Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
Incident to the age, rather than the man, the earl's supernatural
fears of kelpies, gnomes, and water-spirits, now became altogether
secondary to the dread of having been discovered by some human
denizen of the place. He felt for his poniard, and paused. Behind
him yawned the pointed arch of the cavern, with the distant sea-beach
shining in the moonlight; before him lay rocks and water buried in
darkness. He lingered, oar in hand, scarcely daring to breathe, but
heard only the ripple of the rising tide as it chafed on the walls of
the chasm.
Suddenly, another sound smote his ear, that as of a diver rising to
the surface; then came a hard breathing on the water, and the
regulated plashing as of some one swimming away into that very
obscurity which the earl's eyes ached with regarding, but failed to
penetrate. His hair bristled, and his heart quailed with momentary
terror of a spirit, or evil thing; but from that very terror he
gathered a courage, and, by his oar and hands, feeling the rocks on
each side, shot further in his sharp-prowed boat, intent on
overtaking the swimmer, and discovering whether it was a man or
devil; but he had not gone twenty yards when the chasm terminated in
a sheer wall of rock; and again he paused to listen. The dash of the
water had ceased.
He thought he heard other sounds, like those of footsteps clambering
up the rock; but feared he was mistaken, for all became immediately
still, and he heard only the murmur of the water as it boiled among
the reefs without.
"Tush!" thought he, reddening with shame at his own alarm; "it has
only been some poor seal or sea-dog basking on the rocks in the
summer moonlight. By midnight the moon will be in the west--till
then let me sleep, for these last two nights I have never closed an
eye;" and looping a rope round a pinnacle of rock, he securely moored
the boat, and reclined within it to sleep.
Such was the effect of the weariness oppressing him, that in three
minutes he was buried in profound slumber, rocked by the motion of
the boat, which gently rose and fell on the undulations of the water;
for though around the isle the swell was heavy, the waves being
broken by the jutting of the rocks at the cavern mouth, they rolled
gently and smoothly into its dark recesses.
Now while the earl all unconsciously was sleeping, this little cavern
of the sea was filling fast; for as the rising tide on the German
Ocean met the downward current of the Forth, the water rose rapidly
against the impending walls.
Ashkirk knew not how long he slept, when he was suddenly awakened by
an unusual sound, and, on attempting to rise, struck his head with
violence against the stone roof of the cave, close up to which his
boat had floated on the rising tide.
His situation was fraught with danger and horror.
Moored fast to a point of rock now far beyond his reach, the boat was
wedged between the top of the cavern and the surface of the swollen
water, leaving him thus imprisoned, coffined, as it were, in utter
darkness, and with the deadly fear that the whole of this now
submarine grot would be covered by the gurgling tide, in which case
he would assuredly be drowned, "and die the death (as he thought) of
a rat in a drain."
The partial gleam of moonlight which had illuminated the mouth of
this frightful trap had now passed away, and the darkness within and
around it seemed palpable and opaque. He could no longer discern
where the entrance lay, and his heart sank in the fear that the water
had risen over it. He now heard the wavelets rippling, with a
thousand hollow echoes, in the fissures and recesses, and gurgling
with a sucking sound as they filled each in succession, and rose
towards the gunwale of his boat, which had become perfectly immovable.
And the tide was still rising!
He found that he could not survive ten minutes longer. Already the
air was stifling, and the necessity of making one desperate struggle
for life became immediately apparent. Lying almost on his back, he
groped breathlessly around him, and discovered a vacant shelf of rock
upon his right. Clambering within it, he found with joy that it led
to an inner and upper cavern. He had scarcely left the boat when,
with a hoarse gurgle, the tide rushed in and filled it.
As he ascended, a faint red light now flickered on the dark, stony
walls of this slimy retreat; then, indeed, the heart of the gallant
earl began to tremble, as his dread of supernatural beings returned.
He remembered the strange figure which had disappeared so suddenly
into the lower cavern when he first entered it. Again the terror of
the water-kelpie came vividly upon him; for, in that time, all
Scotsmen feared that evil denizen of their native seas and lakes.
Though dark, damp, and slimy, it was evident to the earl that the
water did not usually rise so far as this upper retreat; and as the
light reddened and increased around him, it revealed the solid masses
of whinstone rock which composed the enormous walls of this
subterranean vault. Here and there were columns of basalt, or
perpendicular lava, with masses of sparkling spar, pitchstone, and
porphyry. Still this strange and crimson light brightened and
wavered, dying and growing again, till, overcome by dread of dwarfs
and fairies, or spirits still more fell, several seconds elapsed
before the earl removed his hand from his eyes, and looked steadily
around him.
At the upper end of the grotto, which measured somewhere about twenty
feet square, there burned a fire of wood, green bushes, and crackling
sea-grass; and thereat was seated--neither a witch brewing hell-kail,
nor a wizard working spells; neither a stunted dwarf forging fairy
trinkets, nor some fair water-spirit rising in her naked beauty from
a silver shell, but simply a man roasting one of those wild rabbits
with which the island has in all ages abounded, and who, with his
breath, was blowing aside the smoke, which curled to the upper air
through a chasm in the roof.
