‘Thy name?’ Captain Munro demanded.
‘Jock Bridie.’
Alec once more held out the flimsy dog-eared testimonial, on which the words had been worn away at the long-folded creases. But this time, though with several pauses for thought. Skipper Munro gathered the meaning of it, nodded and handed it back. Alec gathered it into its folded shape and stowed it in the small leather bag hanging from his neck.
‘I’ll tak ye, Jock,’ the captain said. ‘The Maid o’ Dunoon, lying at the quay yonder.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Alec answered. ‘A right dainty barque she is, too, i’ faith.’
‘Ye know her, then?’
Alec reddened.
‘It was her lines took my eyes before ever I asked for her master,’ he said truthfully.
Captain Munro gave a loud laugh.
‘Either ye’re a practised seaman or a great courtier,’ he cried. ‘Awa wi’ ye, laddie. Aboard an’ ask for Mr Ferguson. We sail for Carlisle the night.’
Oleg Ferguson, the mate, was as pleased as his captain to secure such an apparently stalwart crew. What with the disturbances in the Isles and the troubles following the late Queen Elizabeth’s ill-conceived adventures in Ireland, not to speak of smuggling on a large scale from that country, shipping out of the Clyde had been hazardous, unprofitable and lately most unpopular with men who followed the sea. They preferred the eastern ports and the quieter waters of the north-east. So did the mine owners, who could ship their product almost as easily from the Forth as from the Clyde and were finding a rapidly expanding market in London and other prosperous, growing English towns, now forced to use coal in place of the wood cut down for the building of more and yet more craft.
Alec found The Maid o’ Dunoon a happy ship, well found and well conducted. Both Captain Munro and Mr Ferguson were quick and competent, inclined to severity but very fair where the carrying out of an order laid an extra strain upon a man not quite strong enough to support it with all the smartness they required. It was abundantly clear, Alec found, that the voyage was almost a military operation. In fact during his first hour on board this thought struck him as Mr Ferguson led him round the barque, showed him the holds, loaded now with coal and battened down, the high poop, the position of the captain’s quarters under it and of his own forward of the foremast, and between these two locations on either side of the main deck two gun ports with ordinance in position though not run out and the flaps at present closed. As they passed them Alec stopped, pointing.
‘We are at war then, sir?’ he asked, grinning widely.
‘We may be,’ Oleg replied. ‘It is a risk we run going south. Hast not heard?’
‘I hae heard much,’ Alec answered, ‘and had a wee experience lately, fishing near Skye.’
‘Indeed?’
Mr Ferguson was not interested. Alec remembered hearing from MacDonald about the narrow strait between Stranraer and Larne in Ireland, opposite, and the dangers attending a passage there. But he also remembered his humble position in The Maid o’ Dunoon and did not try further to relate his adventure.
But the rumours and warnings were true, he found, though the barque he served did not, to his regret, take a part in the actual fighting. They had come, without incident, past the narrow straits and were making for the Point of Ayr at the northern tip of Man, when the look-out called that an unusual number of masts showed upon the horizon in the direction of the Solway Firth. As they drew on, keeping their course, it became apparent that a running battle was taking place and that The Maid o’ Dunoon was heading into the midst of it. That this was a serious fight was made clear by the bright flashes, puffs of smoke and faint claps like thunder from the pursuers, who were evidently closing with the pursued.
Captain Munro gave instant orders to alter course towards the Scottish coast. He also commanded Alec to stand by the starboard ports to man the guns if need be.
This he did with much inward misgiving, for he knew nothing at all of firearms. During his youth and his years in London, though fighting guards and army troops had carried such weapons, gentlemen relied on their swords, merchants on their authority. But he soon found Mr Ferguson at his side, ready to instruct him, having dealt with those members of the crew who had been resetting the sails upon the new course.
‘Do we run them out, sir?’ Alec said, patting the gun barrel beside him and eager to see it perform.
‘If we get the order,’ Oleg Ferguson answered, smiling at the young man’s eagerness. He turned to a stocky member of the crew who stood just behind him.
‘Mr Bell is our gunner and will instruct ye.’ He turned away, leaving the two together.
