The press-gang and its ugly work, Castle Raincy and its feudal associations, stern Cairn Ferris, the Abbey Burn and the bright new house of Julian Wemyss—Patsy going from one to the other, and the patriarchal simplicity of the farm of Glenanmays, with its girls and boys, its cave-riddled shore and its interests in the Free Traffic—these are what the district of the Back Shore meant in later Napoleonic times.

Most of this was on the surface, to be seen of all men, but the traffic and the "press" are only spoken of in whispers. As to them it is dangerous to appear too knowing.

Even great people were mysteriously tongue-tied. Silence was particularly golden in these days, and in the stillness of the night the little click of a sheep's trotters descending a mountain pathway was often mistaken for the clank of a scabbard point, or the clink of a gun-butt striking a loose stone.

Girls in moorland farms lay awake, half-fearing, half-hoping to hear the saddle-chains of the laden horses, each led by a lover or a brother.

King George might (and did) multiply officials and send what could be spared in the way of landing parties to support the executive, but the claims on the ministry were too many. They could only say, "Wait for a time of peace and then we will regulate the matter of the Solway free trade once for all."

But the most ignorant lad on the shore of Galloway from Loch Ryan to Annan Waterfoot knew that so long as the government waged war against Napoleon and America, it had no time to attend to them. The press-gang was all they had to avoid, and for that they trusted to their clear eyes and nimble feet.

They were also well informed. So soon as a patrol cleared the Irishman's Port in Stranryan, or a boat's crew was seen making for the beach of any of the Back Shore coves, messengers, ragged and brown, sped inland to warn the farms and villages engaged in the business, or even those merely acting as recipients and depots. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, all men under forty-five disappeared from the fields. The teams found their own way homewards or stood still till they were loosed by girls hurrying out from the steadings.

"Patriotism," said Stair Garland, bitterly, "that is a fine word. But the fine patriots tie the lads they catch to rings in the wall of the Stranryan gaol. They lash them till the blood runs just to learn them not to complain. Don't tell me about glory. There was Rob Blair, who came back from Spain after his brother Maxwell had been flogged to death. He shot a general near Corunna—him they make a fuss about—he and half a dozen of his mates, and he told me the reason that Allingham keeps so far ahead of his own soldiers is that they are better shots than the French, who do not fire at him nearly so often."

True or not, this was the Galloway idea of soldiering during the later Napoleonic wars, and it was only after a bout of drunkenness at some fair that recruits could be looked for. Suicide was not uncommon after a few weeks of discipline, and many were drowned from the transport ships which took them to Vigo or the Tagus mouth.

Galloway has always been cut off from the rest of Scotland. In spite of the invasion of its fertile valleys by Ayrshire dairy farmers it has remained the old Free Province, a little anti-Scottish, a good deal anti-Irish, excessively anti-English, self-centred, self-satisfied, quarrel-some and frondeur, yet in the main politically conservative.

In 1811 the Ayrshire invasion had not yet begun, and there was nothing to mitigate the determination of the people not to send a single man to fight in a war about which they cared nothing. No regiment in the service bore its name. It was looked upon as the haunt of an evil breed who would smuggle and fight, but against, and not among, the soldiers of the King.

A landing party had been attacked and cut up on the Corse of Slakes. Soldiers had to take and hold the old camp of the Levellers in the Duchrae wood, near the Black Water. Bitter hatred prevailed between the Lord Lieutenant's party, formed to aid the government in obtaining recruits, and the commonalty, which was equally determined that no one of theirs should be carried off to endure the shame of the cat-o'-nine-tails.

Earl Raincy made a tour of his estates, and the farmers promised wonderful things, but carefully and immediately sent their lads to the heather and the hill-caves for change of air. The girls took to the plough and threshed the grain on the beaten earth of the barn floor—emerging tired, but bright-eyed and happy. This, at least, they could do to keep Alec or John from the dread triangle and the lacerating whip. The Frenchman's bullet they were willing to risk, but not these. Galloway furnished its full tale of officers to both services, but as a recruiting-ground, even in milder times, it has given poor results.

In 1812 there was a good deal of writing about patriotism in struggling local journals. The big farmers were often loud-voiced, and the publicans hung out colours when the recruiting-officers made temporary headquarters of their houses, but the mass of the people stood silent, sullen and determined. They would not be taken, and if any were seized they would put up such a fight that the "press" would pay three or four lives for one. The chiefs would stay their hand, they argued, if they had to pay the price of three or four formed and disciplined men for a single unwilling recruit who would certainly desert at the first opportunity.

