John Splendid Part 23

"Never," said he, "but I know Linnhe and Loch Eil and the fringe of Morar."

"Mere dubs," said M'Iver, pleasantly--"mere dubs or ditches. Now I, Barbreck, have been upon the deeps, tossed for days at hazard without a headland to the view. I may have made verse on the experience,--I'll not say yea or nay to that,--but I never gave a lochan credit for washing the bulged sides of the world."

"You hadn't fancy for it, my good fellow," said the bard, angry again.

"I forgot to say that I saw Loch Finne too, and the Galley of Lorn taking MacCailein off from his castle. I'm making a song on that now."

"Touched!" thinks I, for it was a rapier-point at my comrade's very marrow. He reddened at once, pulled down his brows, and scanned the bard of Keppoch, who showed his knowledge of his advantage.

"If I were you," said John in a little, "I would not put the finish on that ditty till I learned the end of the transaction. Perhaps MacCailein (and G.o.d bless my chief!) is closer on Lochiel and Lochaber to-day than you give him credit for."

"Say nothing about that," said I warningly in English to my friend, never knowing (what I learned on a later occasion) that John Lorn had the language as well as myself.

"When MacCailein comes here," said the bard, "he'll get a Badenoch welcome."

"And that is the thief's welcome, the shirt off his very back," cried M'Iver.

"Off his back very likely," said the bard; "it's the back we see oftenest of the bonny gentleman."

M'Iver grew livid to the very lip, and sprang to his feet, dutching with great menace the black knife he had been whittling with. Not a bit abashed, the bard pulled out his dirk, and there was like to be a pretty to-do when I put between them.

The issue of the quarrel that thus I r.e.t.a.r.ded was postponed altogether by a circ.u.mstance that changed the whole course of our adventure in this wild country,--severed us at a sharp wrench from the Campbell regiments, and gave us the chance--very unwelcome it was--of beholding the manner of war followed by Alasdair MacDonald's savage tribes. It happened in a flash, without warning. No blow had been struck by the two gentlemen at variance, when we were all three thrown to the ground, and the bound prisoners of a squad of Macgregors who had got out of the thicket and round us un.o.bserved in the heat of the argument.

They treated us all alike--the bard as curt as the Campbells, in spite of his tartan,--and without exchanging any words with us marched us before them on a journey of several hours to Kilc.u.min.

Long or ever we reached Kilc.u.min we were manifestly in the neighbourhood of Montrose's force. His pickets held the road; the hillsides moved with his scouts. On a plain called Leiter-nan-lub the battalion lay camped, a mere fragment of the force that brought ruin to Argile: Athol men under the Tutor of Struan, Stewarts of Appin, Maclans of Glencoe, a few of the more sedate men of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Maclean, as well as a handful of the Gregaraich who had captured us. It was the nightfall when we were turned into the presence of Sir Alasdair, who was sitting under a few ells of canvas playing cartes with some chieftains by the light of a fir-root fire.

"Whom have we here?" said he, never stopping for more than a glimpse of us.

"Two Campbells and a man who says he's bard of Keppoch," he was told.

"A spy in an honest tartan, no doubt," said Sir Alas-dair; "but well put it to the test with Keppoch himself: tell him to come over and throw an eye on the fellow."

Keppoch was sent for, and came across from a fire at another part of the field, a hiccough at his throat and a blear look in his eye as one that has been overly brisk with the bottle, but still and on the gentleman and in a very good humour.

"Here's my bard sure enough!" he cried. "John, John, what do you seek in Kilc.u.min, and in Campbell company too?"

"The company is none of my seeking," said John Lorn, very short and blunt "And we're like to have a good deal more of the same clan's company than we want before long, for Argile and his clan to three times your number are at Inverlochy. I have tramped a weary day to tell you the tale, and I get but a spy's reception."

The tale went round the camp in the time a man would whistle an air. Up came Montrose on the instant, and he was the first to give us a civil look. But for him we had no doubt got a short quittance from MacColkitto, who was for the tow gravatte on the spot Instead we were put on parole when his lordship learned we had been Cavaliers of fortune. The moon rose with every sign of storm, the mountains lay about white to their foundations, and ardent winds belched from the glens, but by mountain and glen Mac Donald determined to get round on the flank of Argile.

CHAPTER XIX.--THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY.