Bell said, ‘They be the English frigates we’ve bin promised this twelvemonth.’
‘And their prey?’ Alec asked, for it was becoming plain that the two leading ships in the fight were making for Man or for Ireland, but looked as if they would reach neither. Much of their sail and rigging had been shot away. The second in line was falling far behind and as they watched the leading frigate fired again, the shot struck the mainmast which toppled and fell plunging half overboard in such a way that the starboard decks were forced under water and in a short time the vessel was stationary, sinking fast.
The frigate that had destroyed her with that broadside swept on, keeping up her pace to capture the foremost prey. As the men on The Maid o’ Dunoon watched they saw the second frigate, instead of stopping to pick up survivors from the sinking enemy, not only alter course to avoid her, but send men aloft to cram on extra sail.
‘God’s life!’ cried Captain Munro. ‘The blood-thirsty bastards! Those are no men-o’ -war but some poor fools with silks or spirits from France by way of Man. They have no guns. No fair fight, by God! Shame on them, English dogs!’
‘Better to drown than lie in an English gaol and hang by process of English law,’ said Mr Ferguson bitterly. He had joined the captain on the poop deck when the action had nearly gone past them and it was clear they would not have to defend themselves from either side.
Captain Munro, still blazing with fine Scottish indignation, began to give fresh orders. His crew, led by Oleg Ferguson and now including Alec, swung the spars and hauled the ropes to bring The Maid about on a fresh course that would take her directly across the position of the sinking smuggler, now low in the water.
As they drew near Alec saw a few heads bobbing around the floating upper half of the mizzen mast that had been split away by the same burst of shot that had felled the mainmast. But before they had reached the spot the doomed ship gave a final lurch, dipped forward and plunged out of sight, with a last despairing yell from her captain who had stayed aboard her to the end.
The yell was echoed by the bobbing heads whose number was diminished to two by the final death plunge of their vessel, that had washed them from their hold on the spar. Nevertheless Captain Munro completed his act of mercy. He brought his ship up into the wind, set down one of the boats and sent Oleg and Alec and the gunner to bring in the two survivors if they still lived.
The boat, rowed with vigorous strokes by Alec and Bell, shot across the choppy sea to the spar, guided by Mr Ferguson, who, standing in the stern precariously with a hand on the backstay and a foot on the tiller, had kept his eye firmly on those two heads, for there was a constant danger that he would lose sight of them if he took his eye from them for as much as a second.
‘Avast there!’ he yelled suddenly, leaping down to grip the tiller and swing the boat over with such a sudden movement that the spray from a struck wave drenched them all.
Alec, out of breath, leaned over his oar. The gunner, even more exhausted, lay over backwards. They were both roused instantly by a cry from Ferguson.
‘We’ve got them! Jock, ye great oaf, grab that man!’
The little boat rocked up and down in constant danger of capsizing as first one and then the other of the two survivors was hauled on board, to fall shivering, weeping and praying, giving thanks to God for their delivery from drowning, cal
ling down curses on their attackers and crying out their fears for their future in captivity.
Since it was impossible to row with two writhing bodies amidships, Mr Ferguson raised the small boat’s sail and soon had her alongside The Maid. When it came to getting the two half-drowned wretches on board the barque an unlooked for fact was revealed. One of the two was a Manxman as was expected, but the other was a Scot; who had fallen, he said, from the second frigate as she swept through the drowning crew of the smuggler. And in falling he had struck a jagged piece of wreckage and torn a considerable wound in his thigh.
‘Fell?’ Captain Munro asked wrily, when Mr Ferguson reported this. ‘Or jumped?’
The mate made no answer, but took his skipper to the ship’s boat, now on board the barque again. The latter stared at the pool of reddened seawater in the bottom of the boat and then asked, ‘Where’s the fellow now?’
‘Below, sir,’ Mr Ferguson answered. ‘Yon Jock Bridie hath some knowledge o’ wounds, it seems. I’ll no contradict him. A fine seaman, knowledgeable beyond the ordinary. He could tell us much I reckon, that it would be best we’d not hear.’
