Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (242 page)

“Aweel aweel,” said Alan.

All this time we had seen or heard no more of our pursuers.  In truth we had caught them unawares; their whole party (as I was to learn afterwards) had not yet reached the scene; what there was of them was spread among the bents towards Gillane.  It was quite an affair to call them in and bring them over, and the boat was making speed.  They were besides but cowardly fellows: a mere leash of Highland cattle-thieves, of several clans, no gentleman there to be the captain and the more they looked at Alan and me upon the beach, the less (I must suppose) they liked the look of us.

Whoever had betrayed Alan it was not the captain: he was in the skiff himself, steering and stirring up his oarsmen, like a man with his heart in his employ.  Already he was near in, and the boat securing - already Alan’s face had flamed crimson with the excitement of his deliverance, when our friends in the bents, either in their despair to see their prey escape them or with some hope of scaring Andie, raised suddenly a shrill cry of several voices.

This sound, arising from what appeared to be a quite deserted coast, was really very daunting, and the men in the boat held water instantly.

“What’s this of it?” sings out the captain, for he was come within an easy hail.

“Freens o’mine,” says Alan, and began immediately to wade forth in the shallow water towards the boat.  “Davie,” he said, pausing, “Davie, are ye no coming?  I am swier to leave ye.”

“Not a hair of me,” said I.

“He stood part of a second where he was to his knees in the salt water, hesitating.

“He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar,” said he, and swashing in deeper than his waist, was hauled into the skiff, which was immediately directed for the ship.

I stood where he had left me, with my hands behind my back; Alan sat with his head turned watching me; and the boat drew smoothly away.  Of a sudden I came the nearest hand to shedding tears, and seemed to myself the most deserted solitary lad in Scotland.  With that I turned my back upon the sea and faced the sandhills.  There was no sight or sound of man; the sun shone on the wet sand and the dry, the wind blew in the bents, the gulls made a dreary piping.  As I passed higher up the beach, the sand-lice were hopping nimbly about the stranded tangles.  The devil any other sight or sound in that unchancy place.  And yet I knew there were folk there, observing me, upon some secret purpose.  They were no soldiers, or they would have fallen on and taken us ere now; doubtless they were some common rogues hired for my undoing, perhaps to kidnap, perhaps to murder me outright.  From the position of those engaged, the first was the more likely; from what I knew of their character and ardency in this business, I thought the second very possible; and the blood ran cold about my heart.

I had a mad idea to loosen my sword in the scabbard; for though I was very unfit to stand up like a gentleman blade to blade, I thought I could do some scathe in a random combat.  But I perceived in time the folly of resistance.  This was no doubt the joint “expedient” on which Prestongrange and Fraser were agreed.  The first, I was very sure, had done something to secure my life; the second was pretty likely to have slipped in some contrary hints into the ears of Neil and his companions; and it I were to show bare steel I might play straight into the hands of my worst enemy and seal my own doom.

These thoughts brought me to the head of the beach.  I cast a look behind, the boat was nearing the brig, and Alan flew his handkerchief for a farewell, which I replied to with the waving of my hand.  But Alan himself was shrunk to a small thing in my view, alongside of this pass that lay in front of me.  I set my hat hard on my head, clenched my teeth, and went right before me up the face of the sand-wreath.  It made a hard climb, being steep, and the sand like water underfoot.  But I caught hold at last by the long bent-grass on the brae-top, and pulled myself to a good footing.  The same moment men stirred and stood up here and there, six or seven of them, ragged-like knaves, each with a dagger in his hand.  The fair truth is, I shut my eyes and prayed.  When I opened them again, the rogues were crept the least thing nearer without speech or hurry.  Every eye was upon mine, which struck me with a strange sensation of their brightness, and of the fear with which they continued to approach me.  I held out my hands empty; whereupon one asked, with a strong Highland brogue, if I surrendered.

“Under protest,” said I, “if ye ken what that means, which I misdoubt.”

At that word, they came all in upon me like a flight of birds upon a carrion, seized me, took my sword, and all the money from my pockets, bound me hand and foot with some strong line, and cast me on a tussock of bent.  There they sat about their captive in a part of a circle and gazed upon him silently like something dangerous, perhaps a lion or a tiger on the spring.  Presently this attention was relaxed.  They drew nearer together, fell to speech in the Gaelic, and very cynically divided my property before my eyes.  It was my diversion in this time that I could watch from my place the progress of my friend’s escape.  I saw the boat come to the brig and be hoisted in, the sails fill, and the ship pass out seaward behind the isles and by North Berwick.

