Читать книгу The Raiders: Being Some Passages In The Life Of John Faa, Lord And Earl Of Little Egypt - Samuel R. Crockett - Страница 15

BUT I PROMISED Silver Sand a chapter to himself. Before all be done the justice of this will be acknowledged. Silver Sand was at that time and for long after, a problem like those they give to the collegers at Edinburgh, which the longer you look at, grow the more difficult. To begin with, there seemed nothing uncanny about Silver Sand more than about my clogs with their soles of birk. But after you knew him a while, one strange and unaccountable characteristic after another emerged and set you to thinking. We shall take the plain things first.

Silver Sand was a slenderish man, of middle height, stooped in the shoulders, and with exceedingly long arms, which he carried swinging at his sides as if they belonged to somebody else who had hung them there to drip. These arms were somehow malformed, but as none had seen Silver Sand without his coat, no one had found out exactly what was wrong. Also he was not chancy to ask a question of. It was curious, however, to see him grasp everything from a spoon to a plough-handle or a long scythe for meadow hay, with the palm ever downwards.

Silver Sand made no secret of his calling and livelihood. He had a cuddie and a dog, both wonderful beasts of their kind – the donkey, the largest and choicest of its breed – the dog, the greatest and fiercest of his – a wolf-hound of the race only kept by the hill gypsies, not many removes in blood from their hereditary enemy. This fierce brute padded softly by his master’s side as he in his turn walked by the side of the donkey, not one of the three raising a head or apparently looking either to the right or to the left.

I had known Silver Sand ever since I was a lad. It so chanced that I had been over to the mainland by the shell-causeway that was dry at every ebb tide. I went to gather blackberries, which did not grow in any plenty on Rogues’ Island. Now in the tangle of the copse it happened that I heard a great outcry of boys. I made straight for them as a young dog goes to a collie-shangie of its kind – by instinct, as it were. Here I found half a dozen laddies of my own age, or a little older, who were torturing a donkey. There is no doubt that the animal could have turned the tables on its tormentors but for the fact that it was shackled with a chain and block about its forelegs, so that every time it turned to spread its hoofs at its enemies, it collapsed on its side. When I got near to it the poor beast had given up trying to defend itself, and stood most pitifully still, sleeking back its ears and shutting the lids down on its meek eyes to ward off the rain of blows.

Now whatever be my own iniquities I never could abide ill deeds done to dumb things. So I went into the fray like a young tiger. I had no skill or science of my hands, but with nails and teeth, with clog-shod feet and plenty of wild-cat good will, I made pretty fair handling of the first half-dozen, till a great lout came behind, and with the knob of a branch laid me on the grass. It had gone ill with the donkey and worse with me – for I was far from popular with the village lads – but for the advent of Silver Sand and his dog, Quharrie. Then there were sore dowps and torn breeks among the Orraland callants that night. Also their mothers attended to them, and that soundly, for coming home with their clothes in such a state. The donkey, Silver Sand, and I fell on one another’s necks. Afterwards Silver Sand introduced me to Quharrie – that terrible dog – making him tender me a great paw in a manner absurdly solemn, which made me kin and blood-brother to him all the days of my life. And I have received many a gift which I have found less useful, as you shall hear.

In these troubled times to be a third with Silver Sand and Quharrie, was better than to be the Pope’s nephew. So in this curious way began my friendship with Silver Sand.

From that day to this Silver Sand came to Rogues’ Island and Rathan Tower every month. He made journeys of three weeks’ length to all the farm-towns and herds’ cothouses in the lirks of the hills, with keel in winter and scythe-sand in summer – and it may be a kenning of something stronger, that had never King George’s seal on it. But I asked him nothing of this last.

At any rate he had the freedom of the hill fastness of the gypsies up by the Cooran and the Dungeon of Buchan, and he would make my blood run cold with tales of their cruelty and wrong-doing, and of the terror which they spread all through Carrick and the hill country of Galloway.

