Kidnapped
country as before.
CHAPTER XX
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS
Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked
ever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that country
appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people,
of which we must have passed more than twenty, hidden in quiet places of
the hills. When we came to one of these, Alan would leave me in the way,
and go himself and rap upon the side of the house and speak awhile at
the window with some sleeper awakened. This was to pass the news; which,
in that country, was so much of a duty that Alan must pause to attend to
it even while fleeing for his life; and so well attended to by others,
that in more than half of the houses where we called they had heard
already of the murder. In the others, as well as I could make out
(standing back at a distance and hearing a strange tongue), the news was
received with more of consternation than surprise.
For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any
shelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where
ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around it; there grew there
neither grass nor trees; and I have sometimes thought since then, that
it may have been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre was in
the time of King William. But for the details of our itinerary, I am all
to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; our pace
being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and the names
of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and the
more easily forgotten.
The first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and I
could see Alan knit his brow.
“This is no fit place for you and me,” he said. “This is a place they’re
bound to watch.”
And with that he ran harder than ever down to the water-side, in a part
where the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through with
a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the
lynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked neither to the right nor to the
left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands
and knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he might have
pitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distance
or to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caught
and stopped me.
So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray,
a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides.
When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear,
and I put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and shook me; I saw he
was speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind
prevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, and
that he stamped upon the rock. The same look showed me the water raging
by, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that I covered my eyes
again and shuddered.
The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced
me to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. Then,
putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted,
“Hang or drown!” and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther
branch of the stream, and landed safe.
I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy
was singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, and
just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never
leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with
that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of
courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length;
these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering back
into the lynn, when Alan seized me, first by the hair, then by the
collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety.
Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I must
stagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now
I was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I kept
stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and
when at last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a
number of others, it was none too soon for David Balfour.
A great rock I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning
together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight
inaccessible. Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as four
hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the
third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with
such force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured
a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the
aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up
beside him.
Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat
hollow on the top and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or
saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden.
All this while Alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with
such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortal
fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the rock he said nothing,
nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat
down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter
scouted all round the compass. The dawn had come quite clear; we could
see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed
with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and made
white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living creature
but some eagles screaming round a cliff.
Then at last Alan smiled.
“Ay” said he, “now we have a chance;” and then looking at me with some
amusement, “Ye’re no very gleg[25] at the jumping,” said he.
[25] Brisk.
At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once,
“Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is
what makes the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was water there,
and water’s a thing that dauntons even me. No, no,” said Alan, “it’s no
you that’s to blame, it’s me.”
I asked him why.
“Why,” said he, “I have proved myself a gomeral this night. For first
of all I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so that
the day has caught us where we should never have been; and thanks to
that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next (which is
the worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heather
as myself) I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a
long summer’s day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a
small matter; but before it comes night, David, ye’ll give me news of
it.”
I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out
the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river.
“I wouldnae waste the good spirit either,” says he. “It’s been a good
friend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still be
cocking on yon stone. And what’s mair,” says he, “ye may have observed
(you that’s a man of so much penetration) that Alan Breck Stewart was
perhaps walking quicker than his ordinar’.”
“You!” I cried, “you were running fit to burst.”
“Was I so?” said he. “Well, then, ye may depend upon it, there was nae
time to be lost. And now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep,
lad, and I’ll watch.”
Accordingly, I lay down to sleep; a little peaty earth had drifted in
between the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a
bed to me; the last thing I heard was still the crying of the eagles.
I dare say it would be nine in the morning when I was roughly awakened,
and found Alan’s hand pressed upon my mouth.
“Wheesht!” he whispered. “Ye were snoring.”
“Well,” said I, surprised at his anxious and dark face, “and why not?”
He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like.
It was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. The valley was as clear as
in a picture. About half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; a
big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and near by,
on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with
the sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-side
were posted other sentries; here near together, there widelier
scattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some
on the ground level and marching and counter-marching, so as to meet
half-way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chain
of posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the
distance riding to and fro. Lower down, the infantry continued; but
as the stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerable
burn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords and
stepping-stones.
I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. It was
strange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in the
hour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats and
breeches.
“Ye see,” said Alan, “this was what I was afraid of, Davie: that they
would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago,
and, man! but ye’re a grand hand at the sleeping! We’re in a narrow
place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with
a glass; but if they’ll only keep in the foot of the valley, we’ll do
yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we’ll try
our hand at getting by them.”
“And what are we to do till night?” I asked.
“Lie here,” says he, “and birstle.”
That one good Scotch word, “birstle,” was indeed the most of the story
of the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on
the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us
cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of
it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only
large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked
rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred
on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the
same climate and at only a few days’ distance, I should have suffered
so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this
rock.
All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was
worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying
it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples.
The soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now
changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. These
lay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was like
looking for a needle in a bottle of hay; and being so hopeless a task,
it was gone about with the less care. Yet we could see the soldiers
pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my
vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce
dared to breathe.
It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one
fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of
the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. “I
tell you it’s ‘ot,” says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and
the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick
of dropping out the letter “h.” To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he
had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly