John Splendid: The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn

by Neil Munro

  CHAPTER XI.--ON BENS OF WAR.

  This mount of Dunchuach, on which we now found ourselves ensconced,rises in a cone shape to a height of about eight hundred feet, itsbottom being but a matter of a quarter-mile from the castle door. It iswooded to the very nose, almost, except for the precipitous _sgornach_or scaur, that, seen from a distance, looks like a red wound on the faceof it The fort, a square tower of extraordinarily stout masonry, with aneminent roof, had a sconce with escarpment round it, placed on the veryedge of the summit. Immediately behind Dunchuach is Duntorvil, its twinpeak, that, at less distance than a shout will carry, lifts a hundredfeet higher on the north. The two hills make, indeed, but one, in amanner of talking, except for this hundred feet of a hollow worn by aburn lost midway in long sour grasses. It had always been a surprise tome that Argile's grandfather, when he set the fort on the hill, chosethe lower of the two eminences, contrary to all good guidance of war.But if he had not full domination on Dunchuach, he had, at any rate,a fine prospect I think, in all my time, I have never witnessed a morepleasing scene than ever presents itself in clear weather from the browof this peak. Loch Finne--less, as the whim of the fancy might have it,a loch than a noble river--runs south in a placid band; the Cowal hillsrise high on the left, bare but of heather and gall; in front is theheart of Argile, green with the forest of Creag Dubh, where the stagbays in the gloaming. For miles behind the town and castle lies a plain,flat and rich, growing the most lush crops. The town itself, that onecould almost throw a stone down on, looks like a child's toy. And awayto the north and west are the abundant hills, rising higher and higher,sprinkled here and there with spots of moor loch.

  The fort this night was held by a hundred men of the body called theMarquis his Halberdiers, a corps of antique heroes whose weapon forordinary was a long axe, a pretty instrument on a parade of state, butsmall use, even at close quarters, with an enemy. They had skill ofartillery, however, and few of them but had a Highlander's training inthe use of the broadsword. Besides two culverins mounted on the lessprecipitous side of the hill--which was the way we came--they hadsmaller firearms in galore on the sconce, and many kegs of powderdisposed in a recess or magazine at the base of the tower. To the eastof the tower itself, and within the wall of the fort (where now is butan old haw-tree), was a governor's house perched on the sheer lip of thehill, so that, looking out at its window, one could spit farther than amusket-ball would carry on the level.

  We were no sooner in than MacLachlan was scenting round and into thislittle house. He came out crestfallen, and went over to the groupof halberdiers, who were noisily telling their story to myself andSplendid.

  "Are no people here but men?" he asked Para Mor, who was sergeant of thecompany, and to all appearance in charge of the place.

  He caught me looking at him in some wonder, and felt bound, seemingly,to explain himself.

  "I had half the hope," said he, "that my cousin had come here; butshe'll be in the castle after all, as her father thought."

  John Splendid gave me the pucker of an eye and a line of irony aboutthe edge of his lips, that set my blood boiling. I was a foolish andungoverned creature in those days of no-grace. I cried in my English,"One would think you had a goodman's interest in this bit girl."

  MacLachlan leered at me with a most devilish light in his black eyes,and said, "Well, well, I might have even more. Marriage, they say,makes the sweetest woman wersh. But I hope you'll not grudge me, my dearElrigmore, some anxiety about my own relatives."

  The fellow was right enough (that was the worst of it), for a cousin'sa cousin in the friendly North; but I found myself for the second timesince I came home grudging him the kinship to the Provost of Inneraora'sdaughter.

  That little tirravee passed, and we were soon heartily employed on asupper that had to do duty for two meals. We took it at a rough tablein the tower, lighted by a flambeau that sent sparks flying like pigeonsinto the sombre height of the building which tapered high overhead asa lime-kiln upside down. From this retreat we could see the proof ofknavery in the villages below. Far down on Knapdale, and back in therecesses of Lochow, were burning homes, to judge from the blotched sky.

