  DAN McBRIDE SAILS FROM LOCH RANZA. For a while we lay silent on the giant's step of McAllan's Locker, and I felt my spirits lighten to be outside of that place. The hills were silent, but from the cave came a baying and growling of dog and man, at first as from a distance, and growing louder and louder, as though the Nameless Man and his grim hound ranged through the unknown caverns. We three sprauchled upwards, for we had no relish to meet these two, and as we neared the rise of the hill the baying filled the night, and suddenly the great hound bounded down the hillside with great twisting leaps, and at his heels the wild figure of his master followed. In the valley they played like gambolling puppies, rushing at one another and wrestling, with whiles the brute worrying the man playfully, and whiles the man kneeling on the dog; then away they would dash separately, wheeling and leaping and rubbing their flanks in the snow. For a long time the game went on, and then the players slunk closer, the shaggy heads thrust skywards, and the long whining cry rose on the night; then away they ranged, running flank to flank through the peat hags and over the rise of the hill we had crossed the night before. "He'll be a bold man that shepherds these hills in the lambing," said All through this night we held our course a little to the west of the pole-star, though McKinnon and Dan had travelled the way before. We were now in the middle of the great barren range, frowning mountains menaced our path, and burns rumbled in the darkness; and when Dan spoke his voice was thick with anger— "I lifted a snipe o' a man, and I flung him the back of the fire. What is there in that to be running from? "If the man has freens, I'll meet them a' wherever they like; but this running sticks in my gizzard. It's just ain brother tae caul' fear," and we marched on in grim silence. On the mountains my feet were almost without feeling at all with the cold, and my clothes sticking to my shoulders with sweat; and on the last of the hills McKinnon clapped like a startled hare. "Look at yon," he whispered; "they're to win'ward o' us after a'." Far below us a little light flickered and blinked on the hillside, and we watched it, hardly breathing, and again I heard my heart begin to pound. After some wee while of watching, Dan grunted— "Umph!" says he. "Ye see droll things in the hills when ye're rinnin' for dear life. Yon's just Tchonie Handy Ishable and his lantern." "I never would be believing that story," said Ronny. "Man, if I had the time I would get his secret this night," says Dan. "Ye see, Hamish, yon's an old man down yonder, and they'll be saying he pays the Duke's rent in the big money. They've the story of how he found a hoard o' it among the hills; and it's likely enough, for many's the bold stark lad took to the Southern Seas from these glens. Och, an' I ken folk mysel' that found an iron pot o' doubloons in the peat bink; but aul' Tchonie, he just takes what he will be needin', and he takes it at night when the folks are abed. They used to be following him, but he was skilly among the rocks, and they would maybe come on his lantern sitting lighted, and once they found a dagger stuck at the entrance to a cave to keep the wee folk from shuttin' it when a man was inside; but they were never able to get the secret, for Tchonie Handy Ishable would be sittin' over his peat fire when the lads came back in the mornin'." At the screich o' day we came from Glen Chalmadale into the thatched village of Loch Ranza. At a house some way back from the others McKinnon stopped us. "The man that lives here is a farmer and a fisherman," said he, "and a very po-lite man in his taalk moreover, for I know him well," and he mimicked the Loch Ranza speech, which, indeed, is very proper speech, and I was very startled at one time to hear the very weans with the polite way of it. "Ye will be havin' the dogs on us," says Dan in a low voice; "and there's folks here that are unfreens o' mine." "Alaister Jock has weans enough to do without the dogs," says Ronny, "for dogs are unchancy beasts in the smuggling nights, and Alaister himsel' will be always up wi' the drake's dridd." In a little time Ronny came back to us, and we made our way into Alastair's house, a place where a grown man could stand broad-soled on the clay floor and touch the rafters of the roof with the flat of his palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw them on the fire. "There was one came for you in the night yesterday," says he to Dan in his very proper polite way. "I would not be having her in my house at all, for I am a reeleegious man with a family to rear before the Lord. I put her into the byre with the kye, for she is of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; and my wife sprinkled a little meal and a little saut over the rumps of the kye to keep away her spells, for we must meet spell with spell—not that I will be believing in these evil-doers of the Black Art." "Och, I kent, I kent," cried Dan, long before Alastair had done with his speaking, and disappeared through a door which gave me a glimpse of a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza. Ronny and Alastair were thrang at the talking, with the farmer laying off with his hands, and wagging his head like a minister in the pulpit, and all in a voice so raised in tone that I believed from hearing him what our folks say, that when two farmers are ploughing at the north end they can talk comfortably across three fields, and they are great at the handling of their skiffs and bold sailors. I heard Dan— "Och, my lass, my ain lass; it went sair against my heart to be leaving without seein' you at all." I heard her brave voice with a crooning quiver like a mother's. "I ran, I ran all the long road, for I kent it all from the