The Ice Run
by S. R. Crockett
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Mountains and ice-running 1680’s style. An excerpt from the novel The Raiders, told by its hero, Patrick Heron.
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The Glen of Trool was dark and narrow as we went down into it along the waterside, and the loch itself lay black as night at the bottom of its precipices. It might have been the mouth of the pit of blackness itself. The faintly falling snow had not lain on its surface, which made me wish that I could unbind my father's Dutch ice-runners from the saddle-bow. He had brought them home with him from the Low Countries as curious things for folk to wonder at; and with them I used many a day to disport myself on the White Loch o' the Clonyard, or upon the Orraland mill-dam when I cared not to go so far from home.
I fetched them with me, knowing that when we had to storm the fortress of the isle in Loch Enoch, my life might depend on my speed. Moreover, ice-running was an accomplishment seldom tried in Galloway at that time, and I hoped to come back having gained not a little honour and reputation thereby.
After a long and weary plod up hill and down dale the Lodge of Eschonchan rose before us close by the waterside, a place which the Lords of Galloway had used for a hunting lodge ever since they came to be overlords of that part of the Forest of Buchan—for of old only Cassillis and the Kennedies bore the rule there. It is not a large, but it is a strong-built house—though with hardly any articles of furniture, except bowls and platters of the roughest, because it is not wise to trust aught of value to the gypsies, even under the protection of the payment of mail. So my Lord the Earl keeps not his muniment boxes and treasure chests at the Lodge of Eschonchan by the water of Trool. Here, therefore, we had some refreshment, and rested an hour. Then, leaving a guard with the horses just sufficient to protect them in case of attack, we pressed on with most of the younger men.
Our way lay up the same Gairland Burn by which May, Silver Sand, and I came down in such pain that morning long ago. Yet I think I was heavier of heart to go up it under that gloomy winter sky, for now every step took me farther away from all I loved.
I tried to think that it must be for the best, which was no doubt true; but somehow the thought did not seem to affect the state of my courage, which had (as usual) sunk down into the pit of my stomach. It was, in truth, cold comfort.
We marched in close array with skirmishers flung far up the slope to touch any hidden enemy, while the rest came by the narrow path by the waterside, where the burn roared and swirled about the great gray stones.
We were soon deep among the hills, and yet not a shot had been fired at us. Not a dry red bracken had waved. The rime lay close and thick, and the brown heather kept the feet quiet. Only a scabbard rang now and then on a jutting point of granite, or a nail in some brogan screamed stridently against a stone, harsh and slippery with frost. No whaup or peewit cried. Only on a rock high on the Glints of the Nether Hill of Buchan, a black corbie croaked his dismal anticipative song.
It was not cheering, all this, yet I felt some real elevation to think that we were soon to come to grips.
We were just at the corner of the burn where, under a great black face of rock it is hemmed in a deep defile, when our scouts on the hillside set up a great crying, the cause of which we could not at the time understand.
‘Come up!’ they cried. ‘The water's broken lowse!’
Our herd guide and I took the hill at once, and so did many who were acquainted with the wild lochs and precipices about us, and with the nature of the wilder men whose lives were forfeit to the law.
Suddenly we heard before and above us a tremendous roaring noise, as though the bowels of creation were gushing out in some great convulsion. The hills gave back the echoes on every side. I found myself climbing the brae with some considerable verve and activity till I was fairly among the higher rocks. So active was I that I ran straightway into the embraces of a hairy savage with matted locks, whose weapon was in his hand—the long dirk of the Highlander. But he had not expected any one to come at him over a rock in so remarkable a manner. He took my inroad as a dangerous assault, conceiving that I must have men behind me to be so bold, for he instantly threw down his knife and up with his hands in an attitude of supplication.
‘Hursel' be a puir Gregor lad, an' no doin' ony harm!’ was his statement.
Behind me came our guide, Rab MacQuhirr and Kennedy Maxwell, at sight of whom my captive, taking heart of grace, plunged upwards weaponless among the rocks, and as it was a rough place, with many yirds or hiding-places between the boulders, he was out of sight in a moment. Of which I was glad, for had Will Maxwell come upon him and his dirk, that hour had been the last of ‘hursel' the puir Gregor lad.’
But the MacGregor dirk I set in my belt as a trophy.
The great roaring noise still continued. Indeed the whole of the foregoing since I took the hill passed in a brief tale of seconds. Suddenly we that were up on the side of the Gairy saw a wondrous sight. A great wall of water, glassy black, tinged at the top with brown and crowned with a surging crest of white with many dancing overlapping folds, sped down the glen. Our array was pent in the narrow passage—all those, that is, who had not taken the hill at the first alarm. As the wave came down upon them there was the wildest confusion. Men threw away their guns and took blindly to the hillside, running upward like rabbits that have been feeding in a bottom of old grass. From where we stood the water seemed to travel with great deliberation, but nevertheless not a few of our men were caught in the wash of it and spun downwards like corks in the inrush of the Solway tide.
The black, white-crested wave being passed, the great flood ran red again in a moment, with only a creamy froth over it, and we could hear the boulders grinding and plunging at the bottom of the burn.
Then upon us, scattered as we were in confusion over the brae face, there broke a storm of bullets from behind the rocks higher up the Gairy. It was the first sign of the enemy we had found, and we resented it exceedingly.
A strange sense of the unfairness of the proceeding took hold of me. We had come prepared to give battle and to deliver an assault; but we wanted to do it in our own way and on our own terms. We felt that it was most perfidious (indeed unfair and scoundrelly) thus to scatter us over a great area of ground, and then have at us when we were least prepared.
But Will Maxwell had some of the spirit of a general. Standing on a rock, he sounded his pipe, calling all down from the bare hillside, where each man was a mark for the guns of the outlaws into the closer cover of the burnside, thick sown with boulders. The flood was still running, but was evidently past its strength. The great roaring sped farther and farther down the valley. We gathered off the hill, running like foxes about the stones, and taking advantage of the chance cover as we went. Bullets spatted uncomfortably among the rocks, but the fire of the hill men was not good, and the light was becoming uncertain, so that very few of our men were wounded.
As soon as he had us all collected in the valley, our captain began moving in loose skirmishing formation along the side of the burn towards the loch. The outlaws above us also kept parallel with our march, shots cracked, and on the hillside there was a noise of cheering. But we held on our way, and so far no one was seriously hurt, which showed that the aim of the enemy had been bad. But we knew not if our own were much better.
When we came to the southern side of Loch Valley, whence the Gairland Burn issues, we saw a strange and surprising sight. There was a deep trench, the upper part of which had been cut through recently by the hands of man, for the rubbish lay all about where the spades had been at work. The ends of a weir across the outlet of the loch were yet to be seen jutting into the rushing waters. This had evidently been constructed with considerable care and certainly with immense labour. But now it was cut clean through, and we could see where their sappers had first set their picks; the power of the flood had done the rest. So great had been the force of the water that the passage was clean cut as with a knife down to the bed rock. The deep knoll of sand and jingling stones, which lies like a barrier across the mouth of the loch, had been severed as one cuts sweet-milk cheese, and the black waters were yet pouring out from under the arch of ice that spanned the loch as out of a cave in some frozen Tartarus.
But as we looked over the black and glistering expanse of hollow ice which swept away to our left, bright cracks began to play like forked lightning across its whole surface. The water had been sucked from beneath it, and it held up only by its own weight. The hills echoed the deep-voiced roaring as the cracks and rendings ran across and across. Gradually the play of this flashing and thundering turmoil centred at a point beneath our eyes, and fair in the middle of the loch. An intensely black spot began to yawn there, from which the white, roaring cracks rayed out like the spokes of a wheel from the hub. On the edge of the loch we stood as it were on the rim of a whirlpool, for the ice sloped down from our feet every way into the black centre. Had any one set foot upon the verge of it they had been carried down to the yawning hole, for the entire ice of the loch was giving way as the roof of a great cavern slopes and sways before it falls in.
Then with a crash that shook the ground the ice cave fell in upon the water in a thousand pieces, sending the white foam mixed with dark lumps of ice high into the air, while underneath the broken fragments tumbled and crunched against one another like bergs in a heavy sea (such as I have heard the whalers tell of). Then little by little, groaning and wheezing, the turmoil settled down; and Loch Valley, with its shivered covering of broken ice, went to sleep ten feet beneath its level of the morning.
Hardly elsewhere in Scotland had such a thing been possible; but the outlaws took advantage of the higher barrier of sand and shingle which had so long dammed back the waters of the deep rock-bound lake. It was a true stroke of generalship, and showed us that we had others than ignorant red-handed Marshalls and bloody Macatericks to deal with. It was so well thought on that it did not seem like the rough-and-ready knife-and-bullet method of the common catheran.
