THE BOOK OF THE BOAR.
The sudden presence of Laura Everingham under my mother's roof had,
for a moment, confused and astonished me, filling me with tremulous
anxiety for the issue of their interview.
Laura was a lady-like girl, pretty rather than beautiful, and
graceful rather than dignified, with a bright sunny English eye, a
pale but interesting face, matchless hands and ankles, and a
profusion of chestnut hair. She had trembled excessively when I
presented her to my mother, whom she informed, as rapidly and
coherently as her excessive agitation would permit, that Sir Horace,
'her dear, good, kind papa, would go to the summit of the mountain in
the moonlight, in spite of all advice and the warnings of various
shepherds.'
'The old gentlemen is, aw--aw, rather nocturnal in his tastes,
madam,' yawned Mr. Snobleigh, who had been surveying the dining-room
through his glass, with great apparent curiosity and much
unmistakable depreciation; 'town habits, madam, won't suit this
parallel--aw, of north latitude.'
'And he would visit the Craig-na-tuirc,' continued Laura; 'for dear
papa is such an obstinate old thing, and we are always so afraid of
the gout flying to his head, that we never dare to cross him. Well,
we ascended that horrid mountain, and after great danger and labour
reached the shoulder or cliff, Craig-na-tuirc, I think, you name it,
just in time to see the moon rise above the hills, and a lovely moon
it was--'
'Aw--for Scotland--very!' said Mr. Snobleigh.
'We were at the very verge of the precipice, with our little ponies,
from which we had all dismounted, but dear old obstinate papa, who
would keep his saddle, when suddenly an eagle soared up, with its
huge flapping wings, from amid our feet--our wild ponies took to
flight--scampered down the mountain, and vanished; that which bore
papa accompanied them; we heard him crying piteously for help--oh,
heaven, how piteously! And then, a white stag shot past--'
'God and Mary!--a white stag?' exclaimed my mother.
'Then all became still, so frightfully still, that I heard only my
own heart beating. Oh, dear madam,' added Laura Everingham, clasping
my mother's hand, emotion lending new charms to her winning face and
manner, 'do you think there is danger?'
'Heaven alone knows; if indeed the sheltie galloped towards the Uisc
Dhu--' my mother paused, for even her strong antagonism to this fair
daughter of a man she hated, and against whom all her fierce and
antiquated Celtic prejudices were enlisted, could not withstand the
charm of Laura's winning eye; thus she left nothing unsaid to comfort
her and to soothe her terror. In this she was joined by Miss
Clavering, a fine, handsome, and showy English girl, whose beautiful
and sparkling eyes, dark hair, and nose _retroussé_, piquant manner,
and graceful _tournure_, made her, as her brother Tom Clavering, of
the Grenadier Guards, constantly affirmed, 'one of the finest girls
about town,' meaning London, of course.
'And you saw a white stag?'
'Yes--white as snow,' answered the girls, together.
'Dhia!' exclaimed my mother; 'if it should be the white stag of Loch
Ora!'
'Why--what then?'
'It is said to be enchanted--it never dies, and never appears but as
a harbinger of evil!'
'Heavens, dear madam, don't say so, pray!' urged Laura, weeping
bitterly, and here Callum Dhu and I left them.
Followed by Captain Tom Clavering and his friend, Mr. Adolphus
Frederick Snobleigh, who, with their glazed boots, scarlet shirts,
and blue neckties, tight pantaloons, pomaded locks, and bandolined
moustaches, were scarcely accoutred for ascending the sides of Ben
Ora at midnight, over heather ankle-deep, and drenched in dew, or
over--
'Crags, knolls and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.'
Callum Dhu and I hastened round the base of the mountain, and sought
the Craig-na-tuirc for traces of the missing stranger. The moon was
clear and bright, though obscured at times by fleecy cloudlets, and
we soon reached the summit of the steep craig, or _Rock of the Boar_,
and saw the wild glens and savage peaks of the western Highlands
bounding the view on every side, while at our feet lay Loch nan
Spiordan, or the Lake of Spirits, which was haunted by the
water-horse and bull, and from which the Uisc Dhu, or _black stream_,
brawled through a hundred rough ravines and stony chasms, into the
deep dark basin of Loch Ora. Here we paused for a few minutes.
