Читать книгу The Raiders: Being Some Passages In The Life Of John Faa, Lord And Earl Of Little Egypt - Samuel R. Crockett - Страница 11
ОглавлениеRATHAN ISLAND lay in the roughest tumble of the seas. Its southern point took the full sweep of the Solway tides as they rushed and surged upwards to cover the great deadly sands of Barnhourie. From Sea Point, as we named it, the island stretched northward in many rocky steeps and cliffs riddled with caves. For just at this point the softer sandstone you meet with on the Cumberland shore set its nose out of the brine. So the island was more easily worn into sea caves and strange arches, towers and haystacks, all of stone, sitting by themselves out in the tideway for all the world like bairns’ playthings.
In these caves, which had many doors and entries, I had played with the tide ever since I was a boy. I knew them all as well as I knew our own backyard under the cliff. And the knowledge was before long to stand me in better stead than the Latin grammar I had learned from my father.
In fine weather it was a pleasant thing to go up to the highest point of the island, which, though little of a mountain, was called Ben Rathan, and see the country all about one. Thence was to be seen the reek of many farm- towns and villages, besides cot-houses without number, all blowing the same way when the wind was soft and equal. The morning was the best time to go there. Upon Rathan, close under the sky, the bees hummed about among the short, crisp heather, which was springy just like our little sheltie’s mane after my father had done docking it. There was a great silence up there – only a soughing from the south, where the tides of the Solway, going either up or down, kept for ever chafing against the rocky end of our little Isle of Rathan.
Then nearest to us, on the eastern shore of Barnhourie Bay, there was fair to be seen the farmhouse of Craigdarroch, with the Boreland and the Ingleston above it, which is always the way in Galloway. Wherever there is a Boreland you may be sure that there is an Ingleston not far from it. The way of that is, as my father used to say, because the English came to settle in their ‘tons’, and brought their ‘boors’, or serfs, with them. So that near the English towns are always to be found the boor-lands. Which is as it may be, but the fact is at any rate sufficiently curious. And from Ben Rathan also, looking to the westward, just over the cliffs of our isle, you saw White Horse Bay, much frequented of late years for convenience of debarkation by the Freetraders of Captain Yawkin’s band, with whom, as my father used to say quaintly, no honest smuggler hath company.
For there were, as everyone knows, in this land of Galloway two kinds of the lads who bring over the dutiless gear from Holland and the Isle of Man. There be the decent lads who run it for something honest to do in the winter and for the spice of danger, and without a thought of hurt to King George, worthy gentleman; and there are also the ‘Associated Illdoers’, as my father would often call them in his queer, daffing way – the Holland rogues who got this isle its by-name of Rogues’ Island by running their cargoes into our little land-locked cove which looks towards White Horse Bay. These last were fellows who would stick at nothing, and quite as often as not they would trepan a lass from the Cumberland shore, or slit the throat of a Dumfries burgher to see the colour of his blood. But the Black Smugglers never could have come to such a pitch of daring and success unless they had made to themselves friends of the disaffected of these parts. The truth of the matter was that in the wilds of Galloway that look toward Ayrshire, up the springs of Doon and Dee, there lies a wide country of surpassing wildness, whither resorted all the evil gypsies of the hill – red-handed loons, outlaw and alien to all this realm of well-affected men.
When a vessel came in these openly marched down to the shore with guns, swords, and other weapons – Marshalls, Macatericks, and Millers, often under the leadership of Hector Faa – and escorted to their fastnesses the smuggled stuff and the stolen goods, for there was as much by wicked hands reived and robbed, as of the stuff which was only honestly smuggled.
My father had fallen out with Yawkins when he began the robbing of man and the seizing of maids. I can remember him coming to the Rathan, a thick-set dark man, with his head very low between his shoulders. He had a black beard on his breast, and there was a cast in his eye. He swore many strange oaths. Being a Hollander, the most of his conversation seemed to be ‘dam’, but between whiles he was trying to persuade my father to something.
‘It’s clottered nonsense,’ said my father over and over to him; ‘and, more than that, it’s rank blackguardism; and as for me, I shall have no trokings wi’ the like o’ ye aboot the maitter.’
From which and other things I gathered that in the days of his wildness my father had had his hands pretty deep in the traffic.
Away at the back yonder, across the fertile valley of the Dee, we could see from Rathan Head the blue shadowy hills, where, among the wild heather and the solitudes where the whaups cried all summer long, the hill gypsies had their fastnesses. On those blue hills, to us so sweet and solemn, no king’s man had been of his own free will since the days of Clavers. Little did I think, as I used to sit and watch them, with Andrew and young Jock Allison, Rab Nicoll, and little Jerry, on the smooth brindled heather of Ben Rathan, that I should so often tread the way up to those fastnesses about the Dungeon of Buchan or all were done.
