CHAPTER XXI

THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE HEUGH OF CORRYNAKIEGH

Early as day comes in the beginning of July, it was still dark when we
reached our destination, a cleft in the head of a great mountain, with a
water running through the midst, and upon the one hand a shallow cave
in a rock. Birches grew there in a thin, pretty wood, which a little
farther on was changed into a wood of pines. The burn was full of trout;
the wood of cushat-doves; on the open side of the mountain beyond,
whaups would be always whistling, and cuckoos were plentiful. From the
mouth of the cleft we looked down upon a part of Mamore, and on the
sea-loch that divides that country from Appin; and this from so great
a height as made it my continual wonder and pleasure to sit and behold
them.

The name of the cleft was the Heugh of Corrynakiegh; and although from
its height and being so near upon the sea, it was often beset with
clouds, yet it was on the whole a pleasant place, and the five days we
lived in it went happily.

We slept in the cave, making our bed of heather bushes which we cut for
that purpose, and covering ourselves with Alan’s great-coat. There was a
low concealed place, in a turning of the glen, where we were so bold as
to make fire: so that we could warm ourselves when the clouds set in,
and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trouts that we caught with
our hands under the stones and overhanging banks of the burn. This was
indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal
against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent
a great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and
groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. The largest we
got might have been a quarter of a pound; but they were of good flesh
and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt
to be delicious.

In any by-time Alan must teach me to use my sword, for my ignorance
had much distressed him; and I think besides, as I had sometimes
the upper-hand of him in the fishing, he was not sorry to turn to an
exercise where he had so much the upper-hand of me. He made it somewhat
more of a pain than need have been, for he stormed at me all through the
lessons in a very violent manner of scolding, and would push me so close
that I made sure he must run me through the body. I was often tempted
to turn tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of
my lessons; if it was but to stand on guard with an assured countenance,
which is often all that is required. So, though I could never in the
least please my master, I was not altogether displeased with myself.

In the meanwhile, you are not to suppose that we neglected our chief
business, which was to get away.

“It will be many a long day,” Alan said to me on our first morning,
“before the red-coats think upon seeking Corrynakiegh; so now we must
get word sent to James, and he must find the siller for us.”

“And how shall we send that word?” says I. “We are here in a desert
place, which yet we dare not leave; and unless ye get the fowls of the
air to be your messengers, I see not what we shall be able to do.”

“Ay?” said Alan. “Ye’re a man of small contrivance, David.”

Thereupon he fell in a muse, looking in the embers of the fire; and
presently, getting a piece of wood, he fashioned it in a cross, the four
ends of which he blackened on the coals. Then he looked at me a little
shyly.

“Could ye lend me my button?” says he. “It seems a strange thing to ask
a gift again, but I own I am laith to cut another.”

I gave him the button; whereupon he strung it on a strip of his
great-coat which he had used to bind the cross; and tying in a little
sprig of birch and another of fir, he looked upon his work with
satisfaction.

“Now,” said he, “there is a little clachan” (what is called a hamlet
in the English) “not very far from Corrynakiegh, and it has the name of
Koalisnacoan. There there are living many friends of mine whom I could
trust with my life, and some that I am no just so sure of. Ye see,
David, there will be money set upon our heads; James himsel’ is to set
money on them; and as for the Campbells, they would never spare siller
where there was a Stewart to be hurt. If it was otherwise, I would go
down to Koalisnacoan whatever, and trust my life into these people’s
hands as lightly as I would trust another with my glove.”

“But being so?” said I.

“Being so,” said he, “I would as lief they didnae see me. There’s bad
folk everywhere, and what’s far worse, weak ones. So when it comes dark
again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I have
been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Breck Maccoll,
a bouman[26] of Appin’s.”

[26] A bouman is a tenant who takes stock from the landlord and
shares with him the increase.

“With all my heart,” says I; “and if he finds it, what is he to think?”

“Well,” says Alan, “I wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my
troth I am afraid he will make little enough of it! But this is what I
have in my mind. This cross is something in the nature of the
crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our
clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there
it is standing in his window, and no word with it. So he will say to
himsel’, _The clan is not to rise, but there is something_. Then he
will see my button, and that was Duncan Stewart’s. And then he will say
to himsel’, _The son of Duncan is in the heather and has need of me_.”

“Well,” said I, “it may be. But even supposing so, there is a good deal
of heather between here and the Forth.”

“And that is a very true word,” says Alan. “But then John Breck will
see the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to
himsel’ (if he is a man of any penetration at all, which I misdoubt),
_Alan will be lying in a wood which is both of pines and birches_. Then
he will think to himsel’, _That is not so very rife hereabout;_ and
then he will come and give us a look up in Corrynakiegh. And if he does
not, David, the devil may fly away with him, for what I care; for he
will no be worth the salt to his porridge.”

“Eh, man,” said I, drolling with him a little, “you’re very ingenious!
But would it not be simpler for you to write him a few words in black
and white?”

“And that is an excellent observe, Mr. Balfour of Shaws,” says Alan,
drolling with me; “and it would certainly be much simpler for me to
write to him, but it would be a sore job for John Breck to read it. He
would have to go to the school for two-three years; and it’s possible we
might be wearied waiting on him.”

So that night Alan carried down his fiery cross and set it in the
bouman’s window. He was troubled when he came back; for the dogs had
barked and the folk run out from their houses; and he thought he had
heard a clatter of arms and seen a red-coat come to one of the doors. On
all accounts we lay the next day in the borders of the wood and kept a
close look-out, so that if it was John Breck that came we might be ready
to guide him, and if it was the red-coats we should have time to get
away.

About noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of the
mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from under his
hand. No sooner had Alan seen him than he whistled; the man turned and
came a little towards us: then Alan would give another “peep!” and the
man would come still nearer; and so by the sound of whistling, he was
guided to the spot where we lay.

He was a ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with
the small pox, and looked both dull and savage. Although his English
was very bad and broken, yet Alan (according to his very handsome use,
whenever I was by) would suffer him to speak no Gaelic. Perhaps the
strange language made him appear more backward than he really was; but
I thought he had little good-will to serve us, and what he had was the
child of terror.

Alan would have had him carry a message to James; but the bouman would
hear of no message. “She was forget it,” he said in his screaming voice;
and would either have a letter or wash his hands of us.

I thought Alan would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of
writing in that desert.

But he was a man of more resources than I knew; searched the wood until
he found the quill of a cushat-dove, which he shaped into a pen; made
himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his horn and water from the
running stream; and tearing a corner from his French military commission
(which he carried in his pocket, like a talisman to keep him from the
gallows), he sat down and wrote as follows:

“DEAR KINSMAN,--Please send the money by the bearer to the place he kens
of.

“Your affectionate cousin,

“A. S.”

This he intrusted to the bouman, who promised to make what manner of
speed he best could, and carried it off with him down the hill.

He was three full days gone, but about five in the evening of the third,
we heard a whistling in the wood, which Alan answered; and presently the
bouman came up the water-side, looking for us, right and left. He seemed
less sulky than before, and indeed he was no doubt well pleased to have
got to the end of such a dangerous commission.

He gave us the news of the country; that it was alive with red-coats;
that arms were being found, and poor folk brought in trouble daily; and
that James and some of his servants were already clapped in prison at
Fort William, under strong suspicion of complicity. It seemed it was
noised on all sides that Alan Breck had fired the shot; and there was a
bill issued for both him and me, with one hundred pounds reward.

This was all as bad as could be; and the little note the bouman had
carried us from Mrs. Stewart was of a miserable sadness. In it she
besought Alan not to let himself be captured, assuring him, if he fell
in the hands of the troops, both he and James were no better than dead
men. The money she had sent was all that she could beg or borrow, and
she prayed heaven we could be doing with it. Lastly, she said, she
enclosed us one of the bills in which we were described.

This we looked upon with great curiosity and not a little fear, partly
as a man may look in a mirror, partly as he might look into the barrel
of an enemy’s gun to judge if it be truly aimed. Alan was advertised as
“a small, pock-marked, active man of thirty-five or thereby, dressed
in a feathered hat, a French side-coat of blue with silver buttons,
and lace a great deal tarnished, a red waistcoat and breeches of black,
shag;” and I as “a tall strong lad of about eighteen, wearing an
old blue coat, very ragged, an old Highland bonnet, a long homespun
waistcoat, blue breeches; his legs bare, low-country shoes, wanting the
toes; speaks like a Lowlander, and has no beard.”

Alan was well enough pleased to see his finery so fully remembered and
set down; only when he came to the word tarnish, he looked upon his lace
like one a little mortified. As for myself, I thought I cut a miserable
figure in the bill; and yet was well enough pleased too, for since I had
changed these rags, the description had ceased to be a danger and become
a source of safety.

“Alan,” said I, “you should change your clothes.”

“Na, troth!” said Alan, “I have nae others. A fine sight I would be, if
I went back to France in a bonnet!”

This put a second reflection in my mind: that if I were to separate
from Alan and his tell-tale clothes I should be safe against arrest, and
might go openly about my business. Nor was this all; for suppose I was
arrested when I was alone, there was little against me; but suppose I
was taken in company with the reputed murderer, my case would begin to
be grave. For generosity’s sake I dare not speak my mind upon this head;
but I thought of it none the less.

I thought of it all the more, too, when the bouman brought out a green
purse with four guineas in gold, and the best part of another in small
change. True, it was more than I had. But then Alan, with less than
five guineas, had to get as far as France; I, with my less than two, not
beyond Queensferry; so that taking things in their proportion, Alan’s
society was not only a peril to my life, but a burden on my purse.

But there was no thought of the sort in the honest head of my companion.
He believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. And what could I
do but hold my peace, and chafe, and take my chance of it?

“It’s little enough,” said Alan, putting the purse in his pocket, “but
it’ll do my business. And now, John Breck, if ye will hand me over my
button, this gentleman and me will be for taking the road.”

But the bouman, after feeling about in a hairy purse that hung in front
of him in the Highland manner (though he wore otherwise the Lowland
habit, with sea-trousers), began to roll his eyes strangely, and at last
said, “Her nainsel will loss it,” meaning he thought he had lost it.

“What!” cried Alan, “you will lose my button, that was my father’s
before me? Now I will tell you what is in my mind, John Breck: it is
in my mind this is the worst day’s work that ever ye did since ye was
born.”

And as Alan spoke, he set his hands on his knees and looked at the
bouman with a smiling mouth, and that dancing light in his eyes that
meant mischief to his enemies.

Perhaps the bouman was honest enough; perhaps he had meant to cheat and
then, finding himself alone with two of us in a desert place, cast back
to honesty as being safer; at least, and all at once, he seemed to find
that button and handed it to Alan.

“Well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the Maccolls,” said
Alan, and then to me, “Here is my button back again, and I thank you for
parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me.”
Then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. “For,” says he, “ye have
done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and I will always
give you the name of a good man.”

Lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and Alan and I (getting our
chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight.