coming over here in thousands to tak the jobs of the lads that are doing their duty. I was speakin’ last week to a widow woman that keeps a wee dairy down the Dalmarnock Road. She has two sons, and both in the airmy, one in the Cameronians and one a prisoner in Germany. She was telling me that she could not keep goin’ any more, lacking the help of the boys, though she had worked her fingers to the bone. “Surely it’s a crool job, Mr Amos,” she says, “that the Goavernment should tak baith my laddies, and I’ll maybe never see them again, and let the Irish gang free and tak the bread frae our mouth. At the gasworks across the road they took on a hundred Irish last week, and every yin o’ them as young and well set up as you would ask to see. And my wee Davie, him that’s in Germany, had aye a weak chest, and Jimmy was troubled wi’ a bowel complaint. That’s surely no justice!”. . . .’
He broke off and lit a match by drawing it across the seat of his trousers. ‘It’s time I got the gas lichtit. There’s some men coming here at half-ten.’
As the gas squealed and flickered in the lighting, he sketched for me the coming guests. ‘There’s Macnab and Niven, two o’ my colleagues. And there’s Gilkison of the Boiler-fitters, and a lad Wilkie–he’s got consumption, and writes wee bits in the papers. And there’s a queer chap o’ the name o’ Tombs–they tell me he comes frae Cambridge, and is a kind of a professor there–anyway he’s more stuffed wi’ havers than an egg wi’ meat. He telled me he was here to get at the heart o’ the workingman, and I said to him that he would hae to look a bit further than the sleeve o’ the workin’-man’s jaicket. There’s no muckle in his head, poor soul. Then there’ll be Tam Norie, him that edits our weekly paper–_Justice for All_. Tam’s a humorist and great on Robert Burns, but he hasna the balance o’ a dwinin’ teetotum . . . Ye’ll understand, Mr Brand, that I keep my mouth shut in such company, and don’t express my own views more than is absolutely necessary. I criticize whiles, and that gives me a name of whunstane common-sense, but I never let my tongue wag. The feck o’ the lads comin’ the night are not the real workingman–they’re just the froth on the pot, but it’s the froth that will be useful to you. Remember they’ve heard tell o’ ye already, and ye’ve some sort o’ reputation to keep up.’
‘Will Mr Abel Gresson be here?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Him and me havena yet got to the point o’ payin’ visits. But the men that come will be Gresson’s friends and they’ll speak of ye to him. It’s the best kind of introduction ye could seek.’
The knocker sounded, and Mr Amos hastened to admit the first comers. These were Macnab and Wilkie: the one a decent middle-aged man with a fresh-washed face and a celluloid collar, the other a round-shouldered youth, with lank hair and the large eyes and luminous skin which are the marks of phthisis. ‘This is Mr Brand boys, from South Africa,’ was Amos’s presentation. Presently came Niven, a bearded giant, and Mr Norie, the editor, a fat dirty fellow smoking a rank cigar. Gilkison of the Boiler-fitters, when he arrived, proved to be a pleasant young man in spectacles who spoke with an educated voice and clearly belonged to a slightly different social scale. Last came Tombs, the Cambridge ‘professor, a lean youth with a sour mouth and eyes that reminded me of Launcelot Wake.
‘Ye’ll no be a mawgnate, Mr Brand, though ye come from South Africa,’ said Mr Norie with a great guffaw.
‘Not me. I’m a working engineer,’ I said. ‘My father was from Scotland, and this is my first visit to my native country, as my friend Mr Amos was telling you.’
The consumptive looked at me suspiciously. ‘We’ve got two–three of the comrades here that the cawpitalist Government expelled from the Transvaal. If ye’re our way of thinking, ye will maybe ken them.’
I said I would be overjoyed to meet them, but that at the time of the outrage in question I had been working on a mine a thousand miles further north.
Then ensued an hour of extraordinary talk. Tombs in his sing-song namby-pamby University voice was concerned to get information. He asked endless questions, chiefly of Gilkison, who was the only one who really understood his language. I thought I had never seen anyone quite so fluent and so futile, and yet there was a kind of feeble violence in him like a demented sheep. He was engaged in venting some private academic spite against society, and I thought that in a revolution he would be the class of lad I would personally conduct to the nearest lamp-post. And all the while Amos and Macnab and Niven carried on their own conversation about the affairs of their society, wholly impervious to the tornado raging around them.
It was Mr Norie, the editor, who brought me into the discussion.
‘Our South African friend is very blate,’ he said in his boisterous way. ‘Andra, if this place of yours wasn’t so damned teetotal and we had a dram apiece, we might get his tongue loosened. I want to hear what he’s got to say about the war. You told me this morning he was sound in the faith.’