The voice and image of Laura Everingham were still before me; for one
more fair or polished had never been beneath the roof-tree of our
mountain dwelling, and on regaining my breath, I said, with some
emotion, to Callum,
'If he has fallen into the Black Water!'--
'Well--he may turn up about Christmas-time--a bag of bones, stranded
on the margin of the loch,' was the grim response.
'And we allowed him to ascend--what will people say?'
'There will be none here to say anything,' was the sharp response;
'by that time Glen Ora will be desolate--its people gone to the
shores of the Far West, and the warm hearths where they sit now, will
be silent, cold, and grassy.'
'But the Englishman's daughter, Callum?'
'Let her weep to the night wind, and it will hear her, as it has
often heard our women weep, when the roofs were torn down and the
fires extinguished; when the cabers were tossed upon the heath, and
the cottagers were driven in fetters to the shore, like slaves for
market.'
'But his daughter is beautiful.'
'Dioul! do _you_ begin to think so?'
'Fair, delicate, and gentle, too, Callum,' I urged, warming a little.
'But what of that? she is a stranger, and not one of us! It was not
at such dainty breasts as hers that Lachlan Mohr, who could twist a
horse-shoe, or Angus your ancestor, or Alisdair Mac Coll Keitach, who
could cleave men from beard to breeks, were suckled.'
'What the deuce does all this matter? I would rather have a silver
pound in my pocket than a pedigree an ell long; but wind your horn,
and then let us shout.'
Callum blew his horn, but the echoes of the rocks alone replied in
prolonged reverberations to the sound. Then we shouted together, and
again the echoes were our sole reply. The more I thought of the fair
and timid girl now at my mother's house, the more anxious I felt for
her father's fate.
Myriads of stars were mirrored in the lone and deep blue Loch of the
Spirits, a thousand feet below us, and as we traversed the beetling
cliff, the stones we disengaged, rolled over and plashed into the
water, with a dull faint sound that was long in ascending to the ear.
'By the Black Stone of Scone,' said Callum, with a Highland grin, 'if
the stranger _has_ gone over here on the sheltie, he will have a
skinful of cold water by this time.'
'For heaven's sake, don't say so, Callum!'
'Why not?' returned my companion, tartly; 'his first threat, on
coming among us, was to put me in prison, because a deer-hide was
found in my hut; if he has gone over the Craig-na-tuirc it was his
own fate, and you know our proverb--Ni droch dhuine dan na fein!
_Me_ in prison, indeed! I swore that I found the deer drowned in the
moss, though I shot him at the waterfall, and a brave animal he
was--thirty-four stone weight--devil an ounce less, after the
gralloch was out of him; so every man in the glen had a savoury
supper that night. Must _we_ starve, while the Englishman and the
Lowlander have sport enough and to spare, and when the poor are
driven mad by the depredations of the game on the crops?'
'Hark! I hear voices!'
Turning in the direction from whence they proceeded, we met Captain
Clavering and his companion, the exquisite Mr. Snobleigh, who had
just succeeded in overtaking us, breathless, and in great anxiety for
Sir Horace.
'It was in _that_ direction Sir Horace was carried by his pony,' said
the captain, pointing westward down the rocks.
'Dioul! that is straight for the linn of Glen-dhu-uisc (the glen of
the black water), and if so, God save him!' added Callum, touching
his bonnet, 'for his bones--before _we_ find them--will have been
picked white as china by the gled and iolar. However, let us do what
we can, Mac Innon,' he added, hastening onward, his natural kindness
of heart penetrating the crust of prejudice and animosity with which
he had resolved to protect it from any emotion of sympathy for the
new possessor of our lands.
'The mountain sheltie went like lightning,' said Captain Clavering;
'its hoofs struck fire from the rocks at every bound.'
'Aw--yes,' added his companion, the great head of the dynasty of
Snobleigh; 'I daresay the poor baronet thought himself astride one of
Scott's demmed water kelpies.'