And, indeed, nothing more calculated to shake one's nerve could well be conceived. We were glad to draw together our scattered force, but there is no doubt that by this time most wished themselves well out of it. For me, at least, that six-foot breast of black water and the shining whirlpool of rending ice had taken away any desire for revenge.
Nevertheless, as the darkness settled deeper, we drew down to the old sheep rees by the Midburn, which are solidly built of great granite stones like a fortress, based upon the unshaken ribs of the hills. There was room for us all here. By nature the place was strongly protected—on the one side by the roaring and dangerous Midburn, and on the other it is fenced in by a morass. Here we hoped to abide in some sort of peace, if little enough comfort, through the long winter night. We had all our plaids wrapped about us; and my friend Kennedy had carried strapped about him, half for the warmth and half for the good things of my Lady Grizel which it contained, the Earl's great military mantle. Both cloak and comforts we had agreed to share together.
But this consummation was not at all what I had expected. My chances of glory were few, and the raid seemed likely to end in disaster. To run uphill and take prisoner a shaggy catheran (who immediately escaped again), to be penned like one of a score of hogs in a granite sheep-ree, were not at all to my mind. But how could I better it?
The outlaws on the hill had given us no further trouble, and indeed their demonstration against us had been confined to the moment when the rush of the escaping waters of Loch Valley made us give back and scatter.
‘The Carrick men should be coming on by now,’ said Will Maxwell. ‘Oh, if only we had some one to go up and see what they are doing!’
The old shepherd of the Merrick knew the country best, but he was stiff and old; and, besides, cared little about the matter. About as little cared I, save to burn the Shieling of Craignairny and get that accursed sea-chest out of my dreams. But I think the devil must have tempted me suddenly and successfully, for I called out among them all that I would put on my ice-runners and go. At which they cried admiration and astonishment. Yet I was grieved the next moment and silently called myself a fool for my pains, and that many times over; but my accursed pride would not let me take back the spoken word.
May Maxwell says now that that was the wickedest thing I ever did, because I forgot my plighted word and promise to her—I might have let one of the others go. All which I own is true, but then no one of the others would have offered, and so we had all come home with our fingers in our mouths.
But all the lads of the raid cried out upon me, and said that I was the bravest of the brave, and other things which please a young man. So I took my ice-runners in my hand—which, as I have said, my father had brought from Holland. Kennedy Maxwell and four others, all proper young men with well-grown beards on their faces, whom for this cause I often envied, came to see me safely off’, for I proposed first to circle Loch Neldricken on the ice, that I might be sure there were no enemies lurking about it. This I did, not because I thought that the outlaw men would encamp there, but that these young men, especially Colin Screel and Kennedy Maxwell, who had formerly despised me, might see me start off alone into the night. Such a thick-skull was I, and so void of common understanding! For I ever loved to be admired and to be exclaimed upon for doing that from which others held back. And this same quaint kind of cowardice, for I had little real courage, has often carried me through with credit. I am of the faction of the old soldier who said, when complimented on his bravery in battle, ‘We are all black afraid, only—we do not all show it!’
So I had enough sense to keep my fears to myself at that time. Now it does not matter, for I am a man of middle years, and such is the power of reputation that I cannot do away with this repute myself, so that even this plain confession of weakness will not be believed; which is perhaps, after all, the reason why I make it here. So apt is man at deceiving others—and himself.
But sally forth I did, binding my ice-runners of curved iron to my feet at the little inlet where the Midburn issues—too strong and fierce ever to freeze, save only at the edges where the frost and spray hung in fringes, reaching down cold fingers to clasp the rapid waters.
Away to the left stretched Loch Neldricken, the midmost of the three lochs of that wild high region —Valley, Neldricken and topmost Enoch. I set foot gingerly on the smooth black ice, with hardly even a sprinkling of snow upon it, for the winds had swept away the little feathery fall, and the surface was smooth as glass beneath my feet. Each of the young men shook me silently by the hand. I suppose they thought me at once brave and mad, for I had lost no cattle and had a sweetheart at home to make a bride of. Yet there was I, setting off into the black night in the face of dangers unknown—dangers to which the close-packed well-fenced camp in the sheep-nerr was as one's own fireside.
