Sir Ludar Part 28

"It is, except to McDonnells. I did not play on these rocks for naught when a boy. Only pick me out twenty resolute men, and bring them round secretly to the first break in the cliffs eastward. I shall be there."

'Twas easy to find twenty men ready for the venture. Nay, the hard thing was to take no more than twenty, for a hundred were eager to come.

No sooner were we started, than the main body, as agreed, leapt from their hiding-place, and marched rapidly on Dunluce.

Our guide took us a mile eastward of the castle, where at the head of the narrow gully that led from the cliff to the sh.o.r.e, stood Ludar, pistol in hand, waiting for us. He turned silently as we came up, and, motioning to us to follow, began at once the steep descent. The cleft was so narrow that one man could only lower himself at a time, and that swinging as often as not by his elbows and hands. For me it was harder work than for the active redshanks. As for Ludar, he stood at the bottom, while I, with half the troop growling at my back, was stuck midway. Yet we all reached the bottom in time; and as we did so, the boom of a gun from the rocks above us told that our men were already before the castle knocking for entrance.

Then we waded and scrambled in the darkness at the water's edge, till we came to the base of the great black rock on which the fortress stood.

Often we were wading waist-deep in the pools, and often on hands and knees drawing ourselves over the surf-swept ledges. Ludar seemed to know every step of the way, despite the years that had pa.s.sed since as a boy he hunted there for sea-birds, nor was he in the humour now to slacken speed for us who knew not when we put out one foot, where we should land with the other.

Above us, the noise of the guns was already lost in the thunder of the waves as they echoed in the cave under the castle rock. It seemed, as we stood there and looked up, that not a foot further could we go. The great angry cliff beetled over our heads, and on its very edge, far above, we might discern against the gloomy sky the dim corner of a b.u.t.tress.

But it was not here that Ludar meant us to ascend. "Now, my men," said he, "put your powder in your bonnets and follow me."

Whereupon he took a step up to his neck in the deep water, and started to swim. One by one we followed him, armed and clad as we were, into the angry surf. 'Twas a perilous voyage, and had not the tide been full and high above the rocks, we should not have come out of it, some of us, sound in limb or wind. Once or twice as I was flung upwards with a swirl almost upon the jagged cliff, I thought my last hour was come, and wondered whose eye would be dim at the news of my end. Then, when, with a like swirl I was heaved back into the safety of deep water, I thought what a big venture was this, and who would not follow when Ludar led?

So, I scarce know how, we rounded the mouth of that resounding cave and stood panting on the narrow ledge on the far side. I say, we stood--yet not all. Of the twenty-two men who had plunged, only nineteen foregathered at the far side.

"'Twas bravely swum," said Ludar, "and though it has cost McDonnell three brave sons, it has won him Dunluce. I promise you, we shall go back by land."

I asked him, where next? and he pointed up to what seemed a rock as sheer and threatening as ever we had met on the other side. Nay, on this side, the castle itself seemed to hang clean over the edge.

"There is a path, I remember," said he, "by which in old days the McQuillans came down to the cave. I went up it myself as a boy. See here."

And he led us a few steps round, as if back towards the cave; where was an iron spike driven into the smooth rock a little above the edge of the water.

He reached forward at this, and swung himself out over the water till his feet rested on a narrow ledge beyond, scarce the width of his boot, at the water's edge. Above this was a jutting nose of rock by which he raised himself on to the peg itself, and from that, by a long stride, on to a safer ledge above.

"Follow me," he cried, "and look not back."

Painfully and clumsily I achieved the perilous stride, and found myself at the entrance of a crack in the rock, into which the waves below dashed and thundered, and then, beaten back, shot up in an angry column high over our heads, descending with a whirl that all but swept us headlong from our perch.

Up this rift I watched Ludar clamber, losing him now and again in the shooting foam, and now and again, as the spray cleared off, seeing him safe, and ever a foot higher than before. How I followed him 'twould be hard to say. Yet the rock seemed riven into cracks which gave us a tolerable foothold, the better as we got higher up; and had it not been for the constant dash of the water, and the darkness, it might have been accounted pa.s.sable enough. As it was, but for Ludar's strong arm above me, I should have lost my feet twice, and in my fall, perchance, might have carried away one or more of those who followed.

When we reached the top of the rift, a still worse peril awaited. For now we had to crawl painfully for some distance along a narrow edge on the face of the naked rock, with little hold for our hands, and, since the ledge slanted downward and was wet and slippery with the spray, still less for our feet. Even Ludar, I could see, was at a loss. But to halt now was useless; to turn back impossible. So, gripping as best he might at the rugged rock, he stepped boldly on to the ledge. I could but follow. Yet, at the first step, my feet slid from under me, and but that my hands held firm I should have been headlong. Inch by inch hugging the cliff, with our backs to the sea, we crawled over that treacherous ledge, sometimes slipping to our knees, sometimes hanging sheer by our hands.

Once, in a moment of weakness, I looked back to see how our men were faring. As I did so, a youth, next after me, a tall, brave youth who had been foremost in all the peril, suddenly staggered and slipped. For a moment he hung by hand and knee to the ledge; the next with a loud groan he fell backwards into the darkness. I heard the crash of his body on the rocks below, and, in my horror, my own grip for an instant relaxed, and I felt myself following. But a strong hand caught me and held me up, and Ludar said:

"Humphrey, are you a fool? Lookup, man, or you are lost."

After that I had eyes for naught but the cliff before me. And although, before that terrible pa.s.sage was ended, I heard five more groans and as many more crashes on the rocks below, I managed to keep my own footing, till at last, with my head in a whirl, I stood beside Ludar on a broader, straighter ledge, within a dozen feet of the cliff-top.