‘I said no such thing,’ said Mr Amos. ‘As ye ken well, Tam Norie, I don’t judge soundness on that matter as you judge it. I’m for the war myself, subject to certain conditions that I’ve often stated. I know nothing of Mr Brand’s opinions, except that he’s a good democrat, which is more than I can say of some o’ your friends.’
‘Hear to Andra,’ laughed Mr Norie. ‘He’s thinkin’ the inspector in the Socialist State would be a waur kind of awristocrat then the Duke of Buccleuch. Weel, there’s maybe something in that. But about the war he’s wrong. Ye ken my views, boys. This war was made by the cawpitalists, and it has been fought by the workers, and it’s the workers that maun have the ending of it. That day’s comin’ very near. There are those that want to spin it out till Labour is that weak it can be pit in chains for the rest o’ time. That’s the manoeuvre we’re out to prevent. We’ve got to beat the Germans, but it’s the workers that has the right to judge when the enemy’s beaten and not the cawpitalists. What do you say, Mr Brand?’
Mr Norie had obviously pinned his colours to the fence, but he gave me the chance I had been looking for. I let them have my views with a vengeance, and these views were that for the sake of democracy the war must be ended. I flatter myself I put my case well, for I had got up every rotten argument and I borrowed largely from Launcelot Wake’s armoury. But I didn’t put it too well, for I had a very exact notion of the impression I wanted to produce. I must seem to be honest and in earnest, just a bit of a fanatic, but principally a hard-headed businessman who knew when the time had come to make a deal. Tombs kept interrupting me with imbecile questions, and I had to sit on him. At the end Mr Norie hammered with his pipe on the table.
‘That’ll sort ye, Andra. Ye’re entertain’ an angel unawares. What do ye say to that, my man?’
Mr Amos shook his head. ‘I’ll no deny there’s something in it, but I’m not convinced that the Germans have got enough of a wheepin’.’ Macnab agreed with him; the others were with me. Norie was for getting me to write an article for his paper, and the consumptive wanted me to address a meeting.
‘Wull ye say a’ that over again the morn’s night down at our hall in Newmilns Street? We’ve got a lodge meeting o’ the I.W.B., and I’ll make them pit ye in the programme.’ He kept his luminous eyes, like a sick dog’s, fixed on me, and I saw that I had made one ally. I told him I had come to Glasgow to learn and not to teach, but I would miss no chance of testifying to my faith.
‘Now, boys, I’m for my bed,’ said Amos, shaking the dottle from his pipe. ‘Mr Tombs, I’ll conduct ye the morn over the Brigend works, but I’ve had enough clavers for one evening. I’m a man that wants his eight hours’ sleep.’
The old fellow saw them to the door, and came back to me with the ghost of a grin in his face.
‘A queer crowd, Mr Brand! Macnab didna like what ye said. He had a laddie killed in Gallypoly, and he’s no lookin’ for peace this side the grave. He’s my best friend in Glasgow. He’s an elder in the Gaelic kirk in the Cowcaddens, and I’m what ye call a free-thinker, but we’re wonderful agreed on the fundamentals. Ye spoke your bit verra well, I must admit. Gresson will hear tell of ye as a promising recruit.’
‘It’s a rotten job,’ I said.
‘Ay, it’s a rotten job. I often feel like vomiting over it mysel’. But it’s no for us to complain. There’s waur jobs oot in France for better men . . . A word in your ear, Mr Brand. Could ye not look a bit more sheepish? Ye stare folk ower straight in the een, like a Hieland sergeant-major up at Maryhill Barracks.’ And he winked slowly and grotesquely with his left eye.
He marched to a cupboard and produced a black bottle and glass. ‘I’m blue-ribbon myself, but ye’ll be the better of something to tak the taste out of your mouth. There’s Loch Katrine water at the pipe there . . . As I was saying, there’s not much ill in that lot. Tombs is a black offence, but a dominie’s a dominie all the world over. They may crack about their Industrial Workers and the braw things they’re going to do, but there’s a wholesome dampness about the tinder on Clydeside. They should try Ireland.’
Supposing,’ I said, ‘there was a really clever man who wanted to help the enemy. You think he could do little good by stirring up trouble in the shops here?’
‘I’m positive.’
‘And if he were a shrewd fellow, he’d soon tumble to that?’
‘Ay.’
‘Then if he still stayed on here he would be after bigger game– something really dangerous and damnable?’
Amos drew down his brows and looked me in the face. ‘I see what ye’re ettlin’ at. Ay! That would be my conclusion. I came to it weeks syne about the man ye’ll maybe meet the morn’s night.’
