CHAPTER XXXVIII
MISFORTUNATE COLIN
The completeness of the peace and content which reigned on Fiara wasonly equalled by the fierceness of the storm of passion and hellishanger which broke over Suliscanna on the day after the chief's arrival.It was already late in the forenoon when a messenger, haggard and halfblind with terror and the dying out of the drink in his brain, broughtto the house of the chief the news of the destruction of the boats andthe flight of the prisoners.
Barra rose to his feet. His hand instinctively groped for a dagger, andnot finding it, he struck the man to the ground with his clinched fist.During the night he had probably been the only sober man on the island.When he went out he found a pale and terror-stricken population.Women peered anxiously at him from their hovels or scudded among thescattered bowlders on the hill, with children tagging wearily afterthem and clinging to their skirts.
As he came near the landing-place a woman skirled suddenly from theback of a rock. The wild voice startled him. It was like the crying ofthe death-keen.
"Who is that?" demanded Barra of his nearest henchman.
"'Tis the wife of the watchman, Misfortunate Colin," replied AlisterMcAlister, who this morning had somehow accomplished the gravity ofa judge on circuit. He had been all night in attendance outside thechief's door--so that, although he had carried out his declaredintentions to the letter, he was yet wholly guiltless of the damningnegligence which the Lord of Barra was now about to investigate andpunish.
Presently the Calf and the Killer were discovered, sleeping the sleepof the greatly intoxicated. They still lay with Wat's rope about them,clasped in fraternal arms, their breaths combining to make one generoussteam of Hollands gin. Misfortunate Colin lay as he had fallen, withthe keys of the dungeon tucked under his belt. The chief turned himover with his foot.
"Nail him up to that door by the hands and feet!" he ordered, briefly,looking at the man with cold, malevolent eyes.
A woman's shriek rang out, and like a maenad she came flying down thehill, loose-haired, wild-eyed, and flung herself down, grovellingbestially at Barra's feet.
"Mercy, master of life and death!" she cried, clasping him firmly bythe knees; "all misfortunes fall on my man. And this is not his fault.All the island was even as he is."
"But all the island had not the charge of a prisoner," cried Barra.
Then without further question men approached to seize the man of fatedfortunes, and he would doubtless have been immediately crucified on thedoor which he had failed to guard but for the interference of MistressMcAlister.
She came fearlessly forth from her adjacent dwelling, clad in herdecent white cap and apron, looking snod and wiselike as if she hadbeen going to the Kirk of Colmonel on a sacrament Sabbath. Even asBarra looked at her he was recalled to himself. To him she representedthat civilization from which he had so recently come, and which lookedaskance on the wild vengeances that were expected and even thoughtproper among the clansmen of Suliscanna.
"My lord," she said, "there was one man lang syne that was crucifiedwith nails for the sins of the people. Be kinder to poor Colin. Tie himup with ropes, lest his blood be on your head, and ye win not withinthe mercy of the Crucified."
Now though when abroad he made a pretence of religious fervor forpolitical purposes, in reality Barra was purely pagan and cared nothingfor Bess's parable. Nevertheless, he acknowledged tacitly the force ofan outside civilization and another code of justice, speaking to him inthe person of the woman from Ayrshire.
"Tie him up with ropes," he commanded, abruptly.
And so in a trice the Misfortunate Colin was secured to the door ofthe dungeon of which he had proved himself so inefficient a guard, hisarms fixed by the wrists to the corners of it, and his heavy, drunkenhead rolling loosely from side to side upon his breast. His wife kneltat his feet, but without daring so much as to touch him with a finger.Round his neck swung the keys, the emblem of his broken trust. As forthe Calf and the Killer, they were flung, bound as they were, into thedungeon, where upon awaking their seeming fraternal amity suddenly gaveway, and they bit and butted at each other to the extent of their bondswith mutual recriminations and accusations of treachery.