In the course of two hours or so, more and more ragged Highlandmen kept collecting.  Neil among the first, until the party must have numbered near a score.  With each new arrival there was a fresh bout of talk, that sounded like complaints and explanations; but I observed one thing, none of those who came late had any share in the division of my spoils.  The last discussion was very violent and eager, so that once I thought they would have quarrelled; on the heels of which their company parted, the bulk of them returning westward in a troop, and only three, Neil and two others, remaining sentries on the prisoner.

“I could name one who would be very ill pleased with your day’s work, Neil Duncanson,” said I, when the rest had moved away.

He assured me in answer I should be tenderly used, for he knew he was “acquent wi’ the leddy.”

This was all our talk, nor did any other son of man appear upon that portion of the coast until the sun had gone down among the Highland mountains, and the gloaming was beginning to grow dark.  At which hour I was aware of a long, lean, bony-like Lothian man of a very swarthy countenance, that came towards us among the bents on a farm horse.

“Lads,” cried he, “has ye a paper like this?” and held up one in his hand.  Neil produced a second, which the newcomer studied through a pair of horn spectacles, and saying all was right and we were the folk he was seeking, immediately dismounted.  I was then set in his place, my feet tied under the horse’s belly, and we set forth under the guidance of the Lowlander.  His path must have been very well chosen, for we met but one pair - a pair of lovers - the whole way, and these, perhaps taking us to be free-traders, fled on our approach.  We were at one time close at the foot of Berwick Law on the south side; at another, as we passed over some open hills, I spied the lights of a clachan and the old tower of a church among some trees not far off, but too far to cry for help, if I had dreamed of it.  At last we came again within sound of the sea.  There was moonlight, though not much; and by this I could see the three huge towers and broken battlements of Tantallon, that old chief place of the Red Douglases.  The horse was picketed in the bottom of the ditch to graze, and I was led within, and forth into the court, and thence into the tumble-down stone hall.  Here my conductors built a brisk fire in the midst of the pavement, for there was a chill in the night.  My hands were loosed, I was set by the wall in the inner end, and (the Lowlander having produced provisions) I was given oatmeal bread and a pitcher of French brandy.  This done, I was left once more alone with my three Highlandmen.  They sat close by the fire drinking and talking; the wind blew in by the breaches, cast about the smoke and flames, and sang in the tops of the towers; I could hear the sea under the cliffs, and, my mind being reassured as to my life, and my body and spirits wearied with the day’s employment, I turned upon one side and slumbered.

I had no means of guessing at what hour I was wakened, only the moon was down and the fire was low.  My feet were now loosed, and I was carried through the ruins and down the cliff-side by a precipitous path to where I found a fisher’s boat in a haven of the rocks.  This I was had on board of, and we began to put forth from the shore in a fine starlight

CHAPTER XIV - THE BASS

I had no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word of Ransome’s - the twenty-pounders.  If I were to be exposed a second time to that same former danger of the plantations, I judged it must turn ill with me; there was no second Alan; and no second shipwreck and spare yard to be expected now; and I saw myself hoe tobacco under the whip’s lash.  The thought chilled me; the air was sharp upon the water, the stretchers of the boat drenched with a cold dew: and I shivered in my place beside the steersman.  This was the dark man whom I have called hitherto the Lowlander; his name was Dale, ordinarily called Black Andie.  Feeling the thrill of my shiver, he very kindly handed me a rough jacket full of fish-scales, with which I was glad to cover myself.

“I thank you for this kindness,” said I, “and will make so free as to repay it with a warning.  You take a high responsibility in this affair.  You are not like these ignorant, barbarous Highlanders, but know what the law is and the risks of those that break it.”

“I am no just exactly what ye would ca’ an extremist for the law,” says he, “at the best of times; but in this business I act with a good warranty.”

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked.

“Nae harm,” said he, “nae harm ava’.  Ye’ll have strong freens, I’m thinking.  Ye’ll be richt eneuch yet.”

There began to fall a greyness on the face of the sea; little dabs of pink and red, like coals of slow fire, came in the east; and at the same time the geese awakened, and began crying about the top of the Bass.  It is just the one crag of rock, as everybody knows, but great enough to carve a city from.  The sea was extremely little, but there went a hollow plowter round the base of it.  With the growing of the dawn I could see it clearer and clearer; the straight crags painted with sea-birds’ droppings like a morning frost, the sloping top of it green with grass, the clan of white geese that cried about the sides, and the black, broken buildings of the prison sitting close on the sea’s edge.

At the sight the truth came in upon me in a clap.