I struck out from the edge with great strokes, moving my hands with each sway of my body as my father had taught me. In a moment the four lads sank behind me and I was alone on the black ice; yet I had that feeling of high defiance which all swift motion gives. The ice whirled behind. Following the southern edge, I was between the narrows in a minute. Here a jutting promontory of land—a mere tongue of sand and boulder—cut the loch almost in two. There was a fire kindled on the south shore nearest our camp, and on the opposite side as I sped by I seemed to see two men standing with muskets in their hands; but so dark was it that of this I could not be sure. If they saw me (which with the fire on the shore opposite to them and the passage through which I went not more than twenty yards wide, they could hardly fail to do) they must have thought me the evil one himself, flitting by as it were on the wings of the wind.
I sped away with the irons on my feet, cutting crisply through the thin-sprinkled snow, the immanent mass of the Black Gairy casting a gloomy shadow overhead. An odd flake or two of snow came into my face as I bent low to look sideways up the hill. I went slowly, moving only my body and hardly making a sound, as the night parted before and closed behind me.
It took but little time to make the circuit of the loch and come back to the narrows; but as I passed I put on speed, for I knew that it was dead earnest this time. The watchers would now be on the alert and might very properly bethink themselves that the devil did not use iron runners, but wings like the bat. So I bent low and scudded through the strait with the dying fire on one side and the land closing in to trip me upon the other. I was just in the middle and running my best, when a couple of shots went off, and the bullets tore past behind me screaming like plovers whistling down the wind.
I was so excited with my escape and proud of my daring that I shouted as I flew; but I had better have held my tongue, for a moment after I saw that the force of my impulse was taking me out of the region of sprinkled ice among a low forest of dense green reeds. As swift as thought I turned, but my impetus was too great. I was carried among them, and there, not twenty yards before me, like a hideous black demon's eye looking up at me, lay the unplumbed depths of the Murder Hole, in which for the second time I came nigh to being my own victim. I remembered the tales told of it. It never froze; it was never whitened with snow. With open mouth it lay ever waiting like an insatiable beast for its tribute of human life; it never gave up a body committed to its depths, or broke a murderer's trust.
The thin ice swayed beneath me, but did not crack—which was the worse sign, for it was brittle and weakened by the reeds. The lip of the horrid place seemed to shoot out at me, and the reeds opened to show me the way. I had let myself down on all fours as I came among the rushes; now I laid hold of them as I swept along, and so came to a standstill but a little way from that black verge. Here I hardly dared to move, till, by slow degrees, pulling myself forward and pushing backward, I got once more upon safe ice; then I made directly for the shore, for the Murder Hole was more dreadful to me than a tribe of Faas armed to the teeth.
In a few moments I had unshipped my runners, gained the heather, and was making the best of my way over the Ewe Rig towards the great barrier of Craig Neldricken, behind which Loch Enoch lay. As I went I heard the moor-birds cry—the wild whirl of the whaup and the croak of the raven. Now I knew well that most of these must be the signals of my foes answering one another, because the gypsies can imitate any bird that flies; besides which, the whaup is but seldom seen on these moors in winter and the snipe never. A thought struck me. I set my hands to my mouth in the way that I have already described, and made the whinny of the heatherbleat palpitate across the moor.
Instantly, as on the night of the blowing of the silver whistle, I was answered from either hand; my summons had aroused a whole colony. Only towards Loch Arrow, lying straight in front of me, there was not a single sound. So I called again more persistently and, as it were, querulously; and immediately set off running headlong upward in the direction of Loch Arrow, which I judged to be my best chance of safety.
More than once I had to crouch among the rocks to let a man run past me, so efficacious and imperative had my second call been. It was a blessing that almost everywhere over all that country there is a capable hiding-place within each half-dozen yards ; else had I been ten times a dead man.
I skirted Loch Arrow without putting on my ice-runners, because it is little more than a mountain tarn, and I knew that if there were any guards in the direction I was travelling they would be up at the Nicks of Neldricken, or at the Slock of the Dungeon—the passes which are the usual roads to the tableland of Enoch. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I set my feet upon the rugged Glints, hoary with rime and slippery with frost.
Born by the shore of the Solway, with heuchs (cliffs) at my door, and gulls' eggs for my playthings, I was at home wherever there was a chance of holding by my arms. Dark or light did not make any great difference to me, and but that my ringers thrilled with cold as they caught the rocks, I cannot say that I was agitated by the perils of climbing the Glints of Neldricken.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Mountains and ice-running 1680’s style. An excerpt from the novel The Raiders, told by its hero, Patrick Heron.
