Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXII Part 6

In a few minutes afterwards M'Kay came forth from Lord Rae's apartment to perform the daring feat of securing two armed men by the mere force of physical strength; for he was now without weapon of any kind. When he came out, however, it was with an appearance of the most friendly feeling towards the soldiers. He came out smiling graciously, and entered into familiar chat with the men, alleging that he came to put off the time till his master had written a letter which he was to deliver to a person in town.

Thrown off their guard by M'Kay's jocular and cordial manner, the soldiers grounded their muskets, and began to enter in earnest into the conversation which he was promoting. M'Kay, in the meantime, was watching his opportunity to seize them; but this, as it was necessary he should be placed, with regard to them, so as to have one on either side of him, that he might grasp both at the same instant, he did not obtain for some time.

By dint, however, of some exceedingly cautious and wary manoeuvring, M'Kay at length found himself in a position favourable to his meditated proceedings. On doing so, he, with the speed and force of lightning, darted an arm out on either side of him, seized a soldier by the breast with each hand, and with as much ease as a powerful dog could turn over a kitten, laid them both gently on their backs on the floor of the pa.s.sage, where he held them extended at full length, and immovable in his tremendous grasp, till he felt a.s.sured that Lord Rae had cleared the prison. This the latter effected with the most perfect success. The moment M'Kay seized the soldiers--an act of which Lord Rae was apprised by the former's calling out, "Noo, noo, my lort"--he rushed out, ran along the pa.s.sage, descended the stair in three or four leaps, came upon the little turnkey unawares, as he was looking over the half-door of the prison entrance--his sole occupation during three-fourths of the day--seized him by the neck of the coat behind, laid him down, as M'Kay had done by the soldiers, at his full length--no great length after all--on the floor; drew the form to the door, placed it over the little turnkey in such a way as to prevent his rising, jumped on it, leapt into the street at one bound, and instantly disappeared. All this was done in the tenth part of the time that has been taken to relate it. It was, in truth, the work of but a moment.

On being satisfied that Lord Rae had made his escape--

"Noo, lads, ye may got up," said M'Kay, loosening his hold of the men, and starting himself to his feet. "Ta burd's flown; but ye may look after ta cage, and see tat no more o' your canaries got away."

Freed from the powerful grasp which had hitherto pinned them to the floor, the soldiers sprang to their feet, and endeavoured to get hold of their muskets. Seeing this, M'Kay again seized them, and again threw them to the floor; but on this occasion it was merely to show the power he had over them, if they should still have any doubt of it.

"Noo, lads, I'll tell you what it is," said M'Kay, addressing the prostrate soldiers--"if you'll behave yoursels desenly, and no be botherin' me wi' ony more o' your tarn nonsense, I'll aloo you to make me your prisoner; for I'm no intending to run away; I'll kive myself up to save your hides, and take my shance of ta law for what I'll do. Tat's my mind of it, lads. If you like to acree to it, goot and well; if not, I will knock your two heads togidder, till your prains go into smash."

But too happy to accept of such terms, the soldiers at once a.s.sented to them; and on their doing so, were permitted once more to resume their legs, when M'Kay peaceably yielded himself their prisoner. The gigantic Highlander could easily have effected his own escape; but he could not have done so without having recourse to that violence which had been so anxiously deprecated by both his master and mistress. Without inflicting some mortal injury on the soldiers, he could not have prevented them from pursuing him when he had fled, and probably firing on him as he did so. All this, therefore, had been provided for by the arrangements previously agreed upon by Lord Rae and his retainer. By these it was settled, that he should, on the former's making his escape, peaceably yield himself up to "underlie the law," in a reliance on the friendly disposition of Cromwell towards the fugitive, which, it was not doubted, would be exerted in behalf of his servant. Such proceeding, it was thought too, would bring Lord Rae's case sooner to issue; and be, with regard to the law, as it were, throwing a bone in the dog's way to arrest his attention, and interrupt his pursuit of the original and more important object of his vengeance.

On delivering himself up, M'Kay was immediately placed in confinement, and shortly after brought to trial, for aiding and abetting in the escape of a State prisoner. The trial was a very brief one; for the facts were easily established, and sentence was about to be pa.s.sed on the prisoner, when a stir suddenly arose at the court door. The presiding judge paused; the stir increased. In the next instant it was hushed; and in that instant Cromwell entered the court. On advancing a pace or two within the apartment, he took off his hat, bowed respectfully to the judges, and proceeding onwards, finally ascended the bench and took his seat beside them.

