doubt that the glow of this
subterranean fire, appearing at times through the fissure in the
rocks that bounded the western side of the little valley, formed the
gleams of fairy light, which were the source of such alarm to the
countess.
Her outlawed son made a hearty meal, which passed for both supper and
breakfast, as by the time it was concluded Sabrino had carefully
extinguished his fire, for morning had dawned, and the beams of the
rising sun shone far into the lower cavern, glittering on its wet
walls, and casting their reflection on its slimy recesses. The tide,
which in full flow completely filled it, had now ebbed; but there
were many fathoms of water, dark and deep, in the chasm where the
earl's boat lay floating, swamped and brimful to the gunwale; and the
task of baling it with his bonnet, for lack of another vessel, was a
long and protracted one.
"Now, my friend Sabrino," said he, "dost thou know what has brought
me to this rascally island?"
A knowing leer glittered in the shining eyes of Sabrino; and pointing
to the tower, he kissed his hand, laid it on his heart, and then
pointed to the water.
"Thou art right: to take my black-eyed Sybil from that villanous
prison-house. By my faith, thou wouldst make a glorious lover! what
a bright leer thou gavest! I would give a hundred golden unicorns to
find a sable Venus for thee, my poor Sabrino; and who knoweth, but
through the kind offices of the prior of Torphichen and other knights
of Rhodes, I may do so. Now, dost thou know in what part of yonder
tower Lady Sybil Douglas and the good lady my mother dwell?" asked
the earl, pointing to the castle of the Inch, from the whin-bushes
which screened the entrance to their hiding-place, and faced the
little valley overlooked by the island fortress, and the winding path
which ascended to it. "Not those chambers which overhang the ocean,
I hope?" he added, anxiously.
Sabrino nodded his head sorrowfully.
"Ah! twenty furies! dost thou say so? How shall I ever reach them,
unless I become a hoodie-crow or a Solan goose? Do they ever walk in
the valley?"
Sabrino nodded again.
"Close to these rocks--eh?"
Sabrino shook his woolly head.
"Are they guarded? The devil! thou noddest thy head again. Indeed,
this wary old trooper, Barncleugh, keeps a sure watch over them. By
Satan's horns! I may mar his wardship yet. Do he or they know that
thou art here?"
Another shake of the head replied in the negative.
"Sabrino, my dark-complexioned friend, listen and look; open thy huge
eyes, prick up thy capacious ears, and attend to me. To-night I will
scale that castle wall, and thou shalt assist me."
"Ees."
"I have observed that the windows on that side are not barred,
because they overlook the water. Thou wilt clamber, and not be
afraid?"
"Ees--ees," replied the negro, capering about.
"But we may be shot by the arquebuses of the watchmen."
"O--ah!" howled Sabrino, scratching his woolly head.
"But do not let that affright thee, my Ethiopian; for it hath been
the hap of better men before us. An unlucky cannon slew King James
II. at Roxburgh, at the very moment he was passing a jest with my
gallant grandsire. What matters it whether we are shot now, or die
quietly twenty years after this, for in the twenty-first year time
would be all the same with us, at least so far as I am concerned
personally; but I have it imperatively upon my mind to send certain
Hamiltons to the other world before me, ere I can give up the ghost
in peace."
The eyes of the negro gleamed, and he laid his hand on his dagger.
"How readily thou snuffest blood, my sable devil. I doubt not thou
gottest it with thy mother's milk; for, among the knights of
Torphichen, I have heard it said, that in the far-away land from
whence thou camest, a child receives its first food on a spear, even
as our fierce clansmen in the north give the young Celt his first
food on the point of his father's claymore. Well, then, listen.
Thou seest the wall of yonder barbican, all grey, weatherbeaten, and
tufted with grass; well, where that wall joins the tower, I will
ascend, and so reach the windows of their apartment. Thou starest.
Ah, my friend, thou knowest not my capabilities in the climbing way.
I have done as much before for the mere love of life, and shall I not
do thrice as much again for the love of Sybil Douglas, who is dearer
to me than a thousand lives?"
The negro clapped his hands, lolled out the fragment of his tongue,
and danced about to the jangle of his long earrings, which clanked on
his metallic collar.
Being naturally at all times of a sociable and convivial turn, the
young earl, to while away the time, talked constantly to the poor
mute, gravely and with drollery by turns, amusing himself with his
childish wonder and savage simplicity, for they served to pass the
otherwise dreary day; and gladly Ashkirk beheld the sun sink, and the
hour for more active employment draw near.