Sir Ludar Part 23

"Orpheus, his weapon, is a harp, not a gun. Nevertheless, I am one of five, and shall yield me to a man's bidding for the sake of her, my mistress, to whose glory I have this day indited my ode, and into whose sweet ear I will even now go recite it."

"No, no," said Ludar, "stay here and eat, and then go make a better one on the starboard bow, with your hand on the forestays, and your eye seaward."

He obeyed at length and swallowed his supper. Then, lamenting the maiden's fate at being deprived of his ode, he went gallantly forward.

"There goes a brave man in the garb of a fool," said Ludar. "Humphrey, in this wind, the maiden will be hard put to it to keep her post on the p.o.o.p. 'Twould help her to lash her to her helm. Will you go and do it?"

"That task belongs to the Captain," said I. "She will suffer it from you." He smiled at me grimly and went astern. And, as I said, the maiden let him have his way; and there she stood, as night closed, erect and steadfast, with her hands on the tiller and her brave face set seaward.

'Twas a fearful night of shrieking wind and thundering wave. Often and often as the brave _Misericorde_ reared and hung suspended on a wave's crest, we knew none of us if she would ever reach the next. Lucky for us we were a flush-decked ship and our hatches sound, for the seas that poured over us would have filled us to the brim in an hour. Lucky, too, the Frenchman's cargo had been snugly stowed, or we should have been on our beam-ends before midnight. Half-way through the night, there was a loud crack and over went our main top-mast with her sails in ribbons.

We had scarce time, at great peril, to cut her away, when another burst snapped our mizzen almost at the deck.

"That lightens us still more," said Ludar. "Let go all the forward canvas, and cut away. We must put her into the wind and let her drive under bare poles."

With that he went to the helm, where indeed the maiden must have needed succour. And there he stayed beside her till the night pa.s.sed.

Afterwards he told me that he found her there, half stunned by the wind, but never flinching, or yielding a point out of the course. "I know not if she was pleased to see me there," said he. "She said little enough, and hardly surrendered me the tiller. But when we put the ship into the wind, there was little to do, save to stand and watch the sea, and shield ourselves as best we might from the force of the waves that leapt over the p.o.o.p."

And fierce enough they were, in truth. But what was worse was that our course now lay due west, bringing us every league nearer the coast.

Should the tempest last much longer we might have a sterner peril to face on the iron Northumbrian sh.o.r.e than ever we had escaped in the open sea.

The night pa.s.sed and morning saw us driving headlong, with but one mast standing and not a sail to bless it. The maiden who had stood at her post since sundown yielded at last and came down, pale and drenched, to her quarters. The poet too, who had clung all night to the halyards, looking faithfully ahead and polishing his ode inwardly at the same time, also crawled abaft, half frozen and stupid with drowsiness.

Indeed, there was little any of us could do, and one by one Ludar ordered us to rest, while he, whom no labour seemed to daunt, clung doggedly to the helm.

Thus half that day the wind flung us forward, till presently, far on the horizon, we could discern the sullen outline of a cliff.

"We are lost!" said I.

"Humphrey, you are a fool," said Ludar. "See you not the wind is backing fast?"

So it was, and as we drove on, ever nearer the fatal coast, it swung round again to the southerly, and the sun above us blazed out fitfully from among the breaking clouds.

"Heaven fights for us," said Ludar. "Quick, rig up a sail forward and fly a yard; and do you, seaman, look to your charts and say where we are."

"That I have done long since," said the sailor. "We are scarce a league from the Holy Island, and 'tis full time we put her head out, sir."

"Come and take the helm then."

For a while it seemed as if we were to expect as wild a tempest from the south as ever we had met from the east. But towards evening, the wind slackened a bit, and, veering south-east, enabled us to stand clear of the coast, and make, battered and ill canva.s.sed as we were, straight for the Scotch Forth.

The maiden slept all through that night, and when at dawn she came on deck, fresh and singing, we were tumbling merrily through a slackening sea, with the Ba.s.s Rock looming on the horizon.

"Methinks the jaded Greek felt not otherwise when, leaving behind him the blood-stained plains of Troy, he espied the cloud-topped mountains of h.e.l.las," said the poet, who joined us as we stood.

"Which means," said the maiden, "you are glad?"

"Shall Pyramus rejoice to see the wall that hides him from his Thisbe?

or Hector leap at the trumpet which parts him from his Andromache?

Mistress mine, in yonder rock shall I read my doom?"

"Rather read us your ode, Sir Poet," said she. "It has had a stormy hatching, and should be a tempestuous outburst."

"As indeed you shall find it, if I have your leave to rehea.r.s.e it," said he.

"I beg no greater favour," said she.

Then the poet poured out this brave sonnet:--

"Go, grievous gales, your heads that heave, Ye foam-flaked furies of the wasty deep.

Ye loud-tongued Tritons, wind and wave.

Go fan my love where she doth sleep, And tell her, tell her in her ear Her Corydon sits sighing here.

"The tempest stalks the stormy sea, The lightning leaps with lurid light, The glad gull calls from lea to lea, The whistling whirlwind fills the night; Bears each a message to my love, Whose stony heart I faint to move."

"'Tis too short," said the maiden, "we shall be friends, I hope, long enough to hear more of it."

"Meanwhile, Sir Poet," said Ludar, who chafed at these civilities, "go forward again, and keep the watch. Call if you spy aught, and keep your eyes well open."