When a man feels himself master, he need be under no great ceremony; neither need he trouble himself much about forms or rules which regulate the conduct of inferiors. Cromwell, on this occasion, got up in a few minutes after he had taken his place, and delivered to the court a long, and, after his usual fashion, obscure and unconnected oration in favour of the prisoner at the bar. The chief ground, however, on which he rested his defence and exculpation of M'Kay, was the fidelity to his master, which the crime with which he was charge implied, and the worse effect to the cause of morality than good to the political interests of the State, which the infliction of any punishment in such case would produce. "If," concluded Cromwell, "fidelity to a master is to be punished as a crime, where shall we look for honest servants?"

The reasoning of Cromwell, even had it been less cogent than it was, could not be but convincin to those who knew of and dreaded his power.

He was listened to with the most profound attention, and the justness of his arguments and force of his eloquence acknowledged by the acquittal of the prisoner.

As M'Kay rose from his seat at the bar to leave the court, Cromwell eyed him attentively for some seconds, and, struck with his prodigious size and fierce aspect, whispered to one of the judges near him, "May the Lord keep me from the devil's and _that_ man's grasp."

We have now only to add, that the protection promised by Cromwell to Lady Rae for her husband was duly made out, and delivered to her. We need not say that it was found to be a perfectly efficient doc.u.ment.

THE DIAMOND EYES.

When I entered Edinburgh College the students were tolerably free from any of those clubs or parties into which some fact.i.tious subject--often a whim--divides them. In the prior year the spirit of wager had seized a great number of them with the harpy talons of the demon of gambling, giving rise to consequences prejudicial to their morals, as well as to their studies. A great deal of money among the richer of them changed hands upon the result of bets, often the most frivolous, if not altogether ridiculous. Now, we are not to say that, abstracted from the love of money, the act of betting is unqualifiedly bad, if rather we may not be able to say something for it, insomuch as it sometimes brings out, and stamps ingenuity or sagacity, while it represses and chastises arrogance. But the practice at the College at that time was actually wild. They sought out subjects; the aye and the no of ordinary converse was followed by the gauntlet, which was taken up on the instant; and they even had an umpire in the club, a respectable young man of the name of Hawley, who was too wise to bet himself, but who was pleased with the honour of being privileged to decide the bets of the others.

In the heat of this wild enthusiasm, it happened that two of these youths, one called Henry Dewhurst, and the other Frank Hamilton, were walking on the jetty which runs out from the harbour of Leith a full mile into the Forth. Dewhurst was the son of a West India planter, who allowed him 300 a year, every penny of which was spent in paying only a part of his bills long before the year was done; one of which bills I had an opportunity of seeing, to my wonder--how any one could eat 15 worth of tarts and sweetmeats in the course of not many months! Hamilton was the son of a west country proprietor, and enjoyed the privilege of using, to his ruin, a yearly allowance of 250. In the midst of their sauntering they hailed two of their friends,--one Campbell, a sworn companion of the young West Indian; and the other Cameron, as closely allied to Hamilton;--all the four being, as the saying goes, "birds of a feather," tossing their wings in the gale of sprees, and not always sleeping in their own nests at night.

As they approached the end of the jetty, they met a lad who had wounded one of these large gulls called Tom Norries,--a beautiful creature, with its fine lead-coloured wings and charming snow-white breast, and eye like a diamond.

"I will give you a shilling for the bird," said Dewhurst.

"But what are you to do with it?" replied the lad. "I would not like it to be killed. It is only hurt in the wing; and I will get half-a-crown for it from one who has a garden to keep it in."

"No, no," said Dewhurst, "I'll not kill it. Here's your half-crown."

