CHAPTER XLII
THE FIERY CROSS
Wat and Scarlett found themselves landed in a country which to allintents was one both savage and hostile. It was not indeed Barra'scountry, but the danger was scarcely less on that account. They werestrangers and Sassenach. Wat carried gold in his belt, more than manya Highland chief had ever seen at one time in his life--gold which atPerth or Inverness could be exchanged for a prince's wealth of swordsand daggers, pistols and fighting-gear.
It was in a little land-locked bay that they were disembarked. Greatslaty purple mountains stretched away to the north; a range of lowerhills, cut down to the roots by the narrow cleft of a pass, wardedthe bay to the east; while to the south the comrades looked outon a wilderness of isles and islets, reefs and spouting skerries,which foamed and whitened as the black iron teeth of the rock showedthemselves, and the slow swell of the Atlantic came lumbering andarching in.
Wat and Scarlett sat down on the shore, which stretched away lonely andbarren for miles on either side of them. They watched the boat returnto the ship, as she lay with her sails backed, and shivering in thewind, waiting only for the crew to come on board before sailing for thesouth.
A slight figure could be seen immediately above the bulwark on theland side. Wat rose to his feet and waved his hand. The white specksignalled a reply, and Kate McGhie, the maid of his love, carried theheart of gold away with her to the lands of the south, and the spacesof the sea widened every moment between the truest lovers the worldheld.
Scarlett and Wat sat a long time watching the ship dwindling into amere tower of whiteness in the distance, the seas closing bluer andbluer about her, and the whole universe growing lonely behind her,wanting the Beloved.
At last Scarlett spoke.
"Lad, have ye had enough of adventures," he said, more sadly thanwas his wont, "or are ye as keen after them as ever? It seems thatwe have now put ourselves in every man's ill graces, so far as I cansee. Whether James or William bear the gree to us signifies not a jot;for if James, then the first king's man that comes across us holdsyou for the old outlawry in the matter of wounding my Lord Wellwood,and me for taking your side when I brought you the king's letter toBrederode; and if William wear the crown, lo, for prison-breaking andmanslaughter--aye, and for desertion of his army, both you and poorsilly John Scarlett are alien and outlaw in all the realms of theDutchman. I tell you we are doomed at either end of the stick, Wat, myman."
"And faith, I care not much," quoth Wat, watching with wistful eyesthe _Sea Unicorn_ vanishing with the one thing that was dear to him onearth.
"Care or no care," said Scarlett, "it is time for us to be on our feet!"
So Wat, rising obediently, kissed his hand behind his companion's backto the white tower which was now sinking in the utmost south.
As soon almost as the two adventurers had left the sand and shingleof the shore, they found themselves upon the short heather of certainrough, moorish foothills. No house pleasantly reeking was to bediscerned--not so much as a deer nor even a wandering sheep in thatwide, wild place.
So Wat and Scarlett fared forth straight to the east, keeping mostlyparallel with the shores of a fine loch, which stretched inward in thedirection of the notch in the hills which they had seen from theirlanding-place.
It was towards evening when the two friends came to the summit of alittle knoll and stood looking down upon a curious scene. Beneath them,scattered among the _debris_ of some prehistoric landslip, lay a smallHighland village--if village it could be called--of which each houseor hut was built against the side of a great bowlder or rock fallenfrom the hill-side. The cottages were no better than rude shelters ofturf and stone, roofed with blackened heather and scattered at everyconceivable angle, as if they had been dredged forcibly out of thebottom of a reluctant pepper-pot and had taken root where they fell.
In the centre, however, was a kind of open space--not levelled norcleared of turf and stones, but with all its primeval rocks stickingthrough the scanty turf, blackened and smoothed by the rubbing they hadreceived from the fundamental parts of innumerable generations of goatsand children.
In this space a dozen men in rude kilts and plaids of ancient fadedtartan were collected, arguing and threatening with as much apparentfierceness as though some one of them was to be killed during the nextfive minutes. A small army of women hovered on the outskirts and madeindependent forays into the affray, catching hold of this and thatother valiant discourser, and, if she got the right hold and purchase,swinging him forthwith out of the turmoil--only, however, to return toit again as soon as her grasp relaxed.
There was, therefore, a centre of disturbance of which the elementswere entirely male--while contemporary, and on the whole concentric,with it revolved a number of smaller cyclones, of which the elementswere about equally male and female. Fists were shaken here and there inall of them, and voices rose loud and shrill. But from the heart of thedarker and more permanent quarrel in the centre there came at intervalsthe threatening gleam of steel, as this one and that other stooped andflashed the _skein dhu_, plucked out of his garter, defiantly in theface of his opponent.
In the very midst Wat could see a thick-set man who carried over hisshoulder a couple of ash-plants rudely tied together. This contrivancewas of small dimensions, and the sharpened ends were burned black andfurther stained with blood and what looked like red wax.
The man who carried it had no other weapon--if this could be called aweapon--which appeared as harmless as a boy's sword of lath. Yet asthe little man thrust it towards this one and that, the strong menof the circle shrank back instantly with the greatest alarm, shakingtheir heads and girning their teeth, as Scarlett said, "like so manywull-cats on a dike."
There seemed to be no end to this bloodless but threatening quarrel,which blackened and scattered for all the world like a swarm of beeswhirling abroad on a July day, when the good-wives run beneath withiron pots and clattering skellets to settle the swarm ere it has timeto leave the farm-town. But suddenly out of one of the largest and mostdistinguished of the houses--one not much, if anything, inferior to aGalloway "swine ree"--there issued a tall, dark man, who walked with anair, swinging his tartans and rattling the gold tassel on the baskethilt of his claymore.
He made straight for the thickest of the quarrel, and so soon as hearrived there he knocked this disputant one way and hurled anotherthat, like a schoolmaster unexpectedly descending upon unruly boys.And it was ludicrous to see these stalwart Highlandmen sprawling onthe ground, holding their ears, which had been smitten so suddenly andwith such a mighty buffeting; for the fierceness on their faces whenfirst they felt the blow faded into instant desire to get out of theway--even culminating in a kind of satisfied good-humor so soon as theyset eyes on their chastiser, as though it were not less than an honorto be smitten by such a hand.
In ten seconds the quarrel was no more, and the very men who had warredand debated were to be seen most valiantly retiring behind their wives'petticoats out of reach of the chilling eye-glances and hard-buckledfists of the tall, dark peacemaker.
He, on his part, strode directly to where stood the little man with theblackened cross of ash-plants, and, taking this article unceremoniouslyout of his hand, he thrust it into those of the nearest bystander, andpointed with his hand in the direction of the knoll on which Wat andScarlett had their station.
As he did so it was evident that he observed their presence for thefirst time, and his hand dropped quickly to his side.