Seeing The Maid o’ Dunoon was now proceeding on the course he had set, Captain Munro went below to the crew’s quarters where he found the Manxman, pale and anxious, but quiet now, sitting on the cabin sole by himself and a small group of the crew, off watch, staring down at Alec, who was kneeling beside the rescued Scot, held firmly by two of them.
They made way for the master, who, seeing that Alec had not noticed him, made a sign to them not to interrupt his efforts. He was washing a jagged six-inch shallow cut with salt water that he had had boiled and partly cooled. The man lay with closed eyes and tight mouth, enduring silently. When the wound was cleansed to his satisfaction Alec brought the sides of it together, clapped on a dressing of clean rags and bound it in place with strips of a stouter material. He then directed his helpers to lift the man into a nearby hammock and got to his feet, finding himself face to face with his captain.
‘Well Jock,’ Munro said. ‘Thou’rt ship’s surgeon, master gunner, able seaman and—what else, I wonder?’
He said the last sharply, so that Alec’s face grew white with sudden anger at the implied suspicion. But he managed to control the temper that had so often betrayed him.
‘I be ignorant of cannon, sir,’ he said, forcing himself to speak slowly and respectfully. ‘Of firearms altogether,’ he added.
‘I think ye’d learn fast,’ said Captain Munro. He turned to the men about him.
‘These fellows we hae ta’en be neither prisoners nor any sort of enemy. We took them frae the sea to save their lives. I am now bound for Whitehaven, where they will be put ashore as their ain masters. I ask no questions and demand no answers. Do ye likewise.’
He kept his word. The engagement between the frigates and the smugglers had taken place just after midday. The Maid o’ Dunoon reached Whitehaven the next morning, having been becalmed most of the night, much to Alec’s relief, for the poor wretch he had tended was able to sleep and by morning professed himself out of pain. He did, indeed, seem able to walk, although with an effort and limping.
Captain Munro gave out to the harbour master at Whitehaven that he was obliged to land two men he had found in the water in danger of drowning. He knew nothing of either, he said, but one seemed to be a Scot, a farmer, who should be returned over the border as soon as possible to his native land where his injury could be seen to by his own people.
After he had spoken the harbour master nodded gravely, indicated that such a fleeting visit upon such an errand of mercy needed no formal acknowledgement and allowed The Maid o’ Dunoon to leave again at once.
Later that day the captain said to Oleg Ferguson, ‘Me-thinks they knew as much of the engagement as we did, The ships, the pursuit, the discharge of fire, must hae been as clear to them as to ourselves. Dinna ye agree, Mr Ferguson?’
‘Aye, sir, I do. And I reckon ye’ll no put in to Man, though we hae coal for Ramsey aboard. They frigates maybe saw us at the wreck, maybe no.’
‘I’ll no risk it,’ Captain Munro said. ‘Whitehaven had a strange look for yon Manxman. He’ll be safe enough there. So, I’m thinking, will be that harbour master’s brandy from now on. We’ll make down to Barrow, Mr Ferguson, where they expect us the day.’
The mate turned to go but before he reached the door of the captain’s cabin, Munro said, ‘When Jock Bridie comes off watch send him to me.’
‘Aye, sir,’ Oleg said, wondering what the captain wanted with Jock and half afraid this valuable new recruit would be taken from him.
He was correct in his misgivings. What Captain Munro had guessed, Alec was able to confirm. The young Scot had indeed jumped from the frigate on purpose, hoping his absence would go unobserved in the excitement of the battle and pursuit. He had not joined the King’s Navy willingly; he had been pressed only a few weeks before when on a visit to Carlisle and had been forced to work on board, a farm-hand totally ignorant of the sea, sick most of the time, patrolling around the Isle of Man and the northern coasts of Ireland, often tantalisingly in sight of his native Kirkcudbrightshire. The fight had terrified him, though the Manx smugglers had only pistols to fire as their pursuers closed with them. He was determined to die rather than continue in a life of torment.
The poor lad had told Alec this tale during the first hours of partial relief from the pain of his wound and before he had fallen into a healing sleep,
‘He warned me the press gangs are active in every port of consequence, save in Wales, where they take to the hills if an English man-o’-war is sighted off their coasts.’