Ludar was pale, and his breath came and went hard, as he made room for me beside him. He too had heard those terrible crashes.

"That path," said he, "is easier pa.s.sed by a boy than a man. Had I known what it would cost us-- Yet, come on now!"

There was indeed no time to tarry, for the men behind--all that were left of them--came up, and we must perforce move forward to make them room.

Now, once more we heard the guns above, and a mighty shouting on the far side of the Castle. But, towards us, all frowned black and solitary.

The short distance yet to climb compared with what we had pa.s.sed, was easy. For, steep as it was and often overhanging the sea, the rock here was rough and dry, and our feet held fast. Just as we came to the top, Ludar turned.

"Follow close, my men; shout, and discharge your pieces if you can,"

called he, "and once entered, make for the drawbridge."

Almost as he spoke, we heard a shout above us, and the report of a musket discharged into the darkness. A sentinel had heard our voices, and this was his greeting.

Next moment I saw Ludar on the top, struggling with a man. It was too dark to discern which was which; but a moment later, one of the two staggered a step backwards to the edge. There was a yell, a shower of loose earth; then, as I stood below clinging to the rock, a dark ma.s.s fell betwixt me and the sky, brushing me as it pa.s.sed, and bounding from the ledge below with a hideous crash out into the deepness.

I stood there an instant as cold and pulse-less as the stone against which I leaned. What if this were Ludar who had fallen?

A voice from above restored me to life.

"Quick there, come up, and the place is ours!"

In a moment I stood beside him on the narrow edge of gra.s.s between the castle wall and the brink. We could hear the shouts and firing away at the gate, but not a soul was left here to bar our pa.s.sage. Even the sentinel's shot had pa.s.sed unheeded. There was a low window leading to one of the offices of the castle, through which we clambered. Next moment we found ourselves standing within the walls of Dunluce.

"_Froach Eilan_!" shouted Ludar, drawing his dirk and waving on his men.

"_Froach Eilan! Ludar_!" shouted we, some of us discharging our pieces to add to the uproar, while one man exploded a swivel gun which stood on the seaward battlement.

The effect was magical. There was a sudden pause in the fighting at the bridge. Then rose a mighty answering cry from our McDonnells outside; while the garrison, caught thus between the two fires, looked this way and that, not knowing against which foe to turn.

Though we were but thirteen--nay, only twelve, for the English sentinel in his fall had swept yet another of our brave fellows from the ledge-- it was hard for any one to say in the darkness how many we were or how many were yet behind; and the thirty defenders to the place, when once the panic had spread, were in no mood for waiting to see. Many of them laid down their arms at once. Some, still more terrified, attempted to descend the rocks, and so perished; others plunged boldly into the gulf, and there was an end of them.

Ludar meanwhile rushed to the bridge. Many a brave fellow to-night had met his fate on that narrow way. For so far, no a.s.sault from our men without had been able to shake the strong portcullis, or make an opening on the grim face of the fortress. Indeed, it seemed to me, a single child in the place might have defied an army, so una.s.sailable did it appear. Our men had carried easily the outer courtyard across the moat, driving the slender garrison back, with only time to lower the gate and shut themselves within before the a.s.sault began. But, though they thundered with shot and rock, all was of no avail. The guns of the besieged swept the narrow bridge on either side, and scarce a man who ventured across it returned alive.

Now, all was suddenly changed. Ludar, with a wild shout, fell on the keepers of the gate within and drove them from their post. So sudden was his onslaught, that none had time to ask whence he came or how many followed him. Only a handful of soldiers withstood us. Among these was the gay English fellow whom we had let go an hour or so back; and who now, true to his word, rushed sword in hand at Ludar. I wondered to see what Ludar would do, for kill the fellow I knew he would not. He met the Englishman's sword with a tremendous blow from his own sheathed weapon, which shivered it. Then with his fist he felled him to the ground, and, thus stunned, lifted him and laid him high on a parapet of the wall till he should come to.

Ere this was done, I and the rest of our men were at it, hand to hand with the few fighting men of the garrison that remained. It did not take long, for there were but half-a-dozen of them, and valiantly as they fought, we were too many and strong for them. One by one they fell or yielded, all except one stout man, the constable of the place, Peter Gary by name, who fought as long as he could stand, and then, before our eyes, flung first his sword, then himself, headlong from the cliff.

That ended the matter. Next moment, the English flag--alas! that I should say it--tumbled from the battlements; and with shouts of "_Ludar!

Froach Eilan_!" the portcullis swung open, and Dunluce belonged once more to the McDonnells.

Leaving us to guard the tower where most of the enemy had shut themselves, Ludar stalked off to a remote corner of the castle; whence in a short time he returned and called me.

"Humphrey," said he, "the maiden is safe, thank G.o.d. Go to her and see what she and the old nurse may need. I have other work to do. Friend,"

added he, "is this all a dream? Is this indeed the castle of my fathers? and when Sorley Boy comes, shall it be I who will give it into his hands?"

"You and no other," said I, "for the place is yours."

"Alas!" he said, "at what cost! When I heard my brave men fall from the cliff like sheep, Humphrey, I was minded not to stay there myself. But adieu now. To the maiden! Keep her safe for me."

He waved his hand and stalked to the gate, where I watched him, erect, amid his cheering clansmen, with a joyous smile on his face such as I had rarely seen there before, and which I knew belonged in part to the n.o.ble chieftain, his father, and in part to his true love, the maiden.

Alas! 'twas many a long day before I was to see him smile again like that, as you shall hear.

For the present, I went light at heart to the maiden, whom I found pale, indeed (for she had been ill), but serene and happy. The old nurse, who, I thought, ill liked my intrusion, forbade me to weary her young mistress with talk or questions.