CHAPTER XI

THE CAPTAIN KNUCKLES UNDER

lan and I sat down to breakfast about six of the clock. The floor was covered with broken glass and in a horrid mess of blood, which took away my hunger. In all other ways we were in a situation not only agreeable but merry; having ousted the officers from their own cabin, and having at command all the drink in the ship—both wine and spirits—and all the dainty part of what was eatable, such as the pickles and the fine sort of bread. This, of itself, was enough to set us in good humour, but the richest part of it was this, that the two thirstiest men that ever came out of Scotland (Mr. Shuan being dead) were now shut in the fore-part of the ship and condemned to what they hated most—cold water.

“And depend upon it,” Alan said, “we shall hear more of them ere long. Ye may keep a man from the fighting, but never from his bottle.”

We made good company for each other. Alan, indeed, expressed himself most lovingly; and taking a knife from the table, cut me off one of the silver buttons from his coat.

“I had them,” says he, “from my father, Duncan Stewart; and now give ye one of them to be a keepsake for last night’s work. And wherever ye go and show that button, the friends of Alan Breck will come around you.”

He said this as if he had been Charlemagne, and commanded armies; and indeed, much as I admired his courage, I was always in danger of smiling at his vanity: in danger, I say, for had I not kept my countenance, I would be afraid to think what a quarrel might have followed.

As soon as we were through with our meal he rummaged in the captain’s locker till he found a clothes-brush; and then taking off his coat, began to visit his suit and brush away the stains, with such care and labour as I supposed to have been only usual with women. To be sure, he had no other; and, besides (as he said), it belonged to a king and so behoved to be royally looked after.

For all that, when I saw what care he took to pluck out the threads where the button had been cut away, I put a higher value on his gift.

He was still so engaged when we were hailed by Mr. Riach from the deck, asking for a parley; and I, climbing through the skylight and sitting on the edge of it, pistol in hand and with a bold front, though inwardly in fear of broken glass, hailed him back again and bade him speak out. He came to the edge of the round-house, and stood on a coil of rope, so that his chin was on a level with the roof; and we looked at each other awhile in silence. Mr. Riach, as I do not think he had been very forward in the battle, so he had got off with nothing worse than a blow upon the cheek: but he looked out of heart and very weary, having been all night afoot, either standing watch or doctoring the wounded.

“This is a bad job,” said he at last, shaking his head.

“It was none of our choosing,” said I.

“The captain,” says he, “would like to speak with your friend. They might speak at the window.”

“And how do we know what treachery he means?” cried I.

“He means none, David,” returned Mr. Riach, “and if he did, I’ll tell ye the honest truth, we couldnae get the men to follow.”

“Is that so?” said I.

“I’ll tell ye more than that,” said he. “It’s not only the men; it’s me. I’m frich’ened, Davie.” And he smiled across at me. “No,” he continued, “what we want is to be shut of him.”

Thereupon I consulted with Alan, and the parley was agreed to and parole given upon either side; but this was not the whole of Mr. Riach’s business, and he now begged me for a dram with such instancy and such reminders of his former kindness, that at last I handed him a pannikin with about a gill of brandy. He drank a part, and then carried the rest down upon the deck, to share it (I suppose) with his superior.

A little after, the captain came (as was agreed) to one of the windows, and stood there in the rain, with his arm in a sling, and looking stern and pale, and so old that my heart smote me for having fired upon him.

Alan at once held a pistol in his face.

“Put that thing up!” said the captain. “Have I not passed my word, sir? or do ye seek to affront me?”

“Captain,” says Alan, “I doubt your word is a breakable. Last night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife; and then passed me your word, and gave me your hand to back it; and ye ken very well what was the upshot. Be damned to your word!” says he.