Then from below the bed he pulled a box from which he drew a handsome flute. ‘Ye’ll forgive me, Mr Brand, but I aye like a tune before I go to my bed. Macnab says his prayers, and I have a tune on the flute, and the principle is just the same.’
So that singular evening closed with music–very sweet and true renderings of old Border melodies like ‘My Peggy is a young thing’, and ‘When the kye come hame’. I fell asleep with a vision of Amos, his face all puckered up at the mouth and a wandering sentiment in his eye, recapturing in his dingy world the emotions of a boy.
* * * * *
The widow-woman from next door, who acted as house-keeper, cook, and general factotum to the establishment, brought me shaving water next morning, but I had to go without a bath. When I entered the kitchen I found no one there, but while I consumed the inevitable ham and egg, Amos arrived back for breakfast. He brought with him the morning’s paper.
‘The _Herald_ says there’s been a big battle at Eepers,’ he announced.
I tore open the sheet and read of the great attack of 31 July which was spoiled by the weather. ‘My God!’ I cried. ‘They’ve got St Julien and that dirty Frezenberg ridge . . . and Hooge . . . and Sanctuary Wood. I know every inch of the damned place. . . .’
‘Mr Brand,’ said a warning voice, ‘that’ll never do. If our friends last night heard ye talk like that ye might as well tak the train back to London . . . They’re speakin’ about ye in the yards this morning. ye’ll get a good turnout at your meeting the night, but they’re Sayin’ that the polis will interfere. That mightna be a bad thing, but I trust ye to show discretion, for ye’ll not be muckle use to onybody if they jyle ye in Duke Street. I hear Gresson will be there with a fraternal message from his lunatics in America . . . I’ve arranged that ye go down to Tam Norie this afternoon and give him a hand with his bit paper. Tam will tell ye the whole clash o’ the West country, and I look to ye to keep him off the drink. He’s aye arguin’ that writin’ and drinkin’ gang thegither, and quotin’ Robert Burns, but the creature has a wife and five bairns dependin’ on him.’
I spent a fantastic day. For two hours I sat in Norie’s dirty den, while he smoked and orated, and, when he remembered his business, took down in shorthand my impressions of the Labour situation in South Africa for his rag. They were fine breezy impressions, based on the most whole-hearted ignorance, and if they ever reached the Rand I wonder what my friends there made of Cornelius Brand, their author. I stood him dinner in an indifferent eating-house in a street off the Broomielaw, and thereafter had a drink with him in a public-house, and was introduced to some of his less reputable friends.
About tea-time I went back to Amos’s lodgings, and spent an hour or so writing a long letter to Mr Ivery. I described to him everybody I had met, I gave highly coloured views of the explosive material on the Clyde, and I deplored the lack of clearheadedness in the progressive forces. I drew an elaborate picture of Amos, and deduced from it that the Radicals were likely to be a bar to true progress. ‘They have switched their old militancy,’ I wrote, ‘on to another track, for with them it is a matter of conscience to be always militant.’ I finished up with some very crude remarks on economics culled from the table-talk of the egregious Tombs. It was the kind of letter which I hoped would establish my character in his mind as an industrious innocent.
Seven o’clock found me in Newmilns Street, where I was seized upon by Wilkie. He had put on a clean collar for the occasion and had partially washed his thin face. The poor fellow had a cough that shook him like the walls of a power-house when the dynamos are going.
He was very apologetic about Amos. ‘Andra belongs to a past worrld,’ he said. ‘He has a big reputation in his society, and he’s a fine fighter, but he has no kind of Vision, if ye understand me. He’s an auld Gladstonian, and that’s done and damned in Scotland. He’s not a Modern, Mr Brand, like you and me. But tonight ye’ll meet one or two chaps that’ll be worth your while to ken. Ye’ll maybe no go quite as far as them, but ye’re on the same road. I’m hoping for the day when we’ll have oor Councils of Workmen and Soldiers like the Russians all over the land and dictate our terms to the pawrasites in Pawrliament. They tell me, too, the boys in the trenches are comin’ round to our side.’
We entered the hall by a back door, and in a little waiting-room I was introduced to some of the speakers. They were a scratch lot as seen in that dingy place. The chairman was a shop-steward in one of the Societies, a fierce little rat of a man, who spoke with a cockney accent and addressed me as ‘Comrade’. But one of them roused my liveliest interest. I heard the name of Gresson, and turned to find a fellow of about thirty-five, rather sprucely dressed, with a flower in his buttonhole. ‘Mr Brand,’ he said, in a rich American voice which recalled Blenkiron’s. ‘Very pleased to meet you, sir. We have Come from remote parts of the globe to be present at this gathering.’ I noticed that he had reddish hair, and small bright eyes, and a nose with a droop like a Polish Jew’s.