Fortune favoured us that day, as she had handled us roughly in the days before. The wind held good, and filled our slender canvas. The pilot's charts deceived not; nor did friend or enemy stand across our path.

Before night we had swept round the rock and found the channel of the Forth, up which, on a favouring tide, we dropped quietly that evening; and at nightfall let go our anchor with grateful hearts, albeit weary bodies, in Leith Roads, where for a season the _Misericorde_ and we had rest from our labours.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

HOW WE BROUGHT THE MAIDEN TO HER FATHER'S HOUSE.

A month later, Ludar and the maiden and I stood on a cliff in Cantire which overlooks the Irish coast. The September sun was dipping wrathfully on the distant Donegal heights, kindling, as he did so, the headlands of Antrim with a crimson glow. Below us, the Atlantic surged heavily and impatiently round the rugged Mull. Opposite--so near, it seemed we might almost shout across--loomed out, sheer from the sea, the huge cliff of Benmore, dwarfing the forelands on either hand, and looking, as we saw it then, anything but the Fair Head which people call it. Scarcely further, on our right, lapped in the lurid water, lay the sweet Isle of Raughlin, ablaze with heather, and resounding with its chorus of sea-birds. A finer scene you could scarce desire. A scene which one day, when the sun is high and the calm water blue, may glisten before you like a vision of heaven; or, on a wild black day of storm, may frown over at you like a prison wall of lost souls; or (as it seemed to-night), like the strange battlements of a wizard's castle, which, while you dread, you yet long to enter.

We looked across the narrow channel in silence. I could mark Ludar's eyes flash and his great chest heave, and knew that he thought of his exiled father and his ravished castle. The maiden at his side, as she turned her fair face to the setting sun, half hopefully, half doubtfully, thought perhaps of her unknown home and her unremembered father. As for me, my mind was charged with wonder at a scene so strange and beautiful, and yet with loneliness as I recalled that for me, at least, there waited no home over there.

"The sun has gone," said the maiden presently, laying her hand on Ludar's arm.

He said nothing; but took the little hand captive in his, and stood there, watching the fading glow.

Then she began to sing softly; and I, knowing they needed not my help, left them.

I remember, as I made my way, stumbling through the thick heather, towards the little village, feeling that this trouble of mine would be less could I tell it to some one; and then, I know not how, I fancied myself telling it to sweet Jeannette; and how prettily she heard me, with her bright eyes glistening for my sake, and her hand on my arm, just as a minute ago I had seen that maiden's hand on Ludar's. Heigho!

I who called myself a man was becoming a girl! Happily the heather was thick and the path steep, so that I presently had some other care for my head to busy itself with.

So I came down to the little bay, and set the boat in readiness for to- morrow's voyage, and then, having nought else to do (for the old nurse was abed already), I curled myself up in my corner and fell asleep, dreaming of I know not what.

Now, you are not to suppose that from the time we dropped anchor in Leith Roads till now our travels had been easy. On the contrary, the perils we had met by sea had been nothing to those we encountered by land. Well for us, in parting company with the _Misericorde_ (which we left in the hands of the honest pilot to render up to the Frenchman's agents in Scotland), we had taken each our pistol and sword. For scarce had we set foot in Edinburgh, but we were called to use them. Sometimes it was to protect the maiden from the gallants of the Court, who deemed each pretty face their private game, and were amazed to find Ludar and me dispute their t.i.tle. Sometimes it was to defend ourselves from the hungry redshanks who itched to dig their daggers into some body, little matter whose. Sometimes it was from rogues and vagabonds whose mouths watered at the sight of the box. Sometimes it was from the officers, who took us one day for English spies, and the next for lords in disguise. As for the poet, the day of our landing he had fled for his life from the terrors of the place, and so we lost him.

I cannot tell what battles we fought, what knocks we got, or what we gave in return; how night by night we slept, sword in hand, at the maiden's door; how day by day we sought to escape from the city and could not; how at length, under cover of a notable fray in the streets, we fled back to Leith, where we found a boat and so reached Falkirk.

From there, how like so many gipsies we wandered over the hills and among the deep valleys till we came to Lennox, and so once more met the sea on the other side. Then, by what perils of storm and current, in a small row-boat, we crossed to the wild Isle of Arran, on which we were well-nigh starved with hunger and drowned with the rains. And at last, how, using a fine day, we made across to Cantire, where, so soon as Ludar declared his name, we were hospitably received by the McDonnells there, and promised a safe conduct over to Ireland.

From the wild men here--half soldiers, half mariners--we heard--not that I could understand a word of their tongue, but Ludar and the old nurse could--that Sorley Boy, Ludar's father, was already across, hiding in the Antrim Glynns, where, joined by many a friendly clan, he was waiting his chance to swoop down on the English and recapture his ancient fortress. Turlogh Luinech O'Neill, the maiden's father, we heard, was still lending himself to the invaders, and in return for the Queen's favour, holding aloof, if not getting ready to fall upon the McDonnells when the time came. Of these last, Alexander, Ludar's brother, first and favourite son of the great Sorley Boy (for Donnell, the eldest of all, had been slain in battle), was reputed, next to his father, the bravest; he was also in the Glynns; but James and Randal, his other brothers, were in the Isles, raising the Scots there, and waiting the signal to descend with their gallow-gla.s.ses on the coveted coast.