Barra surveyed carefully every trace which had been left of the mannerof the prisoners' escape. But for the present, at least, he could cometo no conclusion, save that they had escaped in a boat, probably withthe help of Wise Jan. He judged also that, thanks to this excellentnavigator, the fugitives were by this time far beyond the reach of hispresent vengeance. Nevertheless he left nothing untried. He climbedthe heights of Lianacraig and looked out seaward and northward. But hecould see nothing upon the black ridge of the central cliffs of Fiara,and nothing in the gloomy strait which separated it from the oppositerock-wall of Suliscanna. All in that direction was warded by the raceof the Suck, ridging dangerously on either side and tailing away to thenorth in a jabble of confused water.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, upon Fiara Wise Jan ran his errands and gathered hisdrift-wood under the orders of the master-at-arms, while Wat and Kate,content to dwell together in an innocent garden of Eden, a gardenfrom which the serpent was for the moment excluded, walked hand inhand under the shelter of the long central cliff-line of the isle onwhich they had found shelter. The history of their love's growth wasa constant marvel to them, and their chief interest and happiness nowlay in unravelling the why and the wherefore of each incident in theirpasts. How at such a time one thought this--how at such another theyboth thought the same identical thing--though one was interned in aDutch prison and the other tossing on the waters of the North Sea. Nowthat they were fully assured as to their mutual loves--for even Wat hadceased to doubt, if not to marvel--they had time and to spare for thecomparison of their feelings in the past, and for the most exhaustiveexamination of their possibilities in the future.
"Tell me a tale," commanded Kate, as they sat together on theprojecting part of the trunk of the rowan-tree set in the angle of thecliff.
"Which tale?" asked Wat, promptly, as if there were only two in theworld--as indeed there were, for them. Kate sighed at the impossibilityof having both at once--the wondrous tale of their past, and the yetmore wondrous and aureate tale of their future.
"Tell me how you first loved me, and when, and why, and how much?" shesaid, since perforce she had to choose one.
Then Wat, delving always further and further into the past, producedinstance after instance to prove that ever since he had seen her, knownher, hearkened to her voice, there had not been a moment when he hadnot loved her.
And Kate, resting the dusky tangle of her soft curls on his shoulder,sighed again and again with a nestling bliss to listen to tale so sweet.
"You have forgotten about what you thought coming up the stairs inZaandpoort Street," she would correct. For she knew the track of thestory-teller by heart, and like a child with a favorite fairy tale, sheresented omissions almost as much as she suspected the genuineness ofadditions.
"Now tell me more about seeing me lying on Maisie's lap with handsclasped behind my head. And about what you thought then."
And so most innocently she would put her hands in the very position itwas Wat's duty to describe, which naturally for some moments disturbedhis ideas and interfered with the continuity of the history.
But as soon as they turned homeward they became, after their manner,severely practical.
"Kate," said Wat, as they walked together--Wat's hand mostly on hissweetheart's shoulder, after the manner of school-boys that arecomrades--"'tis high time we were taking thought for our escape. Eachday makes the coming of the ship to carry off Barra and his retinue anearer possibility."
Kate sighed as she looked on the long barrier of the northern breakerswhitening the horizon, and then at the mellow floods of peaceful lightwhich poured in from the west, where the seabirds were circling anddiving.
"And leave all this," she said, wistfully, "and you?"
"Nay,
no need to leave me--if you will stay with me," quoth Wat,cheerfully; "but to come with me to mine own land, to be my love and myqueen."
"And what would you do with me there?" she said, looking up at him."Would not you be an outlaw, and I no better than an encumbrance whileyou remain in hiding?"
"I think not that the pursuit is so keen as it was before the kingbegan to protect those of his own religion," answered Wat. "I believewe should find that the worst of the shower had slacked. And then thereis always the old tower in the middle of the loch. Since my mother'sdeath no one has dwelt in it. We would be sure of a shelter there."
Kate shook her head wistfully, like one with the same desires butbetter knowledge.
"Wat, my dear," she made him answer, "you speak by the heart, and itis my heart also, God knows; but now I must speak a word or two by thehead. You and I must e'en bide a wee and wait. It is better so. I willnot be a charge on you. If I am not welcome at home, why, there isalways sweet Grizel McCulloch at the Ardwell to whom I can go. She willgladly give me a hiding-place and a bite for company's sake till theblast goes by. If all speak the truth in Holland where we come from, itwill not be long ere the king has filled up the measure of his folly."
