by Neil Munro
CHAPTER IX.--INVASION.
Eight hours after the beacon kindled on Dunchuach, the enemy was feelingat the heart of Argile.
It came out years after, that one Angus Macalain, a Glencoe man, abranded robber off a respectable Water-of-Duglas family, had guided themain body of the invaders through the mountains of the Urchy and intoour territory. They came on in three bands, Alasdair Mac-Donald andthe Captain of Clanranald (as they called John MacDonald, the beast--ascurvy knave!), separating at Accurach at the forking of the two glens,and entering both, Montrose himself coming on the rear as a support Asif to favour the people of the Glens, a thaw came that day with rain andmist that cloaked them largely from view as they ran for the hills toshelter in the sheiling bothies. The ice, as I rode up the water-side,home to Glen Shira to gather some men and dispose my father safely, wasbreaking on the surface of the loch and roaring up on the shore in theincoming tide. It came piling in layers in the bays--a most wonderfulspectacle! I could not hear my horse's hooves for the cracking andcrushing and cannonade of it as it flowed in on a south wind to thefront of the Gearran, giving the long curve of the land an appearancenew and terrible, filled as it was far over high-water mark withmonstrous blocks, answering with groans and cries to every push of thetide.
I found the glen wrapped in mist, the Gearran hamlet empty of people,Maam, Kilblaan, Stuchgoy, and Ben Bhuidhe presenting every aspect ofdesolation. A weeping rain was making sodden all about my father's housewhen I galloped to the door, to find him and the _sgalag_ the only onesleft.
The old man was bitter on the business.
"Little I thought," said he, "to see the day when Glen Shira would turntail on an enemy."
"Where are they?" I asked, speaking of our absent followers; but indeedI might have saved the question, for I knew before he told me they wereup in the conies between the mounts, and in the caves of Glen Finne.
He was sitting at a fire that was down to its grey ash, a mournfulfigure my heart was vexed to see. Now and then he would look about him,at the memorials of my mother, her chair and her Irish Bible (the firstin the parish), and a posy of withered flowers that lay on a bowl on ashelf where she had placed them, new cut and fresh, the day she tookto her deathbed. Her wheel, too, stood in the corner, with the threadsnapped short in the heck--a hint, I many times thought, at the sunderedinterests of life.
"I suppose we must be going with the rest," I ventured; "there's smallsense in biding here to be butchered."
He fell in a rain of tears, fearing nor death nor hardship, I knew, butwae at the abandonment of his home. I had difficulty in getting him toconsent to come with me, but at last I gave the prospect of safety inthe town and the company of friends there so attractive a hue that heconsented So we hid a few things under a _bruach_ or overhanging braebeside the burn behind the house, and having shut all the doors--acomical precaution against an army, it struck me at the time--we rodedown to Inneraora, to the town house of our relative Craignure.
It was a most piteous community, crowded in every lane and pend withmen, women, and children dreadful of the worst All day the people hadbeen trooping in from the landward parts, flying before the rumour ofthe Athole advance down Cladich. For a time there was the hope thatthe invaders would but follow the old Athole custom and plunder as theywent, sparing unarmed men and women, but this hope we surrendered when alad came from Camus with a tale of two old men, who were weavers there,and a woman, nailed into their huts and burned to death.
Had Inneraora been a walled town, impregnable, say, as a simple Swabianvillage with a few sconces and redoubts, and a few pieces of cannon, weold soldiers would have counselled the holding of it against all comers;but it was innocently open to the world, its back windows looking intothe fields, its through-going wynds and closes leading frankly to thehighway.
A high and sounding wind had risen from the south, the sea got in atumult, the ice-blocks ran like sheep before it to the Gearran bay andthe loch-head. I thought afterwards it must be God's providence thatopened up for us so suddenly a way of flight from this lamentable trap,by the open water now free from shore to shore in front of the town.Generalling the community as if he was a marshal of brigade, JohnSplendid showed me the first of his manly quality in his preparationfor the removal of the women and children. He bade the men run outthe fishing smacks, the wherries and skiffs, at the Cadger's Quay, andmoving about that frantic people, he disposed them in their severalplaces on the crafts that were to carry them over the three-mile ferryto Cowal. A man born to enterprise and guidance, certes! I never saw hisequal. He had the happy word for all, the magic hint of hope, a sobermerriment when needed, sometimes a little raillery and laughing,sometimes (with the old) a farewell in the ear. Even the bettergentry, Sir Donald and the rest, took a second place in the management,beholding in this poor gentleman the human heart that at a pinch isbetter than authority in a gold-braided coat.
By noon we had every bairn and woman (but for one woman I'll mention) ontheir way from the shore, poor dears! tossing on the turbulent sea, thewomen weeping bitterly for the husbands and sons they left, for of menthere went with them but the oldsters, able to guide a boat, but poorlyequipped for battling with Irish banditty. And my father was amongthem, in the kind hands of his _sgaiag_ and kinswomen, but in a vagueindifference of grief.