As soon as we reached the platform I saw that there was going to be trouble. The hall was packed to the door, and in all the front half there was the kind of audience I expected to see–working-men of the political type who before the war would have thronged to party meetings. But not all the crowd at the back had come to listen. Some were scallawags, some looked like better-class clerks out for a spree, and there was a fair quantity of khaki. There were also one or two gentlemen not strictly sober.
The chairman began by putting his foot in it. He said we were there tonight to protest against the continuation of the war and to form a branch of the new British Council of Workmen and Soldiers. He told them with a fine mixture of metaphors that we had got to take the reins into our own hands, for the men who were running the war had their own axes to grind and were marching to oligarchy through the blood of the workers. He added that we had no quarrel with Germany half as bad as we had with our own capitalists. He looked forward to the day when British soldiers would leap from their trenches and extend the hand of friendship to their German comrades.
‘No me!’ said a solemn voice. ‘I’m not seekin’ a bullet in my wame,’–at which there was laughter and cat-calls.
Tombs followed and made a worse hash of it. He was determined to speak, as he would have put it, to democracy in its own language, so he said ‘hell’ several times, loudly but without conviction. Presently he slipped into the manner of the lecturer, and the audience grew restless. ‘I propose to ask myself a question–‘ he began, and from the back of the hall came–‘And a damned sully answer ye’ll get.’ After that there was no more Tombs.
I followed with extreme nervousness, and to my surprise got a fair hearing. I felt as mean as a mangy dog on a cold morning, for I hated to talk rot before soldiers–especially before a couple of Royal Scots Fusiliers, who, for all I knew, might have been in my own brigade. My line was the plain, practical, patriotic man, just come from the colonies, who looked at things with fresh eyes, and called for a new deal. I was very moderate, but to justify my appearance there I had to put in a wild patch or two, and I got these by impassioned attacks on the Ministry of Munitions. I mixed up a little mild praise of the Germans, whom I said I had known all over the world for decent fellows. I received little applause, but no marked dissent, and sat down with deep thankfulness.
The next speaker put the lid on it. I believe he was a noted agitator, who had already been deported. Towards him there was no lukewarmness, for one half of the audience cheered wildly when he rose, and the other half hissed and groaned. He began with whirlwind abuse of the idle rich, then of the middle-classes (he called them the ‘rich man’s flunkeys’), and finally of the Government. All that was fairly well received, for it is the fashion of the Briton to run down every Government and yet to be very averse to parting from it. Then he started on the soldiers and slanged the officers (‘gentry pups’ was his name for them), and the generals, whom he accused of idleness, of cowardice, and of habitual intoxication. He told us that our own kith and kin were sacrificed in every battle by leaders who had not the guts to share their risks. The Scots Fusiliers looked perturbed, as if they were in doubt of his meaning. Then he put it more plainly. ‘Will any soldier deny that the men are the barrage to keep the officers’ skins whole?’
‘That’s a bloody lee,’ said one of the Fusilier jocks.
The man took no notice of the interruption, being carried away by the torrent of his own rhetoric, but he had not allowed for the persistence of the interrupter. The jock got slowly to his feet, and announced that he wanted satisfaction. ‘If ye open your dirty gab to blagyird honest men, I’ll come up on the platform and wring your neck.’
At that there was a fine old row, some crying out ‘Order’, some ‘Fair play’, and some applauding. A Canadian at the back of the hall started a song, and there was an ugly press forward. The hall seemed to be moving up from the back, and already men were standing in all the passages and right to the edge of the platform. I did not like the look in the eyes of these new-comers, and among the crowd I saw several who were obviously plain-clothes policemen.
The chairman whispered a word to the speaker, who continued when the noise had temporarily died down. He kept off the army and returned to the Government, and for a little sluiced out pure anarchism. But he got his foot in it again, for he pointed to the Sinn Feiners as examples of manly independence. At that, pandemonium broke loose, and he never had another look in. There were several fights going on in the hall between the public and courageous supporters of the orator.
Then Gresson advanced to the edge of the platform in a vain endeavour to retrieve the day. I must say he did it uncommonly well. He was clearly a practised speaker, and for a moment his appeal ‘Now, boys, let’s cool down a bit and talk sense,’ had an effect. But the mischief had been done, and the crowd was surging round the lonely redoubt where we sat. Besides, I could see that for all his clever talk the meeting did not like the look of him. He was as mild as a turtle dove, but they wouldn’t stand for it. A missile hurtled past my nose, and I saw a rotten cabbage envelop the baldish head of the ex-deportee. Someone reached out a long arm and grabbed a chair, and with it took the legs from Gresson. Then the lights suddenly went out, and we retreated in good order by the platform door with a yelling crowd at our heels.