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The Glen of Trool was dark and narrow as we went down into it along the waterside, and the loch itself lay black as night at the bottom of its precipices. It might have been the mouth of the pit of blackness itself. The faintly falling snow had not lain on its surface, which made me wish that I could unbind my father's Dutch ice-runners from the saddle-bow. He had brought them home with him from the Low Countries as curious things for folk to wonder at; and with them I used many a day to disport myself on the White Loch o' the Clonyard, or upon the Orraland mill-dam when I cared not to go so far from home.
I fetched them with me, knowing that when we had to storm the fortress of the isle in Loch Enoch, my life might depend on my speed. Moreover, ice-running was an accomplishment seldom tried in Galloway at that time, and I hoped to come back having gained not a little honour and reputation thereby.
After a long and weary plod up hill and down dale the Lodge of Eschonchan rose before us close by the waterside, a place which the Lords of Galloway had used for a hunting lodge ever since they came to be overlords of that part of the Forest of Buchan—for of old only Cassillis and the Kennedies bore the rule there. It is not a large, but it is a strong-built house—though with hardly any articles of furniture, except bowls and platters of the roughest, because it is not wise to trust aught of value to the gypsies, even under the protection of the payment of mail. So my Lord the Earl keeps not his muniment boxes and treasure chests at the Lodge of Eschonchan by the water of Trool. Here, therefore, we had some refreshment, and rested an hour. Then, leaving a guard with the horses just sufficient to protect them in case of attack, we pressed on with most of the younger men.
Our way lay up the same Gairland Burn by which May, Silver Sand, and I came down in such pain that morning long ago. Yet I think I was heavier of heart to go up it under that gloomy winter sky, for now every step took me farther away from all I loved.
I tried to think that it must be for the best, which was no doubt true; but somehow the thought did not seem to affect the state of my courage, which had (as usual) sunk down into the pit of my stomach. It was, in truth, cold comfort.
We marched in close array with skirmishers flung far up the slope to touch any hidden enemy, while the rest came by the narrow path by the waterside, where the burn roared and swirled about the great gray stones.
We were soon deep among the hills, and yet not a shot had been fired at us. Not a dry red bracken had waved. The rime lay close and thick, and the brown heather kept the feet quiet. Only a scabbard rang now and then on a jutting point of granite, or a nail in some brogan screamed stridently against a stone, harsh and slippery with frost. No whaup or peewit cried. Only on a rock high on the Glints of the Nether Hill of Buchan, a black corbie croaked his dismal anticipative song.
It was not cheering, all this, yet I felt some real elevation to think that we were soon to come to grips.
We were just at the corner of the burn where, under a great black face of rock it is hemmed in a deep defile, when our scouts on the hillside set up a great crying, the cause of which we could not at the time understand.
‘Come up!’ they cried. ‘The water's broken lowse!’
Our herd guide and I took the hill at once, and so did many who were acquainted with the wild lochs and precipices about us, and with the nature of the wilder men whose lives were forfeit to the law.
Suddenly we heard before and above us a tremendous roaring noise, as though the bowels of creation were gushing out in some great convulsion. The hills gave back the echoes on every side. I found myself climbing the brae with some considerable verve and activity till I was fairly among the higher rocks. So active was I that I ran straightway into the embraces of a hairy savage with matted locks, whose weapon was in his hand—the long dirk of the Highlander. But he had not expected any one to come at him over a rock in so remarkable a manner. He took my inroad as a dangerous assault, conceiving that I must have men behind me to be so bold, for he instantly threw down his knife and up with his hands in an attitude of supplication.
‘Hursel' be a puir Gregor lad, an' no doin' ony harm!’ was his statement.
Behind me came our guide, Rab MacQuhirr and Kennedy Maxwell, at sight of whom my captive, taking heart of grace, plunged upwards weaponless among the rocks, and as it was a rough place, with many yirds or hiding-places between the boulders, he was out of sight in a moment. Of which I was glad, for had Will Maxwell come upon him and his dirk, that hour had been the last of ‘hursel' the puir Gregor lad.’
But the MacGregor dirk I set in my belt as a trophy.
The great roaring noise still continued. Indeed the whole of the foregoing since I took the hill passed in a brief tale of seconds. Suddenly we that were up on the side of the Gairy saw a wondrous sight. A great wall of water, glassy black, tinged at the top with brown and crowned with a surging crest of white with many dancing overlapping folds, sped down the glen. Our array was pent in the narrow passage—all those, that is, who had not taken the hill at the first alarm. As the wave came down upon them there was the wildest confusion. Men threw away their guns and took blindly to the hillside, running upward like rabbits that have been feeding in a bottom of old grass. From where we stood the water seemed to travel with great deliberation, but nevertheless not a few of our men were caught in the wash of it and spun downwards like corks in the inrush of the Solway tide.
