Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (243 page)

All the time of my stay on the rock we lived well.  We had small ale and brandy, and oatmeal, of which we made our porridge night and morning.  At times a boat came from the Castleton and brought us a quarter of mutton, for the sheep upon the rock we must not touch, these being specially fed to market.  The geese were unfortunately out of season, and we let them be.  We fished ourselves, and yet more often made the geese to fish for us: observing one when he had made a capture and searing him from his prey ere he had swallowed it.

The strange nature of this place, and the curiosities with which it abounded, held me busy and amused.  Escape being impossible, I was allowed my entire liberty, and continually explored the surface of the isle wherever it might support the foot of man.  The old garden of the prison was still to be observed, with flowers and pot-herbs running wild, and some ripe cherries on a bush.  A little lower stood a chapel or a hermit’s cell; who built or dwelt in it, none may know, and the thought of its age made a ground of many meditations.  The prison, too, where I now bivouacked with Highland cattle-thieves, was a place full of history, both human and divine.  I thought it strange so many saints and martyrs should have gone by there so recently, and left not so much as a leaf out of their Bibles, or a name carved upon the wall, while the rough soldier lads that mounted guard upon the battlements had filled the neighbourhood with their mementoes - broken tobacco-pipes for the most part, and that in a surprising plenty, but also metal buttons from their coats.  There were times when I thought I could have heard the pious sound of psalms out of the martyr’s dungeons, and seen the soldiers tramp the ramparts with their glinting pipes, and the dawn rising behind them out of the North Sea.

No doubt it was a good deal Andie and his tales that put these fancies in my head.  He was extraordinarily well acquainted with the story of the rock in all particulars, down to the names of private soldiers, his father having served there in that same capacity.  He was gifted besides with a natural genius for narration, so that the people seemed to speak and the things to be done before your face.  This gift of his and my assiduity to listen brought us the more close together.  I could not honestly deny but what I liked him; I soon saw that he liked me; and indeed, from the first I had set myself out to capture his good-will.  An odd circumstance (to be told presently) effected this beyond my expectation; but even in early days we made a friendly pair to be a prisoner and his gaoler.

I should trifle with my conscience if I pretended my stay upon the Bass was wholly disagreeable.  It seemed to me a safe place, as though I was escaped there out of my troubles.  No harm was to be offered me; a material impossibility, rock and the deep sea, prevented me from fresh attempts; I felt I had my life safe and my honour safe, and there were times when I allowed myself to gloat on them like stolen waters.  At other times my thoughts were very different, I recalled how strong I had expressed myself both to Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected that my captivity upon the Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife and Lothian, was a thing I should be thought more likely to have invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, I must pass for a boaster and a coward.  Now I would take this lightly enough; tell myself that so long as I stood well with Catriona Drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and spilled water; and thence pass off into those meditations of a lover which are so delightful to himself and must always appear so surprisingly idle to a reader.  But anon the fear would take me otherwise; I would be shaken with a perfect panic of self-esteem, and these supposed hard judgments appear an injustice impossible to be supported.  With that another train of thought would he presented, and I had scarce begun to be concerned about men’s judgments of myself, than I was haunted with the remembrance of James Stewart in his dungeon and the lamentations of his wife.  Then, indeed, passion began to work in me; I could not forgive myself to sit there idle: it seemed (if I were a man at all) that I could fly or swim out of my place of safety; and it was in such humours and to amuse my self-reproaches that I would set the more particularly to win the good side of Andie Dale.

At last, when we two were alone on the summit of the rock on a bright morning, I put in some hint about a bribe.  He looked at me, cast back his head, and laughed out loud.

“Ay, you’re funny, Mr. Dale,” said I, “but perhaps if you’ll glance an eye upon that paper you may change your note.”

The stupid Highlanders had taken from me at the time of my seizure nothing but hard money, and the paper I now showed Andie was an acknowledgment from the British Linen Company for a considerable sum.

He read it.  “Troth, and ye’re nane sae ill aff,” said he.

“I thought that would maybe vary your opinions,” said I.

“Hout!” said he.  “It shows me ye can bribe; but I’m no to be bribit.”

“We’ll see about that yet a while,” says I.  “And first, I’ll show you that I know what I am talking.  You have orders to detain me here till after Thursday, 21st September.”

“Ye’re no a’thegether wrong either,” says Andie.  “I’m to let you gang, bar orders contrair, on Saturday, the 23rd.”

I could not but feel there was something extremely insidious in this arrangement.  That I was to re-appear precisely in time to be too late would cast the more discredit on my tale, if I were minded to tell one; and this screwed me to fighting point.

“Now then, Andie, you that kens the world, listen to me, and think while ye listen,” said I.  “I know there are great folks in the business, and I make no doubt you have their names to go upon.  I have seen some of them myself since this affair began, and said my say into their faces too.  But what kind of a crime would this be that I had committed? or what kind of a process is this that I am fallen under?  To be apprehended by some ragged John-Hielandman on August 30th, carried to a rickle of old stones that is now neither fort nor gaol (whatever it once was) but just the gamekeeper’s lodge of the Bass Rock, and set free again, September 23rd, as secretly as I was first arrested - does that sound like law to you? or does it sound like justice? or does it not sound honestly like a piece of some low dirty intrigue, of which the very folk that meddle with it are ashamed?”

“I canna gainsay ye, Shaws.  It looks unco underhand,” says Andie.  “And werenae the folk guid sound Whigs and true-blue Presbyterians I would has seen them ayont Jordan and Jeroozlem or I would have set hand to it.”

“The Master of Lovat’ll be a braw Whig,” says I, “and a grand Presbyterian.”

“I ken naething by him,” said he.  “I hae nae trokings wi’ Lovats.”

“No, it’ll be Prestongrange that you’ll be dealing with,” said I.

“Ah, but I’ll no tell ye that,” said Andie.

“Little need when I ken,” was my retort.

“There’s just the ae thing ye can be fairly sure of, Shaws,” says Andie.  “And that is that (try as ye please) I’m no dealing wi’ yoursel’; nor yet I amnae goin’ to,” he added.

“Well, Andie, I see I’ll have to be speak out plain with you,” I replied.  And told him so much as I thought needful of the facts.

He heard me out with some serious interest, and when I had done, seemed to consider a little with himself.

“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, “its 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.”

“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.  Ye’ll have heard tell of Prophet Peden.  There was never the wale of him sinsyne, and it’s a question wi’ mony if there ever was his like afore.  He was wild’s a peat-hag, fearsome to look at, fearsome to hear, his face like the day of judgment.  The voice of him was like a solan’s and dinnle’d in folks’ lugs, and the words of him like coals of fire.

Now there was a lass on the rock, and I think she had little to do, for it was nae place far decent weemen; but it seems she was bonny, and her and Tam Dale were very well agreed.  It befell that Peden was in the gairden his lane at the praying when Tam and the lass cam by; and what should the lassie do but mock with laughter at the sant’s devotions?  He rose and lookit at the twa o’ them, and Tam’s knees knoitered thegether at the look of him.  But whan he spak, it was mair in sorrow than in anger.  ‘Poor thing, poor thing!” says he, and it was the lass he lookit at, “I hear you skirl and laugh,” he says, “but the Lord has a deid shot prepared for you, and at that surprising judgment ye shall skirl but the ae time!”  Shortly thereafter she was daundering on the craigs wi’ twa-three sodgers, and it was a blawy day.  There cam a gowst of wind, claught her by the coats, and awa’ wi’ her bag and baggage.  And it was remarked by the sodgers that she gied but the ae skirl.