Lochinvar: A Novel

"God help my Wat!" sobbed Kate, half to herself and half to the Divinity – who, as the Good Book says, can do wonders in the great waters.

"Aye, 'deed, lass, as ye say, God help him! He never had mair need. The dead-fish are louping for him and the other with him."

Just at this moment Kate uttered a cry and clasped her hands, for the boat was heaved up from the side nearest the cliffs on the summit of a toppling pyramid of water. The mast fell over, and the whole breadth of the sail hugged the surface of the sea. Then the swirling tide-race took hold of her and sucked her under. In a smooth sea, without a particle of wind, the two men went down within cry of the rocks of Suliscanna, and not a hand could be stretched out to save them. Only now and then something black, a wet, air-filled blob of the sail, the surge-tossed back of a man, or the angle of the boat, showed dark for a moment upon the surface of the pale water, and then was carried under, all racing northward in the grip of the angry tide current.

Kate McGhie had fallen on her knees.

"God forgive his sins and take me soon to him!" she said.

"Wheest, lass! Nae Papist prayers in my hearin'," said Mrs. McAlister in her ear. "Gin that be your lad, he's dead and gane. And that's a hantle better than dying on the gully-knives of the McAlisters."

At the sight of the disaster beneath them on the wrinkled face of the water, all the islanders had leaped suddenly erect behind their shelters and craggy hiding-places. Each man stood with his head thrown forward in an attitude of the most intent watchfulness. And once when the stern of the boat cocked up, and a man's arm rose like the fin of a fish beside it for a moment, every son of Alister expelled the long-withholden air from his lungs in a sonorous "Hough!" which indicated that in his opinion all was over. Instantly the islanders of Suliscanna collected here and there, at likely places along the shore, into quick-gathering knots and clusters which dissolved as quickly. They discussed the disaster from every point of view. The minister was specially active, going about from group to group.

"We must e'en submit," he was saying; "it is the will of God. And, after all, though both men and boat had been cast ashore, it is little likely that they would have had anything worth lifting on them. They were just poor bodies that by misadventure have been cast away in a fog, and would have no other gear about them save the clothes on their backs."

But Alister McAlister was of another mind.

"Work like this is enough to make an unbeliever out of a God-fearing man," he affirmed to his intimates, "to see what Providence will permit – a good fishing-boat with a mast and sail in the charge of two landward men that did not even know where to let her go to pieces, so that Christians and men of sense might get some good of her. For the fools let her sink plumb down in the Suck of Suliscanna, instead of driving her straight inshore against the hill of Aoinaig, whence she would have come safe as weed-drift to our very feet."

And there were more of Alister's opinion than of the minister's, whose spiritual consolation was discounted, at any rate, by the fact that he was officially compelled to speak well of Providence.

But before long there was another sound on the Isle of Suliscanna. Away on the edge of the bay, under the cliffs, a group of men was to be seen grappling some object which repeatedly slipped from their poles between two long shore-skirting reefs. It lay black and limp in the water, and again and again, breaking from their hands, it returned to the push of the tide in the narrow gut with a splash of flaccid weight.

"Lord, what's yon they hae gotten?" cried Mistress McAlister, as soon as she had seen the figures of the men collecting about the thing, like carrion-crows gathering about a dead sheep on the hill. "Thank God, my Alister loon is away south'ard on the heuchs of Lianacraig!"

She stood on tiptoe and looked for the flash of the killing knife or the dull crash of the stone with which commonly the wreckers insured silence and safety when any came alive ashore along with wreckage of price from the great waters.

The heads of the men were all bent inward, but Bess Landsborough saw no threatening movement of their arms nor yet any signs of a struggle.

She would have drawn Kate away from the scene, but the girl by her side suddenly wrenched herself free, and, plucking up her skirts in her hands, ran hot-foot for the northern shore.

CHAPTER XXVIII

JOHN SCARLETT COMES ASHORE

Kate's sojourn on the island had given her back all her girlish spring of carriage and swift grace of movement. Fleet and light as a goat she sped over the short turf and threaded the sharp shark's fins of the black basaltic ridges, her eyes fixed upon the shifting groups on the shore.