The roar of the cataract, formed by the Uisc Dhu forcing its way
through a chasm, and rolling over a ledge of rocks into Loch Ora, now
broke the solemn stillness of the midnight hills. We reached a
plateau of rock, which overhung the fall, and we felt it trembling
and vibrating in the concussion of the waters, which roared and
rushed in one broad, ceaseless, and snow-white torrent, into a deep
dark pool below. Its height was startling; its sides bristled with
ghastly rocks, and these were fringed by tangled masses of green
shrubbery and wild plants. Glittering in the moonlight like dew, or
a continual shower of revolving diamonds, the transparent foam arose
from the profundity into which the descending waters bellowed, and
beyond which they swept away round the mountain in placid silence,
forming Loch Ora, where the black ouzel and the wild swan floated in
the radiance of the summer moon.
Captain Clavering appeared to be impressed by this majestic scene,
but his companion, a restless Londoner, prattled and talked, and ever
and anon shouted 'Sir Horace!' in the voice of a peacock proclaiming
rain.
'Stay; I hear something,' said I; 'it comes from yonder rock.'
'No, no,' replied Callum, hastily; 'do not say so--that is Sien Sluai
(the dwelling of a multitude). Often when my father was benighted,
he has seen lights glitter there, and heard the sound of music,
dancing feet, and merry little voices.'
A moment after, we heard a lamentable cry, that was quite different
from the echoes.
'Good heaven!' exclaimed Captain Clavering, 'there is some one over
the fall--or _in it_. Did you not hear a voice? There it is again!'
'Dioul! I have heard it twice already, but thought it was a hart
roaring in the forest,' said Callum; 'and here are the hoofmarks of a
pony, fresh in the turf, at the very edge of the Fall.'
'Help!' cried a piteous voice, which ascended from the abyss beneath
us, and sounded above the hiss and roar of the hurrying waters;
'help, in the name of the blessed God!'
'Merciful heaven, it is Sir Horace!' exclaimed Captain Clavering,
peering over.
'Aw--aw, good gwacious--gwacious goodness! aw-aw, what a dreadful
situation!' added Snobleigh, aghast.
Upon a ledge of rock that jutted over the fall about twenty feet
below the plateau on which we stood, lay the unfortunate baronet,
crouching in a place where the beetling rocks rose above him, and
where they descended sheer below to a depth which the eye and mind
shrank from contemplating. His pony had become unmanageable, or
disliked the severity with which it was whipped and spurred; thus on
getting the bit between its teeth, it scoured along the terrible
ridge of the Craig-na-tuirc like the wind, and rushed headlong
towards the cascade. In deadly terror, the portly baronet had thrown
himself off this fierce and shaggy little charger, but too late; he
was just at the edge of the fall over which the pony went headlong
like a flying Pegasus. Desperately Sir Horace clung to the bracken
and heather on the verge of the chasm; but both gave way, and he
toppled over!--sight, sound, hearing, and sensation left him as he
fell into the abyss, believing all was over; but the sharp, cool,
smoky spray revived him, and on recovering, he found himself safely
and softly shelved on a turf-covered ledge of rock, from which an
ascent unaided was totally impracticable, as the cliff above him was
a sheer wall of twenty feet high; and a safe descent was equally
impossible, for below, two hundred feet and more, pouring like
ceaseless thunder, the cascade roared, boomed, boiled, and whirled;
he shut his eyes, and for the first time since childhood, perhaps,
endeavoured to arrange his thoughts in prayer.
Imagine the sensations of this right honourable baronet, and M.P. for
'the gentlemanly interest'--this old Regent-street lounger and
man-about-town, accustomed to all the butterfly enjoyment, the ease,
elegance, and luxury wealth can procure, and London furnish, on
finding himself at midnight in the region of old romance and much
imaginary barbarism---in the land of caterans, brownies, and bogles,
cowering like a water-rat on a narrow ledge of rock, and on the verge
of that tremendous cascade!
Prayer was difficult, new, and unnatural to him; he closed his eyes,
and after shouting hopelessly and vainly, he endeavoured not to think
at all; terror absorbed all his faculties, and now were he to live
for a thousand years he could never forget the miseries and horrors
he endured.