Lord Ashkirk paused irresolutely; for, in advancing, he might fall
upon an enemy, and in retiring, he would inevitably fall into the
water, which murmured angrily in the cavern below. The whole aspect
of this subterranean cook was wild and strange; and though he stooped
immediately over the red embers that gleamed on a shelf of basalt,
the intruder failed to discover his features.
Suddenly, something familiar in the attitude flashed upon his memory.
"Sabrino!" he exclaimed, and approached him.
Sabrino--for this mysterious personage was no other--turned round,
and bounded backward with a terror which was ludicrously expressed by
the blue aspect of his usually sable visage, his dilated yellow eyes
and expansive mouth, in the recesses of which he rolled about the
voiceless fragment of his mutilated tongue.
"O--ah!" he stuttered, capering with terror, "O--ah--ees a-mee!"
"Now, by St. Mary! I thought thee the devil himself roasting some
poor man's child. Why art thou not attending my mother in that
rascally old tower above us? How camest thou to be hiding thus, and
in a condition so dilapidated? But, first of all, how is my Lady
Sybil--tush! I waste my time in questioning thee, poor pagan, who
art incapable of Christian speech."
As Sabrino's whole vocabulary consisted of a few guttural sounds, a
vast number of contortions of visage and shark-like grins, which were
seldom very intelligible to any one save the countess or Lady Jane,
who had acquired a knowledge of his meaning by habit, an answer to
the earl's three questions was not to be expected. After his first
terror and the extravagance of his after-joy had subsided, his story,
if he could have told it, might have been related in a few words.
The blow inflicted by the oar had neither killed nor stunned him;
for, luckily, that portion of his frame whereon it fell, namely, his
head, was stronger, by nature, than a casque of steel; thus, he
merely sank to come up again a few yards distant; but he dared
neither to swim after the boat, nor return to the tower where his
mistress was imprisoned, and from which he had been so
unceremoniously repulsed. Full of hatred and fear of the white men
among whom his evil fortune had cast him, the unhappy black page had
found this shelter when pursuing a rabbit by moonlight among the
rocks. Externally, a thick clump of whin-bushes concealed the
fissure that gave admittance to this upper grotto, where, for
fourteen days, Sabrino had lurked, coming forth only at night to pick
up fuel and shell-fish, crabs, mussels, whelks, and other _debris_ of
the ocean on the beach, and to catch the wild rabbits as they slept
among the long reedy grass in the moonlight.
During the day he remained close in his retreat; for he knew well
that Sir James Hamilton's men in the tower would have thought as
little of shooting him, by bow or arquebuse, as of winging a Solan
goose.
In these fourteen days, much of the original savageism of the
African's aspect and disposition had returned. He looked wild,
haggard, and strange, as his glassy eyeballs, and the gold earrings
with which the countess had adorned his large ears, glittered in the
light of the embers. On his thick woolly head was a cap or crown,
which he had woven of seaweed, and ornamented with the crabs' claws
and the cockleshells of his late repasts; his once gay doublet of
white satin slashed with scarlet silk and laced with gold, his tight
white hose and trunk breeches, together with the metallic collar of
thrall, which had the Countess Margaret's arms and cipher engraved
thereon, were all wofully changed in aspect, the former being torn to
rags, and the latter encrusted with salt by the saline atmosphere of
the Firth.
All this and much more the poor mute endeavoured to explain by signs,
which were totally unintelligible to the Earl of Ashkirk; who,
however, understood one point of the narrative, the necessity of
remaining closely concealed.
As Sabrino, to avoid discovery, had to cook all his viands in the
night, another rabbit was put to the spit before his fire, on which
he threw some of the driftwood and dried seaweed procured from the
creek; and there can be little doubt that the glow of this
subterranean fire, appearing at times through the fissure in the
rocks that bounded the western side of the little valley, formed the
gleams of fairy light, which were the source of such alarm to the
countess.
Her outlawed son made a hearty meal, which passed for both supper and
breakfast, as by the time it was concluded Sabrino had carefully
extinguished his fire, for morning had dawned, and the beams of the
rising sun shone far into the lower cavern, glittering on its wet
walls, and casting their reflection on its slimy recesses. The tide,
which in full flow completely filled it, had now ebbed; but there
were many fathoms of water, dark and deep, in the chasm where the
earl's boat lay floating, swamped and brimful to the gunwale; and the
task of baling it with his bonnet, for lack of another vessel, was a
long and protracted one.
"Now, my friend Sabrino," said he, "dost thou know what has brought
me to this rascally island?"
A knowing leer glittered in the shining eyes of Sabrino; and pointing
to the tower, he kissed his hand, laid it on his heart, and then
pointed to the water.
"Thou art right: to take my black-eyed Sybil from that villanous
prison-house. By my faith, thou wouldst make a glorious lover! what
a bright leer thou gavest! I would give a hundred golden unicorns to
find a sable Venus for thee, my poor Sabrino; and who knoweth, but
through the kind offices of the prior of Torphichen and other knights
of Rhodes, I may do so. Now, dost thou know in what part of yonder
tower Lady Sybil Douglas and the good lady my mother dwell?" asked