Catriona

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"It's there ye're coming, is it?" I cried. "Ah, man Alan, you can wile
your old wives, but you never can wile me."

Remembrance of my temptation in the wood made me strong as iron.

"I have a tryst to keep," I continued. "I am trysted with your cousin
Charlie; I have passed my word."

"Braw trysts that you'll can keep," said Alan. "Ye'll just mistryst
aince and for a' with the gentry in the bents. And what for?" he went
on with an extreme threatening gravity. "Just tell me that, my mannie!
Are ye to be speerited away like Lady Grange? Are they to drive a dirk
in your inside and bury ye in the bents? Or is it to be the other way,
and are they to bring ye in with James? Are they folk to be trustit?
Would ye stick your head in the mouth of Sim Fraser and the ither
Whigs?" he added with extraordinary bitterness.

"Alan," cried I, "they're all rogues and liars, and I'm with ye there.
The more reason there should be one decent man in such a land of
thieves! My word in passed, and I'll stick to it. I said long syne to
your kinswoman that I would stumble at no risk. Do ye mind of that? -
the night Red Colin fell, it was. No more I will, then. Here I stop.
Prestongrange promised me my life: if he's to be mansworn, here I'll
have to die."

"Aweel aweel," said Alan.

All this time we had seen or heard no more of our pursuers. In truth
we had caught them unawares; their whole party (as I was to learn
afterwards) had not yet reached the scene; what there was of them was
spread among the bents towards Gillane. It was quite an affair to call
them in and bring them over, and the boat was making speed. They were
besides but cowardly fellows: a mere leash of Highland cattle-thieves,
of several clans, no gentleman there to be the captain and the more
they looked at Alan and me upon the beach, the less (I must suppose)
they liked the look of us.

Whoever had betrayed Alan it was not the captain: he was in the skiff
himself, steering and stirring up his oarsmen, like a man with his
heart in his employ. Already he was near in, and the boat securing -
already Alan's face had flamed crimson with the excitement of his
deliverance, when our friends in the bents, either in their despair to
see their prey escape them or with some hope of scaring Andie, raised
suddenly a shrill cry of several voices.

This sound, arising from what appeared to be a quite deserted coast,
was really very daunting, and the men in the boat held water instantly.

"What's this of it?" sings out the captain, for he was come within an
easy hail.

"Freens o'mine," says Alan, and began immediately to wade forth in the
shallow water towards the boat. "Davie," he said, pausing, "Davie, are
ye no coming? I am swier to leave ye."

"Not a hair of me," said I.

"He stood part of a second where he was to his knees in the salt water,
hesitating.

"He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar," said he, and swashing in deeper
than his waist, was hauled into the skiff, which was immediately
directed for the ship.

I stood where he had left me, with my hands behind my back; Alan sat
with his head turned watching me; and the boat drew smoothly away. Of
a sudden I came the nearest hand to shedding tears, and seemed to
myself the most deserted solitary lad in Scotland. With that I turned
my back upon the sea and faced the sandhills. There was no sight or
sound of man; the sun shone on the wet sand and the dry, the wind blew
in the bents, the gulls made a dreary piping. As I passed higher up
the beach, the sand-lice were hopping nimbly about the stranded
tangles. The devil any other sight or sound in that unchancy place.
And yet I knew there were folk there, observing me, upon some secret
purpose. They were no soldiers, or they would have fallen on and taken
us ere now; doubtless they were some common rogues hired for my
undoing, perhaps to kidnap, perhaps to murder me outright. From the
position of those engaged, the first was the more likely; from what I
knew of their character and ardency in this business, I thought the
second very possible; and the blood ran cold about my heart.

I had a mad idea to loosen my sword in the scabbard; for though I was
very unfit to stand up like a gentleman blade to blade, I thought I
could do some scathe in a random combat. But I perceived in time the
folly of resistance. This was no doubt the joint "expedient" on which
Prestongrange and Fraser were agreed. The first, I was very sure, had
done something to secure my life; the second was pretty likely to have
slipped in some contrary hints into the ears of Neil and his
companions; and it I were to show bare steel I might play straight into
the hands of my worst enemy and seal my own doom.

