Chapter XXI

The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakiegh

Early as day comes in the beginning of July, it was still dark when we reached our destination, a cleft in the head of a great mountain, with a water running through the midst, and upon the one hand a shallow cave in a rock.

The name of the cleft was the Heugh of Corry-nakiegh; and although from its height and being so near upon the sea, it was often beset with clouds, yet it was on the whole a pleasant place, and the five days we lived in it went happily.

We slept in the cave, making our bed of heather bushes which we cut for that purpose, and covering ourselves with Alan’s great-coat. There was a low concealed place, in a turning of the glen, where we were so bold as to make fire: so that we could warm ourselves when the clouds set in, and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trouts that we caught. This was indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent a great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. They were of good flesh and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt to be delicious.

In any by-time Alan must teach me to use my sword, for my ignorance had much distressed him.

In the meanwhile, you are not to suppose that we neglected our chief business, which was to get away.

‘It will be many a long day,’ Alan said to me on our first morning, ‘before the red-coats think upon seeking Corrynakiegh; so now we must get word sent to James, and he must find the siller for us.’

‘And how shall we send that word?’ says I.

He looked at me a little shyly.

‘Could ye lend me my button?’ says he. ‘It seems a strange thing to ask a gift again, but I own I am laith to cut another.’

I gave him the button; whereupon he strung it on a strip of his great-coat which he had used to bind the cross; and tying in a little sprig of birch and another of fir, he looked upon his work with satisfaction.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘there is a little clachan’ (what is called a hamlet in the English) ‘not very far from Corrynakiegh, and it has the name of Koalisnacoan. So when it comes dark again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Breck Maccoll, a bouman of Appin’s.’

‘With all my heart,’ says I; ‘and if he finds it, what is he to think?’

‘Well,’ says Alan, ‘I wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my troth I am afraid he will make little enough of it! But this is what I have in my mind. This cross is something in the nature of the crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there it is standing in his window, and no word with it. So he will say to himsel’, THE CLAN IS NOT TO RISE, BUT THERE IS SOMETHING. Then he will see my button, and that was Duncan Stewart’s. And then he will say to himsel’, THE SON OF DUNCAN IS IN THE HEATHER, AND HAS NEED OF ME. Then John Breck will see the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to himsel’ (if he is a man of any penetration at all, which I misdoubt), ALAN WILL BE LYING IN A WOOD WHICH IS BOTH OF PINES AND BIRCHES. Then he will think to himsel’, THAT IS NOT SO VERY RIFE HEREABOUT; and then he will come and give us a look up in Corrynakiegh.’

So that night Alan carried down his fiery cross and set it in the bouman’s window.

About noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of the mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from under his hand. He was a ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with the smallpox, and looked both dull and savage.

Alan would have had him carry a message to James; but the bouman would hear of no message.

‘She was forget it,’ he said in his screaming voice; and would either have a letter or wash his hands of us.

I thought Alan would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of writing in that desert. But he was a man of more resources than I knew; he found the quill of a cushat-dove; made himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his horn; and tearing a corner from his French military commission (which he carried in his pocket, like a talisman to keep him from the gallows), he sat down and wrote as follows:

‘DEAR KINSMAN,

– Please send the money by the bearer to the place he kens of.

‘Your affectionate cousin,

‘A.S.’

This he intrusted to the bouman, who promised to make what manner of speed he best could, and carried it off with him down the hill.

He was three full days gone, but about five in the evening of the third, we heard a whistling in the wood, which Alan answered; and presently the bouman came up the water-side, looking for us, right and left.

He gave us the news of the country; that it was alive with red-coats; that James and some of his servants were already clapped in prison at Fort William, under strong suspicion of complicity. It seemed it was noised on all sides that Alan Breck had fired the shot; and there was a bill issued for both him and me, with one hundred pounds reward.

This was all as bad as could be; and the little note the bouman had carried us from Mrs. Stewart was of a miserable sadness. In it she besought Alan not to let himself be captured, assuring him, if he fell in the hands of the troops, both he and James were no better than dead men. The money she had sent was all that she could beg or borrow, and she prayed heaven we could be doing with it. Lastly, she said, she enclosed us one of the bills in which we were described.

This we looked upon with great curiosity and not a little fear. Alan was advertised as ‘a small, pockmarked, active man of thirty-five or thereby, dressed in a feathered hat, a French side-coat of blue with silver buttons, and lace a great deal tarnished, a red waistcoat and breeches of black shag;’ and I as ‘a tall strong lad of about eighteen, wearing an old blue coat, very ragged, an old Highland bonnet, a long homespun waistcoat, blue breeches; his legs bare, low-country shoes, wanting the toes; speaks like a Lowlander, and has no beard.’

‘Alan,’ said I, ‘you should change your clothes.’

‘Na, troth!’ said Alan, ‘I have nae others. A fine sight I would be, if I went back to France in a bonnet!’

This put a reflection in my mind: that if I were to separate from Alan and his tell-tale clothes I should be safe against arrest, and might go openly about my business. I thought of it all the more, too, when the bouman brought out a green purse with four guineas in gold, and the best part of another in small change. True, it was more than I had. But then Alan, with less than five guineas, had to get as far as France; I, with my less than two, not beyond Queensferry; so that taking things in their proportion, Alan’s society was not only a peril to my life, but a burden on my purse.