  Dunchuach had never yet been attacked, but that was an experienceexpected at any hour, and its holders were ready for it They haddisposed their guns round the wall in such a way as to command the wholegut between the hills, and consequently the path up from the glens. Thetown side of the fort wall, and the east side, being on the sheer face(almost) of the rock, called for no artillery.

  It was on the morning of the second day there that our defence was putto the test by a regiment of combined Irish and Athole men. The day wasmisty, with the frost in a hesitancy, a raw gowsty air sweeping over thehills. Para Mor, standing on the little north bastion or ravelin, as hispost of sergeant always demanded, had been crooning a ditty and carvinga scroll with his hunting-knife on a crook he would maybe use when hegot back to the tack where his home was in ashes and his cattle were farto seek, when he heard a crackle of bushes at the edge of the wood thatalmost reached the hill-top, but falls short for lack of shelter fromthe sinister wind. In a second a couple of scouts in dirty red and greentartans, with fealdags or pleatless kilts on them instead of the betterclass philabeg, crept cannily out into the open, unsuspicious that theirposition could be seen from the fort.

  Para Mor stopped his song, projected his firelock over the wall as heducked his body behind it--all but an eye and shoulder--and, with ahairy cheek against the stock, took aim at the foremost The crack of themusket sounded odd and moist in the mist, failing away in a dismal slamthat carried but a short distance, yet it was enough to rouse Dunchuach.

  We took the wall as we stood,--myself, I remember me, in my kilt, withno jacket, and my shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder; for I hadbeen putting the stone, a pleasant Highland pastime, with John Splendid,who was similarly disaccoutred.

  "All the better for business," said he, though the raw wind, as we linedthe wall, cut like sharp steel.

  Para Mor's unfortunate gentleman was the only living person to seewhen we looked into the gut, and he was too little that way to say muchabout. Para had fired for the head, but struck lower, so that the scoutwrithed to his end with a red-hot coal among his last morning's viands.

  Long after, it would come back to me, the oddity of that spectaclein the hollow--a man in a red fealdag, with his hide-covered bucklergrotesquely flailing the grass, he, in the Gaelic custom, making a greatmoan about his end, and a pair of bickering rooks cawing away heartilyas if it was no more than a sheep in the throes of braxy.

  After a little the moan of the MacDonald stopped, the crows slanted downto the loch-side, stillness came over the place. We talked in whispers,sped about the walls on the tiptoes of our brogues, and peeredwonderingly down to the edge of the wood. Long we waited and wearily,and by-and-by who came out high on the shoulder of Duntorvil but a bandof the enemy, marching in good order for the summit of that paramountpeak?

  "I hope to God they have no large pieces with them yonder," said John;"for they'll have a coign there to give us trouble if once they getmother of muskets in train."

  But, fortunately for us, no artillery ever came to Duntorvil.

  Fully two hundred of the enemy massed on the hill, commanded by a squatofficer in breeks and wearing a peruke _Anglice_, that went oddly withhis tartan plaid. He was the master of Clanranald, we learned anon, acunning person, whose aim was to avail himself of the impetuousnessof the kilts he had in his corps. Gaels on the attack, as he knew, areomnipotent as God's thunderbolts: give them a running start at a foe,with no waiting, and they might carry the gates of hell against theWorst One and all his clan; on a standing defence where coolness anddiscipline are wanted they have less splendid virtues. Clanranald waswell aware that to take his regiment all into the hollow where hisscout was stiffening was not only to expose them to the fire of the fortwithout giving them any chance of quick reply, but to begin the siegeoff anything but the bounding shoe-sole the Hi
ghlander has the naturalgenius for. What he devised was to try musketry at long range (and toshorten my tale, that failed), then charge from his summit, over therushy gut, and up the side of Dunchuach, disconcerting our aim andbringing his men in on their courageous heat.

  We ran back our pieces through the gorge of the bastions, wheeled themin on the terre-plein back from the wall, and cocked them higher ontheir trunnions to get them in train for the opposite peak.

  "Boom!" went the first gun, and a bit of brown earth spat up to the leftof the enemy, low by a dozen paces.

