CHAPTER XX

THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE ROCKS

Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked
ever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that country
appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people,
of which we must have passed more than twenty, hidden in quiet places of
the hills. When we came to one of these, Alan would leave me in the way,
and go himself and rap upon the side of the house and speak awhile at
the window with some sleeper awakened. This was to pass the news; which,
in that country, was so much of a duty that Alan must pause to attend to
it even while fleeing for his life; and so well attended to by others,
that in more than half of the houses where we called they had heard
already of the murder. In the others, as well as I could make out
(standing back at a distance and hearing a strange tongue), the news was
received with more of consternation than surprise.

For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any
shelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where
ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around it; there grew there
neither grass nor trees; and I have sometimes thought since then, that
it may have been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre was in
the time of King William. But for the details of our itinerary, I am all
to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; our pace
being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and the names
of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and the
more easily forgotten.

The first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and I
could see Alan knit his brow.

“This is no fit place for you and me,” he said. “This is a place they’re
bound to watch.”

And with that he ran harder than ever down to the water-side, in a part
where the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through with
a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the
lynn a little mist of spray. Alan looked neither to the right nor to the
left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands
and knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he might have
pitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distance
or to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caught
and stopped me.

So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray,
a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides.
When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear,
and I put my hand over my eyes. Alan took me and shook me; I saw he
was speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind
prevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, and
that he stamped upon the rock. The same look showed me the water raging
by, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that I covered my eyes
again and shuddered.

The next minute Alan had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced
me to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. Then,
putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted,
“Hang or drown!” and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther
branch of the stream, and landed safe.

I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy
was singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, and
just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never
leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with
that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of
courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length;
these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering back
into the lynn, when Alan seized me, first by the hair, then by the
collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety.

Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I must
stagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now
I was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I kept
stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and
when at last Alan paused under a great rock that stood there among a
number of others, it was none too soon for David Balfour.

A great rock I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning
together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight
inaccessible. Even Alan (though you may say he had as good as four
hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the
third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with
such force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured
a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the
aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up
beside him.

Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat
hollow on the top and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or
saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden.

All this while Alan had not said a word, and had run and climbed with
such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortal
fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the rock he said nothing,
nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat
down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter
scouted all round the compass. The dawn had come quite clear; we could
see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed
with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and made
white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living creature
but some eagles screaming round a cliff.

Then at last Alan smiled.

“Ay” said he, “now we have a chance;” and then looking at me with some
amusement, “Ye’re no very gleg[25] at the jumping,” said he.

[25] Brisk.

At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once,
“Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is
what makes the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was water there,
and water’s a thing that dauntons even me. No, no,” said Alan, “it’s no
you that’s to blame, it’s me.”

I asked him why.

“Why,” said he, “I have proved myself a gomeral this night. For first
of all I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so that
the day has caught us where we should never have been; and thanks to
that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next (which is
the worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heather
as myself) I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a
long summer’s day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a
small matter; but before it comes night, David, ye’ll give me news of
it.”

I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out
the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river.

“I wouldnae waste the good spirit either,” says he. “It’s been a good
friend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still be
cocking on yon stone. And what’s mair,” says he, “ye may have observed
(you that’s a man of so much penetration) that Alan Breck Stewart was
perhaps walking quicker than his ordinar’.”

“You!” I cried, “you were running fit to burst.”

“Was I so?” said he. “Well, then, ye may depend upon it, there was nae
time to be lost. And now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep,
lad, and I’ll watch.”

Accordingly, I lay down to sleep; a little peaty earth had drifted in
between the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a
bed to me; the last thing I heard was still the crying of the eagles.

I dare say it would be nine in the morning when I was roughly awakened,
and found Alan’s hand pressed upon my mouth.

“Wheesht!” he whispered. “Ye were snoring.”

“Well,” said I, surprised at his anxious and dark face, “and why not?”

He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like.

