THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS.
The broad, flat table-top of the Bennan summit spread out before me like
an exercise ground for troops or a racecourse for horses.
Yet not all barren or desolate, for here and there among the grey
granite peeped forth the bloom of the young heather, making a livelier
purple amid the burnt brown of the short grass, which in its turn was
diversified by the vivid emerald green circling the “quacking-quaas” or
bottomless moss-holes of the bogs beneath.
Now this is what I saw, lying on my face, with no more than my chin set
over the edge--two men in tattered, peat-stained clothing running for
their lives towards the edge of the little plateau farthest from me.
Between me and them twenty or thirty dragoons were urging their horses
forward in pursuit, weaving this way and that among the soft lairy
places, and as many more whose steeds had stuck fast in the moss were
coursing the fugitives on foot as though the poor men had been beasts of
the field.
Every now and then one of the pursuers would stop, set his musket to his
shoulder and blaze away with a loud report and a drift of white smoke,
shouting joyously as at a rare jest whether he hit or missed. And I
thought that the poor lads would make good their escape with such sorry
marksmen. But even whilst I was putting up a prayer for them as I lay
panting upon the manifest edge, a chance shot struck the smaller and
more slender of the wanderers. He stumbled, poor wretch, and fell
forward upon his face. Then, mastering himself, and recognising his
grievous case and how much of mercy he had to look for if his enemies
came up with him, his strong spirit for an instant conquered his bodily
hurt.
He rose immediately, set his hands one over the other upon his side,
doubtless to stay the welling gap the bullet had riven there, and ran
yet more determinedly after his companion. But close to the further
verge his power went from him. His companion halted and would have come
back to aid him, or more likely to die with him. But the wounded man
threw out his hand in vehement protest.
“Run, Sandy,” he cried, so loudly and eagerly that I could easily hear
him through all the shouting and pother. “It will do no good. I am sped.
Save yourself--God have mercy--tell Margaret----!”
But what he would have told Margaret I know not, for even then he spread
out his arms and fell forward on his face in the spongy moss.
At this his companion turned sharply and ran on by himself, finally
disappearing among the granite boulders amid a brisk crackling of the
soldiers’ pieces.
But their marksmanship was poor, for though they were near to him, what
with the breathless race and the unevenness of the ground, not a shot
took effect. Nor showed he any sign of scathe when last I saw him,
leaping nimbly from clump to clump of bent, where the green slimy moss
wet with the peat-brew keeps all soft as a quicksand, so that neither
hoof of a charger nor heavy military boot dare venture upon it, though
the bare accustomed foot of one bred to the hills may carry him across
easily enough. So the fugitive, a tall, burly man, cumbered with little
besides a doublet and short hose, disappeared out of my sight, and the
plain was bare save for the disappointed dragoons in their red coats and
the poor man left fallen on his face in the morass.
I could never see him move hand or foot after he fell; and, indeed, it
was not long that he had the chance. For even as I continued to gaze
fascinated at the scene of blood which so suddenly had broken in upon
the pastoral peace of our Kells hills, I saw a tall, dark soldier, one
evidently of some authority among them, stride up to the fallen man. He
strove to turn him over with his foot, but the moss clung, and he could
not. So without a moment’s hesitation he took a musket from the nearest
dragoon, glanced coolly at the priming of the touch, set the butt to his
shoulder, and with the muzzle within a foot shot the full charge into
the back of the prostrate man.
At this I could command myself no longer. The pursuit and the shooting
at the fugitives, even the killing when at least they had a chance for
their lives, seemed nothing to this stony-hearted butchery. I gat me up
on my feet, and in a boyish frenzy shouted curses upon the murderer.
“God shall send thee to hell for this, wicked man, black murderer that
thou art!” I cried, shaking my clenched hand, like the angry impotent
child I was.
The soldiers who were searching here and there, as it were, for more
victims among the coverts turned their heads my way and gazed, hearing
the voice but seeing no man. Others who stood upon the verge, taking
shots as fast as they could load at the man who had escaped, also
turned. I yelled at them that they were to show themselves brave
soldiers, and shoot me also. The tall, dark buirdly man in the red coat
who had fired into the wounded man cried to them “to take a shot at the
damned young Whig.” But I think the men were all too much surprised at
my bold words to do it, for none moved, so that the speaker was obliged
to snatch a pistol from his own belt, and let fly at me himself.
The whistle of the pistol ball as it sped harmlessly by waked me as from
a dream. A quick horror took me by the throat. I seemed to see myself
laid face down on the turf and the murderer of the poor wanderer pouring
shot after shot into my back. I felt my knees tremble, and it seemed (as
it often does in a nightmare) that if he pursued I should be unable to
move. But even as I saw the man in red reach for his other pistol the
power came back to my limbs.
I turned and ran without knowing it, for the next thing I remember was
the scuff of the wind about my ears as I sped recklessly down the
steepest slope, with no feeling that my feet were touching the ground at
all. I saw Ashie and Gray scouring far before me, with their tails
clapped between their legs, for I suppose that their master’s fear had
communicated itself to them. Yet all the time I knew well that a single
false step, a stumble upon a twisted root of burnt heather, a
treacherous clump of grass amid the green slime of the morass, and the
fate of the fallen martyr would be mine.
But ere I passed quite out of range I heard the rattle of a dropping
fusillade from the edge of the hill above me, as a number of the
soldiers let off their pieces at me, firing, I think, half in sport and
half from a feeling of chagrin that they had let a more important victim
escape them. I heard the _whisk-whisk_ of the balls as they flew wide,
and one whizzed past my ear and buried itself with a vicious spit in the
moss a yard or two before me as I ran--but all harmless, and soon I was
out of range. For I think it was more in cruel jest and with raffish
laughter than with any intent to harm me that the soldiers fired.
Nevertheless, my boy’s heart was full of wild fear. I had seen murder
done. The wholesome green earth was spotted black with crime. Red motes
danced in the sunshine. The sun himself in the wide blue heavens seemed
turned to blood.
Then, all suddenly, I thought of my mother, and my heart stood still. It
would soon be the hour at which it was her custom to take out victual to
the little craggy linn where my father was in hiding. So with a new
access of terror I turned towards our house of Ardarroch, and ran to
warn her of what I had seen upon the Bennan top.
I felt as I sped along that life could never be the same to me again.
From a heedless boy I had grown into a man in one unutterable hour. I
had, of course, heard much of killings, and even as a child the relation
of the cruelties of the Highland Host had impressed me so that the red
glinting of a soldier’s coat would send me into the deepest thickets of
Ardarroch wood. But it was the musket shot poured into the back of the
poor helpless lad on the Bennan that made a lifelong Covenanter of
Quintin MacClellan.