  A silly patter of poor musketry made answer, but their bullets might aswell have been aimed at snipe for all the difference it made to us: theycame short or spattered against our wall. We could hear the shouts ofthe foe, and saw their confusion as our third gun sent its message intothe very heart of them.

  Then they charged Dunchuach.

  Our artillery lost its value, and we met them with fusil and caliver.

  They came on in a sort of echelon of four companies, close ordered, andnot as a more skilly commander would make them, and the leading companytook the right. The rushy grass met them with a swish as they boundedover it like roebucks, so fast that our few score of muskets made noimpression on them until they were climbing up the steep brae that ledto our walls.

  Over a man in a minority, waiting, no matter how well ensconced, theonslaught of numbers carried on the wings of hate, there comes a strangefeeling--I'll never deny it--a sort of qualm at the pit of the stomach,a notion to cry parley or turn a tail disgraceful. I felt it but for asecond, and then I took to my old practice of making a personal foe ofone particular man in front of me. This time I chose a lieutenant orsergeant of the MacDonalds (by his tartan), a tall lean rascal, cleanshaved, in trews and a tight-fitting _cota gearr_ or short coat, with anotter-skin cap on his head, the otter-tail still attached and danglingbehind like a Lowlander's queue. He was striding along zealfully,brandishing his sword, and disdaining even to take off his back thebull-hide targe, though all his neighbours kept theirs in front of themon the left arm.

  "You have wrecked honest homes!" I argued with him in my mind. "Youput the torch to the widow's thatch, you have driven the cattle fromElrigmore, and what of a girl with dark eyes like the sloe? Fancy man,man of my fancy! Oh! here's the end of your journey!"

  Our assailants, after their usual custom, dropped their pieces, such ashad them, when they had fired the first shot, and risked all on the pushof the target and the slash of the broad brand, confident even that oursix or seven feet of escarpment would never stay their onset any time tospeak of. An abattis or a fosse would have made this step futile; but asthings were, it was not altogether impossible that they might surmountour low wall. Our advantage was that the terre-plein on which we stoodwas three or four feet higher than they were at the outer side of thewall, apart from the fact that they were poised precariously on a steepbrae. We leaned calmly over the wall and spat at them with pistols nowand then as they ran up the hill, with Clanranald and some captainscrying them on at the flank or middle. In the plain they left a piperwho had naturally not enough wind to keep his instrument going and facethe hill at the same time. He strode up and down in the deadliest partof the valley where a well-sent musket ball would never lose him, andplayed a tune they call "The Galley of the Waves," a Stewart rant witha hint of the zest of the sea in it Nobody thought of firing at him,though his work was an encouragement to our foes, and anon the hill-topsrang with a duel of pibrochs between him and a lad of our garrison, whogot round on the top of the wall near the governor's house and struttedhigh shouldered up and down, blasting at the good braggart air of "BaileInneraora."

  Those snorting, wailing, warring pipes mingled oddly with the shout ofthe fighting men, who had ways of battle new to me in practice thoughthey were in a sense my own countrymen. Gaelic slogans and maledictionsthey shouted, and when one of them fell in the mob, his immediatecomrades never failed to stop short in their charge and coolly rob himof a silver button from his coat, or a weapon if it seemed worth while.

  In a little they were soon clamouring against our wall. We laughed andprodded them off with the long-handed axes to get free play with thefusils, and one after another of them fell off, wounded or dead.

  "This is the greatest folly ever I saw," said Sir Donald, wiping hisbrow with a bloody hand.

  "I wish I was sure there was no trick in it," said John. He was lookingaround him and taking a tug at his belt, that braced him by a couple ofholes. Then he spat, for luck, on a ball he dropped into his fusil, saida Glassary charm on it as he rammed home the charge and brought the buttto his cheek, aiming at a white-faced Irisher with a leathern waistcoat,who fell backward into a dub of mud and stirred no more.

  "Four!" said John; "I could scarcely do better with my own French fusilMain Og."

  The enemy drew off at a command of their captain, and into the edge ofthe wood that came up on the left near our summit. We lost our interestin them for a time, watching a man running up the little valley from theright, above Kilmalieu. He came on waving his arms wildly and pointingahead; but though he was plain to our view, he was out of sight of theenemy on the left.

