Mr. Standfast
heather to make a couch, and I emerged to get some. I had not raised my
head for a second when I flopped down again. For I had a neighbour on
the hill-top.
He was about two hundred yards off, just reaching the crest, and,
unlike me, walking quite openly. His eyes were on Ranna, so he did not
notice me, but from my cover I scanned every line of him. He looked an
ordinary countryman, wearing badly cut, baggy knickerbockers of the
kind that gillies affect. He had a face like a Portuguese Jew, but I
had seen that type before among people with Highland names; they might
be Jews or not, but they could speak Gaelic. Presently he disappeared.
He had followed my example and selected a hiding-place.
It was a clear, hot day, but very pleasant in that airy place. Good
scents came up from the sea, the heather was warm and fragrant, bees
droned about, and stray seagulls swept the ridge with their wings. I
took a look now and then towards my neighbour, but he was deep in his
hidey-hole. Most of the time I kept my glasses on Ranna, and watched
the doings of the _Tobermory_. She was tied up at the jetty, but seemed
in no hurry to unload. I watched the captain disembark and walk up to a
house on the hillside. Then some idlers sauntered down towards her and
stood talking and smoking close to her side. The captain returned and
left again. A man with papers in his hand appeared, and a woman with
what looked like a telegram. The mate went ashore in his best clothes.
Then at last, after midday, Gresson appeared. He joined the captain at
the piermaster’s office, and presently emerged on the other side of the
jetty where some small boats were beached. A man from the _Tobermory_
came in answer to his call, a boat was launched, and began to make its
way into the channel. Gresson sat in the stern, placidly eating his
luncheon.
I watched every detail of that crossing with some satisfaction that my
forecast was turning out right. About half-way across, Gresson took the
oars, but soon surrendered them to the _Tobermory_ man, and lit a pipe.
He got out a pair of binoculars and raked my hillside. I tried to see
if my neighbour was making any signal, but all was quiet. Presently the
boat was hid from me by the bulge of the hill, and I caught the sound
of her scraping on the beach.
Gresson was not a hill-walker like my neighbour. It took him the best
part of an hour to get to the top, and he reached it at a point not two
yards from my hiding-place. I could hear by his labouring breath that
he was very blown. He walked straight over the crest till he was out of
sight of Ranna, and flung himself on the ground. He was now about fifty
yards from me, and I made shift to lessen the distance. There was a
grassy trench skirting the north side of the hill, deep and thickly
overgrown with heather. I wound my way along it till I was about twelve
yards from him, where I stuck, owing to the trench dying away. When I
peered out of the cover I saw that the other man had joined him and
that the idiots were engaged in embracing each other.
I dared not move an inch nearer, and as they talked in a low voice I
could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one phrase, which
the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically. “Tomorrow night,” he
said, and I noticed that his voice had not the Highland inflection
which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced at his watch, and then
the two began to move downhill towards the road I had travelled that
morning.
I followed as best I could, using a shallow dry watercourse of which
sheep had made a track, and which kept me well below the level of the
moor. It took me down the hill, but some distance from the line the
pair were taking, and I had to reconnoitre frequently to watch their
movements. They were still a quarter of a mile or so from the road,
when they stopped and stared, and I stared with them. On that lonely
highway travellers were about as rare as roadmenders, and what caught
their eye was a farmer’s gig driven by a thick-set elderly man with a
woollen comforter round his neck.
I had a bad moment, for I reckoned that if Gresson recognised Amos he
might take fright. Perhaps the driver of the gig thought the same, for
he appeared to be very drunk. He waved his whip, he jiggoted the reins,
and he made an effort to sing. He looked towards the figures on the
hillside, and cried out something. The gig narrowly missed the ditch,
and then to my relief the horse bolted. Swaying like a ship in a gale,
the whole outfit lurched out of sight round the corner of hill where
lay my cache. If Amos could stop the beast and deliver the goods there,
he had put up a masterly bit of buffoonery.
The two men laughed at the performance, and then they parted. Gresson
retraced his steps up the hill. The other man—I called him in my mind
the Portuguese Jew—started off at a great pace due west, across the
road, and over a big patch of bog towards the northern butt of the
Coolin. He had some errand, which Gresson knew about, and he was in a
hurry to perform it. It was clearly my job to get after him.
I had a rotten afternoon. The fellow covered the moorland miles like a
deer, and under the hot August sun I toiled on his trail. I had to keep
well behind, and as much as possible in cover, in case he looked back;
and that meant that when he had passed over a ridge I had to double not
to let him get too far ahead, and when we were in an open place I had
to make wide circuits to keep hidden. We struck a road which crossed a
low pass and skirted the flank of the mountains, and this we followed
till we were on the western side and within sight of the sea. It was
gorgeous weather, and out on the blue water I saw cool sails moving and
little breezes ruffling the calm, while I was glowing like a furnace.
Happily I was in fair training, and I needed it. The Portuguese Jew
must have done a steady six miles an hour over abominable country.
About five o’clock we came to a point where I dared not follow. The
road ran flat by the edge of the sea, so that several miles of it were
visible. Moreover, the man had begun to look round every few minutes.
He was getting near something and wanted to be sure that no one was in
his neighbourhood. I left the road accordingly, and took to the
hillside, which to my undoing was one long cascade of screes and
tumbled rocks. I saw him drop over a rise which seemed to mark the rim
of a little bay into which descended one of the big corries of the
mountains. It must have been a good half-hour later before I, at my
greater altitude and with far worse going, reached the same rim. I
looked into the glen and my man had disappeared.
He could not have crossed it, for the place was wider than I had
thought. A ring of black precipices came down to within half a mile of
the shore, and between them was a big stream—long, shallow pools at the
sea end and a chain of waterfalls above. He had gone to earth like a
badger somewhere, and I dared not move in case he might be watching me
from behind a boulder.
But even as I hesitated he appeared again, fording the stream, his face
set on the road we had come. Whatever his errand was he had finished
it, and was posting back to his master. For a moment I thought I should
follow him, but another instinct prevailed. He had not come to this
wild place for the scenery. Somewhere down in the glen there was
something or somebody that held the key of the mystery. It was my
business to stay there till I had unlocked it. Besides, in two hours it
would be dark, and I had had enough walking for one day.
I made my way to the stream side and had a long drink. The corrie
behind me was lit up with the westering sun, and the bald cliffs were
flushed with pink and gold. On each side of the stream was turf like a
lawn, perhaps a hundred yards wide, and then a tangle of long heather
and boulders right up to the edge of the great rocks. I had never seen
a more delectable evening, but I could not enjoy its peace because of
my anxiety about the Portuguese Jew. He had not been there more than
half an hour, just about long enough for a man to travel to the first
ridge across the burn and back. Yet he had found time to do his
business. He might have left a letter in some prearranged place—in
which case I would stay there till the man it was meant for turned up.
Or he might have met someone, though I didn’t think that possible. As I
scanned the acres of rough moor and then looked at the sea lapping
delicately on the grey sand I had the feeling that a knotty problem was
before me. It was too dark to try to track his steps. That must be left
for the morning, and I prayed that there would be no rain in the night.
I ate for supper most of the braxy ham and oatcake I had brought from
Macmorran’s cottage. It took some self-denial, for I was ferociously
hungry, to save a little for breakfast next morning. Then I pulled
heather and bracken and made myself a bed in the shelter of a rock
which stood on a knoll above the stream. My bed-chamber was well
hidden, but at the same time, if anything should appear in the early
dawn, it gave me a prospect. With my waterproof I was perfectly warm,
and, after smoking two pipes, I fell asleep.
My night’s rest was broken. First it was a fox which came and barked at
my ear and woke me to a pitch-black night, with scarcely a star
showing. The next time it was nothing but a wandering hill-wind, but as
I sat up and listened I thought I saw a spark of light near the edge of
the sea. It was only for a second, but it disquieted me. I got out and
climbed on the top of the rock, but all was still save for the gentle
lap of the tide and the croak of some night bird among the crags. The
third time I was suddenly quite wide awake, and without any reason, for
I had not been dreaming. Now I have slept hundreds of times alone
beside my horse on the veld, and I never knew any cause for such
awakenings but the one, and that was the presence near me of some human
being. A man who is accustomed to solitude gets this extra sense which
announces like an alarm-clock the approach of one of his kind.
But I could hear nothing. There was a scraping and rustling on the
moor, but that was only the wind and the little wild things of the
hills. A fox, perhaps, or a blue hare. I convinced my reason, but not
my senses, and for long I lay awake with my ears at full cock and every
nerve tense. Then I fell asleep, and woke to the first flush of dawn.
The sun was behind the Coolin and the hills were black as ink, but far
out in the western seas was a broad band of gold. I got up and went
down to the shore. The mouth of the stream was shallow, but as I moved
south I came to a place where two small capes enclosed an inlet. It
must have been a fault in the volcanic rock, for its depth was
portentous. I stripped and dived far into its cold abysses, but I did
not reach the bottom. I came to the surface rather breathless, and
struck out to sea, where I floated on my back and looked at the great
rampart of crag. I saw that the place where I had spent the night was
only a little oasis of green at the base of one of the grimmest corries
the imagination could picture. It was as desert as Damaraland. I
noticed, too, how sharply the cliffs rose from the level. There were
chimneys and gullies by which a man might have made his way to the
summit, but no one of them could have been scaled except by a
mountaineer.
I was feeling better now, with all the frowsiness washed out of me, and
I dried myself by racing up and down the heather. Then I noticed
something. There were marks of human feet at the top of the deep-water
inlet—not mine, for they were on the other side. The short sea-turf was
bruised and trampled in several places, and there were broken stems of