These thoughts brought me to the head of the beach. I cast a look
behind, the boat was nearing the brig, and Alan flew his handkerchief
for a farewell, which I replied to with the waving of my hand. But
Alan himself was shrunk to a small thing in my view, alongside of this
pass that lay in front of me. I set my hat hard on my head, clenched
my teeth, and went right before me up the face of the sand-wreath. It
made a hard climb, being steep, and the sand like water underfoot. But
I caught hold at last by the long bent-grass on the brae-top, and
pulled myself to a good footing. The same moment men stirred and stood
up here and there, six or seven of them, ragged-like knaves, each with
a dagger in his hand. The fair truth is, I shut my eyes and prayed.
When I opened them again, the rogues were crept the least thing nearer
without speech or hurry. Every eye was upon mine, which struck me with
a strange sensation of their brightness, and of the fear with which
they continued to approach me. I held out my hands empty; whereupon
one asked, with a strong Highland brogue, if I surrendered.

"Under protest," said I, "if ye ken what that means, which I misdoubt."

At that word, they came all in upon me like a flight of birds upon a
carrion, seized me, took my sword, and all the money from my pockets,
bound me hand and foot with some strong line, and cast me on a tussock
of bent. There they sat about their captive in a part of a circle and
gazed upon him silently like something dangerous, perhaps a lion or a
tiger on the spring. Presently this attention was relaxed. They drew
nearer together, fell to speech in the Gaelic, and very cynically
divided my property before my eyes. It was my diversion in this time
that I could watch from my place the progress of my friend's escape. I
saw the boat come to the brig and be hoisted in, the sails fill, and
the ship pass out seaward behind the isles and by North Berwick.

In the course of two hours or so, more and more ragged Highlandmen kept
collecting. Neil among the first, until the party must have numbered
near a score. With each new arrival there was a fresh bout of talk,
that sounded like complaints and explanations; but I observed one
thing, none of those who came late had any share in the division of my
spoils. The last discussion was very violent and eager, so that once I
thought they would have quarrelled; on the heels of which their company
parted, the bulk of them returning westward in a troop, and only three,
Neil and two others, remaining sentries on the prisoner.

"I could name one who would be very ill pleased with your day's work,
Neil Duncanson," said I, when the rest had moved away.

He assured me in answer I should be tenderly used, for he knew he was
"acquent wi' the leddy."

This was all our talk, nor did any other son of man appear upon that
portion of the coast until the sun had gone down among the Highland
mountains, and the gloaming was beginning to grow dark. At which hour
I was aware of a long, lean, bony-like Lothian man of a very swarthy
countenance, that came towards us among the bents on a farm horse.

"Lads," cried he, "has ye a paper like this?" and held up one in his
hand. Neil produced a second, which the newcomer studied through a
pair of horn spectacles, and saying all was right and we were the folk
he was seeking, immediately dismounted. I was then set in his place,
my feet tied under the horse's belly, and we set forth under the
guidance of the Lowlander. His path must have been very well chosen,
for we met but one pair - a pair of lovers - the whole way, and these,
perhaps taking us to be free-traders, fled on our approach. We were at
one time close at the foot of Berwick Law on the south side; at
another, as we passed over some open hills, I spied the lights of a
clachan and the old tower of a church among some trees not far off, but
too far to cry for help, if I had dreamed of it. At last we came again
within sound of the sea. There was moonlight, though not much; and by
this I could see the three huge towers and broken battlements of
Tantallon, that old chief place of the Red Douglases. The horse was
picketed in the bottom of the ditch to graze, and I was led within, and
forth into the court, and thence into the tumble-down stone hall. Here
my conductors built a brisk fire in the midst of the pavement, for
there was a chill in the night. My hands were loosed, I was set by the
wall in the inner end, and (the Lowlander having produced provisions) I
was given oatmeal bread and a pitcher of French brandy. This done, I
was left once more alone with my three Highlandmen. They sat close by
the fire drinking and talking; the wind blew in by the breaches, cast
about the smoke and flames, and sang in the tops of the towers; I could
hear the sea under the cliffs, and, my mind being reassured as to my
life, and my body and spirits wearied with the day's employment, I
turned upon one side and slumbered.

I had no means of guessing at what hour I was wakened, only the moon
was down and the fire was low. My feet were now loosed, and I was
carried through the ruins and down the cliff-side by a precipitous path
to where I found a fisher's boat in a haven of the rocks. This I was
had on board of, and we began to put forth from the shore in a fine
starlight

CHAPTER XIV - THE BASS

I HAD no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there
for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word
of Ransome's - the TWENTY-POUNDERS. If I were to be exposed a second
time to that same former danger of the plantations, I judged it must
turn ill with me; there was no second Alan; and no second shipwreck and
spare yard to be expected now; and I saw myself hoe tobacco under the
whip's lash. The thought chilled me; the air was sharp upon the water,
the stretchers of the boat drenched with a cold dew: and I shivered in
my place beside the steersman. This was the dark man whom I have
called hitherto the Lowlander; his name was Dale, ordinarily called
Black Andie. Feeling the thrill of my shiver, he very kindly handed me
a rough jacket full of fish-scales, with which I was glad to cover
myself.

"I thank you for this kindness," said I, "and will make so free as to
repay it with a warning. You take a high responsibility in this
affair. You are not like these ignorant, barbarous Highlanders, but
know what the law is and the risks of those that break it."

"I am no just exactly what ye would ca' an extremist for the law," says
he, "at the best of times; but in this business I act with a good
warranty."

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked.

"Nae harm," said he, "nae harm ava'. Ye'll have strong freens, I'm
thinking. Ye'll be richt eneuch yet."

There began to fall a greyness on the face of the sea; little dabs of
pink and red, like coals of slow fire, came in the east; and at the
same time the geese awakened, and began crying about the top of the
Bass. It is just the one crag of rock, as everybody knows, but great
enough to carve a city from. The sea was extremely little, but there
went a hollow plowter round the base of it. With the growing of the
dawn I could see it clearer and clearer; the straight crags painted
with sea-birds' droppings like a morning frost, the sloping top of it
green with grass, the clan of white geese that cried about the sides,
and the black, broken buildings of the prison sitting close on the
sea's edge.

At the sight the truth came in upon me in a clap.

"It's there you're taking me!" I cried.

"Just to the Bass, mannie," said he: "Whaur the auld saints were afore
ye, and I misdoubt if ye have come so fairly by your preeson."

"But none dwells there now," I cried; "the place is long a ruin."

"It'll be the mair pleisand a change for the solan geese, then," quoth
Andie dryly.

The day coming slowly brighter I observed on the bilge, among the big
stones with which fisherfolk ballast their boats, several kegs and
baskets, and a provision of fuel. All these were discharged upon the
crag. Andie, myself, and my three Highlanders (I call them mine,
although it was the other way about), landed along with them. The sun
was not yet up when the boat moved away again, the noise of the oars on
the thole-pins echoing from the cliffs, and left us in our singular
reclusion:

Andie Dale was the Prefect (as I would jocularly call him) of the Bass,
being at once the shepherd and the gamekeeper of that small and rich
estate. He had to mind the dozen or so of sheep that fed and fattened
on the grass of the sloping part of it, like beasts grazing the roof of
a cathedral. He had charge besides of the solan geese that roosted in
the crags; and from these an extraordinary income is derived. The
young are dainty eating, as much as two shillings a-piece being a
common price, and paid willingly by epicures; even the grown birds are
valuable for their oil and feathers; and a part of the minister's
stipend of North Berwick is paid to this day in solan geese, which
makes it (in some folks' eyes) a parish to be coveted. To perform
these several businesses, as well as to protect the geese from
poachers, Andie had frequent occasion to sleep and pass days together
on the crag; and we found the man at home there like a farmer in his
steading. Bidding us all shoulder some of the packages, a matter in
which I made haste to bear a hand, he led us in by a looked gate, which
was the only admission to the island, and through the ruins of the
fortress, to the governor's house. There we saw by the ashes in the
chimney and a standing bed-place in one corner, that he made his usual
occupation.

This bed he now offered me to use, saying he supposed I would set up to
be gentry.

"My gentrice has nothing to do with where I lie," said I. "I bless God
I have lain hard ere now, and can do the same again with thankfulness.
While I am here, Mr. Andie, if that be your name, I will do my part and
take my place beside the rest of you; and I ask you on the other hand
to spare me your mockery, which I own I like ill."