first o' it," and in the dimness of the byre I could see these two clinging to each other. "Is it the sight[1] ye think ye have now, my droll dark lass?" says Dan, looking down at her, one arm holding her away from him and the great love in his eyes. "There's whiles I come near to hating you when you will be talking like that," said the swarthy girl. "Mirren Stuart brought me word." "You'll be glad to be rid o' me then. You'll be forgetting me soon," and the man let his arm drop from her shoulders, and the cold intolerant pride of his voice stung like a whip-lash, for he never could thole that the woman he loved could even have a thought different from his own, let alone a love-hatred. I expected a proud heart-breaking lie from the sombre beauty, but for all his answer she crept close, and clung to him with both hands, and hid her face on his breast; then holding him at the stretch of her arms she raised her head, and looked Dan in his eyes. "Oh, man," she cried, "I have that that will keep me in mind o' ye, shameless, shameless that I am," and two great tears rose in her eyes, the first tears I ever saw there, but Dan lifted her in his arms like a baby. "Was ever there such a mother for a bold man's son," I heard him cry in a voice of love and pride and laughter. In Alastair's kitchen the thought came to me then what will the son of these two be—the father strong as a mountain ash, and with the cruel arrogant pride of a long-bred race behind him, his own will his only law, and the queer twist of tenderness for old stories and old songs and his love for all nature—a stark man, who would reach out and take what he desired; and the mother fiercely tender, wildly, passionately loving her chosen man, all the dark East in her black eyes, all the deadly South in her blazing angers—a graceful, hard, blue steel blade of Damascus, with jewel-encrusted hilt and sheath of velvet. What was the son of these to be? Alastair slipped out quietly, and Ronny and me sat at the fireside. "We'll manage," said McKinnon, "for the gomerils have let us slip at their bonfire and lost us. The goodman here is McGilp's man, and his skiff's ready, and the Gull will be close in behind the point at high water. It will just be good-bye to Dan McBride wi' the turn o' the tide." "But how can this godly man be a smuggler?" said I, more to make talk than anything else. "Godly men must live like ither folk," said Ronny. For a while we sat there till Dan and Belle joined us, and the lass could not be letting go of her man, the brave proud lass. I watched her hand quivering in his great brown one, and her eyes following his every change of look, and her face was all sorrow. I came near to hating Dan McBride too. In the grey of the morning we made our way stealthily to the shore by the point. Dan and the gipsy stood some way from us, on the cold dark shore head, and I think we had all a lowness of spirits, for that place is more sad and mournful than any place I have ever seen. "You'll set McCurdy's hut to rights for my dark wife," said Dan to me, "and let it be her own place, and the money that is lying with my uncle, you'll be giving her when she needs it," and there he went on, keeping up her heart with his talk, and his eyes were straining longingly to the loom of hills in the dimness, like a man saying farewell, and I think the gangers and Dol Beag were clean forgot. There came to our ears the low swish-sch of a boat gliding and slithering over wrack, and the beating of wings in the air as the sea-birds left the beach, and Alastair's boat grated on the gravel of the shore. "Will ye no' come wi' me, my dear," cried Dan to the lass as she clung to him, and I had a twinge of jealousy that I was all forgot. "Oh, fain, fain wid I be to travel wi' ye, my man, the cool long roads and the waving green meadows; but oh! ye hivna the nature o' my folk—there will be the great battles calling ye, and I would be trying to keep ye beside me, till ye grew weary o' me. But you will remember always and always in your wanderings you will never be thinking of me, but just that I will be loving you somewhere," and with a great cry, "Have I no' loved ye—can I ever be forgetting ye?" When Dan would have taken her to his heart, she sprang away, her eyes blazing. "Do not be petting me," she cries. "I am not a bairn to be quieted. Tell me ye love me—I want my ain fierce lover that wid make me kneel to him because he loved me—the love in his eyes and the strength o' his hands,—oh, I have loved a man." And then the man answered, and she saw the sorrow of parting in his face. "My ain brave lass" . . . and at his words she came to him—"I will be waiting for you all the long days, for I will be with you again; but oh! it were better for all that ye never set your boot on these shores, for then the storm-clouds will gather, and the lightning will leap in the scarred mountains—my love, my love; but my heart cannot be brave enough to forbid you to come back to me." And for an instant the wild fierce woman clung to her lover, then fled from the shore. Dan stepped into the waiting boat in silence, his head on his breast, and a word from McKinnon or me, I think, would have kept him; but we said our farewells, and Alastair set to the sculling, and we watched the receding boat from the shore head until she drew close to the Seagull, and we saw Dan climb on board, and the skiff returning. As we walked back to Alastair's, we saw Belle standing on a ridge of high ground, with the morning light behind her—dark against the light, and her eyes straining to the sea; and as we came closer I spoke, thinking to take her away from her sorrow, but her dark eyes remained fixed on the schooner, as though she had never heard me. There was a little mist hanging over the sea. |
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