But there was no thought of the sort in the honest head of my companion. He believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. And what could I do but hold my peace, and chafe, and take my chance of it?

‘It’s little enough,’ said Alan, putting the purse in his pocket, ‘but it’ll do my business. And now, John Breck, if ye will hand me over my button, this gentleman and me will be for taking the road.’

He found that button and handed it to Alan.

‘Well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the Maccolls,’ said Alan, and then to me, ‘Here is my button back again, and I thank you for parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me.’ Then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. ‘Ye have done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and I will always give you the name of a good man.’

Lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and Alan and I (getting our chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight.

Chapter XXII

The Flight in the Heather: The Moor

Some seven hours’ incessant, hard travelling brought us early in the morning to the end of a range of mountains. In front of us there lay a piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. The sun was not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as Alan said) there might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser.

We sat down, therefore, in a howe of the hill-side till the mist should have risen, and made ourselves a dish of drammach, and held a council of war.

‘This is how we stand: Appin’s fair death to us. To the south it’s all Campbells, and no to be thought of. To the north; well, there’s no muckle to be gained by going north; neither for you, that wants to get to Queensferry, nor yet for me, that wants to get to France. Well, then, we’ll can strike east.’

‘East be it!’ says I, quite cheerily.

‘Well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs,’ said Alan. ‘Once there, David, it’s mere pitch-and-toss. Out on yon bald, naked, flat place, where can a body turn to? Let the red-coats come over a hill, they can spy you miles away; and the sorrow’s in their horses’ heels, they would soon ride you down. It’s no good place, David; and I’m free to say, it’s worse by daylight than by dark.’

‘Alan,’ said I, ‘I give my word to go ahead until we drop.’

Alan was delighted. ‘There come whiles when ye show yoursel’ a mettle spark; and it’s then, David, that I love ye like a brother.’

The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point.

We went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. If I had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, I should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise.

About noon we lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Alan took the first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second. I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing.

The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away, and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. I saw I had betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like dying in my body. For sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east, spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in the deep parts of the heather.

When I waked Alan, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him.

‘What are we to do now?’ I asked.

‘We’ll have to play at being hares,’ said he. ‘Do ye see yon mountain?’ pointing to one on the northeastern sky.

‘Ay,’ said I.

‘Well, then,’ says he, ‘let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder. It is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can win to it before the morn, we may do yet. So now, David man, be brisk!’ With that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with an incredible quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. All the time, too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the moorland where we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. Now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile, and panted, and putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons.

The aching and faintness of my body, the labouring of my heart, the soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable that I would gladly have given up. Nothing but the fear of Alan lent me enough of a false kind of courage to continue. As for himself he had first turned crimson, but as time went on the redness began to be mingled with patches of white; his breath cried and whistled as it came; and his voice, when he whispered his observations in my ear during our halts, sounded like nothing human. Yet he seemed in no way dashed in spirits, nor did he at all abate in his activity, so that I was driven, to marvel at the man’s endurance.

At length, in the first gloaming of the night, we heard a trumpet sound, and looking back from among the heather, saw the troop beginning to collect. A little after, they had built a fire and camped for the night, about the middle of the waste.

At this I begged and besought that we might lie down and sleep.

‘There shall be no sleep the night!’ said Alan. And off he set again at his top speed.

It grew cooler and even a little darker. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while.

I had no care of my life, neither past nor future. I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair – and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred.

Day began to come in, after years, I thought; and by that time we were past the greatest danger, and could walk upon our feet like men, instead of crawling like brutes. But, dear heart, have mercy! What a pair we must have made, going double like old grandfathers, stumbling like babes, and as white as dead folk.

We were going down a heathery brae, Alan leading and I following a pace or two behind, like a fiddler and his wife; when upon a sudden the heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at his throat.

I don’t think I cared. I was too glad to have stopped walking to mind about a dirk. I lay looking up in the face of the man that held me, but I was not afraid of him. I heard Alan and another whispering in the Gaelic; and what they said was all one to me.

Then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken away, and we were set face to face, sitting in the heather.

‘They are Cluny’s men,’ said Alan. ‘We couldnae have fallen better. We’re just to bide here with these, which are his out-sentries, till they can get word to the chief of my arrival.’

Now Cluny Macpherson, the chief of the clan Vourich, had been one of the leaders of the great rebellion six years before; there was a price on his life; and I had supposed him long ago in France, with the rest of the heads of that desperate party.

‘What,’ I cried, ‘is Cluny still here?’

‘Ay, is he so!’ said Alan. ‘Still in his own country and kept by his own clan. King George can do no more.’

The messenger returned; it appeared that Cluny would be glad to receive us, we must get once more upon our feet and set forward. Alan was in excellent good spirits, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had brought him word. For my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. I had been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. With all that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that I could have wept at my own helplessness.

I saw Alan knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger. But my good companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment, two of the gillies had me by the arms, and I began to be carried forward with great swiftness through a labyrinth of dreary glens and hollows and into the heart of that dismal mountain of Ben Alder.