He grumbled a little at this speech, but seemed upon reflection to
approve it. Indeed, he was a long-headed, sensible man, and a good
Whig and Presbyterian; read daily in a pocket Bible, and was both able
and eager to converse seriously on religion, leaning more than a little
towards the Cameronian extremes. His morals were of a more doubtful
colour. I found he was deep in the free trade, and used the rains of
Tantallon for a magazine of smuggled merchandise. As for a gauger, I
do not believe he valued the life of one at half-a-farthing. But that
part of the coast of Lothian is to this day as wild a place, and the
commons there as rough a crew, as any in Scotland.

One incident of my imprisonment is made memorable by a consequence it
had long after. There was a warship at this time stationed in the
Firth, the SEAHORSE, Captain Palliser. It chanced she was cruising in
the month of September, plying between Fife and Lothian, and sounding
for sunk dangers. Early one fine morning she was seen about two miles
to east of us, where she lowered a boat, and seemed to examine the
Wildfire Rocks and Satan's Bush, famous dangers of that coast. And
presently after having got her boat again, she came before the wind and
was headed directly for the Base. This was very troublesome to Andie
and the Highlanders; the whole business of my sequestration was
designed for privacy, and here, with a navy captain perhaps blundering
ashore, it looked to become public enough, if it were nothing worse. I
was in a minority of one, I am no Alan to fall upon so many, and I was
far from sure that a warship was the least likely to improve my
condition. All which considered, I gave Andie my parole of good
behaviour and obedience, and was had briskly to the summit of the rock,
where we all lay down, at the cliff's edge, in different places of
observation and concealment. The SEAHORSE came straight on till I
thought she would have struck, and we (looking giddily down) could see
the ship's company at their quarters and hear the leadsman singing at
the lead. Then she suddenly wore and let fly a volley of I know not
how many great guns. The rock was shaken with the thunder of the
sound, the smoke flowed over our heads, and the geese rose in number
beyond computation or belief. To hear their screaming and to see the
twinkling of their wings, made a most inimitable curiosity; and I
suppose it was after this somewhat childish pleasure that Captain
Palliser had come so near the Bass. He was to pay dear for it in time.
During his approach I had the opportunity to make a remark upon the
rigging of that ship by which I ever after knew it miles away; and this
was a means (under Providence) of my averting from a friend a great
calamity, and inflicting on Captain Palliser himself a sensible
disappointment.

All the time of my stay on the rock we lived well. We had small ale
and brandy, and oatmeal, of which we made our porridge night and
morning. At times a boat came from the Castleton and brought us a
quarter of mutton, for the sheep upon the rock we must not touch, these
being specially fed to market. The geese were unfortunately out of
season, and we let them be. We fished ourselves, and yet more often
made the geese to fish for us: observing one when he had made a
capture and searing him from his prey ere he had swallowed it.

The strange nature of this place, and the curiosities with which it
abounded, held me busy and amused. Escape being impossible, I was
allowed my entire liberty, and continually explored the surface of the
isle wherever it might support the foot of man. The old garden of the
prison was still to be observed, with flowers and pot-herbs running
wild, and some ripe cherries on a bush. A little lower stood a chapel
or a hermit's cell; who built or dwelt in it, none may know, and the
thought of its age made a ground of many meditations. The prison, too,
where I now bivouacked with Highland cattle-thieves, was a place full
of history, both human and divine. I thought it strange so many saints
and martyrs should have gone by there so recently, and left not so much
as a leaf out of their Bibles, or a name carved upon the wall, while
the rough soldier lads that mounted guard upon the battlements had
filled the neighbourhood with their mementoes - broken tobacco-pipes
for the most part, and that in a surprising plenty, but also metal
buttons from their coats. There were times when I thought I could have
heard the pious sound of psalms out of the martyr's dungeons, and seen
the soldiers tramp the ramparts with their glinting pipes, and the dawn
rising behind them out of the North Sea.

