“Shaws,” said he at last, “I’ll deal with the naked hand.
It’s a queer tale, and no very creditable, the way you tell it; and I’m far frae minting that is other than the way that ye believe it.
As for yoursel’, ye seem to me rather a dacent-like young man.
But me, that’s aulder and mair judeecious, see perhaps a wee bit further forrit in the job than what ye can dae. And here the maitter clear and plain to ye. There’ll be nae skaith to yoursel’ if I keep ye here; far free that, I think ye’ll be a hantle better by it.
There’ll be nae skaith to the kintry—just ae mair Hielantman hangit—Gude kens, a guid riddance! On the ither hand, it would be considerable skaith to me if I would let you free.
Sae, speakin’ as a guid Whig, an honest freen’ to you, and an anxious freen’ to my ainsel’, the plain fact is that I think ye’ll just have to bide here wi’ Andie an’ the solans.”
“Andie,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee, “this Hielantman’s innocent.”
“Ay, it’s a peety about that,” said he. “But ye see, in this warld, the way God made it, we cannae just get a’thing that we want.”
CHAPTER XV—BLACK ANDIE’S TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK
I have yet said little of the Highlanders.
They were all three of the followers of James More, which bound the accusation very tight about their master’s neck.
All understood a word or two of English, but Neil was the only one who judged he had enough of it for general converse, in which (when once he got embarked) his company was often tempted to the contrary opinion.
They were tractable, simple creatures; showed much more courtesy than might have been expected from their raggedness and their uncouth appearance, and fell spontaneously to be like three servants for Andie and myself.
Dwelling in that isolated place, in the old falling ruins of a prison, and among endless strange sounds of the sea and the sea-birds, I thought I perceived in them early the effects of superstitious fear.
When there was nothing doing they would either lie and sleep, for which their appetite appeared insatiable, or Neil would entertain the others with stories which seemed always of a terrifying strain.
If neither of these delights were within reach—if perhaps two were sleeping and the third could find no means to follow their example—I would see him sit and listen and look about him in a progression of uneasiness, starting, his face blenching, his hands clutched, a man strung like a bow.
The nature of these fears I had never an occasion to find out, but the sight of them was catching, and the nature of the place that we were in favourable to alarms.
I can find no word for it in the English, but Andie had an expression for it in the Scots from which he never varied.
“Ay,” he would say, “_it’s an unco place_, _the Bass_.”
It is so I always think of it.
It was an unco place by night, unco by day; and these were unco sounds, of the calling of the solans, and the plash of the sea and the rock echoes, that hung continually in our ears.
It was chiefly so in moderate weather.
When the waves were anyway great they roared about the rock like thunder and the drums of armies, dreadful but merry to hear; and it was in the calm days that a man could daunt himself with listening—not a Highlandman only, as I several times experimented on myself, so many still, hollow noises haunted and reverberated in the porches of the rock.
This brings me to a story I heard, and a scene I took part in, which quite changed our terms of living, and had a great effect on my departure.
It chanced one night I fell in a muse beside the fire and (that little air of Alan’s coming back to my memory) began to whistle.
A hand was laid upon my arm, and the voice of Neil bade me to stop, for it was not “canny musics.”
“Not canny?” I asked. “How can that be?”
“Na,” said he; “it will be made by a bogle and her wanting ta heid upon his body.” {13}
“Well,” said I, “there can be no bogles here, Neil; for it’s not likely they would fash themselves to frighten geese.”
“Ay?” says Andie, “is that what ye think of it!
But I’ll can tell ye there’s been waur nor bogles here.”
“What’s waur than bogles, Andie?” said I.
“Warlocks,” said he. “Or a warlock at the least of it.
And that’s a queer tale, too,” he added. “And if ye would like, I’ll tell it ye.”
To be sure we were all of the one mind, and even the Highlander that had the least English of the three set himself to listen with all his might.
THE TALE OF TOD LAPRAIK
MY faither, Tam Dale, peace to his banes, was a wild, sploring lad in his young days, wi’ little wisdom and little grace.
He was fond of a lass and fond of a glass, and fond of a ran-dan; but I could never hear tell that he was muckle use for honest employment.
Frae ae thing to anither, he listed at last for a sodger and was in the garrison of this fort, which was the first way that ony of the Dales cam to set foot upon the Bass.
Sorrow upon that service!
The governor brewed his ain ale; it seems it was the warst conceivable.
The rock was proveesioned free the shore with vivers, the thing was ill-guided, and there were whiles when they but to fish and shoot solans for their diet.
To crown a’, thir was the Days of the Persecution. The perishin’ cauld chalmers were all occupeed wi’ sants and martyrs, the saut of the yearth, of which it wasnae worthy.
And though Tam Dale carried a firelock there, a single sodger, and liked a lass and a glass, as I was sayin,’ the mind of the man was mair just than set with his position.
He had glints of the glory of the kirk; there were whiles when his dander rase to see the Lord’s sants misguided, and shame covered him that he should be haulding a can’le (or carrying a firelock) in so black a business.
There were nights of it when he was here on sentry, the place a’ wheesht, the frosts o’ winter maybe riving in the wa’s, and he would hear ane o’ the prisoners strike up a psalm, and the rest join in, and the blessed sounds rising from the different chalmers—or dungeons, I would raither say—so that this auld craig in the sea was like a pairt of Heev’n.
Black shame was on his saul; his sins hove up before him muckle as the Bass, and above a’, that chief sin, that he should have a hand in hagging and hashing at Christ’s Kirk.
But the truth is that he resisted the spirit.
Day cam, there were the rousing compainions, and his guid resolves depairtit.
In thir days, dwalled upon the Bass a man of God, Peden the Prophet was his name.