"In that case I might have to fight for the fool and his folly both,"said Wat, quietly.
"Aye, there it is!" cried Kate; "a lass in her heart cares nought forking or prince when once she has given herself to love. But a man willhold to his own way of it, and put in peril his happiness and thehappiness of another in order to have the right shade of color set uponthe cushions of the throne."
Wat smiled at her yet more gently.
"In Holland," he said, "I fought for the prince and was true to him;but it is another matter here, where we are under the rule and sway ofthe anointed king of the ancient Scottish name."
"Ah, well, Wat," said Kate, "that is not my thought of it, as wellyou know. But I do not love you so little, lad, that I could thinkthe less of you for standing by your colors, even though with yourown eyes ye have seen that king make of Scotland little better than ahunting-field."
"James Stuart is my king as surely as Kate McGhie is my love," saidWat, mighty gravely. "I argue as little about one as the other."
Kate touched his arm gently.
"Dear love--no," she said. "Do not let us dispute any more. You areyou, and so you love me true. You shall fight for what king you will,only keep safe your heart and life for me--for they are all I have."
They had reached the great chamber in the cliff which lay open to thenorth, and in which Jack Scarlett already had his cooking-fire ofcharcoal alight for the evening meal. A hundred yards from the entrancethere met them a sweet and appetizing smell of fresh sea-fish broilingin the ashes. For Wise Jan lay most of his spare time fishing out on ajutting rock, where the swirl of the Suck sent a back-spang of currentcareering anglewise along the northern edge of the Fiara.
"Jack," said Wat, as they came in, "I think that we should get awayfrom the island as soon as we can."
"And has it taken you all this time to come to that conclusion?" criedold Jack, without looking up, plowtering discontentedly in the redembers with a burned stick.
"The new moon will now give us nearly three hours' light--enough forour purpose," said Wat, "and Wise Jan here can help us to put our oldboat in readiness."
"Why not the new and brave one you hid in the water-passage? I supposeit is there in safety still?" said Scarlett.
"Aye," replied Wat, "but unless you want to be cast away the secondtime in the tumble of the Suck, you will most carefully leave that boatalone; for the current races by at either end, and except for thosewho have spent their lives in piloting their way through the intricatepassages of the reefs and know their every glide and swirl, it isimpossible to reach the open sea from the Sound of Suliscanna."
"How then?" grumbled Scarlett, for these things of the sea were not inhis province, and he resented the reference of any question to him."Let those that stomach cold salt-water agree about the road over it.My parish begins when there is solid earth beneath my feet."
Wat answered him clearly, scoring the points on his fingers as he madethem.
"First we have the old boat, which on my first coming hither I foundfloating in the northern bay and brought ashore. Well, we must get Janto rig her with the mast out of the larger boat in the water-cave, andequip her with the oars out of that also. Then, since the Suck sweepspast us on the east, and there is a strong tide-race to the west, wemust steer our way directly out from the northern shore of Fiara,which is indeed the only direction in which the sea is anyway clear.We shall keep steadily on till we find the waters to the east calm andpracticable, for the fretting of the tide on the shoreward skerriescannot last long out on the open sea."
Scarlett nodded his head. It was all right, he thought. He was ready toadventure in any direction which did not involve another wrestle withthe unfriendly and unwholesome Suck of Suliscanna.
"This very night," quoth Wat, to close the discussion, "will I swimover and bring back the needful things for our departure in the boatitself. It is a pity, indeed, that we cannot take her with us."
Kate looked at him with wonderful changeful eyes, a lingering regardthat dwelt tenderly on him. She said nothing with her tongue, but hereyes spoke for her. They were of the tenderest brown immediately aboutthe dark pupils, then of a clear hazel, which merged into the mostsweet and translucent gray, like the first dawn of a May morning.
"Take care of yourself for me," they said; "you are all my earthlytreasure."
For this is the universal language of loving women's eyes in times ofdanger, ever since Eve clave to her husband in the night solace outsidethe wall of Paradise, and they twain became one flesh.
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