  A long black coat hampered his movements, and he looked gawky enough,stumbling through the rushes.

  "If I didn't think the inside of Castle Inneraora was too snug to quitfor a deadly hillside," said John, "I could believe yon was our friendthe English minister."

  "The English minister sure enough!" said half-a-dozen beside us.

  "Here's ill-luck for us then!" cried John, with irony. "He'll preach usto death: the fellow's deadlier than the Clanranald ban ditty."

  Some one ran to the post beside the governor's house, and let thegentleman in when he reached it. He was panting like a winded hound, thesweat standing in beads on his shaven jowl, and for a minute or twohe could say nothing, only pointing at the back of our fort in thedirection of the town.

  "A parish visit, is it, sir?" asked John, still in his irony.

  The minister sat him down on a log of wood and clutched his side, stillpointing eagerly to the south of our fort No one could understand him,but at last he found a choked and roupy voice.

  "A band behind there," he said; "your--front--attack is--but--a--feint"

  As he spoke, half-a-dozen men in a north-country tartan got on the topof our low rear wall that we thought impregnable on the lip of the hill,and came on us with a most ferocious uproar. "Badenoch!" they cried ina fashion to rend the hills, and the signal (for such it was more thanslogan) brought on our other side the Clanranald gentry.

  What followed in that hearthstone fight so hot and brisk took so shorta space of time, and happened in so confused and terrible a moment,that all but my personal feeling escapes me. My every sense stirredwith something horrible--the numb sound of a musket-butt on a head,the squeal of men wounded at the vitals, and the deeper roar of hate;a smell of blood as I felt it when a boy holding the candle at night toour shepherds slaughtering sheep in the barn at home; before the eyes ared blur cleared at intervals when I rubbed the stinging sweat from myface.

  Half a hundred of those back-gait assailants were over our low wall withtheir axe-hooks and ladders before we could charge and prime, engagingus hand to hand in the cobbled square of our fort, at the tower foot.The harassment on this new side gave the first band of the enemy thechance to surmount our front wall, and they were not slow to take it.

  Luckily our halberdiers stood firm in a mass that faced both ways,and as luckily, we had in Master John M'Iver a general of strategy andexperience.

  "Stand fast, Campbell Halberdiers!" he cried. "It's bloody death,whether we take it like cravens or Gaelic gentlemen!" He laid about himwith a good purpose, and whether they tried us in front or rear, thescamps found the levelled pikes and the ready swords. Some droppedbeside, but more dropped before us, for the tod in a hole will facetwenty times what he will flee from in the open wood, but never a manof all our striving company fought sturdier than our minister, w
ith aweapon snatched from an Athole man he had levelled at a first blow froman oaken rung.

  "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" he would cry; "for all thekings of the Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered togetheragainst us." A slim elder man he was, ordinarily with a wan sharp face;now it was flushed and hoved in anger, and he hissed his texts throughhis teeth as he faced the dogs. Some of youth's schooling was there, aLowland youth's training with the broadsword, for he handled it like nonovice, and even M'Iver gave him "Bravo, _suas e!_"

  That we held our ground was no great virtue--we could scarcely do less;but we did more, for soon we had our enemy driven back on the walls.They fought with a frenzy that made them ill to beat, but when a coupleof scores of our lads lined the upper wall again and kept back the leakfrom that airt by the command of John Splendid, it left us the chance ofsweeping our unwelcome tenants back again on the lower wall. They stayedstubbornly, but we had weight against them and the advantage of thelittle brae, and by-and-by we pinned them, like foumarts, against thestones. Most of them put back against the wall, and fought, even withthe pike at their vitals, slashing empty air with sword or dirk; somegot on the wall again and threw themselves over the other side, riskingthe chance of an uglier death on the rocks below.

  In less than an hour after the shot of Para Mor (himself a strickencorpse now) rang over Dunchuach, our piper, with a gash on his face, wasplaying some vaunting air on the walls again, and the fort was free ofthe enemy, of whom the bulk had fallen back into the wood, and seeminglyset out for Inneraora.

