John Splendid Part 24

I have hungered many times on weary marches, but yon was the most cruel hunger of my life. And though the pain of the starving could be dulled a little by draughts of water from the wayside springs, what there was no remede for was the weakness that turned the flesh in every part of me to a nerveless pulp. I went down Nevis Glen a man in a delirium. My head swam with vapours, so that the hillside seemed to dance round and before me. If I had fallen in the snow I should a.s.suredly have lain there and died, and the thought of how simple and sweet it would be to stretch out my heavy limbs and sleep the sleep for ever, more than once robbed me of my will. Some of the Stewarts and Camerons, late recruits to the army, and as yet not inured to its toils, fell on the wayside halfway down the glen. Mac Donald was for leaving them--"We have no need for weaklings,"

he said, cruelly, fuming at the delay; but their lairds gave him a sharp answer, and said they would bide bye them till they had recovered. Thus a third of our force fell behind us in the march, and I would have been behind too, but for M'Iver's encouragement. His songs were long done; his stories chilled on his lip. The hunger had him at the heart, but he had a lion's will and a lion's vigour.

"For the love of G.o.d!" he said to me, "do not let them think we are so much of the Covenanter that we cannot keep up! For a Scots Cavalier you are giving in over early."

"Campaigning with Mackay was never like this," I pleaded, wearily; "give me the open road and an enemy before me, and I would tramp gaily to the world's end. Here's but a choked ravine the very deer abhor in such weather, and before us but a battle we must not share in."

He said never a word for a few moments, but trudged on. My low-heeled shoon were less fitted for the excursion than his close-thonged brogues that clung to the feet like a dry glove, and I walked lamely. Ever and anon he would look askance at me, and I was annoyed that he should think me a poorer mountaineer than those unwearied knaves who hurried us. I must have shown my feeling in my face, for in a little he let-on to fall lame too, and made the most grievous complaint of ache and weariness.

His pretence deceived me but for a little. He was only at his old quirk of keeping me in good repaie with myself, but he played the part with skill, letting us both fall behind the general company a little, so that the Mac Donalds might not witness the indignity of it.

Glen Nevis, as I saw it that night in the light of the moon, is what comes to me now in my dreams. I smell the odour of the sweat-drenched, uncleanly deeding of those savage clans about us; I see the hills lift on either hand with splintered peaks that p.r.i.c.k among the stars--gorge and ravine and the wide ascending pa.s.ses filled ever with the sound of the river, and the coa.r.s.e, narrow drove-road leads into despair. That night the moon rode at the full about a vacant sky. There was not even a vapour on the hills; the wind had failed in the afternoon.

At the foot of the hill Cam Dearg (or the Red Mount), that is one of three gallant mountains that keep company for Nevis Ben the biggest of all, the path we followed made a twist to the left into a gully from which a blast of the morning's wind had cleaned out the snow as by a giant's spade.

So much the worse for us, for now the path lay strewn with boulders that the dragoons took long to thread through, and the bare feet of the private soldiers bled redly anew. Some lean high fir-trees threw this part into a shadow, and so it happened that as I felt my way wearily on, I fell over a stone. The fall lost me the last of my senses: I but heard some of the Stewarts curse me for an enc.u.mbrance as they stumbled over me and pa.s.sed on, heedless of my fate, and saw, as in a dwam, one of them who had abraded his knees by his stumble over my body, turn round with a drawn knife that glinted in a shred of moonlight.

I came to, with M'Iver bent over me, and none of our captors at hand.

"I had rather this than a thousand rix-dollars," said he, as I sat up and leaned on my arm.

"Have they left us?" I asked, with no particular interest in the answer.

It could work little difference whatever it might be. "I thought I saw one of them turn on me with a knife."

"You did," said M'Iver. "He broke his part of the parole, and is lying on the other side of you, I think with a hole in his breast.

An ugly and a treacherous scamp! It's lucky for us that Montrose or MacColkitto never saw the transaction between this clay and John M'Iver, or their clemency had hardly been so great 'You can bide and see to your friend,' was James Grahame's last words, and that's the reason I'm here."

M'Iver lifted me to my feet, and we stood a little to think what we should do. My own mind had no idea save the one that we were bound to keep in touch with the company whose prisoners we were, but M'Iver hinted at an alternative scarce so honest--namely, a desertion and a detour to the left that would maybe lead us to the Campbell army before active hostilities began.

"You would surely not break parole?" said I, surprised, for he was usually as honourable in such matters as any Highlander I ever met.

"Bah!" he cried, pretending contempt at hesitation, though I could perceive by his voice he was somewhat ashamed of the policy he proposed.

"Who quitted the contract first? Was it not that Stewart gentleman on your other side who broke it in a most dastardly way by aiming at your life?"

"I'm thankful for the life you saved, John," said I, "little worth though it seems at this time, but Montrose is not to be held responsible for the sudden impulse of a private. We made our pact as between gentleman and gentleman--let us be going."

"Oh, very well!" said he, shortly. "Let us be going. After all, we are in a trap anyway we look at all; for half the Stewarts and Gainerons are behind in the wood there, and our flank retreat among these hills might be a tempting of Providence. But are you thinking of this Athole corp and what his kin will be doing to his slayers?"

"I'll risk it," I said, shortly. "We may be out of their hands one way or the other before they miss him."

On a sudden there rose away before us towards the mouth of the glen the sound of a bagpipe. It came on the tranquil air with no break in its uproar, and after a preparatory tuning it broke into an air called "Cogadh no Sith"--an ancient braggart pibroch made by one Macruimen of the Isle of Skye,--a tune that was commonly used by the Campbells as a night-retreat or tattoo.