“It’s there you’re taking me!” I cried.

“Just to the Bass, mannie,” said he: “Whaur the auld saints were afore ye, and I misdoubt if ye have come so fairly by your preeson.”

“But none dwells there now,” I cried; “the place is long a ruin.”

“It’ll be the mair pleisand a change for the solan geese, then,” quoth Andie dryly.

The day coming slowly brighter I observed on the bilge, among the big stones with which fisherfolk ballast their boats, several kegs and baskets, and a provision of fuel.  All these were discharged upon the crag.  Andie, myself, and my three Highlanders (I call them mine, although it was the other way about), landed along with them.  The sun was not yet up when the boat moved away again, the noise of the oars on the thole-pins echoing from the cliffs, and left us in our singular reclusion:

Andie Dale was the Prefect (as I would jocularly call him) of the Bass, being at once the shepherd and the gamekeeper of that small and rich estate.  He had to mind the dozen or so of sheep that fed and fattened on the grass of the sloping part of it, like beasts grazing the roof of a cathedral.  He had charge besides of the solan geese that roosted in the crags; and from these an extraordinary income is derived.  The young are dainty eating, as much as two shillings a-piece being a common price, and paid willingly by epicures; even the grown birds are valuable for their oil and feathers; and a part of the minister’s stipend of North Berwick is paid to this day in solan geese, which makes it (in some folks’ eyes) a parish to be coveted.  To perform these several businesses, as well as to protect the geese from poachers, Andie had frequent occasion to sleep and pass days together on the crag; and we found the man at home there like a farmer in his steading.  Bidding us all shoulder some of the packages, a matter in which I made haste to bear a hand, he led us in by a looked gate, which was the only admission to the island, and through the ruins of the fortress, to the governor’s house.  There we saw by the ashes in the chimney and a standing bed-place in one corner, that he made his usual occupation.

This bed he now offered me to use, saying he supposed I would set up to be gentry.

“My gentrice has nothing to do with where I lie,” said I.  “I bless God I have lain hard ere now, and can do the same again with thankfulness.  While I am here, Mr. Andie, if that be your name, I will do my part and take my place beside the rest of you; and I ask you on the other hand to spare me your mockery, which I own I like ill.”

He grumbled a little at this speech, but seemed upon reflection to approve it.  Indeed, he was a long-headed, sensible man, and a good Whig and Presbyterian; read daily in a pocket Bible, and was both able and eager to converse seriously on religion, leaning more than a little towards the Cameronian extremes.  His morals were of a more doubtful colour.  I found he was deep in the free trade, and used the rains of Tantallon for a magazine of smuggled merchandise.  As for a gauger, I do not believe he valued the life of one at half-a-farthing.  But that part of the coast of Lothian is to this day as wild a place, and the commons there as rough a crew, as any in Scotland.

One incident of my imprisonment is made memorable by a consequence it had long after.  There was a warship at this time stationed in the Firth, the Seahorse, Captain Palliser.  It chanced she was cruising in the month of September, plying between Fife and Lothian, and sounding for sunk dangers.  Early one fine morning she was seen about two miles to east of us, where she lowered a boat, and seemed to examine the Wildfire Rocks and Satan’s Bush, famous dangers of that coast.  And presently after having got her boat again, she came before the wind and was headed directly for the Base.  This was very troublesome to Andie and the Highlanders; the whole business of my sequestration was designed for privacy, and here, with a navy captain perhaps blundering ashore, it looked to become public enough, if it were nothing worse.  I was in a minority of one, I am no Alan to fall upon so many, and I was far from sure that a warship was the least likely to improve my condition.  All which considered, I gave Andie my parole of good behaviour and obedience, and was had briskly to the summit of the rock, where we all lay down, at the cliff’s edge, in different places of observation and concealment.  The Seahorse came straight on till I thought she would have struck, and we (looking giddily down) could see the ship’s company at their quarters and hear the leadsman singing at the lead.  Then she suddenly wore and let fly a volley of I know not how many great guns.  The rock was shaken with the thunder of the sound, the smoke flowed over our heads, and the geese rose in number beyond computation or belief.  To hear their screaming and to see the twinkling of their wings, made a most inimitable curiosity; and I suppose it was after this somewhat childish pleasure that Captain Palliser had come so near the Bass.  He was to pay dear for it in time.  During his approach I had the opportunity to make a remark upon the rigging of that ship by which I ever after knew it miles away; and this was a means (under Providence) of my averting from a friend a great calamity, and inflicting on Captain Palliser himself a sensible disappointment.