It was here that the plain-clothes men came in handy. They held the door while the ex-deportee was smuggled out by some side entrance. That class of lad would soon cease to exist but for the protection of the law which he would abolish. The rest of us, having less to fear, were suffered to leak into Newmilns Street. I found myself next to Gresson, and took his arm. There was something hard in his coat pocket.
Unfortunately there was a big lamp at the point where we emerged, and there for our confusion were the Fusilier jocks. Both were strung to fighting pitch, and were determined to have someone’s blood. Of me they took no notice, but Gresson had spoken after their ire had been roused, and was marked out as a victim. With a howl of joy they rushed for him.
I felt his hand steal to his side-pocket. ‘Let that alone, you fool,’ I growled in his ear.
‘Sure, mister,’ he said, and the next second we were in the thick of it.
It was like so many street fights I have seen–an immense crowd which surged up around us, and yet left a clear ring. Gresson and I got against the wall on the side-walk, and faced the furious soldiery. My intention was to do as little as possible, but the first minute convinced me that my companion had no idea how to use his fists, and I was mortally afraid that he would get busy with the gun in his pocket. It was that fear that brought me into the scrap. The jocks were sportsmen every bit of them, and only one advanced to the combat. He hit Gresson a clip on the jaw with his left, and but for the wall would have laid him out. I saw in the lamplight the vicious gleam in the American’s eye and the twitch of his hand to his pocket. That decided me to interfere and I got in front of him.
This brought the second jock into the fray. He was a broad, thickset fellow, of the adorable bandy-legged stocky type that I had seen go through the Railway Triangle at Arras as though it were blotting-paper. He had some notion of fighting, too, and gave me a rough time, for I had to keep edging the other fellow off Gresson.
‘Go home, you fool,’ I shouted. ‘Let this gentleman alone. I don’t want to hurt you.’
The only answer was a hook-hit which I just managed to guard, followed by a mighty drive with his right which I dodged so that he barked his knuckles on the wall. I heard a yell of rage, and observed that Gresson seemed to have kicked his assailant on the shin. I began to long for the police.
Then there was that swaying of the crowd which betokens the approach of the forces of law and order. But they were too late to prevent trouble. In self-defence I had to take my jock seriously, and got in my blow when he had overreached himself and lost his balance. I never hit anyone so unwillingly in my life. He went over like a poled ox, and measured his length on the causeway.
I found myself explaining things politely to the constables. ‘These men objected to this gentleman’s speech at the meeting, and I had to interfere to protect him. No, no! I don’t want to charge anybody. It was all a misunderstanding.’ I helped the stricken jock to rise and offered him ten bob for consolation.
He looked at me sullenly and spat on the ground. ‘Keep your dirty money,’ he said. ‘I’ll be even with ye yet, my man–you and that red-headed scab. I’ll mind the looks of ye the next time I see ye.’
Gresson was wiping the blood from his cheek with a silk handkerchief. ‘I guess I’m in your debt, Mr Brand,’ he said. ‘You may bet I won’t forget it.’
* * * * *
I returned to an anxious Amos. He heard my story in silence and his only comment was–‘Well done the Fusiliers!’
‘It might have been worse, I’ll not deny,’ he went on. ‘Ye’ve established some kind of a claim upon Gresson, which may come in handy . . . Speaking about Gresson, I’ve news for ye. He’s sailing on Friday as purser in the _Tobermory_. The _Tobermory’s_ a boat that wanders every month up the West Highlands as far as Stornoway. I’ve arranged for ye to take a trip on that boat, Mr Brand.’
I nodded. ‘How did you find out that?’ I asked.
‘It took me some finding,’ he said dryly, ‘but I’ve ways and means. Now I’ll not trouble ye with advice, for ye ken your job as well as me. But I’m going north myself the morn to look after some of the Ross-shire wuds, and I’ll be in the way of getting telegrams at the Kyle. Ye’ll keep that in mind. Keep in mind, too, that I’m a great reader of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and that I’ve a cousin of the name of Ochterlony.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Various Doings in the West
The _Tobermory_ was no ship for passengers. Its decks were littered with a hundred oddments, so that a man could barely walk a step without tacking, and my bunk was simply a shelf in the frowsty little saloon, where the odour of ham and eggs hung like a fog. I joined her at Greenock and took a turn on deck with the captain after tea, when he told me the names of the big blue hills to the north. He had a fine old copper-coloured face and side-whiskers like an archbishop, and, having spent all his days beating up the western seas, had as many yarns in his head as Peter himself.