My heart filled with the strain. It gave me not only the simple illusion that I saw again the regimentals of my native country--many a friend and comrade among them in the shelter of the Castle of Inverlochy--but it roused in me a spirit very antique, very religious and moving too, as the music of his own land must in every honest Gael.

"_Cruachan_ for ever!" I said lightly to M'Iver, though my heart was full.

He was as much touched by that homely lilt as myself. "The old days, the old styles!" said he. "G.o.d! how that pibroch stings me to the core!" And as the tune came more clearly in the second part, or _Crunluadh_ as we call it, and the player maybe came round a bend of the road, my comrade stopped in his pace and added with what in another I might have thought a sob--"I've trudged the world; I have learned many bravadoes, so that my heart never stirred much to the mere trick of an instrument but one, and the _piob mhor_ conquers me. What is it, Colin, that's in us, rich and poor, yon rude cane-reeds speak so human and friendly to?"

"Tis the Gaelic," I said, cheered myself by the air. "Never a roar of the drone or a sob of the chanter but's in the Gaelic tongue."

"Maybe," said he, "maybe: I've heard the scholars like yourself say the sheepskin and the drones were Roman--that or Spanish, it's all one to me. I heard them at Boitzenburg when we gave the b.u.t.t of the gun to Tilly's _soldadoes_, they played us into Holstein, and when the ditch of Stralsund was choked with the tartan of Mackay, and our lads were falling like corn before the hook, a Reay piper stood valiantly in front and played a salute. Then and now it's the pipes, my darling!"

"I would as lief have them in a gayer strain. My fondest memories are of reels I've danced to their playing," I said, and by now we were walking down the glen.

"And of one reel you danced," said he, quizzingly, "not more than two months gone in a town that was called Inneraora?"

"Two months!" I cried,--"two months! I could have sworn offhand we have been wandering in Lorn and Badenoch for as many years!"

Such spirit did my native pipes, played by a clansman, put in me that my weariness much abated, and we made great progress down the glen, so that before the tune had ceased we were on the back of Montrose's men as they crept on quietly in the night.

The piper stopped suddenly enough when some shots rang out,--an exchange of compliments between our pickets ahead and some wandering scouts of Argile.

And yonder below us, Loch Linnhe and Locheil glanced in the moonlight, and the strong towers of Inverlochy sat like a scowl on the fringe of the wave!

CHAPTER XX.--INVERLOCHY.

When we came up with the main body of MacDonald's army, the country, as I say, was shining in the light of the moon, with only a camp-fire down in the field beside the castle to show in all the white world a sign of human life. We had got the Campbells in the rear, but they never knew it A few of their scouts came out across the fields and challenged our pickets; there was an exchange of musketry, but, as we found again, we were thought to be some of the Lochaber hunters unworthy of serious engagement.

For the second time in so many days we tasted food, a handful of meal to the quaich of water--no more and no less; and James Grahame, Marquis of Montrose, supped his brose like the rest of us, with the knife from his belt doing the office of a horn-spoon.

Some hours after us came up the Camerons, who had fallen behind, but fresher and more eager for fighting than our own company, for they had fallen on a herd of roe on the slope of Sgur an Iolair, and had supped savagely on the warm raw flesh.

"You might have brought us a gigot off your take," Sir Alasdair said to the leader of them, Dol Ruadh. He was a short-tempered man of no great manners, and he only grunted his response.

"They may well call you Camerons of the soft mouth," said Alasdair, angrily, "that would treat your comrades so."

"You left us to carry our own men," said the chief, shortly; "we left you to find your own deer."

We were perhaps the only ones who slept at the mouth of Glen Nevis that woeful night, and we slept because, as my comrade said, "What cannot be mended may be well slept on; it's an ease to the heart." And the counsel was so wise and our weariness so acute, that we lay on the bare ground till we were roused to the call of a trumpet.

It was St Bridget's Day, and Sunday morning. A myriad bens around gave mists, as smoke from a censer, to the day. The Athole pipers high-breastedly strutted with a vain port up and down their lines and played incessantly. Alasdair laid out the clans with amazing skill, as M'Iver and I were bound to confess to ourselves,--the horse (with Montrose himself on his charger) in the centre, the men of Clanra.n.a.ld, Keppoch, Locheil, Glengarry, and Maclean, and the Stewarts of Appin behind. MacDonald and O'Kyan led the Irish on the wings.

In the plain we could see Argile's forces in a somewhat similar order, with the tartan as it should be in the midst of the bataille and the Lowland levies on the flanks. Over the centre waved the black galley of Lorne on a gold standard.

I expressed some doubt about the steadfastness of the Lowlanders, and M'Iver was in sad agreement with me.

"I said it in Glenaora when we left," said he, "and I say it again.

They would be fairly good stuff against foreign troops; but they have no suspicion of the character of Gaelic war. I'm sore feared they'll prove a poor reed to lean on. Why, in heaven's name, does Mac-Cailein take the risk of a battle in such an awkward corner? An old soldier like Auchinbreac should advise him to follow the Kilc.u.min road and join forces with Seaforth, who must be far down Glen Albyn by now."

As we were standing apart thus, up to us came Ian Lorn, shaking the brogue-money he got from Grahame in his dirty loof. He was very bitter.

"I never earned an honester penny," he said, looking up almost insolently in our faces, so that it was a temptation to give him a clout on the cunning jowl.

"So Judas thought too, I daresay, when he fingered his filthy shekels,"

said I. "I thought no man from Keppoch would be skulking aside here when his pipers blew the onset."

"Och!" said M'Iver, "what need ye be talking? Bardery and bravery don't very often go together."