The black, white-crested wave being passed, the great flood ran red again in a moment, with only a creamy froth over it, and we could hear the boulders grinding and plunging at the bottom of the burn.
Then upon us, scattered as we were in confusion over the brae face, there broke a storm of bullets from behind the rocks higher up the Gairy. It was the first sign of the enemy we had found, and we resented it exceedingly.
A strange sense of the unfairness of the proceeding took hold of me. We had come prepared to give battle and to deliver an assault; but we wanted to do it in our own way and on our own terms. We felt that it was most perfidious (indeed unfair and scoundrelly) thus to scatter us over a great area of ground, and then have at us when we were least prepared.
But Will Maxwell had some of the spirit of a general. Standing on a rock, he sounded his pipe, calling all down from the bare hillside, where each man was a mark for the guns of the outlaws into the closer cover of the burnside, thick sown with boulders. The flood was still running, but was evidently past its strength. The great roaring sped farther and farther down the valley. We gathered off the hill, running like foxes about the stones, and taking advantage of the chance cover as we went. Bullets spatted uncomfortably among the rocks, but the fire of the hill men was not good, and the light was becoming uncertain, so that very few of our men were wounded.
As soon as he had us all collected in the valley, our captain began moving in loose skirmishing formation along the side of the burn towards the loch. The outlaws above us also kept parallel with our march, shots cracked, and on the hillside there was a noise of cheering. But we held on our way, and so far no one was seriously hurt, which showed that the aim of the enemy had been bad. But we knew not if our own were much better.
When we came to the southern side of Loch Valley, whence the Gairland Burn issues, we saw a strange and surprising sight. There was a deep trench, the upper part of which had been cut through recently by the hands of man, for the rubbish lay all about where the spades had been at work. The ends of a weir across the outlet of the loch were yet to be seen jutting into the rushing waters. This had evidently been constructed with considerable care and certainly with immense labour. But now it was cut clean through, and we could see where their sappers had first set their picks; the power of the flood had done the rest. So great had been the force of the water that the passage was clean cut as with a knife down to the bed rock. The deep knoll of sand and jingling stones, which lies like a barrier across the mouth of the loch, had been severed as one cuts sweet-milk cheese, and the black waters were yet pouring out from under the arch of ice that spanned the loch as out of a cave in some frozen Tartarus.
But as we looked over the black and glistering expanse of hollow ice which swept away to our left, bright cracks began to play like forked lightning across its whole surface. The water had been sucked from beneath it, and it held up only by its own weight. The hills echoed the deep-voiced roaring as the cracks and rendings ran across and across. Gradually the play of this flashing and thundering turmoil centred at a point beneath our eyes, and fair in the middle of the loch. An intensely black spot began to yawn there, from which the white, roaring cracks rayed out like the spokes of a wheel from the hub. On the edge of the loch we stood as it were on the rim of a whirlpool, for the ice sloped down from our feet every way into the black centre. Had any one set foot upon the verge of it they had been carried down to the yawning hole, for the entire ice of the loch was giving way as the roof of a great cavern slopes and sways before it falls in.
Then with a crash that shook the ground the ice cave fell in upon the water in a thousand pieces, sending the white foam mixed with dark lumps of ice high into the air, while underneath the broken fragments tumbled and crunched against one another like bergs in a heavy sea (such as I have heard the whalers tell of). Then little by little, groaning and wheezing, the turmoil settled down; and Loch Valley, with its shivered covering of broken ice, went to sleep ten feet beneath its level of the morning.
Hardly elsewhere in Scotland had such a thing been possible; but the outlaws took advantage of the higher barrier of sand and shingle which had so long dammed back the waters of the deep rock-bound lake. It was a true stroke of generalship, and showed us that we had others than ignorant red-handed Marshalls and bloody Macatericks to deal with. It was so well thought on that it did not seem like the rough-and-ready knife-and-bullet method of the common catheran.
And, indeed, nothing more calculated to shake one's nerve could well be conceived. We were glad to draw together our scattered force, but there is no doubt that by this time most wished themselves well out of it. For me, at least, that six-foot breast of black water and the shining whirlpool of rending ice had taken away any desire for revenge.