His senses wandered, and while the endless linn, stunning and
dashing, poured in full flood and mighty volume over the trembling
rocks, at one time he imagined himself addressing the House on the
Abjuration Oath, the Scottish Appellate Jurisdiction, or some other
equally sane and useful institution; or at the opera listening to
Mario, Alboni, or Piccolomini; now it was the voice of his daughter,
and then the laugh of his ward, Fanny Clavering. The quaint wild
stories of the Highland foresters flitted before him, and while
strange voices seemed to mingle with the ceaseless roar of that
eternal cataract; damp kelpies sprawled their long and clammy fingers
over him; paunchy imps and bearded brownies swarmed about his ears
like gnats in the moonshine; while grey spectres seemed to peer and
jabber at him, from amid the pouring foam and impending rocks.
He grew sick and faint with fear and hopelessness, for he was a cold,
proud, and narrow-hearted man; hence the agony of his mind was the
greater when he found himself face to face, and front to front, with
Death!
Hours passed away; they seemed months, years, ages, still he remained
there in a state of torpor and coma. He might fall into the stream;
then all would be over; he might linger on for days, his cries
unheard, for the country was desolate and depopulated--for days until
he perished of slow starvation, and his bones would be left to whiten
on that shelf of rock after his flesh had been carried away by the
hawks and eagles!
'Horror! horror!' he exclaimed, and shut his eyes.
Suddenly, voices that seemed human met his ear!
He uttered a wild cry for mercy and for succour and the loud Highland
_haloo_ of Callum Mac Ian responded. By a lucky chance we had
discovered the lost man, when every hope was dying in his arid heart.
A mountain-ash, the sinewy roots of which grasped the fissures of the
rocks, and were knotted round them, overhung the chasm, and from this
Callum, supported by Clavering and me--the captain was a brave,
active, and athletic fellow--lowered down a stout rope, which we
desired Sir Horace to tie securely round him; but he was so paralyzed
by fear, or so benumbed by cold, that though we reiterated the
request again and again, with all the energy his urgent danger could
inspire, we were unheeded.
'Dioul! 'smeas so na'n t-alam!' (the devil! this is worse than alum!)
grumbled Callum in Gaelic; this old fellow will have the cat's
departure in the cascade if he closes his ears thus!'
'What in heaven's name shall we do?' asked Captain Clavering; 'good
fellows, can't you advise?'
'Go down into the cascade,' said I.
'Eh--aw--the deuce! good gwacious, you cawnt mean that,' said
Snobleigh, with a chill shudder; 'deaw me--what a boaw!'
'He does mean it,' replied Callum, coldly; 'but that shall be my
task, for though his spirit is brave, his arm is less strong than
mine, and I shall meet the danger first. It was our task of old--I
am his co-dhalta, and come of race that were the leine chrios of his
father's on many a bloody field--but I forget that you are
Englishmen, and know not what I speak of.'
Even while he said this, Callum had flung aside his bonnet and plaid;
tied one end of the rope round the ash, and knotted the other round
his waist, and begun to descend into the chasm, finding grasps for
his hands and rests for his feet where other men would have felt for
them in vain; and scaring the polecat from its lair, and the
chattering night-hawk from its perch, by his hearty shout of triumph,
as he reached Sir Horace, and transferred the rope round his inert
and passive form.
'Air Dhia! the old man is like a bundle of dry bracken,' said the
bold Highland forester with some contempt; 'hoist away sirs, and be
sure that you have a tight hold of _your_ end of the rope!'
Assisted by Mr. Snobleigh, who was in a high state of excitement, the
Captain and I drew up the poor baronet, who was almost dead with
renewed terror on finding himself suspended like the golden fleece
over that roaring gulf; however, we landed him safely, and laid him
at length on the thick soft heather to recover his breath and
animation, while we lowered the rope to Callum, who with our
assistance scrambled up the wall of rock like a squirrel, and stood
beside us again.
'Mona mon dioul!' said he, with a hearty laugh, such as can only come
from a throat and lungs braced by the keen mountain air; 'this will
be a night for the new laird to remember!'