“Well, well, sir,” said the captain, “ye’ll get little good by swearing.” (And truly that was a fault of which the captain was quite free.) “But we have other things to speak,” he continued, bitterly. “Ye’ve made a sore hash of my brig; I haven’t hands enough left to work her; and my first officer (whom I could ill spare) has got your sword throughout his vitals, and passed without speech. There is nothing left me, sir, but to put back into the port of Glasgow after hands; and there (by your leave) ye will find them that are better able to talk to you.”

“Ay?” said Alan; “and faith, I’ll have a talk with them mysel’! Unless there’s naebody speaks English in that town, I have a bonny tale for them. Fifteen tarry sailors upon the one side, and a man and a halfling boy upon the other! O, man, it’s peetiful!”

Hoseason flushed red.

“No,” continued Alan, “that’ll no do. Ye’ll just have to set me ashore as we agreed.”

“Ay,” said Hoseason, “but my first officer is dead—ye ken best how. There’s none of the rest of us acquaint with this coast, sir; and it’s one very dangerous to ships.”

“I give ye your choice,” says Alan. “Set me on dry ground in Appin, or Ardgour, or in Morven, or Arisaig, or Morar; or, in brief, where ye please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of the Campbells. That’s a broad target. If ye miss that, ye must be as feckless at the sailoring as I have found ye at the fighting. Why, my poor country people in their bit cobles* pass from island to island in all weathers, ay, and by night too, for the matter of that.”

“A coble’s not a ship, sir,” said the captain. “It has nae draught of water.”

“Well, then, to Glasgow if ye list!” says Alan. “We’ll have the laugh of ye at the least.”

“My mind runs little upon laughing,” said the captain. “But all this will cost money, sir.”

“Well, sir,” says Alan, “I am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put me in the Linnhe Loch.”

“But see, sir, where we lie, we are but a few hours’ sail from Ardnamurchan,” said Hoseason. “Give me sixty, and I’ll set ye there.”

“And I’m to wear my brogues and run jeopardy of the red-coats to please you?” cries Alan. “No, sir; if ye want sixty guineas earn them, and set me in my own country.”

“It’s to risk the brig, sir,” said the captain, “and your own lives along with her.”

“Take it or want it,” says Alan.

“Could ye pilot us at all?” asked the captain, who was frowning to himself.

“Well, it’s doubtful,” said Alan. “I’m more of a fighting man (as ye have seen for yoursel’) than a sailor-man. But I have been often enough picked up and set down upon this coast, and should ken something of the lie of it.”

The captain shook his head, still frowning.

“If I had lost less money on this unchancy cruise,” says he, “I would see you in a rope’s end before I risked my brig, sir. But be it as ye will. As soon as I get a slant of wind (and there’s some coming, or I’m the more mistaken) I’ll put it in hand. But there’s one thing more. We may meet in with a king’s ship and she may lay us aboard, sir, with no blame of mine: they keep the cruisers thick upon this coast, ye ken who for. Now, sir, if that was to befall, ye might leave the money.”

“Captain,” says Alan, “if ye see a pennant, it shall be your part to run away. And now, as I hear you’re a little short of brandy in the fore-part, I’ll offer ye a change: a bottle of brandy against two buckets of water.”

That was the last clause of the treaty, and was duly executed on both sides; so that Alan and I could at last wash out the round-house and be quit of the memorials of those whom we had slain, and the captain and Mr. Riach could be happy again in their own way, the name of which was drink.

CHAPTER XII

I HEAR OF THE “RED FOX”

efore we had done cleaning out the round-house, a breeze sprang up from a little to the east of north. This blew off the rain and brought out the sun.

And here I must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map. On the day when the fog fell and we ran down Alan’s boat, we had been running through the Little Minch. At dawn after the battle, we lay becalmed to the east of the Isle of Canna or between that and Isle Eriska in the chain of the Long Island. Now to get from there to the Linnhe Loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the Sound of Mull. But the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his brig so deep among the islands; and the wind serving well, he preferred to go by west of Tiree and come up under the southern coast of the great Isle of Mull.