In the old outlaws' cave on Isle Ryan, towards the Mull out beyond Orraland, thirty or forty young men were gathered. They were not afraid of any attack by land or water. The stony bulk of the isle did not even fear cannon, and the passage, open only at low water, was exceedingly easily defended. Provisions they had in plenty, and for more they had only to cross to the mainland, where every farmer would willingly supply them.

Lads from all Galloway were there, shock-headed Vikings, with far-looking blue eyes, from Kirkmaiden to Leswalt, black, hook-nosed Blairs and McCallums from Garlieston sat beside Rerrick and Colvend men with deep-set eyes, the fine flower of the Free Trade, men whose forefathers had run cargoes for a hundred and thirty years into the same ports, and refused King's service for many thousand, though perfectly obedient to their own lords and war committees. There were always a plenty of fighting men along Solway shore, as the published rolls of 1638 attest.[1] Willing were they to fight, only they would fight when and against whom they chose, under such and such officers, appointed by themselves, and under no others. Kings, whether Highland Stuarts or German Guelphs, they would not obey—no, not though military parties made examples of them at every dyke back. The iron of the Killing Time was branded deep into the folk of Galloway. They would not go soldiering, and they would smuggle. In the last resort, if matters got too hot, the young men would silently betake themselves to Canada, where they rose to be factors and chief traders under the Hudson Bay Company, or, like Paul Jones, took service under another flag, and fought with the lust of battle ever in their heart, against all that was English or smelt of the service of King George.

"Are we to stay here for ever?" demanded Stair Garland, lying on the sand of the upper cavern and looking out at the blue curtain of sky, which was all he could see. Outside was a kind of balcony on which they stretched their legs at night, but, as there were preventive officers on the cliffs with telescopes under their arms, it was forbidden to go out there in daylight.

"We must stay here till the ships of war have gone out of the channel. You can see the top-sails of the Britomart at this moment, hanging about the Mull, and a sloop-of-war lies off Logan House, waiting for Captain Laurence's orders."

It was a Stewartry man who spoke, keen of eye and crisply black-haired, his voice soft and easy, not hectoring and overbearing like that of most of his fellows—his name, Godfrey McCulloch, the younger son of a younger son, but of the best and oldest blood in Scotland, which is to say of the Ardwalls.

Godfrey and Stair were in a manner rivals for leadership. The Stewartry man was the elder by many years, and among his own enjoyed an unrivalled reputation, but three-fourths of the Isle Ryan refugees were Wigtonshire men and faithful to Stair Garland.

But Stair Garland was often reckless and headstrong, so brave himself that he hardly thought of danger to those whom he led. Godfrey McCulloch, on the other hand, was cautious and long-sighted. He argued out every possibility, and arranged what was to be done if things fell out so and so. Sometimes he even hesitated too long, balancing between two wise courses, while Stair, leading his men with a rush, would thresh his way through to victory. On the whole, Godfrey was the safer, Stair far the more popular leader.

"We cannot lie up in this hole much longer," said Stair, digging his heels into the sand.

"I do not see that you do much lying up," retorted Godfrey McCulloch, his eyes dark and beady in the semi-dark; "you are off ashore more than half the time—"

"After that little slip of a Ferris girl, Patsy," said an Irishman from Antrim. "I saw the pair of you go down the glen together, and may I never see Cushendal more if you had not your arm about her waist behind the dyke—"

Stair's clenched fist shut in the remainder of the sentence. The Rathlain man choked as he swallowed a couple of teeth, and felt his raw lip acrid upon the gap.

"Tell them you lie—tell them before you spit—or I will send the rest of your teeth after those two!"

The man gasped out that "Sure it was only a joke—"

"A joke, was it?" said Stair fiercely; "then I hope you will consider the teeth you have swallowed as the cream of it!"

The men were silent—not from fear at all, but because any two of them had a right to settle such differences in their own way.

"Will the Irishman not sell us because of Stair Garland's fist closing his mouth so awkward like?" inquired a second Rerrick man, lying at the shoulder of Godfrey McCulloch.

