Kidnapped
a grim face, but never a grimmer than Alan’s when he had named the Red
Fox.
“And who is the Red Fox?” I asked, daunted, but still curious.
“Who is he?” cried Alan. “Well, and I’ll tell you that. When the men of
the clans were broken at Culloden, and the good cause went down, and the
horses rode over the fetlocks in the best blood of the north, Ardshiel
had to flee like a poor deer upon the mountains--he and his lady and his
bairns. A sair job we had of it before we got him shipped; and while he
still lay in the heather, the English rogues, that couldnae come at his
life, were striking at his rights. They stripped him of his powers; they
stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of
his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries; ay, and the very
clothes off their backs--so that it’s now a sin to wear a tartan plaid,
and a man may be cast into a gaol if he has but a kilt about his legs.
One thing they couldnae kill. That was the love the clansmen bore their
chief. These guineas are the proof of it. And now, in there steps a man,
a Campbell, red-headed Colin of Glenure----”
“Is that him you call the Red Fox?” said I.
“Will ye bring me his brush?” cries Alan, fiercely. “Ay, that’s the man.
In he steps, and gets papers from King George, to be so-called King’s
factor on the lands of Appin. And at first he sings small, and is
hail-fellow-well-met with Sheamus--that’s James of the Glens, my
chieftain’s agent. But by-and-by, that came to his ears that I have just
told you; how the poor commons of Appin, the farmers and the crofters
and the boumen, were wringing their very plaids to get a second rent,
and send it over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. What was it ye
called it, when I told ye?”
“I called it noble, Alan,” said I.
“And you little better than a common Whig!” cries Alan. “But when it
came to Colin Roy, the black Campbell blood in him ran wild. He sat
gnashing his teeth at the wine table. What! should a Stewart get a bite
of bread, and him not be able to prevent it? Ah! Red Fox, if ever I
hold you at a gun’s end, the Lord have pity upon ye!” (Alan stopped to
swallow down his anger.) “Well, David, what does he do? He declares all
the farms to let. And, thinks he, in his black heart, ‘I’ll soon get
other tenants that’ll overbid these Stewarts, and Maccolls, and Macrobs’
(for these are all names in my clan, David); ‘and then,’ thinks he,
‘Ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a French roadside.’”
“Well,” said I, “what followed?”
Alan laid down his pipe, which he had long since suffered to go out, and
set his two hands upon his knees.
“Ay,” said he, “ye’ll never guess that! For these same Stewarts, and
Maccolls, and Macrobs (that had two rents to pay, one to King George
by stark force, and one to Ardshiel by natural kindness) offered him a
better price than any Campbell in all broad Scotland; and far he
sent seeking them--as far as to the sides of Clyde and the cross of
Edinburgh--seeking, and fleeching, and begging them to come, where there
was a Stewart to be starved and a red-headed hound of a Campbell to be
pleasured!”
“Well, Alan,” said I, “that is a strange story, and a fine one, too. And
Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten.”
“Him beaten?” echoed Alan. “It’s little ye ken of Campbells, and less
of the Red Fox. Him beaten? No: nor will be, till his blood’s on the
hillside! But if the day comes, David man, that I can find time and
leisure for a bit of hunting, there grows not enough heather in all
Scotland to hide him from my vengeance!”
“Man Alan,” said I, “ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to
blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no
harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he
next?”
“And that’s a good observe, David,” said Alan. “Troth and indeed,
they will do him no harm; the more’s the pity! And barring that about
Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae
Christian), I am much of your mind.”
“Opinion here or opinion there,” said I, “it’s a kent thing that
Christianity forbids revenge.”
“Ay” said he, “it’s well seen it was a Campbell taught ye! It would be
a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing
as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush! But that’s nothing to the
point. This is what he did.”
“Ay” said I, “come to that.”