All day the breeze held in the same point, and rather freshened than died down; and towards afternoon, a swell began to set in from round the outer Hebrides. Our course, to go round about the inner isles, was to the west of south, so that at first we had this swell upon our beam, and were much rolled about. But after nightfall, when we had turned the end of Tiree and began to head more to the east, the sea came right astern.

Meanwhile, the early part of the day, before the swell came up, was very pleasant; sailing, as we were, in a bright sunshine and with many mountainous islands upon different sides. Alan and I sat in the round-house with the doors open on each side (the wind being straight astern), and smoked a pipe or two of the captain’s fine tobacco. It was at this time we heard each other’s stories, which was the more important to me, as I gained some knowledge of that wild Highland country on which I was so soon to land. In those days, so close on the back of the great rebellion, it was needful a man should know what he was doing when he went upon the heather.

It was I that showed the example, telling him all my misfortune; which he heard with great good-nature. Only, when I came to mention that good friend of mine, Mr. Campbell the minister, Alan fired up and cried out that he hated all that were of that name.

“Why,” said I, “he is a man you should be proud to give your hand to.”

“I know nothing I would help a Campbell to,” says he, “unless it was a leaden bullet. I would hunt all of that name like blackcocks. If I lay dying, I would crawl upon my knees to my chamber window for a shot at one.”

“Why, Alan,” I cried, “what ails ye at the Campbells?”

“Well,” says he, “ye ken very well that I am an Appin Stewart, and the Campbells have long harried and wasted those of my name; ay, and got lands of us by treachery—but never with the sword,” he cried loudly, and with the word brought down his fist upon the table. But I paid the less attention to this, for I knew it was usually said by those who have the underhand. “There’s more than that,” he continued, “and all in the same story: lying words, lying papers, tricks fit for a peddler, and the show of what’s legal over all, to make a man the more angry.”

“You that are so wasteful of your buttons,” said I, “I can hardly think you would be a good judge of business.”

“Ah!” says he, falling again to smiling, “I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to London town, to let him see it at the best. So they were had into the palace and showed the whole art of the sword for two hours at a stretch, before King George and Queen Carline, and the Butcher Cumberland, and many more of whom I havenae mind. And when they were through, the King (for all he was a rank usurper) spoke them fair and gave each man three guineas in his hand. Now, as they were going out of the palace, they had a porter’s lodge to go by; and it came in on my father, as he was perhaps the first private Hieland gentleman that had ever gone by that door, it was right he should give the poor porter a proper notion of their quality. So he gives the King’s three guineas into the man’s hand, as if it was his common custom; the three others that came behind him did the same; and there they were on the street, never a penny the better for their pains. Some say it was one, that was the first to fee the King’s porter; and some say it was another; but the truth of it is, that it was Duncan Stewart, as I am willing to prove with either sword or pistol. And that was the father that I had, God rest him!”

“I think he was not the man to leave you rich,” said I.

“And that’s true,” said Alan. “He left me my breeks to cover me, and little besides. And that was how I came to enlist, which was a black spot upon my character at the best of times, and would still be a sore job for me if I fell among the red-coats.”

“What,” cried I, “were you in the English army?”

“That was I,” said Alan. “But I deserted to the right side at Preston Pans—and that’s some comfort.”

I could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an unpardonable fault in honour. But for all I was so young, I was wiser than say my thought. “Dear, dear,” says I, “the punishment is death.”

“Ay” said he, “if they got hands on me, it would be a short shrift and a lang tow for Alan! But I have the King of France’s commission in my pocket, which would aye be some protection.”

“I misdoubt it much,” said I.

“I have doubts mysel’,” said Alan drily.

“And, good heaven, man,” cried I, “you that are a condemned rebel, and a deserter, and a man of the French King’s—what tempts ye back into this country? It’s a braving of Providence.”

“Tut!” says Alan, “I have been back every year since forty-six!”