It was a heartsome sight to see the encampment of Silver Sand by the little burnside, that came down from the high spring on the top of Rathan Isle. It was aye like a breath of thyme to me. For one thing the place was really green all the year round, and seemed to keep hidden about it the genius of the spring.

Silver Sand and Quharrie, his great wolf-dog, appeared there with a kind of regular irregularity, so that we grew to expect them. Some morning, looking out of my deep-set wicket in the high old house of Rathan, there would be a whiff of blue wood smoke rising down upon the side of the Rathan Linn, which made me hurry on my clothes and omit my prayers, which indeed are not so pressing in the morning.

When I came in sight of the encampment I usually ran, for there I would see Silver Sand pottering about in front of his bit tent, with a frying-pan or a little black cannikin hung above his fire from three crooked poles in the fashion he had learned from the gypsies. Whenever I think of Paradise, to this day my mind runs on gypsy poles, and a clear stream birling down among trees of birk and ash that cower in the hollow of the glen from the south-west wind, and of Silver Sand frying Loch Grannoch trout upon a skirling pan. Ah, to me it was ever the prime of the morning and the spring of the year when Silver Sand camped on Rathan.

‘Shure, the top av the mornin’ to ye, Pathrick!’ cried Silver Sand, as soon as he had sight of me. He had a queer, smileless humour of his own, and often used to pretend that I was an evergreen Paddy because my father, for my future sins, had dubbed me Patrick.

‘Shure, an’ the same to you, and manny av thim, Brian Boru!’ it was my invariable custom to reply, which pleased him much. Then I would get a red speckled trout fresh out of the pan, which the night before had steered his easy way through the clear granite-filtered water of Loch Skerrow. It was hardly food for sinful mortals. And all the time Silver Sand told me strange tales and stirred the cold potatoes in the pan where the trouts had been frying, till they were burned crisp and delicious. On such mornings there were no breakfasts for me at all in the house. Indeed as long as Silver Sand remained on Isle Rathan, I only looked in occasionally at the tower to see that all went well, but if the weather were good I did not trouble the inside of it.

As for Silver Sand he never was comfortable inside a room for more than half an hour together. The wide lift was his house, and sun or shine, rain or fair, made little difference to him.

The tales he told about the wild country by the springs of Dee set me all agog to go there, and I often asked him to take me with him.

‘Ah, Pathrick, my lad, it’s no for me to be leading you there, and you with neither father nor mother. It’s a wild country and the decent folk in it are few. Wi’ man, I dinna even take Neddy into the thick of it. “No farder than the Hoose o’ the Hill for Neddy,” says he, “and thank you kindly.” But Quharrie and me’s another matter. Where Quharrie and his master canna gang, the Ill Thief himsel’ daurna ride. For Silver Sand can fill his bags o’ the fine, white granite piles on Loch Enoch shore, watched by a dozen of the bloody Macatericks and the wilder Marshalls, an’ no yin o’ them a hair the wiser.’

And this was no idle boast, as you shall hear ere the story ends.

Here I drew a long breath. These tales made my quiet life here on the island seem no better than that of the green mould which grew on the ‘thruch’ stones in the kirkyard.

I longed for the jingle-jangle of the Freetraders’ harness or the scent of the outlaws’ camp-fires among the great granite boulders.

‘No yin o’ them a hair the wiser,’ said Silver Sand, striking a light with his flint and steel, and transferring the flame when it lowed up to the bowl of his tiny elf ’s pipe, so small that it just let in the top of his little finger as he settled the tobacco in it as it began to burn.

So the days went on and the lads at the house buzzed about and went and came to their meals – the Allisons and Rab Nicoll. Only little Jerry came down to us by the waterside, for Silver Sand could be ‘doin’ wi’ him’ – boys in general, and even those under my protection, he held in utter abhorrence. Once Jerry brought tidings.

‘There’s a sharp-nosed brig with high sails setting in for Briggus Bay or Maxwell’s landing. She’s been beating off and on a’ day with her tops’ls reefed,’ said Jerry, in a careless way which intimated that he was of opinion that his news was important, but which yet left him a porthole if it did not turn out so to be.

In a moment Silver Sand sprang up the side of the bank to a favourite lookout station of his own.

He came down shaking his head. The news appeared important enough to Silver Sand to please even Jerry, who loved excitement of every sort.

‘There’s deviltry afoot!’ he said. ‘That’s Yawkins and his crew, an’ Silver Sand kens what they’re after brawly, the ill-contriving wirricows – but we’ll diddle them yet.’

Then looking down at the great dog, he cried, with a kind of daft glee:

Up an’ waur them a’, Quharrie,

Up an’ waur them a’, man;

There’s no a Dutchman i’ the pack

That’s ony guid ava, man – Hooch!

And Silver Sand, usually so dignified, executed a fandango on the beach, his long arms hanging wide from his sides and his light and limber legs twinkling. Quharrie also lifted up his forepaws, moving them solemnly as though he wished to join his master in his reel.

So it wore to evening and the stars came out. Silver Sand seemed far from easy. He ran repeatedly up to the lookout place, which he called Glim Point, but ever came back unsatisfied.

‘It’s no dark aneuch yet to see weel!’ he said, for his eyes seemed to be of greatest service at night when the light was shut from the eyes of others.

‘We’ll hae veesitors the nicht, doon by the Rogues’ Hole, I’m thinkin’,’ said Silver Sand.

It was about half an hour past nine o’clock when Silver Sand’s nervousness became very apparent and unsettling to myself. He ran about his camp and up to the hilltop – in and out all the while, like a dog at a fair. Quharrie also bristled up his hair and shot his short, sharp ears forward, and under his black lips there was a gleam of white teeth, like the foam line on the shore on a dark, blowy night.

Quite suddenly a light flickered out of the gloom across the water in the direction of the farmhouse of Craigdarroch, and then Silver Sand’s agitation became pitiful to see. He ordered me about like a dog – nay, like a very cur, for never a word uncivil did he say to Quharrie that was a dog indeed. The beast seemed to understand him without a word, watching his look with fierce eyes that shone like untwinkling stars.

‘Gae to the House of Rathan, and bid the lads bar every door and no sleep a wink the nicht. Tell them to loaden a’ your faither’s guns, but not to shoot unless the ill-doers try to break in the door. It’s little likely that they’ll meddle wi’ the big hoose o’ Rathan, that has no store of nowt or horse beasts. But wha kens? – wha kens? – the gleds are fatherin’ fra the north an’ frae the sooth. Ootland Dutchmen an’ French Monzies – broken men frae a’ the ports o’ Scotland, and the riff-raff o’ the Dungeon o’ Buchan’.

I ran to the house and startled the lads with my news. And here again was a strange thing. The boys that had hidden from their mothers so lately brisked up, and if any of them were down-hearted about their position, they did not let the others see it. It had been recognised among us that we might have some trouble with the bad crew of smugglers, whom my father’s reputation as a marksman and past-master in the Freetrade craft, had hitherto kept at a distance. But even I had no small conceit of myself, and I thought that I could soon make myself as respected among any Yawkins and his crew as ever my father had been. In which, as it happened, I was grievously mistaken, for without Silver Sand, I had been no better than a herring hung by the gills in the hand of these unscrupulous men. I named Andrew Allison captain of the stronghold of Rathan till my return, for we did everything in military fashion; and gave him the key of the glazed press of guns, which we often spent our wet days in oiling with immense care and forethought. It gave me pleasure only to look upon the row of them, shining like silver on the rack.

For myself I took a pair of pistols, and was for bringing the same out to Silver Sand, when I remembered that without doubt he had his own by him.