A curious accident, that in the grace of God made the greatestdifference on my after-life, left among them that found no place in theboats the daughter of Provost Brown. She had made every preparation togo with her father and mother, and had her foot on the beam of the boat,when an old woman set up a cry for an oe that had been forgot in theconfusion, and was now, likely, crying in the solitude of the backlands. It was the love-bairn of a dead mother, brought up in the kindlyHighland fashion, free of every gimel and kail-pot. Away skirted Bettyup the causeway of the Cadger's Quay, and in among the lanes for thelittle one, and (I learned again) she found it playing well contentamong puddled snow, chattering to itself in the loneliness of yonwar-menaced town. And she had but snatched it up to seek safety with herin the boats when the full tide of Colkitto's robbers came pelting inunder the Arches. They cut her off from all access to the boats by thatway, so she turned and made for the other end of the town, hoping tohail in her father's skiff when he had put far enough off shore to seeround the point and into the second bay.
We had but time to shout her apparent project to her father, when wefound ourselves fighting hand-to-hand against the Irish gentry in trews.This was no market-day brawl, but a stark assault-at-arms. All inthe sound of a high wind, broken now and then with a rain blatteringeven-down, and soaking through tartan and _clo-dubh_ we at it for dearlife. Of us Clan Campbell people, gentrice and commoners, and so many ofthe Lowland mechanics of the place as were left behind, there wouldbe something less than two hundred, for the men who had come up theloch-side to the summon of the beacons returned the way they came whenthey found MacCailein gone, and hurried to the saving of wife and bairn.We were all well armed with fusil and sword, and in that we had someadvantage of the caterans bearing down on us; for they had, for themain part, but rusty matchlocks, pikes, billhooks--even bows and arrows,antique enough contrivance for a time of civilised war! But they hadhunger and hate for their backers, good guidance in their own savagefashion from MacDonald, and we were fighting on a half heart, a bodynever trained together, and stupid to the word of command.
From the first, John took the head of our poor defence. He was_duine-uasail_ enough, and he had, notoriously, the skill that earnedhim the honour, even over myself (in some degree), and certainly overSir Donald.
The town-head fronted the upper bay, and between it and the grindingice on the shore lay a broad tract of what might be called esplanade,presenting ample space for our encounter.
"Gentlemen," cried John, picking off a man with the first shot from asilver-butted _dag_ he pulled out of his waist-belt at the onset, "andwith your leave, Sir Donald (trusting you to put pluck in these LowCountry shopkeepers), it's Innerao
ra or Ifrinn for us this time. Givethem cold steel, and never an inch of arm-room for their bills!"
Forgotten were the boats, behind lay all our loves and fortunes--wasever Highland heart but swelled on such a time? Sturdy black and hairyscamps the Irish--never German boor so inelegant--but venomous in theircourage! Score upon score of them ran in on us through the Arches. Ourlads had but one shot from the muskets, then into them with the dirk andsword.
"Montrose! Montrose!" cried the enemy, even when the blood glucked atthe thrapple, and they twisted to the pain of the knife.
"A papist dog!" cried Splendid, hard at it on my right, for once azealous Protestant, and he was whisking around him his broadsword like ahazel wand, facing half-a-dozen Lochaber-axes. "Cruachan, Cruachan!" hesang. And we cried the old slogan but once, for time pressed and windwas dear.
Sitting cosy in taverns with friends long after, listening to mensinging in the cheery way of taverns the ditty that the Leckan bard madeupon this little spulzie, I could weep and laugh in turns at minding ofyon winter's day. In the hot stress of it I felt but the ardour that'sin all who wear tartan--less a hatred of the men I thrust and slashedat with Sir Claymore than a zest in the busy traffic, and something ofa pride (God help me!) in the pretty way my blade dirled on the ham-pansof the rascals. There was one trick of the sword I had learned off anold sergeant of pikes in Macka's Scots, in a leisure afternoon in camp,that I knew was alien to every man who used the targe in home battles,and it served me like a Mull wife's charm. They might be sturdy, thedogs, valorous too, for there's no denying the truth, and they weregleg, gleg with the target in fending, but, man, I found them mightysimple to the feint and lunge of Alasdair Mor!
Listening, as I say, to a song in a tavern, I'm sad for the stoutfellows of our tartan who fell that day, and still I could laugh gailyat the amaze of the ragged corps who found gentlemen before them. Theypricked at us, for all their natural ferocity, with something likeapology for marring our fine clothes; and when the end came, and we weredriven back, they left the gentlemen of our band to retreat by the pendsto the beech-wood, and gave their attention to the main body of ourcommon townsmen.
We had edged, Splendid and Sir Donald and I, into a bit of green behindthe church, and we held a council of war on our next move.
Three weary men, the rain smirring on our sweating, faces, there wewere! I noticed that a trickle of blood was running down my wrist, and Ifelt at the same time a beat at the shoulder that gave the explanation,and had mind that a fellow in the Athole corps had fired a pistoletpoint-blank at me, missing me, as I had thought, by the thickness of mydoublet-sleeve.
"You've got a cut," said Sir Donald. "You have a face like the clay."
"A bit of the skin off," said I, unwilling to vex good company.
"We must take to Eas-a-chosain for it," said Splendid, his eyes flashingwild upon the scene, the gristle of his red neck throbbing.
Smoke was among the haze of the rain; from the thatch of the town-headhouses the wind brought on us the smell of burning heather and brake andfir-joist.
"Here's the lamentable end of town Inneraora!" said John, in a dolefulkey.
And we ran, the three of us, up the Fisherland burn side to the wood ofCreag Dubh.