The month of January, as our old Gaelic notion has it, borrows three days from July for a bribe of three young lambs. Those three days we call Faoilteaeh, and often they are very genial and cheerful days, with a sun that in warmth is a sample of the mellow season at hand. But this year, as my history has shown, we had no sign of a good _Faoilteach_, and on the morning of the last day of January, when Alasdair MacDonald's army set over the hills, it was wild, tempestuous weather. A wind rose in the dawning and increased in vehemence as the day aged, and with it came a storm of snow--the small bitter sifting snow that, encountered on the hill, stings like the ant and drifts in monstrous and impa.s.sable wreaths. Round about us yawned the glens, to me nameless, mysterious, choked to the throat with snow-mist that flapped and shook like grey rags. The fields were bleak and empty; the few houses that lay in the melancholy plain were on no particularly friendly terms with this convocation of Erse-men and wild kerns: they shut their doors steadfastly on our doings, and gave us not even the compliment of looking on at our strange manoeuvres. There was but one exception, in a staunch and ma.s.sive dwelling,--a manifest baron keep or stout domicile of that nature, just on the border of the Meld in which the camp was pitched: it was apparently in the charge of two old spinster sisters whose men-folk were afield somewhere else, for they had shuttered the windows, barricaded the gates, and ever and anon would they show blanched faces as the tumult of our preparation disturbed them, and they came to the door and cunningly pulled it open a little and looked out on this warlike array. If a soldier made a step in their direction they fled inside with terror, and their cries rang in the interior.

Those two spinsters--very white, very thin clad for a morn so rigorous, and with a trepidation writ on every feature--were all that saw us off on our march to the south-east They came out and stood hand in hand on the door-stoop, and I have little doubt the honest bodies thanked the G.o.d of Israel that the spoilers were departed furth their neighbourhood.

The country we now plunged into, as may be guessed, was a _terra incognita_ to me. Beyond that it was Bade-noch and an unhealthy clime for all that wear the Campbell tartan, I could guess no more. It was after these little wars were over I discovered the names of the localities--the glens, mounts, pa.s.ses, streams, and drove-roads--over which we pa.s.sed in a march that Gustavus never faced the like of.

With good judgment enough our captors put a small advance-guard ahead, a score of Airlie's troopers, sw.a.n.ky blaspheming persons, whose horses pranced very gaily up Glen Tarf, guided by John Lom. M'Iver and I walked together with the main body, quite free and unfettered, sometimes talking with affability to our captors. The Irish were in good humour; they cracked jokes with us in their peculiar Gaelic that at first is ill for a decent Gael of Albion to follow, if uttered rapidly, but soon becomes as familiar as the less foreign language of the Athole men, whose tongue we Argiles find some strange conceits in. If the Irish were affable, the men of our own side of the ocean were most singularly morose--small wonder, perhaps, for we have little reason to love each other. Sour dogs! they gloomed at us under their bonnets and swore in their beards. I have no doubt but for their gentry there had been dirks in us before we reached Corryarick.

It was with the repartee of the Irish and the scowls of the Gaels we went up the rough valley of the Tarf, where the wind moaned most drearily and drove the thin fine snow like a smoke of burning heather.

But when we got to the pa.s.s of Corryarick our trials began, and then such spirit did M'Iver put in the struggle with the task before us, such s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, sharp saying and old story,--such commradary as it might be named,--that we were on good terms with all. For your man of family the Gael has ever some regard. M'Iver (not to speak of myself) was so manifestly the _duine-uasail_ that the coa.r.s.est of the company fell into a polite tone, helped to their manners to some degree no doubt by the example of Montrose and Airlie, who at the earliest moments of our progress walked beside us and discoursed on letters and hunting, and soldiering in the foreign wars.

The pa.s.s of Corryarick met us with a girning face and white fangs. On Tarf-side there was a rough bridle-path that the wind swept the snow from, and our progress was fairly easy. Here the drifts lay waist high, the horses plunged to the belly-bands, the footmen pushed through in a sweat. It was like some Hyperborean h.e.l.l, and we the doomed wretches sentenced to our eternity of toil. We had to climb up the shoulder of the hill, now among tremendous rocks, now through water unfrozen, now upon wind-swept ice, but the snow--the snow--the heartless snow was our constant companion. It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts round us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain. Unlucky were they who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze, while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose among the felt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joints was unmarred.

It was long beyond noon when we reached the head of the pa.s.s, and saw before us the dip of the valley of the Spey. We were lost in a wilderness of mountain-peaks; the bens started about us on every hand like the horrors of a nightmare, every ben with its death-sheet, menacing us, poor insects, crawling in our pain across the landscape.

I thought we had earned a halt and a bite of meat by this forenoon of labour; and Montrose himself, who had walked the pa.s.s on foot like his fellows, seemed anxious to rest, but Sir Alasdair pushed us on like a fate relentless.