No doubt it was a good deal Andie and his tales that put these fancies
in my head. He was extraordinarily well acquainted with the story of
the rock in all particulars, down to the names of private soldiers, his
father having served there in that same capacity. He was gifted
besides with a natural genius for narration, so that the people seemed
to speak and the things to be done before your face. This gift of his
and my assiduity to listen brought us the more close together. I could
not honestly deny but what I liked him; I soon saw that he liked me;
and indeed, from the first I had set myself out to capture his good-
will. An odd circumstance (to be told presently) effected this beyond
my expectation; but even in early days we made a friendly pair to be a
prisoner and his gaoler.

I should trifle with my conscience if I pretended my stay upon the Bass
was wholly disagreeable. It seemed to me a safe place, as though I was
escaped there out of my troubles. No harm was to be offered me; a
material impossibility, rock and the deep sea, prevented me from fresh
attempts; I felt I had my life safe and my honour safe, and there were
times when I allowed myself to gloat on them like stolen waters. At
other times my thoughts were very different, I recalled how strong I
had expressed myself both to Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected
that my captivity upon the Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts
of Fife and Lothian, was a thing I should be thought more likely to
have invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at
least, I must pass for a boaster and a coward. Now I would take this
lightly enough; tell myself that so long as I stood well with Catriona
Drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and spilled
water; and thence pass off into those meditations of a lover which are
so delightful to himself and must always appear so surprisingly idle to
a reader. But anon the fear would take me otherwise; I would be shaken
with a perfect panic of self-esteem, and these supposed hard judgments
appear an injustice impossible to be supported. With that another
train of thought would he presented, and I had scarce begun to be
concerned about men's judgments of myself, than I was haunted with the
remembrance of James Stewart in his dungeon and the lamentations of his
wife. Then, indeed, passion began to work in me; I could not forgive
myself to sit there idle: it seemed (if I were a man at all) that I
could fly or swim out of my place of safety; and it was in such humours
and to amuse my self-reproaches that I would set the more particularly
to win the good side of Andie Dale.

At last, when we two were alone on the summit of the rock on a bright
morning, I put in some hint about a bribe. He looked at me, cast back
his head, and laughed out loud.

"Ay, you're funny, Mr. Dale," said I, "but perhaps if you'll glance an
eye upon that paper you may change your note."

The stupid Highlanders had taken from me at the time of my seizure
nothing but hard money, and the paper I now showed Andie was an
acknowledgment from the British Linen Company for a considerable sum.

He read it. "Troth, and ye're nane sae ill aff," said he.

"I thought that would maybe vary your opinions," said I.

"Hout!" said he. "It shows me ye can bribe; but I'm no to be bribit."

"We'll see about that yet a while," says I. "And first, I'll show you
that I know what I am talking. You have orders to detain me here till
after Thursday, 21st September."

"Ye're no a'thegether wrong either," says Andie. "I'm to let you gang,
bar orders contrair, on Saturday, the 23rd."

I could not but feel there was something extremely insidious in this
arrangement. That I was to re-appear precisely in time to be too late
would cast the more discredit on my tale, if I were minded to tell one;
and this screwed me to fighting point.

"Now then, Andie, you that kens the world, listen to me, and think
while ye listen," said I. "I know there are great folks in the
business, and I make no doubt you have their names to go upon. I have
seen some of them myself since this affair began, and said my say into
their faces too. But what kind of a crime would this be that I had
committed? or what kind of a process is this that I am fallen under?
To be apprehended by some ragged John-Hielandman on August 30th,
carried to a rickle of old stones that is now neither fort nor gaol
(whatever it once was) but just the gamekeeper's lodge of the Bass
Rock, and set free again, September 23rd, as secretly as I was first
arrested - does that sound like law to you? or does it sound like
justice? or does it not sound honestly like a piece of some low dirty
intrigue, of which the very folk that meddle with it are ashamed?"

"I canna gainsay ye, Shaws. It looks unco underhand," says Andie.
"And werenae the folk guid sound Whigs and true-blue Presbyterians I
would has seen them ayont Jordan and Jeroozlem or I would have set hand
to it."

"The Master of Lovat'll be a braw Whig," says I, "and a grand
Presbyterian."

"I ken naething by him," said he. "I hae nae trokings wi' Lovats."

"No, it'll be Prestongrange that you'll be dealing with," said I.

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