Nevertheless, as the darkness settled deeper, we drew down to the old sheep rees by the Midburn, which are solidly built of great granite stones like a fortress, based upon the unshaken ribs of the hills. There was room for us all here. By nature the place was strongly protected—on the one side by the roaring and dangerous Midburn, and on the other it is fenced in by a morass. Here we hoped to abide in some sort of peace, if little enough comfort, through the long winter night. We had all our plaids wrapped about us; and my friend Kennedy had carried strapped about him, half for the warmth and half for the good things of my Lady Grizel which it contained, the Earl's great military mantle. Both cloak and comforts we had agreed to share together.
But this consummation was not at all what I had expected. My chances of glory were few, and the raid seemed likely to end in disaster. To run uphill and take prisoner a shaggy catheran (who immediately escaped again), to be penned like one of a score of hogs in a granite sheep-ree, were not at all to my mind. But how could I better it?
The outlaws on the hill had given us no further trouble, and indeed their demonstration against us had been confined to the moment when the rush of the escaping waters of Loch Valley made us give back and scatter.
‘The Carrick men should be coming on by now,’ said Will Maxwell. ‘Oh, if only we had some one to go up and see what they are doing!’
The old shepherd of the Merrick knew the country best, but he was stiff and old; and, besides, cared little about the matter. About as little cared I, save to burn the Shieling of Craignairny and get that accursed sea-chest out of my dreams. But I think the devil must have tempted me suddenly and successfully, for I called out among them all that I would put on my ice-runners and go. At which they cried admiration and astonishment. Yet I was grieved the next moment and silently called myself a fool for my pains, and that many times over; but my accursed pride would not let me take back the spoken word.
May Maxwell says now that that was the wickedest thing I ever did, because I forgot my plighted word and promise to her—I might have let one of the others go. All which I own is true, but then no one of the others would have offered, and so we had all come home with our fingers in our mouths.
But all the lads of the raid cried out upon me, and said that I was the bravest of the brave, and other things which please a young man. So I took my ice-runners in my hand—which, as I have said, my father had brought from Holland. Kennedy Maxwell and four others, all proper young men with well-grown beards on their faces, whom for this cause I often envied, came to see me safely off’, for I proposed first to circle Loch Neldricken on the ice, that I might be sure there were no enemies lurking about it. This I did, not because I thought that the outlaw men would encamp there, but that these young men, especially Colin Screel and Kennedy Maxwell, who had formerly despised me, might see me start off alone into the night. Such a thick-skull was I, and so void of common understanding! For I ever loved to be admired and to be exclaimed upon for doing that from which others held back. And this same quaint kind of cowardice, for I had little real courage, has often carried me through with credit. I am of the faction of the old soldier who said, when complimented on his bravery in battle, ‘We are all black afraid, only—we do not all show it!’
So I had enough sense to keep my fears to myself at that time. Now it does not matter, for I am a man of middle years, and such is the power of reputation that I cannot do away with this repute myself, so that even this plain confession of weakness will not be believed; which is perhaps, after all, the reason why I make it here. So apt is man at deceiving others—and himself.
But sally forth I did, binding my ice-runners of curved iron to my feet at the little inlet where the Midburn issues—too strong and fierce ever to freeze, save only at the edges where the frost and spray hung in fringes, reaching down cold fingers to clasp the rapid waters.
Away to the left stretched Loch Neldricken, the midmost of the three lochs of that wild high region —Valley, Neldricken and topmost Enoch. I set foot gingerly on the smooth black ice, with hardly even a sprinkling of snow upon it, for the winds had swept away the little feathery fall, and the surface was smooth as glass beneath my feet. Each of the young men shook me silently by the hand. I suppose they thought me at once brave and mad, for I had lost no cattle and had a sweetheart at home to make a bride of. Yet there was I, setting off into the black night in the face of dangers unknown—dangers to which the close-packed well-fenced camp in the sheep-nerr was as one's own fireside.
I struck out from the edge with great strokes, moving my hands with each sway of my body as my father had taught me. In a moment the four lads sank behind me and I was alone on the black ice; yet I had that feeling of high defiance which all swift motion gives. The ice whirled behind. Following the southern edge, I was between the narrows in a minute. Here a jutting promontory of land—a mere tongue of sand and boulder—cut the loch almost in two. There was a fire kindled on the south shore nearest our camp, and on the opposite side as I sped by I seemed to see two men standing with muskets in their hands; but so dark was it that of this I could not be sure. If they saw me (which with the fire on the shore opposite to them and the passage through which I went not more than twenty yards wide, they could hardly fail to do) they must have thought me the evil one himself, flitting by as it were on the wings of the wind.