It was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. The valley was as clear as
in a picture. About half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; a
big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and near by,
on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with
the sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-side
were posted other sentries; here near together, there widelier
scattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some
on the ground level and marching and counter-marching, so as to meet
half-way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chain
of posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the
distance riding to and fro. Lower down, the infantry continued; but
as the stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerable
burn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords and
stepping-stones.

I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. It was
strange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in the
hour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats and
breeches.

“Ye see,” said Alan, “this was what I was afraid of, Davie: that they
would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago,
and, man! but ye’re a grand hand at the sleeping! We’re in a narrow
place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with
a glass; but if they’ll only keep in the foot of the valley, we’ll do
yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we’ll try
our hand at getting by them.”

“And what are we to do till night?” I asked.

“Lie here,” says he, “and birstle.”

That one good Scotch word, “birstle,” was indeed the most of the story
of the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on
the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us
cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of
it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only
large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked
rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred
on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the
same climate and at only a few days’ distance, I should have suffered
so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this
rock.

All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was
worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying
it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples.

The soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now
changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. These
lay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was like
looking for a needle in a bottle of hay; and being so hopeless a task,
it was gone about with the less care. Yet we could see the soldiers
pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my
vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce
dared to breathe.

It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one
fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of
the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. “I
tell you it’s ‘ot,” says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and
the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick
of dropping out the letter “h.” To be sure, I had heard Ransome; but he
had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly
at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise
was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a
grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether
with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and
there spy out even in these memoirs.

The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the
greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the
sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like
rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since,
on the lines in our Scotch psalm:--

“The moon by night thee shall not smite,
Nor yet the sun by day;”

and indeed it was only by God’s blessing that we were neither of us
sun-smitten.

At last, about two, it was beyond men’s bearing, and there was now
temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now
got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side
of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.

“As well one death as another,” said Alan, and slipped over the edge and
dropped on the ground on the shadowy side.

I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was I
and so giddy with that long exposure. Here, then, we lay for an hour or
two, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite naked
to the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. None came,
however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued to
be our shield even in this new position.

Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers
were now lying closer along the river-side, Alan proposed that we should
try a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world;
and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome
to me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip
from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies
in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.

The soldiers, having searched this side of the valley after a fashion,
and being perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon,
had now laid by much of their vigilance, and stood dozing at their posts
or only kept a look-out along the banks of the river; so that in this
way, keeping down the valley and at the same time towards the mountains,
we drew steadily away from their neighbourhood. But the business was the
most wearing I had ever taken part in. A man had need of a hundred
eyes in every part of him, to keep concealed in that uneven country and
within cry of so many and scattered sentries. When we must pass an open
place, quickness was not all, but a swift judgment not only of the lie
of the whole country, but of the solidity of every stone on which we
must set foot; for the afternoon was now fallen so breathless that the
rolling of a pebble sounded abroad like a pistol shot, and would start
the echo calling among the hills and cliffs.

By sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress,
though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view.
But now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and that
was a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glen
river. At the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plunged
head and shoulders in the water; and I cannot tell which was the more
pleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greed
with which we drank of it.

We lay there (for the banks hid us), drank again and again, bathed our
chests, let our wrists trail in the running water till they ached
with the chill; and at last, being wonderfully renewed, we got out the
meal-bag and made drammach in the iron pan. This, though it is but cold
water mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungry
man; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case)
good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those who
have taken to the heather.

As soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, at
first with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standing
our full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking. The way
was very intricate, lying up the steep sides of mountains and along the
brows of cliffs; clouds had come in with the sunset, and the night was
dark and cool; so that I walked without much fatigue, but in continual
fear of falling and rolling down the mountains, and with no guess at our
direction.

The moon rose at last and found us still on the road; it was in its last
quarter, and was long beset with clouds; but after awhile shone out and
showed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneath
us on the narrow arm of a sea-loch.

At this sight we both paused: I struck with wonder to find myself so
high and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds; Alan to make sure of
his direction.

Seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us
out of ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of our
night-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes, warlike,
merry, plaintive; reel tunes that made the foot go faster; tunes of my
own south country that made me fain to be home from my adventures; and
all these, on the great, dark, desert mountains, making company upon the
way.