‘I saw ye kept below while we stayed at Whitehaven,’ Captain Munro said, looking away.
‘Aye, sir. I would get me to the south, to the Channel ports.’
‘Then thou’lt need hide thyself at Liverpool, where we stay three days unloading afore coming north again in ballast. But at Barrow, where we put in tonight if the breeze holds, we shall no find English ships nor English press gangs. The men of those parts are more like to our own race. It is a land of hills and lochs not unlike our ain country, but smaller, both.’
He brought his eyes back to Alec and there was full understanding between them.
‘I shall be loth to quit this fine barque,’ Alec said slowly, with real regret. ‘But ye see sir, how it is.’
‘I see well enough,’ said Captain Munro sharply, ‘that there is much in thy past no man may see with advantage. I canna hae mysteries on my ship, Jock Bridie. So get ye on thy way at Barrow.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Alec said, sighing as he left the cabin.
From Barrow, walking alone, he followed the coast line as nearly as he could until, at the head of Morecambe Bay it went south again. He then struck east, leaving the sharp mountain tops behind and northwards to climb the rounded hills of the Pennines, where small close villages lay in the dales beside narrow sparkling streams. Little inns made him welcome, though the landlords’ smiles faded when they heard his unfamiliar speech.
He was reminded of the great journey he had made with his friend Francis Leslie from Edinburgh to London in the newly appointed king’s train. They had ridden through York and now he travelled in the north riding of the shire of that name. Well, let them be as unfriendly as they wished; he would not trouble them beyond buying food and shelter for which he could afford a modest sum; he would keep to the hills and travel down the spine of England, enjoying a well-being he had not felt since he fled from the capital and all his former life there nine months ago.
On the fourth day after leaving Barrow Alec was moving along Swaledale when he saw from the drovers’ track he was using a collection of beasts with their drovers watering at the stream below him. He decided to go down to inquire his best way south, for he felt he had come east as far as he should but was uncertain how to proceed.
The drovers answered him civilly, advising him to seek shelter before sundown because the mists had been comin
g up early for the last few days with late frosts following the warmth of the spring sunshine.
Alec thanked their leader, who then took him a few steps apart from the herdsmen and their ponies to show him where a village lay at a little distance in the dale. As he lifted his arm to point it out his cloak that he wore folded over his shoulder fell away and Alec saw that it was clasped to the jacket beneath by a brooch he instantly recognised. He exclaimed, pointing, ‘Friend, where got ye that gaud?’
The drover started back, his hand going to his side.
‘Nay,’ Alec said. ‘Mistake me not. I hae no evil intent. But my great friend, travelling to his hame in Fife hath a tale of succour by certain cattle-men to whose leader he gave—’
‘Man!’ cried the drover. ‘So it was, but he never said his name. A pale young man, but strong. A scholar, he told us, I bound for Fife.’
‘Francis,’ Alec said, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Francis Leslie. It is God’s purpose I should meet with ye, for I am just now without purpose or direction. Except ye can help me I as ye helped him.’
‘But—but we go up into Scotland and ye ask direction to go south.’ The drover laid his hand on Alec’s arm. The young man was trembling, he both saw and felt, evidently much distressed. He went on, ‘Already the mists are rising from the Swale. We must move our beasts to the shelter of yon knoll where we shall rest the night. Stay thou with us, share our fire and our supper in return for thy tale, which I warrant hath meat in it, Thou’rt in no fit shape to go farther till dawn.’
Alec felt ashamed of his sudden and unexpected weakness, but the sight of Francis’s silver brooch, a very familiar part of the latter’s dress in their early days at St Andrews, brought back the story of its disposal which he had heard often enough in London when Francis returned from his visit to his father, the laird of Kilessie, near Falkland. It recalled to him in full poignancy the many joys of his lost friendship, those memories he had tried so hard to suppress, but which now flooded back into his mind. Without speaking, with the tears still running down his face, he bowed his head in assent and followed the drover back to the other herdsmen and the waiting cattle.
Over the Seas Page 6