“Well, David,” said he, “since he couldnae be rid of the loyal commons
by fair means, he swore he would be rid of them by foul. Ardshiel was to
starve: that was the thing he aimed at. And since them that fed him in
his exile wouldnae be bought out--right or wrong, he would drive them
out. Therefore he sent for lawyers, and papers, and red-coats to stand
at his back. And the kindly folk of that country must all pack and
tramp, every father’s son out of his father’s house, and out of the
place where he was bred and fed, and played when he was a callant. And
who are to succeed them? Bare-leggit beggars! King George is to whistle
for his rents; he maun dow with less; he can spread his butter thinner:
what cares Red Colin? If he can hurt Ardshiel, he has his wish; if he
can pluck the meat from my chieftain’s table, and the bit toys out of
his children’s hands, he will gang hame singing to Glenure!”
“Let me have a word,” said I. “Be sure, if they take less rents, be
sure Government has a finger in the pie. It’s not this Campbell’s fault,
man--it’s his orders. And if ye killed this Colin to-morrow, what better
would ye be? There would be another factor in his shoes, as fast as spur
can drive.”
“Ye’re a good lad in a fight,” said Alan; “but, man! ye have Whig blood
in ye!”
He spoke kindly enough, but there was so much anger under his contempt
that I thought it was wise to change the conversation. I expressed my
wonder how, with the Highlands covered with troops, and guarded like
a city in a siege, a man in his situation could come and go without
arrest.
“It’s easier than ye would think,” said Alan. “A bare hillside (ye see)
is like all one road; if there’s a sentry at one place, ye just go by
another. And then the heather’s a great help. And everywhere there are
friends’ houses and friends’ byres and haystacks. And besides, when folk
talk of a country covered with troops, it’s but a kind of a byword at
the best. A soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles. I have
fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a
fine trout; and I have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another,
and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling. This was it,” said he,
and whistled me the air.
“And then, besides,” he continued, “it’s no sae bad now as it was in
forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with
never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty[17]
folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David,
is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in
exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing
the poor at home. But it’s a kittle thing to decide what folk’ll bear,
and what they will not. Or why would Red Colin be riding his horse all
over my poor country of Appin, and never a pretty lad to put a bullet in
him?”
[17] Careful.
And with this Alan fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad
and silent.
I will add the rest of what I have to say about my friend, that he
was skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipe-music; was a
well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in
French and English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent
fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon.
For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But
the worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick
quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle
of the round-house. But whether it was because I had done well myself,
or because I had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more
than I can tell. For though he had a great taste for courage in other
men, yet he admired it most in Alan Breck.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LOSS OF THE BRIG
It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that
season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright),
when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door.
“Here,” said he, “come out and see if ye can pilot.”
“Is this one of your tricks?” asked Alan.
“Do I look like tricks?” cries the captain. “I have other things to
think of--my brig’s in danger!”
By the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp tones in
which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly
earnest; and so Alan and I, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on
deck.
The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of
daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly.
The brig was close hauled, so as to round the southwest corner of the
Island of Mull, the hills of which (and Ben More above them all, with a
wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the lar-board bow. Though
it was no good point of sailing for the _Covenant_, she tore through
the seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the
westerly swell.
Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun
to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the
brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to
us to look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the
moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.
“What do ye call that?” asked the captain, gloomily.
“The sea breaking on a reef,” said Alan. “And now ye ken where it is;
and what better would ye have?”
“Ay,” said Hoseason, “if it was the only one.”
And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther
to the south.
“There!” said Hoseason. “Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of these
reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared, it’s not sixty
guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a
stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?”
“I’m thinking,” said Alan, “these’ll be what they call the Torran
Rocks.”
“Are there many of them?” says the captain.
“Truly, sir, I am nae pilot,” said Alan; “but it sticks in my mind there
are ten miles of them.”
Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.
“There’s a way through them, I suppose?” said the captain.
“Doubtless,” said Alan, “but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once
more that it is clearer under the land.”
“So?” said Hoseason. “We’ll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Riach; we’ll
have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we can take her, sir;
and even then we’ll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that
stoneyard on our lee. Well, we’re in for it now, and may as well crack
on.”
With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to the
foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these
being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their
work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Riach to go aloft, and he sat there
looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw.
“The sea to the south is thick,” he cried; and then, after a while, “it
does seem clearer in by the land.”
“Well, sir,” said Hoseason to Alan, “we’ll try your way of it. But I
think I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God you’re right.”
“Pray God I am!” says Alan to me. “But where did I hear it? Well, well,
it will be as it must.”