And the bargain was struck. Dewhurst, with the struggling bird in his hand, went down, followed by his friends, one of the side stairs to the stone rampart, by which the jetty is defended on the east. There they sat down. The sun was throwing a blaze of glory over a sea which repaid the gift with a liquid splendour scarcely inferior to his of fire; and the companions of the bird, swirling in the clear air, seemed to be attracted by the sharp cries of the prisoner; but all its efforts were vain to gratify its love of liberty and their yearning. It was in the hands of those who had neither pity for its sufferings, consideration for the lessons it carried in its structure, nor taste for estimating its beauties. One of another kind of students might have detected adaptations in the structure of that creature sufficient to have raised his thoughts to the great Author of design and the source of all beauty,--that small and light body, capable of being suspended for a great length of time in the air by those broad wings, so that, as a bird of prey, it should watch for its food without the aid of a perch; the feathers, supplied by an unctuous substance, to enable them to throw off the water and keep the body dry; the web-feet for swimming; and the long legs, which it uses as a kind of stay, by turning them towards the head when it bends the neck, to apply the beak--that beak, too, so admirably formed--for taking up entire, or perforating the backs of the silly fishes that gambol too near the surface. Ay, even in these fishes, which, venturing too far from their natural depths, and becoming amorous of the sun, and playful in their escapades, he might see the symbol of man himself, who, when he leaves the paths of prudence, and gets top-light with pleasure, is ready, in every culmination of his delirium, to be caught by a waiting retribution. Ah! but our student, who held the bird, was not incurious--only cold and cruel in his curiosity.

"Hamilton," said he, "that bird could still swim on the surface of that sea, though deprived of every feather on its body."

"I deny it," replied Hamilton. "It will not swim five minutes,"

"What do you bet?"--- The old watchword.

"Five pounds."

"Done."

And getting Campbell to hold the beak, which the bird was using with all its vigour, he grasped its legs and wings together by his left hand, and began to tear from the tender living skin the feathers. Every handful showed the quivering flesh, and was followed by spouts of blood; nor did he seem to care--although the more carefully the flaying operation was performed, the better chance he had of carrying his wager--whether he brought away with the torn tips portions of the skin. The writhing of the tortured creature was rather an appeal to his deliberate cruelty, and the shrill scream only quickened the process. The back finished and b.l.o.o.d.y, the belly, snow-white and beautiful, was turned up, the feathers torn away, the breast laid bare, and one wing after the other stript of every pinion. Nothing in the shape of feathers, in short, was left, except the covering of the head, which resisted his fingers.

"There now is Plato's definition of a man personified," said he as he laughed.

During all this time a lady looked over the parapet. Dewhurst caught her eye red with anger, but he only laughed the louder.

"Now, Hamilton," said he, "you take the bird, and we mount to the platform. When I give the sign, fling him in, and we shall see how the bet goes."

They accordingly mounted, and the lady turning her back, as if she had been unable to bear longer the sight of so much cold cruelty, directed her vision towards the west; but a little boy, who was along with her, seemed to watch the operation.

"Now," cried Dewhurst.

And Hamilton thiew the bird into the sea. The creature, still vivacious, true to its old instinct, spread out its bare wings in an attempt to fly, but it was in vain; down it came sinking below the surface, but rising quickly again to lash, with the bleeding wings, the water on which it used to swim so lightly and elegantly. The struggle between the effort to fly and the tendency to sink was continued for several minutes, its screams bringing closer around it many of its compeers, who looked as if with pity and amazement on the suffering victim, known to them now only by the well-known cry of distress.

Meanwhile these curious students of natural history stood looking over the rail, watch in hand; and the little boy, an important personage in our story, also intent upon the experiment, cried out two solitary words, very simple ones too, and yet fraught with a strange import, as regards consequences, that could not be gathered from them.

"See, ma'."

But the lady to whom they were addressed had still her head turned away.

"Six minutes," cried Dewhurst. "The time is up, and the bird is only this instant down. I win."

"I admit it," responded Hamilton, evidently disconcerted. "I shall pay you to-night at Stewart's, at seven o'clock. I got my remittance yesterday."

"Content," said Dewhurst, "That's the third bet I have gained off you within a fortnight,"

Hamilton bit his lip and scowled--- an act which only roused against him the raillery of his comrades, who were now collected in a circle, and symptoms of anger of a more expressive kind showed themselves.

"You have been at this trade of flaying before," said he, looking sternly at Dewhurst. "Your father, like the other West Indians, is well acquainted with the flaying of negroes, and you have been following his example with the Jamaica lungies. But, by G--d," he added, getting enraged, "next time we cross the rapiers of a bet, it shall be for ten times five."

"This instant," answered Dewhurst, on whom the imputations about his father acted as a fiery stimulant.

"Seek your subject," responded Hamilton.

"You see that lady there?" continued the West Indian. "She has a boy with her."

"I do."

"The mother of the boy, or not?" continued Dewhurst. "I say she is; and, in place of fifty, I'll make it a hundred."

"Have you ever seen them before?" asked Hamilton, trying to be calm.