The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster
brightness, which mirrored all the mountains round, the loch seemed to hold the very heart of content. Ewen had the sensation that his heart, too, was drowned there. And by his own will he was saying farewell to loch and mountain, island and red crag. He remembered how Alison had said that he would be hard put to it to choose between her and them. Was she right?
There was a place where for a little there was no bank, but marshy ground, and where the water came brimming into the reeds and grasses, setting them faintly swaying. He went to it, and, stooping with difficulty, dipped a cupped hand into the water and raised it to his lips. Perhaps that sacramental draught would give him to see this scene as bright and sharp in dreams, over there in the land of exile whither, like his father, like all who had not counted the cost, he was going.
As he drank there was a loud croak over his head, and, looking up, he saw a heron winging its slow, strong way over the loch towards the sunset. It might almost have been the same heron which he and Alison had watched that evening last summer, when it had seemed to arrive from the western coast like a herald from him who had landed there. Now it was going towards the coast once more, as he, the outlaw, was going, and as his Chief and his fugitive Prince would soon be going. In a little year, between two flights of a heron seen over Loch na h-Iolaire, the whole adventure of ruin had been begun and consummated.
Well, if one’s life remained to one it was in order to come back some day and renew the struggle. Ewen took off his bonnet. “God save King James!” he said firmly, and turned away from the mirrored mountains to take the same path as the heron.
CHAPTER V
This sea-fog, Keith Windham decided, was worse than the inland mist; thicker, more woolly, more capricious. Yesterday, for instance, one had wakened to it, and all day it had cloaked sea and shore and the wild, tumbled mountains of the ‘Rough Bounds’. Yet towards evening it had suddenly lifted, and the night had been clear and moonlit. But this morning the white veil was down again, and only now, some hours after sunset, was it clearing away.
And this was all the more vexatious because in the silver clearness of last night he had distinctly made out a strange vessel—a Frenchman, he was sure—anchored somewhere off the isle of Rum. But in the day, thanks to that muffling fog, who knew whether she was still off the coast or no! Yet in a few minutes more, when the moon came up from behind the mountains, he hoped to be able to see as far as her anchorage; meanwhile, followed by his orderly, he rode slowly along the flat shore in the direction of Morar.
No one could accuse Major Keith Windham of neglecting Lord Albemarle’s instructions; if anything, he went beyond them in his ceaseless vigilance. Quartered himself at Arisaig, he thence patrolled the coast in both directions, from Loch nan Uamh, the Adventurer’s original landing-place, to Morar of the white sands on the other, and had his grumbling men out in all weathers, at all hours of the day and night, and for any kind of false alarm. But he spared himself still less than them, taking little sleep and covering miles every day, often on foot. If fatigue, like virtue, were its own reward, then he had that recompense. And so far it was his only one.
But at least Keith felt tolerably certain that no fugitives had yet made their escape from his strip of coast, no fugitives of any kind. For, apart from using every endeavour to secure the person of the Pretender’s son, he had been instructed to prevent all communication with French vessels, of whom one or two might always be hovering off the coast. These nights, therefore, that this ghostly ship was visible, it naturally behoved him to be extraordinarily vigilant, since it was unlikely that she was there by chance; she was probably hanging about in hopes of taking off the prize that he was after, and he was duly grateful to the moon last night for showing her to him. And surely it was time for the moon to appear now! Keith put his hand impatiently into the breast of his uniform for a little almanac which he carried there, and, encountering a packet which he also carried, was swept at the touch of it away for a moment from shore and ship and moonrise.
Having left Fort Augustus for the coast so soon after Ewen Cameron had confided to his care the letter to his wife, Keith had had no opportunity of despatching it; moreover, why send that farewell letter now that its writer had escaped? So not knowing where else to dispose it, he still carried the packet with the lock of hair upon him, a material token of the tie between him and the foe who had captured him a year ago, and had held him in a species of bondage ever since. The thought had never formulated itself so definitely until to-night, but, by gad, it was true!
He had been hard put to it to conceal his exultation when, just before setting out from Fort Augustus for Moidart, he had heard of Ewen’s escape and disappearance; and this news had, ever since, been a source of the most unfeigned pleasure to him. His sacrifices had not been in vain; they had been well worth the making. He thought of Ewen back at Ardroy—his doing, that! Ewen would recognise it, too. He had not failed in everything!
And now he pictured Ewen lying hid in the mountains round Loch na h-Iolaire until the worst of the storm had blown over. He could not imagine him leaving Ardroy unless he were obliged, and surely, not being on the list of proscribed, he could contrive to elude capture in those wilds. His wife would doubtless get news of him somehow, return to Scotland and visit him secretly; and in the end, when the price had been paid by those who had not had his good fortune, and there was for the others an amnesty or some act of indemnity, he might be able to occupy his home again in peace. It had so happened, Keith believed, after the Fifteen.
Was then his hope that they should meet again some day so impossible of fulfilment now? It was true that if he himself succeeded in capturing the ‘Prince’, Ewen would not readily take his hand. However, no need to face that dilemma yet. But, in a sense, every day that ‘the young gentleman’ was still in Scotland brought nearer the hour when he must try to leave it, and if Lord Albemarle were right in supposing that he would make for this stretch of coast, already familiar to him, he must soon approach the snare laid for him there.
And the presence of that unknown ship last night seemed to indicate that the actual moment of that approach was very near. Ah! now at last he would be able to look for her, for the moon had pushed up over the craggy eastern summits at his back into a cloudless sky.
Keith gave his horse to his orderly, and going along a low spur of rock gazed steadily out to sea. The fantastic peaks of Rum were even more unreal in the moonlight than in the day, and the isle of Eigg of an even odder shape. At first he thought that the stranger was gone, and then all at once he saw her, a ghostly bark on the rippling silver. She seemed to be off Morar, and, since some of her square-sails appeared to be set, he doubted if she were at anchor; but she was certainly not sailing away.
Keith had to make a rapid decision. At Morar he had an officer and thirty men stationed. That, surely, was enough. He could, if he wished, send back to Arisaig and bring up some more from there; yet should Arisaig and not Morar prove after all the destined spot, and he had denuded Arisaig of watchers, he would be undone. Loch nan Uamh, the original landing-place, was also provided with a quota, but the distance did not admit of bringing any soldiers thence to-night.
He returned to his orderly and mounted his horse. “I shall ride on to Morar. Go back to Arisaig and tell the Captain so; desire him to keep a close watch on the shore, for the Frenchman is lying off the coast again and nearer in than last night.”
The man saluted and rode off along the rough sandy road, and Keith was left alone with the ship, the moonlight and his own excited thoughts. Not that he stayed to contemplate any of these; he pushed on at a smart trot for Morar, turning over the question of a boat, without which no fugitive could, naturally, reach the ship. He had temporarily confiscated every boat on this stretch of coast except such as were genuinely needed for fishing, to which he had granted a permit. Even of the owners of these he was not sure, for they were all MacDonald of Clanranald’s dependents. It would no doubt have been better to have burnt every one of their craft. Yet even then a vessel could easily despatch one of her own, at the risk of being fired on.
Keith took a last look at the burnished and gently moving expanse of which he must now lose