  Then we gathered and stroked our dead--twenty-and-three; we put ourwounded in the governor's house, and gave them the rough leech-craft ofthe fighting field; the dead of the assailants we threw over the rock,and among them was a clean-shaven man in trews and a tight-fitting _cotagearr_, who left two halves of an otter-skin cap behind him.

  "I wish to God!" cried John Splendid, "that I had a drink of Altanaluinnat this minute, or the well of Beal-loch-an-uarain."

  It was my own first thought, or something very like it, when thefighting was over, for a most cruel thirst crisped my palate, and, asill luck had it, there was not a cup of water in the fort.

  "I could be doing with a drop myself," said the English minister. "I'lltake a stoup and go down to the well yonder and fetch it."

  He spoke of the spout in the gut, a clean little well of hill-waterthat, winter or summer, kept full to the lip and accessible.

  We had gathered into the tower itself (all but a few sentinels), gladfor a time to escape the sight of yon shambles of friend and foe thatthe battle had left us. The air had softened of a sudden from itspiercing cold to a mildness balmy by comparison; the sky had leadenedover with a menacing vapour, and over the water--in the great glenbetween Ben Ime and Ardno--a mist hurried to us like driving smoke. Afew flakes of snow fell, lingering in the air as feathers from a nest inspring.

  "Here's a friend of Argile back again," said an old halberdier,staunching a savage cut on his knee, and mumbling his words because hewas chewing as he spoke an herb that's the poultice for every wound.

  "Frost and snow might have been Argile's friend when that proverb wasmade," said John Splendid, "but here are changed times; our last snowdid not keep Colkitto on the safe side of Cladich. Still, if this besnow in earnest," he added with a cheerier tone, "it may rid us of thesevermin, who'll find provand iller to get every extra day they bide.Where are you going, Master Gordon?"

  "To the well," said the minister, simply, stopping at the port, witha wooden stoup in his hand. "Some of our friends must be burning for amouthful, poor dears; the wounded flesh is drouthy."

  John turned himself round on a keg he sat on, and gave a French shrug hehad picked up among foreign cavaliers.

  "Put it down, sir," he said; "there's a wheen less precious lives inthis hold than a curate's, and for the turn you did us in coming up toalarm us of the rear attack, if for nothing else, I would be sorry tosee you come to any skaith. Do you not know that between us and thewell there might be death half-a-dozen times? The wood, I'll warrant, ishotching still with those disappointed warriors of Clanranald, who wouldhave no more reverence for your life than for your Geneva bands."

  "There's no surer cure for the disease of death in a hind than for thesame murrain in a minister of the Gospel--or a landed gentleman," saidGordon, touched in his tone a little by the austerity of his speeches aswe heard them at the kirk-session.

  John showed some confusion in his face, and the minister had his feet onthe steps before he could answer him.

  "Stop, stop!" he cried. "Might I have the honour of serving the Kirk foronce? I'll get the water from the well, minister, if you'll go in againand see how these poor devils of ours are thriving. I was but jokingwhen I hinted at the risk; our Athole gentry are, like enough, far offby this time."

  "I liked you better when you were selfish and told the truth, than nowthat you're valiant (in a small degree) and excuse it with a lie," quo'the minister, and off he set.

  He was beyond the wall, and stepping down the brae before we could beout at the door to look after him.

  "Damn his nipped tongue!" fumed John. "But man! there's a lovable quirkin his character too. I'll give twenty pounds (Scots) to his kirk-plateat the first chance if he wins out of this fool's escapade of hiswithout injury."

  There was no doubt the minister's task had many hazards in it, for hecarried stave nor steel as he jogged on with the stoup, over the frankopen brae-side, down to the well. Looking at him going down into theleft of the gut as unafeared as he had come up on the right of it, Iput myself in his place, and felt the skin of my back pimp-ling at theinstinct of lurking enemies.