It was after the time of dishwashing, and the most part of us were out on the heuchs, looking to seaward with my father’s old prospect-glass (which was ever one of our choicest possessions) when little Jerry, who had been drawing with pencils and colour the shape of the coast and hills – a vanity he was very fond of from his childhood – came up the hill in great spangs, crying that there was a boat coming round the point running against the tide, with two men rowing. I turned the glass on the boat as she came, and was soon able to pick her up.
‘It’s your mither, Andrew Allison,’ I said, ‘an’ yours, Jerry, my lad. They’ll be gettin’ anxious to see ye!’
‘Guid save us,’ said Andrew; ‘I’m awa’ to hide!’
‘Awa’ wi’ ye, then,’ I said; ‘but dinna inform me where, that I may not have more lies to tell than are just and needful.’
I was well aware that there was some business for me to do during the next hour, for neither Mistress Allison that was a baillie’s wife, nor yet Mistress MacWhirter, were canny women with their tongues when they got a subject to do them justice.
But my father set me on a capital plan, having regard to the tongue of a scolding woman. I know not how it would work if you had her always in the house with you. I misdoubt that in that case my father’s receipt might need application and reinforcement from a hazel rod; but against the tongues of orra folk that you have only to stand for a while at a time, it is altogether infallible. My father had a great respect for Scripture, and he had Scripture warrant for this.
‘Mind ye, Paitrick,’ he used to say, ‘that the Good Book says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” Now keep your temper, laddie. Never quarrel wi’ an angry person, specially a woman. Mind ye, a soft answer’s aye best. It’s commanded – and forbye, it makes them far madder than onything else ye could say.’
As we looked the boat sped nearer, and, peering through the prospect-glass again, I could see that it was rowed by a pair of folk – a lassie and a man. It was the Craigdarroch boat – white with a green stripe about it, very genteel. So that I did not need to be a prophet or other than my father’s son to know that it was my daft Maxwell lass, whom they call May Mischief, that was oaring the wives across.
Now it made me vexed sore to think that she should hear all the on-ding of their ill tongues. Not that I cared for May Maxwell, or any like her, only it was galling to let a lass like that, who was for ever gibing and jeering, get new provision of powder and shot for her scoffs and fleers. The last time I saw her, when I went over to Craigdarroch myself for the milk – one day that it blew hard and I could not send the younger ones – she had a new word for me. She would call me no word but ‘Adullam’. Well, any name was better than ‘Sheep’, for when I saw her forming her mouth to say ‘Baa’, I could have run and left her in fair anger. But this she did but seldom.
‘Noo, Adullam,’ she cried, as soon as ever I could get near the onstead for yowching dogs, ‘this is a bonny business. I suppose ye think that ye are a great captain, like King David in the cave; and that a’ that are discontented and a’ that are in distress wull gather in till ye, an’ ye’ll be a captain ower them. A bonny-like captain, Adullam. There’s a braw big hoose up in Enbra’, I hear, that’s fu’ o’ sic captains. They pit strait-jackets on them there, an’ tie them up wi’ rapes.’
This I did not answer, remembering my father’s prescription.
‘O, ye think ye’re a braw lad,’ said the impudent besom. ‘Ye’re a’ braw lads, by your ain accounts, but some knotty twigs o’ the bonny birk wad fit ye better than so mony “captains.” I’ll speak to my faither about that!’ she said, making believe to go off.
Now when she spoke in this fashion I got a great deal of comfort just from saying over and over to myself, ‘Ye impudent besom! Ye impudent besom!’ So before I was aware, out the words came; and then in a moment I was horrified at the sound of my own voice.
I had never so spoken to a young woman before; indeed seldom to the breed at all. For my father and I kept ourselves very close to ourselves in Rathan Isle as long as he lived.
But instead of being offended the daft lassie threw back her head and laughed. She had close curls like a boy, and her way of laughing was strange, and smote me as though some elf were tapping down at the bottom of my throat with his forefinger. There was something witching about her laughter.
‘Weel dune, Adullam, ye’ll be nane sic a sumph some day, when ye get the calf conceit ta’en oot o’ ye and your hair cut,’ said she.
‘Let my hair alane – my hair’s no meddlin’ you!’ I said, so coltish and stupid that I fair hated the lass for humbling me that way – me that had so good an opinion of myself from living much alone.
So it was small wonder that the thought of her hearing what the pair of old randy wives had to say to me for leading their precious sons astray was like gall and wormwood.