Was her love lying there dead before her, or at least in utmost danger of his life? The men stood so close together, all looking inward and downward, that Kate was among them before any one saw her come. She cleft a way through the shouldering press, and there on the wet pebbles of the beach, dragged just a few yards from the shore on which a back-draught from the smooth glides and rattling currents of the tide-race of Suliscanna had cast him, lay the body of John Scarlett.

Kate gave a sharp cry, half of disappointment and half of relief. Her love it was not; but his friend it was. And if this were John Scarlett, where would Wat Gordon be by this time – of a surety lying deep in the green heave of some far-reaching "gloop," or battered against the cruel cliffs of the "goës," into which the surges swelled and thundered, throwing themselves in bootless assault upon the perpendicular cliffs, and fretting their pure green arches into delicatest gray lace of foam and little white cataracts which came pouring back into the gloomy depths along every crevice and over every ledge.

John Scarlett lay with his broad chest naked and uncovered, for his coat and waistcoat had already become centres of two separate quarrels, shrill and contentious as the bickerings of sparrows over the worm which they hold by either end and threaten to rend in pieces.

Patterns of muskets and sword-blades were wrought upon the veteran's breast in a fashion which was then common to all men of adventuring – land travellers and seafarers alike. The old soldier's arms and breast were a mass of scars and cicatrices, both from his many public campaigns and from his innumerable excursions upon the field of private honor.

"This has been a man indeed," said one of the men that stood by; "many a knife has been tried on that skin, and many, I warrant, gat deeper holes and deadlier cuts than these in the making of this pretty patchwork."

"He is an enemy of the chief, that is beyond a doubt," said another; "for he is not a man of the isles, and our Lord Murdo forbade the coming of any else. It will be safer to stick him with a gully-knife before he comes to, lest a worst thing happen us."

And it is likely that this amiable intention might have become the finding and conclusion of the meeting, but that at that moment Kate pierced the throng and threw herself down on the salt, clammy pebbles at John Scarlett's head. She put her hand upon his heart, but could not feel it beat. Before long she was reinforced by Mrs. McAlister, who arrived panting. She swept the men unceremoniously aside with her arm, and addressed them in their own tongue, in words which carried insult and railing in the very sound of them.

The two women had not worked long at the chill, sea-tossed body of the master-at-arms before John Scarlett opened his eyes and looked about him.

"Bess Landsborough!" he said, without manifesting the least surprise, "what for did ye no' meet me at the kirk stile of Colmonel, where I trysted wi' ye?"

"John Scarlett!" cried Mrs. McAlister, "I declare in the name o' a' that's holy, Jack Scarlett, the King's Dragoon – what in the world has brocht ye here, lying bare and broadcast on the cauld stanes of Suliscanna?"

"I cam' seekin' you, Bess," said John Scarlett, easing himself up on his elbow with a grimace of pain. "I heard in Colmonel that ye had kilted your coats o' green satin and awa' wi' John Hielandman. So I e'en cam' round this gate to see if ye had tired o' him."

"And I see that, dead or alive, ye can lie as gleg as ever – certes, there never was a dragoon that was single-tongued, since Satan made the first o' that evil clan oot o' the red cinders of hell!" answered Mistress McAlister, vigorously.

"Weel, Bess, it skills little," replied Scarlett, rising slowly to a sitting posture. "But if ye would prevail on these honest men to withdraw a little and not glower at my nakedness, as if they had never in their lives before cast eyes on a man that has had a wash, it is greatly grateful I will be, and forgive you that little mislippen about the tryst."

As John Scarlett turned himself about, he pressed Kate's hand sharply to intimate that he desired her to pretend complete ignorance of his person and purpose. But the fear which now had become almost a certainty, that she had seen her lover go down in the tide-race of Suliscanna, dominated her heart. She was scarce conscious of the meeting of John Scarlett and his ancient sweetheart, but continued to gaze steadily and with straining eyes out upon the smooth and treacherous swirls of the Suck.

"Have ye a cloak or a plaid, Bess, that I may gird myself with it, and go decently to my quarters – unless these gentlemen still desire to finish me here?" asked Scarlett, calmly.

Whereat the wife of Alister drew a plaid of rough brown wool from the shoulders of the man nearest to her and cast it about him. By this time Scarlett had managed to stand upon his feet, and even to walk a few steps along the pebbles of the shore. All Suliscanna was now gathered about the new-comer, and on the skirts of the crowd the minister and Alister stood apart with bent brows in anxious consultation.