"On, on," he cried, waving his long arms to the prospect before; "here's but the start of our journey; far is the way before; strike fast, strike hot! Would ye eat a meal with appet.i.te while the Diarmaids wait in the way?"

M'iver, who was plodding beside MacDonald when he said these words, gave a laugh. "Take your time, Sir Sandy," said he; "you'll need a bowl or two of brose ere you come to grips with MacCailein."

"Well never come to grips with MacCailein," said MacDonald, taking the badinage in good part, "so long as he has a back-gate to go out at or a barge to sail off in."

"I could correct you on that point in a little affair of arms as between gentlemen--if the time and place were more suitable," said M'Iver, warmly.

"Let your chief defend himself, friend," said MacDonald. "Man, I'll wager we never see the colour of his face when it comes to close quarters."

"I wouldn't wonder," I ventured. "He is in no great trim for fighting, for his arm is----"

Sir Alasdair gave a gesture of contempt and cried, "Faugh! we've heard of the raxed arm: he took care when he was making his tale that he never made it a raxed leg."

Montrose edged up at this, with a red face and a somewhat annoyed expression. He put his gloved hand lightly on MacDonald's shoulder and chided him for debate with a prisoner of war.

"Let our friends be, Alasdair," he said, quietly. "They are, in a way, our guests: they would perhaps be more welcome if their tartan was a different hue, but in any case we must not be insulting them. Doubtless they have their own ideas of his lordship of Argile----"

"I never ask to serve a n.o.bler or a more generous chief," said M'Iver, firmly.

"I would expect no other sentiment from a gentleman of Argile's clan.

He has ever done honestly enough by his own people. But have we not had enough of this? We are wasting our wind that should be more precious, considering the toils before us."

We found the descent of Corryarick even more ill than its climbing.

The wind from the east had driven the snow into the mouth of it like a wedge. The horses, stepping ahead, more than once slipped into drifts that rose to their necks. Then they became wild with terror, dashed with frantic hooves into deeper trouble, or ran back, quivering in every sinew and snorting with affright till the troopers behove to dismount and lead them. When we in the van reached the foot of the come we looked back on a spectacle that fills me with new wonder to this day when I think of it,--a stream of black specks in the distance dropping, as it were, down the sheer face of white; nearer, the broken bands of different clansmen winding noiselessly and painfully among the drifts, their kilts pinned between their thighs, their plaids crossed on their chests--all their weapons a weariness to them.

In the afternoon the snow ceased to fall, but the dusk came on early notwithstanding, for the sky was blotted over with driving clouds.

At the head of Glen Roy the MacDonalds, who had lost their bauchles of brogues in the pa.s.s, started to a trot, and as the necessity was we had to take up the pace too. Long lank hounds, they took the road like deer, their limbs purple with the cold, their faces pinched to the aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. "There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat," the Major-General had said.

It would have given his most spiritless followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put mile after mile below them.

But the Campbells were not in Glen Roy. They had been there and skirmished for a day among their old foes and had gone back to Lochyside, little thinking the fires they left in the Cameron barns at morning would light the enemy on ere night The roofs still smouldered, and a granary here and there on the sides of the valley sent up its flames,--at once a spur to the spirit of the MacDonalds and a light to their vengeance.

We halted for the night in Glen Spean, with Ben Chlin-aig looming high to the south, and the river gulping in ice beside our camp. Around was plenty of wood: we built fires and ate as poor a meal as the Highlands ever granted in a bad year, though it was the first break in our fast for the day. Gentle and simple, all fared alike--a whang of barley bannock, a stirabout of oat-and-water, without salt, a quaich of spirits from some kegs the troopers carried, that ran done before the half of the corps had been served. Sentinels were posted, and we slept till the morning pipe with sweet weariness in our bones.

Our second day was a repet.i.tion of the first. We left without even a breakfast whenever the pipers set up the Cameron rant, "Sons of the dogs, O come and get flesh!" The Campbells had spoiled the bridge with a charge of powder, so we had to ford the river among the ice-lumps, MacDonald showing the way with his kilt-tail about his waist A hunter from a hamlet at the glen foot gladly left the smoking ruin of his home and guided us on a drove-road into the wilds of Lochaber, among mountains more stupendous than those we had left behind. These relentless peaks were clad with blinding snow. The same choking drifts that met us in Corryarick filled the pa.s.ses between Stob Choire and Easan Mor and Stob Ban, that cherish the snow in their crannies in the depths of midsummer. Hunger was eating at our hearts when we got to Glen Nevis, but the glen was empty of people, and the second night fell ere we broke fast.