I sped away with the irons on my feet, cutting crisply through the thin-sprinkled snow, the immanent mass of the Black Gairy casting a gloomy shadow overhead. An odd flake or two of snow came into my face as I bent low to look sideways up the hill. I went slowly, moving only my body and hardly making a sound, as the night parted before and closed behind me.
It took but little time to make the circuit of the loch and come back to the narrows; but as I passed I put on speed, for I knew that it was dead earnest this time. The watchers would now be on the alert and might very properly bethink themselves that the devil did not use iron runners, but wings like the bat. So I bent low and scudded through the strait with the dying fire on one side and the land closing in to trip me upon the other. I was just in the middle and running my best, when a couple of shots went off, and the bullets tore past behind me screaming like plovers whistling down the wind.
I was so excited with my escape and proud of my daring that I shouted as I flew; but I had better have held my tongue, for a moment after I saw that the force of my impulse was taking me out of the region of sprinkled ice among a low forest of dense green reeds. As swift as thought I turned, but my impetus was too great. I was carried among them, and there, not twenty yards before me, like a hideous black demon's eye looking up at me, lay the unplumbed depths of the Murder Hole, in which for the second time I came nigh to being my own victim. I remembered the tales told of it. It never froze; it was never whitened with snow. With open mouth it lay ever waiting like an insatiable beast for its tribute of human life; it never gave up a body committed to its depths, or broke a murderer's trust.
The thin ice swayed beneath me, but did not crack—which was the worse sign, for it was brittle and weakened by the reeds. The lip of the horrid place seemed to shoot out at me, and the reeds opened to show me the way. I had let myself down on all fours as I came among the rushes; now I laid hold of them as I swept along, and so came to a standstill but a little way from that black verge. Here I hardly dared to move, till, by slow degrees, pulling myself forward and pushing backward, I got once more upon safe ice; then I made directly for the shore, for the Murder Hole was more dreadful to me than a tribe of Faas armed to the teeth.
In a few moments I had unshipped my runners, gained the heather, and was making the best of my way over the Ewe Rig towards the great barrier of Craig Neldricken, behind which Loch Enoch lay. As I went I heard the moor-birds cry—the wild whirl of the whaup and the croak of the raven. Now I knew well that most of these must be the signals of my foes answering one another, because the gypsies can imitate any bird that flies; besides which, the whaup is but seldom seen on these moors in winter and the snipe never. A thought struck me. I set my hands to my mouth in the way that I have already described, and made the whinny of the heatherbleat palpitate across the moor.
Instantly, as on the night of the blowing of the silver whistle, I was answered from either hand; my summons had aroused a whole colony. Only towards Loch Arrow, lying straight in front of me, there was not a single sound. So I called again more persistently and, as it were, querulously; and immediately set off running headlong upward in the direction of Loch Arrow, which I judged to be my best chance of safety.
More than once I had to crouch among the rocks to let a man run past me, so efficacious and imperative had my second call been. It was a blessing that almost everywhere over all that country there is a capable hiding-place within each half-dozen yards ; else had I been ten times a dead man.
I skirted Loch Arrow without putting on my ice-runners, because it is little more than a mountain tarn, and I knew that if there were any guards in the direction I was travelling they would be up at the Nicks of Neldricken, or at the Slock of the Dungeon—the passes which are the usual roads to the tableland of Enoch. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I set my feet upon the rugged Glints, hoary with rime and slippery with frost.
Born by the shore of the Solway, with heuchs (cliffs) at my door, and gulls' eggs for my playthings, I was at home wherever there was a chance of holding by my arms. Dark or light did not make any great difference to me, and but that my ringers thrilled with cold as they caught the rocks, I cannot say that I was agitated by the perils of climbing the Glints of Neldricken.
About the Author
S. R. Crockett was born in Balmaghie, Galloway, in 1859 and died in France on April 16th, 1914. During his life, he had over 60 novels published (many of them serialised) and hundreds of short stories/sketches appeared in the popular magazines. He was one of Scotland’s bestselling and best known authors in his day, but now is barely known of. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death, The Galloway Raiders has been set up and a major collection of 32 of his Galloway-based fictional works is being republished by Ayton Publishing Limited.
To find out more about S. R. Crockett, you can join The Galloway Raiders for FREE at www.gallowayraiders.co.uk
To find out more about S. R. Crockett, you can join The Galloway Raiders for FREE at www.gallowayraiders.co.uk