On the very day after the birth of Alwyn's heir something strange
occurred: a large flight of curious seagulls alighted in the park around
Dunallan Towers. No one had ever remembered seeing such weird-looking
birds there before, and Janet had averred that their arrival betokened
no good. She was not wrong, for that same night it came on to blow from
the north, oh, such a fearful gale! Many of the tallest and sturdiest
trees were torn up by the roots, and even tossed about, and the Towers
shook and trembled as if the very earth were quaking. It was eerisome
to hear, at the dark midnight hour, the shriek of frightened wild birds
around the house, high above the fitful roaring of the wind.
The Nith, too, came down "in spate;" they could see its white flashing
waters, nearly close up to the window of the red parlour in which I now
am sitting at work. It brought along with it from the mountains, fallen
trees, bushes, heather-clad turf, and boulders of solid rock, tons and
tons in weight.
All that night the storm raged, and though the wind went down about
sunrise, the terrible rain still fell, and the river continued in raging
spate. Great was the damage done to the lower-lying lands seawards;
huts and even houses were laid low, sheep and cattle were drowned and
borne away, so great is the fury and strength of a Highland river like
the Nith when it "comes down," as the people phrase it.
But the sun shone forth at length, and the clouds went driving
southwards, leaving lovely rifts of blue between them, and the rain
ceased, and the poor people of the glens came forth to view the work of
devastation and to mourn their losses.
One of these, while walking in the park and not far from the mansion
house, found, crouching under the gnarled root of an old tree, and
gazing up at him with its bright crimson eye, or rather first with one
eye then with the other, a snow-white gull of most graceful form. [Note
1.]
He caught it--one wing was injured--and brought it round to the kitchen,
where it was much admired and tenderly cared for. In little over a week
it seemed as well and strong as it must have been before the storm. Yet
it was in no hurry to leave.
It stayed on and on and on, and became as tame as a dove, and most
affectionate to all it knew. But to Janet in particular it attached
itself. One day it followed her into the room where Alwyn's heir lay in
his little crib. Janet showed him the bird. He smiled and stretched
out his arms with a fond cry, and next moment the snow-bird was nestling
quietly on his breast.
There was no keeping the gull out of Claude's room after this, so it
came to be called "baby's bird."
When Claude Alwyn was about three years of age, an event happened down
the glen that cast that gloom on Dunallan Towers that never yet has left
it: Lord Alwyn was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. Her
ladyship left the glen after this, and went south, and Claude,
childlike, would insist on taking his pet along with him.
Years flew by, summers passed and winters passed, but smoke was hardly
ever seen to hover over the Towers. Then one day the old steward came
down to the village all a-quiver with excitement. He wanted tradesmen
of all kinds to come forthwith to the mansion house. Lady Alwyn and
young Claude--now grown a great lad, the steward felt sure of this--were
to return in less than a month.
Smoke enough now began to curl high over turret and tree; even the rooks
seemed to feel the importance of the coming occasion, and positively
crowed themselves hoarse.
At the appointed time the family carriage, a very stately and gigantic
kind of a concern, rattled up the long avenue through the park, and soon
after the widow of Lord Alwyn was once more Lady of the Towers. She was
greatly altered. Though still young and youthful in appearance, sorrow
had stamped itself on her brow and saddened her eye. It was said that
she seldom smiled.
But she was even kinder to the poor of the district than she had been in
the days of yore, and, wet day or dry day, she was never missed from the
pew in church of a Sunday. And beside her always sat a sturdy
bright-faced boy of about thirteen, with blue eyes, and short
irrepressible locks of soft fair hair, that nothing on earth except
scissors could have kept from tumbling over his brow. He was always
dressed in the Highland garb as Highland lads ought to be, but his
jacket was of black velvet and his kilt of the sombrest coloured tartan.
He was the favourite of every one on the estate, and so was his bird.
Wherever young Claude--he was seldom called Lord Claude, because he did
not like to be--wherever he went his snow-bird went as well.
And Claude was quite as fond of his pet as his pet was of him, and that
was the secret of his success in taming this wild and strangely
beautiful creature.
Only those who have seen the snow-bird in its own country, sailing
around great icebergs or glittering glaciers, its plumage rivalling the
snow in the purity of its whiteness, its shape more graceful than that
of a swallow, can have any idea of the extreme loveliness of the
creature. No wonder that the humble people of the glens, deeply imbued
as they were with that superstition peculiar to the Highland peasantry,
often looked upon young Claude and his matchless bird with something
akin to awe.
"It is his good angel and nothing else," one old crone used to remark,
"his good angel, Heaven bless the bonnie boy."
Yes, and a bonnie boy he looked at all times. Had you seen him
standing, alpenstock in hand, dressed in Highland garb, on the brow of a
hill, well defined against the sky, up to which his face was turned, and
in which the snow-bird kept sailing and sailing, following every motion
of Claude's upstretched, waving arm, you could not have helped admiring
him.
Claude spent much of his time fishing or shooting, but more particularly
the former. Little he recked if the fish did not bite. He would then
throw himself on his back among the ferns and flowers on the banks of
the stream and pull out his "Burns" or his "Scott." Meanwhile the
snow-bird would perch upon a mossy boulder, or water-washed stone, and
watch for the tiny troutlets, which sought for shelter and sunshine in
the shallower water.
Young lord though he was, Claude was a "people's boy." It would be an
exaggeration of speech to say that any of the villagers would have died
for him; but it is true that Claude brightened every doorstep he
crossed. And this too, all and only, by means of his own handsome face,
sunny smile, and kindly words. Not that he did not bring the poor folks
gifts, for he was often sent on errands of mercy by his mother, and he
brought them also of his own accord many a goodly string of trout.
In a wild country like that in which our young hero dwelt and wandered,
there are many dangers to life and limb, and Claude did not always
escape quite scot-free. But when, on rushing down a lofty hillside
once, he missed his foothold and fell over a crag full fifty feet high,
he did not lose his presence of mind, but simply jumped up from the soft
turf on which he had alighted, as if on a feather bed, and looked around
for his bonnet, which he never saw again. The old shepherd who
witnessed the involuntary exploit, told of it all over the parish, and
the wise women alleged it was the bird that had saved him. When
Claude's gun burst in his hand and he escaped without a scratch, that
too was in some way owing to the bird's protecting care. When a branch
on which he was leaning snapped beneath his weight and precipitated
Claude into the roaring, foaming torrent beneath, where any one save a
Webb would have been drowned, and when bleeding and cut he safely
scrambled out, who but the bird, averred the wise old women, helped him
out?
Claude rather encouraged than otherwise the belief in the supernatural
powers of this wonderful snow-bird of his. Rather mischievous of him,
it must be confessed, but then he was only a boy.
"My bird tells me I must do this or that," he would often say; or, "I
must consult my bird on that subject."
Then he would pretend to hold communication with it, and the creature
looked as though it understood every word he said. During the winter,
Claude used to be at a distant school. Then his bird stayed at the
Towers; but, although it suffered itself to be fed and petted by Lady
Alwyn and by Janet, it did little else but mope until spring returned,
and with it Claude.
The library at Dunallan Towers was a very large one, and Claude had the
choosing of his own summer reading after forenoon lessons were over, and
the books he took with him afield were always those of adventure, or
some of the poets. It was often remarked that he never invited any of
his tutors to accompany him in his rambles--only the bird.
"Mother," said Claude one evening, "I'm going to be a sailor."
"Dear boy," replied his mother, "what has put such a notion in your
head?"
"My bird, perhaps, mother," said the boy, smiling.
"No, Claude, but those books you pore over. Dear boy, hardly half of
what you read bears any resemblance to the truth."
"Oh, mother," cried the boy, "if only one _half_ is true I must go and
see that half I'm a good sailor already; you know how I enjoyed that
voyage down the Mediterranean. I dream of all I saw even till this day.
Mother, I must go to sea.
"Mother," he said again, after a long pause, during which Lady Alwyn was
musing, and very sad and gloomy were her thoughts--"mother, do you know
where my bird came from?"
"It came from the wild mysterious region around the Pole."
"Yes, I have been reading about that too, reading about it until I seem
to have spent years and years of my life in the country. I have but to
shut my eyes, any time I wish, and such pictures rise up before me as
few but sailors ever see the reality of."
Young Claude placed one hand across his eyes as he spoke.
"Here it is again, mother, a vast and lonely trackless waste of snow;
great glaciers, against whose sides mountain waves for ever dash and
foam; icebergs whose pinnacled heads taper upwards into a sky of
cloudless blue. Fields of ice on which white bears roam; dark, inky
seas where the walrus plays and tumbles, and through which the
solitude-loving narwhal pursues his finny prey; and crystalline caves
where sea-bears roar. But the scene is changed: it is night--the long,
long, Polar night. Oh, how bright and beautiful the Aurora, with its
ever-changing tints of crimson, green, and blue; and the stars, how near
they seem; and the silence, how deep, how awful! But see, a storm is
coming across the pack, and clouds are banking up and hiding the
glorious Aurora; now it is on us, and higher than the stars rise the
clouds of whirling, drifting snow. Hark! how the wind howls! There is
danger on its wings; there is--"
"Stop, boy, stop?" cried Lady Alwyn, laying her hand on his arm. "Speak
not thus; you frighten me."
There were tears in her eyes. Claude made haste to soothe her.
"Dear mother, forgive me!" he cried. "I am so thoughtless; but I will
not transgress so again. Forgive and forget it."
"You are all I have on earth to care for," she said, drawing him gently
towards her; "but, Claude, your happiness has always been, and ever will
be, my first, my chief care. Yes, I will forgive your heedless words.
You did not mean to hurt me; but, Claude,"--here she smiled, but it was
a very sad smile--"I will not quite forget them. You love the sea."
Lady Alwyn retired early to her room that evening, but it was long past
midnight ere she slept. Her last thoughts ere slumber sealed her
eyelids were these--
"And so my boy, even my boy, will be taken away from me. He will be a
sailor; it is his bent, and why should I do aught that would mar his
happiness? Heaven give me strength to bear my every trial here below,
nor forget that on earth I have `no continuing city.'"
Lady Alwyn was rich, though not surpassingly so. She could afford her
boy a yacht, in which he made many a cruise as owner--not as master--
round the British islands and as far north as the Shetlands; indeed more
than once they ventured over to Norway.
And so Claude grew up a sailor, so to speak. The smaller yacht gave
place to a larger, and still a larger; and in a few years, when young
Lord Alwyn had reached his twentieth year, he commanded, as well as
owned, his ship himself.
About this time an event occurred that in a great measure altered the
old tenor of Claude's life, and that of his mother too, and on this
event our story hinges.
In none of his cruises did his snow-bird accompany its master. Lady
Alwyn was glad of this. "So long," she thought, "as the bird stays with
me, my boy will return safely from sea."
It will be seen that even Lady Alwyn was slightly superstitious.
And Claude's cruises were ever northwards. He had been several times to
Iceland itself, and one day he meant to make a far longer and much more
adventurous voyage. In the words of the old Norse song, it appeared as
though--
"Nought around howe'er so bright
Could win his stay or stop his flight
From where he saw the Pole-star's light
Shine o'er the north."
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Note 1. Probably the arctic tern or snow-bird, which is hardly ever
seen below the latitude of Iceland.