"Not by a great deal," said Godfrey, "perhaps he will kill Stair if he can, though Stair is more likely to kill him. But he will not lay information as to the lads of the Free Trade. He will remember what happened to Luke Finney and James Tynan when they thought to lift the hundred pound reward out for Captain Maxwell of the Scaur."

"What was that?" said the youth at his elbow.

"Have you not heard? It is a Colvend story, too," said McCulloch. "We took them out into mid-channel and tied each man to an old anchor with his fifty pounds in jingling gold about his neck. For which cause Luke Finney and James Tynan, two rusty anchors and a hundred guineas of unrusted gold lie in the gut of the North Channel to this day."

"Is the water deep?" the young man asked.

"Deeper than any diver will reach till the judgment day," quoth Godfrey. "This Rathlin man will think twice before he plays Judas to the lads of the Trade."

"It must have been worst when they were over the side before the anchors went plunk!" The young fellow shuddered. A clean death in a fair fight he did not mind more than another, but dangling there tied to an anchor—"Ugh!" said the lad.

That night a cargo was to be run into the Abbey Burnfoot Bay, close by the house of Julian Wemyss. The King's ships had settled themselves, one in Belfast Lough, and the sloop-of-war well round the point into Loch Ryan. The Good Intent might therefore discharge her cargo in peace, and the boats were ready on the beach of the Water Cave to put the Inch Ryan refugees in charge of the pack horses which were to carry the stuff inland, distributing as they went.

The lads were riotous to be off, and Stair had to exercise his authority, backed by Godfrey McCulloch's experience and influence over the eastern men, to keep them quiet in the cove till the time should come for the Good Intent to cast anchor in the bay.

The chastisement of the Rathlin man had cowed the wildest spirits, and, still more than the fear of Stair, the acquiescence of the company in the justice of the punishment. Nevertheless, those in the cave were restless and uneasy, setting their heads out to sniff the salt of the sea beneath, and craning their necks through the spy-hole to watch the sand-pipers wheeling as if dancing new-fangled waltzes, or probing the sands after little shellfish and sea worms, never getting in each other's way, but each working quietly along, like a minister in his own parish.

Stair Garland was lost in admiration of the glory of the sea and sand at sunset. The crying of the island curlews coming down each in long plane flight eased his mind. Willy-wha—willy-wha! they called in long diminuendo, before they settled.

Presently the mist began to rise out of the hollows and hung out over the sea from Inch Ryan to the mainland crags like the stretched awning of a tent. Stair gave the lads leave to go on the balcony while he himself started on a tour of inspection. He would have liked to take Godfrey McCulloch with him. But he knew that his own following would be jealous and resent his passing them over, so he contented himself with saying, "Attend to what Godfrey says, boys. He has seen more than all of us put together. Fergus" (this to his elder brother), "knock the heads of any men who make a noise. No one shall come with us to-night who does not obey now!"

Stair went out by the little passage, spoken of in other chronicles, which opened into the inner towers of the ancient castle of the Herons. He found himself among rugged, heathy ground, the hollow palm of the island, now suffused with milky opalescence, for the sun was setting. Hardly could Stair see from one tuft to another, but out of the tinted mist swooped first two and then three birds like angels appearing out of a white heaven. Magnified by the mist Stair hardly recognized the green and black summer uniform of the golden plover, but he heard their softly wistful cries everywhere.

And as the mist shifted and flowed everywhere more and more were revealed, doing sentry duty each on his tussock of bent-grass, while behind his mate effaced herself upon her four eggs or led her little flock into the deepest of the growing heather and among the white meadows of cotton-grass which blew about them, more downy than even the youngest nestling.

Stair made his way to the most easterly point of the isle—that nearest to the Burnfoot Bay. Already the fog was bunching and billowing uneasily. He noted that it was losing its steady, even pour over the island. "It will lift," he muttered.

And from far away there came the sound of a schooner's mainsail being brought down as her head came to the wind, the plunge of an anchor, and then, through a gap in the gloom, the tall, bare mast of a ship in the direction of the new house of Abbey Burnfoot.

"The Good Intent!" he muttered. "She must be very sure of herself to come to anchor like that. Still that is Captain Penman's business. If he can discharge his cargo, I can put it out of harm's way. We shall have two hundred lads on the beach by midnight, and whatever force they may bring against us, we can go through them with the strong hand!"