“And what brings ye, man?” cried I.

“Well, ye see, I weary for my friends and country,” said he. “France is a braw place, nae doubt; but I weary for the heather and the deer. And then I have bit things that I attend to. Whiles I pick up a few lads to serve the King of France: recruits, ye see; and that’s aye a little money. But the heart of the matter is the business of my chief, Ardshiel.”

“I thought they called your chief Appin,” said I.

“Ay, but Ardshiel is the captain of the clan,” said he, which scarcely cleared my mind. “Ye see, David, he that was all his life so great a man, and come of the blood and bearing the name of kings, is now brought down to live in a French town like a poor and private person. He that had four hundred swords at his whistle, I have seen, with these eyes of mine, buying butter in the market-place, and taking it home in a kale-leaf. This is not only a pain but a disgrace to us of his family and clan. There are the bairns forby, the children and the hope of Appin, that must be learned their letters and how to hold a sword, in that far country. Now, the tenants of Appin have to pay a rent to King George; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the poor folk scrape up a second rent for Ardshiel. Well, David, I’m the hand that carries it.” And he struck the belt about his body, so that the guineas rang.

“Do they pay both?” cried I.

“Ay, David, both,” says he.

“What! two rents?” I repeated.

“Ay, David,” said he. “I told a different tale to yon captain man; but this is the truth of it. And it’s wonderful to me how little pressure is needed. But that’s the handiwork of my good kinsman and my father’s friend, James of the Glens: James Stewart, that is: Ardshiel’s half-brother. He it is that gets the money in, and does the management.”

This was the first time I heard the name of that James Stewart, who was afterwards so famous at the time of his hanging. But I took little heed at the moment, for all my mind was occupied with the generosity of these poor Highlanders.

“I call it noble,” I cried. “I’m a Whig, or little better; but I call it noble.”

“Ay” said he, “ye’re a Whig, but ye’re a gentleman; and that’s what does it. Now, if ye were one of the cursed race of Campbell, ye would gnash your teeth to hear tell of it. If ye were the Red Fox...” And at that name, his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking. I have seen many 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* 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?”

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

t 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.”

As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes cried down to us to change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so close on the brig’s weather board that when a sea burst upon it the lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain.

The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day, which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the other, and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and looking and as steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown well in the fighting; but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more because I found Alan very white.

“Ochone, David,” says he, “this is no the kind of death I fancy!”

“What, Alan!” I cried, “you’re not afraid?”

“No,” said he, wetting his lips, “but you’ll allow, yourself, it’s a cold ending.”

By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the tail of the land ran very strong, and threw the brig about. Two hands were put to the helm, and Hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to see three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a living thing) struggle against and drive them back. This would have been the greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of obstacles. Mr. Riach, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear water ahead.

“Ye were right,” said Hoseason to Alan. “Ye have saved the brig, sir. I’ll mind that when we come to clear accounts.” And I believe he not only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the Covenant hold in his affections.

But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise than he forecast.

“Keep her away a point,” sings out Mr. Riach. “Reef to windward!”

And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the deck, and came near to shake Mr. Riach from his place upon the mast.

I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck was close in under the southwest end of Mull, off a little isle they call Earraid, which lay low and black upon the larboard. Sometimes the swell broke clean over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the reef, so that we could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with the great noise of the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the spray in the moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think my head must have been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I saw.

Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and, still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all wrought like horses while we could.

Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved.

The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He stood holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud whenever the ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like wife and child to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor Ransome; but when it came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with her.

All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one other thing: that I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what country it was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a land of the Campbells.

We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when this man sang out pretty shrill: “For God’s sake, hold on!” We knew by his tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough, there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted her over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak, I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean over the bulwarks into the sea.

I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while, I was being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor afraid.

Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself.

It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far I had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low down to see.

While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.

I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the rocks.

“Well,” thought I to myself, “if I cannot get as far as that, it’s strange!”