"It is the chief's order!" said the minister. "We will have to answer for it with our lives if we do not ward him safely."

"In the vaults of the tower will be the best and securest place," answered Alister.

Then, with no more words spoken, Alister McAlister stepped up to his wife, and, seizing her by the arm, said, "This is chief's business – do as I bid you, now!"

And Mrs. McAlister knew that the time had come for her to obey. For well as she could make the burly dhuine wassail do her bidding when the business was his own or hers, Bess never put her general supremacy to the test by offering resistance to her husband's will when the clan or the chief were in question.

"Tell the Lowland man," said Alister, looking his wife straight in the eyes, "that it is the order of the chief that he be warded till we hear what is to be done with him. We did not ask him to come to Suliscanna, and we must see that he does not invite himself quietly away again now that he is here. He is to bide in the tower at our house-end, and ye can boil him Lowland brose as muckle as ever he can sup, since ye seem to be so well acquainted with his kind of folk."

When Mistress McAlister had interpreted this to John Scarlett, the old campaigner gave the brown plaid a twirl about his shoulders, and crying, "Content – lead on!" accepted the situation with a soldier's philosophy.

The ancient tower of Suliscanna, in which Scarlett presently found himself, was no extensive castle, but simply a half-ruinous block-house constructed for defence by some former lords of the isle. The upper part was a mere shell in which Alister's wild goats were sometimes penned, when for some herdsman's purpose they had been collected in the vicinity of the huts by the expectation of the spare crystals of salt when the pans were drawn. But underneath there was a vaulted dungeon still strong and intact. This subterranean "strength" possessed a door of solid wood – a rare thing in Suliscanna – brought at some remote period from the main-land; for, save drif-twood, there is no plant thicker-stemmed than the blackberry to be found on all these outermost islands of the sea. This door was secured by a ponderous lock, the bolt of which ran into the stone for nearly two feet, while the wood of which it was composed was studded with great iron nails and covered with hide like a targe. It was the sole article of value which had been left in the ancient tower when my lord's new house was built farther up the hill.

The tower stood at the summit of the first ascent of the island, close beside the cottage of Alister McAlister – of which, indeed, very characteristically and economically, it formed the gable-end. Heather bloomed close up to the door of it, and looked into the dungeon at every narrow peep-hole, so that when Scarlett set his head to one of these he found himself staring into a fairy forest of rose and green, in which the muir-fowl crouched and the grasshoppers chirred.

John Scarlett found that during the time he had been conferring with the representative of the Lord of the Small Isles and his wife Bess upon the pebbles of the beach, a bed of fragrant heather tops had been made for him by the clansmen in this arched and airy sleeping-place. Alister went in with him, glanced comprehensively around, and nodded.

"Now you will be comfortable and make yourself at home," the action said. And John Scarlett smiled back at his taciturn jailer. For indeed, except the stone seat which ran round the vault, and the new-laid bed of heather tops in the corner, the available accommodations of the Tower of Suliscanna consisted exclusively of an uneven area of hard-beaten earthen floor made visible by the light of half a dozen narrow port-holes, which looked in different directions out upon the moor and through the gable against the dark wall of Bess Landsborough's house.

Alister locked the dungeon door by turning the huge key with a spar of driftwood thrust through the head of it like the bar of a capstan. Then he called to him a shaggy gillie and bade him watch the door on the peril of his head. Whereupon the red-headed Gael grinned obediently, pulled himself an armful of heather, and effectually double-locked the door by stretching himself across the entrance with his hand on his dirk and his sword naked by his side.

CHAPTER XXIX

WAT'S ISLE OF REFUGE

But there were two men in the ill-fated boat when she so heedlessly rushed into the strange and dangerous outer defences of my Lord Barra's warded Isle of Suliscanna. What had become of the other?

Wat Gordon of Lochinvar was not drowned – it is hardly necessary to say so much. For had his body been lying in some eddy of the swirling waters about the outer reef of the Aoinaig narrows, this narrative of his history could not have been written. And of his life with its chequered good and bad, its fine instincts, clear intents, and halting performances, there would have been left no more than a little swarded mound in the bone-yard of dead and forgotten mariners.