  But Gordon got safely to the well, through the snow, now falling in aheavy shower, dipped out a stoupful, and turned about to come home. Afew yards off his path back, to the right and closer to the wood, laythe only man of all the bodies lying in the valley who seemed to haveany life left in him. This fellow lay on his side, and was waving hishands feverishly when the minister went up to him, and--as we saw in adim way through the snow--gave him a drink of the water from the lip ofthe stoup.

  "Sassenach fool!" said young MacLachlan, parched with thirst, gatheringin with a scooped hand the snow as it fell on the wall, and gluttonouslysucking it.

  "There are many kinds of folly, man," said I; "and I would think twicebefore I would grudge a cleric's right to give a mouthful of water to adying man, even if he was a Mac Donald on his way to the Pit."

  "Tuts, tuts! Elrigmore," cried John, "let the young cock crow; he meansno more than that it's hard to be hungry and see your brother feed afoeman. Indeed I could be wishing myself that his reverence was the GoodSamaritan on a more fitting occasion."

  We were bandying words now, and not so closely watching our friend inthe hollow, and it was Sir Donald, standing to a side a little, whocalled our attention anew, with a cry of alarm.

  "Look, lads, look!" he cried, "God help Gordon!"

  We looked through the snow--a grey veil--and saw two or three men fallon the minister.

  John Splendid but stopped a second to say, "It may be a feint to drawus off the fort; bide where ye are," and then he leaped over the wall,armed with a claymore picked from the haunch of a halberdier beside him.I was over at his heels, and the pair of us scoured down the brae.

  There was some hazard in the enterprise; I'm ashamed to this day to tellI thought that, at every foot of the way as we ran on. Never beforenor since have I felt a wood so sinister, so ghastly, so inspired bydreadful airs, and when it was full on our flank, I kept my head halfturned to give an eye to where I was going and an eye to what might comeout on my rear. People tell you fear takes wings at a stern climax, thata hot passion fills the brain with blood and the danger blurs to theeye. It's a theory that works but poorly on a forlorn-hope, with acertainty that the enemy are outnumbering you on the rear. With man andghost, I have always felt the same: give me my back to the wall, andI could pluck up valour enough for the occasion,
but there's a spotbetween the shoulders that would be coward flesh in Hector himself.That, I'm thinking, is what keeps some armies from turning tail to heavyodds.

  Perhaps the terror behind (John swore anon he never thought on't tillhe learned I had, and then he said he felt it worse than I) gave ourapproach all the more impetuousness, for we were down in the gut beforethe MacDonald loiterers (as they proved) were aware of our coming. Wemust have looked unco numerous and stalwart in the driving snow, for thescamps dashed off into the wood as might children caught in a mischief.We let them go, and bent over our friend, lying with a very gashly lookby the body of the MacDonald, a man well up in years, now in the lastthroes, a bullet-wound in his neck and the blood frothing at his mouth.

  "Art hurt, sir?" asked John, bending on a knee, but the minister gave noanswer.

  We turned him round and found no wound but a bruise on the head, thatshowed he had been attacked with a cudgel by some camp-followers of theenemy, who had neither swords, nor reverence for a priest who was givinga brotherly sup to one of their own tartan. In that driving snow werubbed him into life again, cruelly pallid, but with no broken bit abouthim.

  "Where's my stoup?" were his first words; "my poor lads upbye must bewearying for water." He looked pleased to see the same beside him wherehe had set it down, with its water untouched, and then he cast a waeglance on the dead man beside him.

  "Poor wretch, poor wretch!" said he.

  We took the stoup and our minister up to the summit, and had got himbut safely set there when he let out what gave me the route again fromDunchuach, and led to divers circumstances that had otherwise never comeinto this story if story there was, which I doubt there had never been.Often I've thought me since how pregnant was that Christian act ofGordon in giving water to a foe. Had I gone, or had John gone, for thestoup of water, none of us, in all likelihood, had stirred a foot torelieve yon enemy's drouth; but he found a godly man, though an austereone too on occasion, and paid for the cup of water with a hint in brokenEnglish that was worth all the gold in the world to me. Gordon told usthe man's dying confidence whenever he had come to himself a little morein the warmth of the fort fire.

  "There's a woman and child," said he, "in the wood of Strongara."