‘On this boat,’ he announced, ‘we don’t ken what a day may bring forth. I may put into Colonsay for twa hours and bide there three days. I get a telegram at Oban and the next thing I’m awa ayont Barra. Sheep’s the difficult business. They maun be fetched for the sales, and they’re dooms slow to lift. So ye see it’s not what ye call a pleasure trip, Maister Brand.’
Indeed it wasn’t, for the confounded tub wallowed like a fat sow as soon as we rounded a headland and got the weight of the south-western wind. When asked my purpose, I explained that I was a colonial of Scots extraction, who was paying his first visit to his fatherland and wanted to explore the beauties of the West Highlands. I let him gather that I was not rich in this world’s goods.
‘Ye’ll have a passport?’ he asked. ‘They’ll no let ye go north o’ Fort William without one.’
Amos had said nothing about passports, so I looked blank.
‘I could keep ye on board for the whole voyage,’ he went on, ‘but ye wouldna be permitted to land. If ye’re seekin’ enjoyment, it would be a poor job sittin’ on this deck and admirin’ the works o’ God and no allowed to step on the pier-head. Ye should have applied to the military gentlemen in Glesca. But ye’ve plenty o’ time to make up your mind afore we get to Oban. We’ve a heap o’ calls to make Mull and Islay way.’
The purser came up to inquire about my ticket, and greeted me with a grin.
‘Ye’re acquaint with Mr Gresson, then?’ said the captain. ‘Weel, we’re a cheery wee ship’s company, and that’s the great thing on this kind o’ job.’
I made but a poor supper, for the wind had risen to half a gale, and I saw hours of wretchedness approaching. The trouble with me is that I cannot be honestly sick and get it over. Queasiness and headache beset me and there is no refuge but bed. I turned into my bunk, leaving the captain and the mate smoking shag not six feet from my head, and fell into a restless sleep. When I woke the place was empty, and smelt vilely of stale tobacco and cheese. My throbbing brows made sleep impossible, and I tried to ease them by staggering upon deck. I saw a clear windy sky, with every star as bright as a live coal, and a heaving waste of dark waters running to ink-black hills. Then a douche of spray caught me and sent me down the companion to my bunk again, where I lay for hours trying to make a plan of campaign.
I argued that if Amos had wanted me to have a passport he would have provided one, so I needn’t bother my head about that. But it was my business to keep alongside Gresson, and if the boat stayed a week in some port and he went off ashore, I must follow him. Having no passport I would have to be always dodging trouble, which would handicap my movements and in all likelihood make me more conspicuous than I wanted. I guessed that Amos had denied me the passport for the very reason that he wanted Gresson to think me harmless. The area of danger would, therefore, be the passport country, somewhere north of Fort William.
But to follow Gresson I must run risks and enter that country. His suspicions, if he had any, would be lulled if I left the boat at Oban, but it was up to me to follow overland to the north and hit the place where the _Tobermory_ made a long stay. The confounded tub had no plans; she wandered about the West Highlands looking for sheep and things; and the captain himself could give me no time-table of her voyage. It was incredible that Gresson should take all this trouble if he did not know that at some place–and the right place–he would have time to get a spell ashore. But I could scarcely ask Gresson for that information, though I determined to cast a wary fly over him. I knew roughly the _Tobermory’s_ course–through the Sound of Islay to Colonsay; then up the east side of Mull to Oban; then through the Sound of Mull to the islands with names like cocktails, Rum and Eigg and Coll; then to Skye; and then for the Outer Hebrides. I thought the last would be the place, and it seemed madness to leave the boat, for the Lord knew how I should get across the Minch. This consideration upset all my plans again, and I fell into a troubled sleep without coming to any conclusion.
Morning found us nosing between Jura and Islay, and about midday we touched at a little port, where we unloaded some cargo and took on a couple of shepherds who were going to Colonsay. The mellow afternoon and the good smell of salt and heather got rid of the dregs of my queasiness, and I spent a profitable hour on the pier-head with a guide-book called _Baddely’s Scotland_, and one of Bartholomew’s maps. I was beginning to think that Amos might be able to tell me something, for a talk with the captain had suggested that the _Tobermory_ would not dally long in the neighbourhood of Rum and Eigg. The big droving season was scarcely on yet, and sheep for the Oban market would be lifted on the return journey. In that case Skye was the first place to watch, and if I could get wind of any big cargo waiting there I would be able to make a plan. Amos was somewhere near the Kyle, and that was across the narrows from Skye. Looking at the map, it seemed to me that, in spite of being passportless, I might be able somehow to make my way up through Morvern and Arisaig to the latitude of Skye. The difficulty would be to get across the strip of sea, but there must be boats to beg, borrow or steal.
