CHAPTER XX
THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS
Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walkedever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that countryappeared 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 ofthe 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 atthe 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 toit 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 heardalready 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 wasreceived with more of consternation than surprise.
For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from anyshelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks, andwhere ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around it; there grewthere neither grass nor trees; and I have sometimes thought since thenthat it may have been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre wasin the time of King William. But for the details of our itinerary I amall to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; ourpace being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and thenames of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue andthe more easily forgotten.
The first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and Icould see Alan knit his brow.
"This is no fit place for you and me," he said. "This is a place they'rebound to watch."
And with that he ran harder than ever down to the water-side, in a partwhere the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through witha horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over thelynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked neither to the right nor to theleft, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his handsand knees to check himself, for that rock was small, and he might havepitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distanceor to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caughtand stopped me.
So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, afar 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, andI put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and shook me; I saw he wasspeaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mindprevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, andthat he stamped upon the rock. The same look showed me the water ragingby, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that I covered my eyesagain and shuddered.
The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced meto 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 fartherbranch of the stream, and landed safe.
I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandywas singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, andjust wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should neverleap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with thatkind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead ofcourage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length;these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering backinto the lynn, when Alan seized me, first by the hair, then by thecollar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety.
Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I muststagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now Iwas sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I keptstumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; andwhen at last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among anumber of others, it was none too soon for David Balfour.
A great rock, I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaningtogether at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sightinaccessible. Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as fourhands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at thethird trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up withsuch force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secureda lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with theaid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled upbeside him.
Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhathollow on the top, and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish orsaucer, 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 withsuch a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortalfear 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 flatdown, 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 couldsee the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewedwith rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, andmade white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any livingcreature 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 someamusement, "Ye're no' very gleg[25] at the jumping," said he.
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, iswhat 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 gomeril this night. For first ofall I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so thatthe day has caught us where we should never have been; and, thanks tothat, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next (which isthe worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heatheras myself) I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for along summer's day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that asmall matter; but before it comes night, David, ye'll give me news ofit."
I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour outthe brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river.
"I wouldna waste the good spirit either," says he. "It's been a goodfriend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still becocking 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 wasperhaps 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 naetime 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 inbetween the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be abed to me; the last thing I heard was still the crying of the eagles.
I daresay 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 asin a picture. About half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; abig 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, withthe sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-sidewere posted other sentries; here near together, there widelierscattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some onthe ground level, and
marching and counter-marching, so as to meethalf-way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chainof posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in thedistance riding to and fro. Lower down, the infantry continued; but asthe stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerableburn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords andstepping-stones.
I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. It wasstrange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in thehour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats andbreeches.
"Ye see," said Alan, "this was what I was afraid of, Davie: that theywould 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 narrowplace. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us witha glass; but if they'll only keep in the foot of the valley we'll doyet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we'll tryour hand at getting by them."
"And what are we to do till night?" I asked.
"Lie here," says he, "and birstle."
That one good Scots word, "birstle," was indeed the most of the story ofthe day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on thebare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon uscruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch ofit; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was onlylarge enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the nakedrock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyredon a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in thesame climate, and at only a few days' distance, I should have sufferedso cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon thisrock.
All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which wasworse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, buryingit 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, nowchanging guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. Theselay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was likelooking 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 piketheir bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into myvitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarcedared to breathe.
It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; onefellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face ofthe rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. "Itell you it's 'ot," says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones andthe odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trickof dropping out the letter "h". To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but hehad taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly atthe best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprisewas all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of agrown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogetherwith the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here andthere spy out even in these memoirs.
The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only thegreater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and thesun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs likerheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since,on the lines in our Scots psalm--
"The moon by night thee shall not smite, Nor yet the sun by day";
and indeed it was only by God's blessing that we were neither of ussun-smitten.
At last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was nowtemptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being nowgot a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east sideof our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.
"As well one death as another," said Alan, and slipped over the edge anddropped on the ground on the shadowy side.
I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was Iand so giddy with that long exposure. Here, then, we lay for an hour ortwo, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite nakedto the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. None came,however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued tobe our shield even in this new position.
Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldierswere now lying closer along the river-side, Alan proposed that we shouldtry a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world;and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome tome; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slipfrom rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our belliesin the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.
The soldiers, having searched this side of the valley after a fashion,and being perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon,had now laid by much of their vigilance, and stood dozing at their postsor only kept a look-out along the banks of the river; so that in thisway, keeping down the valley and at the same time towards the mountains,we drew steadily away from their neighbourhood. But the business was themost wearing I had ever taken part in. A man had need of a hundred eyesin every part of him, to keep concealed in that uneven country andwithin cry of so many and scattered sentries. When we must pass an openplace, quickness was not all, but a swift judgment not only of the lieof the whole country, but of the solidity of every stone on which wemust set foot; for the afternoon was now fallen so breathless that therolling of a pebble sounded abroad like a pistol-shot, and would startthe echo calling among the hills and cliffs.
By sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress,though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view.But now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and thatwas a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glenriver. At the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plungedhead and shoulders in the water; and I cannot tell which was the morepleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greedwith which we drank of it.
We lay there (for the banks hid us), drank again and again, bathed ourchests, let our wrists trail in the running water till they ached withthe chill; and at last, being wonderfully renewed, we got out themeal-bag and made drammach in the iron pan. This, though it is but coldwater mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungryman; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case)good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those whohave taken to the heather.
As soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, atfirst with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standingour full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking. The way wasvery intricate, lying up the steep sides of mountains and along thebrows of cliffs; clouds had come in with the sunset, and the night wasdark and cool; so that I walked without much fatigue, but in continualfear of falling and rolling down the mountains, and with no guess at ourdirection.
The moon rose at last and found us still on the road; it was in its lastquarter, and was long beset with clouds; but after a while shone out andshowed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneathus on the narrow arm of a sea-loch.
At this sight we both paused: I struck with wonder to find myself sohigh, and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds: Alan to make sure ofhis direction.
Seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us outof ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of ournight-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes, warlike,merry, plaintive; reel tunes that made the foot go faster; tunes of myown south country that made me fain to be home from my adventures; andall these, on the great, dark, desert mountains, making company upon theway.
FOOTNOTE:
[25] Brisk.