Die, prophet! in thy speech;
For this, among the rest, was I ordained.
Henry VI. Part III.
The progress of the Borderer, who, as we have said, was the last of the
party, was fearfully arrested by a hand, which caught hold of his leg as
he dragged his long limbs after him in silence and perturbation through
the low and narrow entrance of the subterranean passage. The steel heart
of the bold yeoman had well-nigh given way, and he suppressed with
difficulty a shout, which, in the defenceless posture and situation which
they then occupied, might have cost all their lives. He contented
himself, however, with extricating his foot from the grasp of this
unexpected follower. ‘Be still,’ said a voice behind him, releasing him;
‘I am a friend--Charles Hazlewood.’
These words were uttered in a very low voice, but they produced sound
enough to startle Meg Merrilies, who led the van, and who, having already
gained the place where the cavern expanded, had risen upon her feet. She
began, as if to confound any listening ear, to growl, to mutter, and to
sing aloud, and at the same time to make a bustle among some brushwood
which was now heaped in the cave.
‘Here, beldam, deyvil’s kind,’ growled the harsh voice of Dirk Hatteraick
from the inside of his den, ‘what makest thou there?’
‘Laying the roughies to keep the cauld wind frae you, ye desperate
do-nae-good. Ye’re e’en ower weel off, and wotsna; it will be otherwise
soon.’
‘Have you brought me the brandy, and any news of my people?’ said Dirk
Hatteraick.
‘There’s the flask for ye. Your people--dispersed, broken, gone, or cut
to ribbands by the redcoats.’
‘Der deyvil! this coast is fatal to me.’
‘Ye may hae mair reason to say sae.’
While this dialogue went forward, Bertram and Dinmont had both gained the
interior of the cave and assumed an erect position. The only light which
illuminated its rugged and sable precincts was a quantity of wood burnt
to charcoal in an iron grate, such as they use in spearing salmon by
night. On these red embers Hatteraick from time to time threw a handful
of twigs or splintered wood; but these, even when they blazed up,
afforded a light much disproportioned to the extent of the cavern; and,
as its principal inhabitant lay upon the side of the grate most remote
from the entrance, it was not easy for him to discover distinctly objects
which lay in that direction. The intruders, therefore, whose number was
now augmented unexpectedly to three, stood behind the loosely-piled
branches with little risk of discovery. Dinmont had the sense to keep
back Hazlewood with one hand till he whispered to Bertram, ‘A
friend--young Hazlewood.’
It was no time for following up the introduction, and they all stood as
still as the rocks around them, obscured behind the pile of brushwood,
which had been probably placed there to break the cold wind from the sea,
without totally intercepting the supply of air. The branches were laid so
loosely above each other that, looking through them towards the light of
the fire-grate, they could easily discover what passed in its vicinity,
although a much stronger degree of illumination than it afforded would
not have enabled the persons placed near the bottom of the cave to have
descried them in the position which they occupied.
The scene, independent of the peculiar moral interest and personal danger
which attended it, had, from the effect of the light and shade on the
uncommon objects which it exhibited, an appearance emphatically dismal.
The light in the fire-grate was the dark-red glare of charcoal in a state
of ignition, relieved from time to time by a transient flame of a more
vivid or duskier light, as the fuel with which Dirk Hatteraick fed his
fire was better or worse fitted for his purpose. Now a dark cloud of
stifling smoke rose up to the roof of the cavern, and then lighted into a
reluctant and sullen blaze, which flashed wavering up the pillar of
smoke, and was suddenly rendered brighter and more lively by some drier
fuel, or perhaps some splintered fir-timber, which at once converted the
smoke into flame. By such fitful irradiation they could see, more or less
distinctly, the form of Hatteraick, whose savage and rugged cast of
features, now rendered yet more ferocious by the circumstances of his
situation and the deep gloom of his mind, assorted well with the rugged
and broken vault, which rose in a rude arch over and around him. The form
of Meg Merrilies, which stalked about him, sometimes in the light,
sometimes partially obscured in the smoke or darkness, contrasted
strongly with the sitting figure of Hatteraick as he bent over the flame,
and from his stationary posture was constantly visible to the spectator,
while that of the female flitted around, appearing or disappearing like a
spectre.
Bertram felt his blood boil at the sight of Hatteraick. He remembered him
well under the name of Jansen, which the smuggler had adopted after the
death of Kennedy; and he remembered also that this Jansen, and his mate
Brown, the same who was shot at Woodbourne, had been the brutal tyrants
of his infancy. Bertram knew farther, from piecing his own imperfect
recollections with the narratives of Mannering and Pleydell, that this
man was the prime agent in the act of violence which tore him from his
family and country, and had exposed him to so many distresses and
dangers. A thousand exasperating reflections rose within his bosom; and
he could hardly refrain from rushing upon Hatteraick and blowing his
brains out.
At the same time this would have been no safe adventure. The flame, as it
rose and fell, while it displayed the strong, muscular, and broad-chested
frame of the ruffian, glanced also upon two brace of pistols in his belt,
and upon the hilt of his cutlass: it was not to be doubted that his
desperation was commensurate with his personal strength and means of
resistance. Both, indeed, were inadequate to encounter the combined power
of two such men as Bertram himself and his friend Dinmont, without
reckoning their unexpected assistant Hazlewood, who was unarmed, and of a
slighter make; but Bertram felt, on a moment’s reflection, that there
would be neither sense nor valour in anticipating the hangman’s office,
and he considered the importance of making Hatteraick prisoner alive. He
therefore repressed his indignation, and awaited what should pass between
the ruffian and his gipsy guide.
‘And how are ye now?’ said the harsh and discordant tones of his female
attendant.’ Said I not, it would come upon you--ay, and in this very
cave, where ye harboured after the deed?’
‘Wetter and sturm, ye hag!’ replied Hatteraick, ‘keep your deyvil’s
matins till they’re wanted. Have you seen Glossin?’
‘No,’ replied Meg Merrilies; ‘you’ve missed your blow, ye blood-spiller!
and ye have nothing to expect from the tempter.’
‘Hagel!’ exclaimed the ruffian, ‘if I had him but by the throat! And what
am I to do then?’
‘Do?’ answered the gipsy; ‘die like a man, or be hanged like a dog!’
‘Hanged, ye hag of Satan! The hemp’s not sown that shall hang me.’
‘It’s sown, and it’s grown, and it’s heckled, and it’s twisted. Did I not
tell ye, when ye wad take away the boy Harry Bertram, in spite of my
prayers,--did I not say he would come back when he had dree’d his weird
in foreign land till his twenty-first year? Did I not say the auld fire
would burn down to a spark, but wad kindle again?’
‘Well, mother, you did say so,’ said Hatteraick, in a tone that had
something of despair in its accents; ‘and, donner and blitzen! I believe
you spoke the truth. That younker of Ellangowan has been a rock ahead to
me all my life! And now, with Glossin’s cursed contrivance, my crew have
been cut off, my boats destroyed, and I daresay the lugger’s taken; there
were not men enough left on board to work her, far less to fight her--a
dredge-boat might have taken her. And what will the owners say? Hagel and
sturm! I shall never dare go back again to Flushing.’
‘You’ll never need,’ said the gipsy.
‘What are you doing there,’ said her companion; ‘and what makes you say
that?’
During this dialogue Meg was heaping some flax loosely together. Before
answer to this question she dropped a firebrand upon the flax, which had
been previously steeped in some spirituous liquor, for it instantly
caught fire and rose in a vivid pyramid of the most brilliant light up to
the very top of the vault. As it ascended Meg answered the ruffian’s
question in a firm and steady voice: ‘BECAUSE THE HOUR’S COME, AND THE
MAN.’
At the appointed signal Bertram and Dinmont sprung over the brushwood and
rushed upon Hatteraick. Hazlewood, unacquainted with their plan of
assault, was a moment later. The ruffian, who instantly saw he was
betrayed, turned his first vengeance on Meg Merrilies, at whom he
discharged a pistol. She fell with a piercing and dreadful cry between
the shriek of pain and the sound of laughter when at its highest and most
suffocating height. ‘I kenn’d it would be this way,’ she said.
Bertram, in his haste, slipped his foot upon the uneven rock which
floored the cave--a fortunate stumble, for Hatteraick’s second bullet
whistled over him with so true and steady an aim that, had he been
standing upright, it must have lodged in his brain. Ere the smuggler
could draw another pistol, Dinmont closed with him, and endeavoured by
main force to pinion down his arms. Such, however, was the wretch’s
personal strength, joined to the efforts of his despair, that, in spite
of the gigantic force with which the Borderer grappled him, he dragged
Dinmont through the blazing flax, and had almost succeeded in drawing a
third pistol, which might have proved fatal to the honest farmer, had not
Bertram, as well as Hazlewood, come to his assistance, when, by main
force, and no ordinary exertion of it, they threw Hatteraick on the
ground, disarmed him, and bound him. This scuffle, though it takes up
some time in the narrative, passed in less than a single minute. When he
was fairly mastered, after one or two desperate and almost convulsionary
struggles, the ruffian lay perfectly still and silent. ‘He’s gaun to die
game ony how,’ said Dinmont; ‘weel, I like him na the waur for that.’
This observation honest Dandie made while he was shaking the blazing flax
from his rough coat and shaggy black hair, some of which had been singed
in the scuffle. ‘He is quiet now,’ said Bertram; ‘stay by him and do not
permit him to stir till I see whether the poor woman be alive or dead.’
With Hazlewood’s assistance he raised Meg Merrilies.
‘I kenn’d it would be this way,’ she muttered, ‘and it’s e’en this way
that it should be.’
The ball had penetrated the breast below the throat. It did not bleed
much externally; but Bertram, accustomed to see gunshot wounds, thought
it the more alarming. ‘Good God! what shall we do for this poor woman?’
said he to Hazlewood, the circumstances superseding the necessity of
previous explanation or introduction to each other.
‘My horse stands tied above in the wood,’ said Hazlewood. ‘I have been
watching you these two hours. I will ride off for some assistants that
may be trusted. Meanwhile, you had better defend the mouth of the cavern
against every one until I return.’ He hastened away. Bertram, after
binding Meg Merrilies’s wound as well as he could, took station near the
mouth of the cave with a cocked pistol in his hand; Dinmont continued to
watch Hatteraick, keeping a grasp like that of Hercules on his breast.
There was a dead silence in the cavern, only interrupted by the low and
suppressed moaning of the wounded female and by the hard breathing of the
prisoner.