I was poring over Baddely when Gresson sat down beside me. He was in a good temper, and disposed to talk, and to my surprise his talk was all about the beauties of the countryside. There was a kind of apple-green light over everything; the steep heather hills cut into the sky like purple amethysts, while beyond the straits the western ocean stretched its pale molten gold to the sunset. Gresson waxed lyrical over the scene. ‘This just about puts me right inside, Mr Brand. I’ve got to get away from that little old town pretty frequent or I begin to moult like a canary. A man feels a man when he gets to a place that smells as good as this. Why in hell do we ever get messed up in those stone and lime cages? I reckon some day I’ll pull my freight for a clean location and settle down there and make little poems. This place would about content me. And there’s a spot out in California in the Coast ranges that I’ve been keeping my eye on,’ The odd thing was that I believe he meant it. His ugly face was lit up with a serious delight.
He told me he had taken this voyage before, so I got out Baddely and asked for advice. ‘I can’t spend too much time on holidaying,’ I told him, ‘and I want to see all the beauty spots. But the best of them seem to be in the area that this fool British Government won’t let you into without a passport. I suppose I shall have to leave you at Oban.’
‘Too bad,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Well, they tell me there’s some pretty sights round Oban.’ And he thumbed the guide-book and began to read about Glencoe.
I said that was not my purpose, and pitched him a yarn about Prince Charlie and how my mother’s great-grandfather had played some kind of part in that show. I told him I wanted to see the place where the Prince landed and where he left for France. ‘So far as I can make out that won’t take me into the passport country, but I’ll have to do a bit of footslogging. Well, I’m used to padding the hoof. I must get the captain to put me off in Morvern, and then I can foot it round the top of Lochiel and get back to Oban through Appin. How’s that for a holiday trek?’
He gave the scheme his approval. ‘But if it was me, Mr Brand, I would have a shot at puzzling your gallant policemen. You and I don’t take much stock in Governments and their two-cent laws, and it would be a good game to see just how far you could get into the forbidden land. A man like you could put up a good bluff on those hayseeds. I don’t mind having a bet . . .’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m out for a rest, and not for sport. If there was anything to be gained I’d undertake to bluff my way to the Orkney Islands. But it’s a wearing job and I’ve better things to think about.’
‘So? Well, enjoy yourself your own way. I’ll be sorry when you leave us, for I owe you something for that rough-house, and beside there’s darned little company in the old moss-back captain.’
That evening Gresson and I swopped yarns after supper to the accompaniment of the ‘Ma Goad!’ and ‘Is’t possible?’ of captain and mate. I went to bed after a glass or two of weak grog, and made up for the last night’s vigil by falling sound asleep. I had very little kit with me, beyond what I stood up in and could carry in my waterproof pockets, but on Amos’s advice I had brought my little nickel-plated revolver. This lived by day in my hip pocket, but at night I put it behind my pillow. But when I woke next morning to find us casting anchor in the bay below rough low hills, which I knew to be the island of Colonsay, I could find no trace of the revolver. I searched every inch of the bunk and only shook out feathers from the mouldy ticking. I remembered perfectly putting the thing behind my head before I went to sleep, and now it had vanished utterly. Of course I could not advertise my loss, and I didn’t greatly mind it, for this was not a job where I could do much shooting. But it made me think a good deal about Mr Gresson. He simply could not suspect me; if he had bagged my gun, as I was pretty certain he had, it must be because he wanted it for himself and not that he might disarm me. Every way I argued it I reached the same conclusion. In Gresson’s eyes I must seem as harmless as a child.
We spent the better part of a day at Colonsay, and Gresson, so far as his duties allowed, stuck to me like a limpet. Before I went ashore I wrote out a telegram for Amos. I devoted a hectic hour to the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, but I could not compose any kind of intelligible message with reference to its text. We had all the same edition–the one in the _Golden _Treasury series–so I could have made up a sort of cipher by referring to lines and pages, but that would have taken up a dozen telegraph forms and seemed to me too elaborate for the purpose. So I sent this message:
_Ochterlony, Post Office, Kyle,
I hope to spend part of holiday near you and to see you if boat’s programme permits. Are any good cargoes waiting in your neighbourhood? Reply Post Office, Oban._
It was highly important that Gresson should not see this, but it was the deuce of a business to shake him off. I went for a walk in the afternoon along the shore and passed the telegraph office, but the confounded fellow was with me all the time. My only chance was just before we sailed, when he had to go on board to check some cargo. As the telegraph office stood full in view of the ship’s deck I did not go near it. But in the back end of the clachan I found the schoolmaster, and got him to promise to send the wire. I also bought off him a couple of well-worn sevenpenny novels.
The result was that I delayed our departure for ten minutes and when I came on board faced a wrathful Gresson. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he asked. ‘The weather’s blowing up dirty and the old man’s mad to get off. Didn’t you get your legs stretched enough this afternoon?’
I explained humbly that I had been to the schoolmaster to get something to read, and produced my dingy red volumes. At that his brow cleared. I could see that his suspicions were set at rest.
We left Colonsay about six in the evening with the sky behind us banking for a storm, and the hills of Jura to starboard an angry purple. Colonsay was too low an island to be any kind of breakwater against a western gale, so the weather was bad from the start. Our course was north by east, and when we had passed the butt-end of the island we nosed about in the trough of big seas, shipping tons of water and rolling like a buffalo. I know as much about boats as about Egyptian hieroglyphics, but even my landsman’s eyes could tell that we were in for a rough night. I was determined not to get queasy again, but when I went below the smell of tripe and onions promised to be my undoing; so I dined off a slab of chocolate and a cabin biscuit, put on my waterproof, and resolved to stick it out on deck.
I took up position near the bows, where I was out of reach of the oily steamer smells. It was as fresh as the top of a mountain, but mighty cold and wet, for a gusty drizzle had set in, and I got the spindrift of the big waves. There I balanced myself, as we lurched into the twilight, hanging on with one hand to a rope which descended from the stumpy mast. I noticed that there was only an indifferent rail between me and the edge, but that interested me and helped to keep off sickness. I swung to the movement of the vessel, and though I was mortally cold it was rather pleasant than otherwise. My notion was to get the nausea whipped out of me by the weather, and, when I was properly tired, to go down and turn in.
I stood there till the dark had fallen. By that time I was an automaton, the way a man gets on sentry-go, and I could have easily hung on till morning. My thoughts ranged about the earth, beginning with the business I had set out on, and presently–by way of recollections of Blenkiron and Peter–reaching the German forest where, in the Christmas of 1915, I had been nearly done in by fever and old Stumm. I remembered the bitter cold of that wild race, and the way the snow seemed to burn like fire when I stumbled and got my face into it. I reflected that sea-sickness was kitten’s play to a good bout of malaria.
The weather was growing worse, and I was getting more than spindrift from the seas. I hooked my arm round the rope, for my fingers were numbing. Then I fell to dreaming again, principally about Fosse Manor and Mary Lamington. This so ravished me that I was as good as asleep. I was trying to reconstruct the picture as I had last seen her at Biggleswick station . . .
A heavy body collided with me and shook my arm from the rope. I slithered across the yard of deck, engulfed in a whirl of water. One foot caught a stanchion of the rail, and it gave with me, so that for an instant I was more than half overboard. But my fingers clawed wildly and caught in the links of what must have been the anchor chain. They held, though a ton’s weight seemed to be tugging at my feet . . . Then the old tub rolled back, the waters slipped off, and I was sprawling on a wet deck with no breath in me and a gallon of brine in my windpipe.
I heard a voice cry out sharply, and a hand helped me to my feet. It was Gresson, and he seemed excited.
‘God, Mr Brand, that was a close call! I was coming up to find you, when this damned ship took to lying on her side. I guess I must have cannoned into you, and I was calling myself bad names when I saw you rolling into the Atlantic. If I hadn’t got a grip on the rope I would have been down beside you. Say, you’re not hurt? I reckon you’d better come below and get a glass of rum under your belt. You’re about as wet as mother’s dish-clouts.’
There’s one advantage about campaigning. You take your luck when it comes and don’t worry about what might have been. I didn’t think any more of the business, except that it had cured me of wanting to be sea-sick. I went down to the reeking cabin without one qualm in my stomach, and ate a good meal of welsh-rabbit and bottled Bass, with a tot of rum to follow up with. Then I shed my wet garments, and slept in my bunk till we anchored off a village in Mull in a clear blue morning.
It took us four days to crawl up that coast and make Oban, for we seemed to be a floating general store for every hamlet in those parts. Gresson made himself very pleasant, as if he wanted to atone for nearly doing me in. We played some poker, and I read the little books I had got in Colonsay, and then rigged up a fishing-line, and caught saithe and lythe and an occasional big haddock. But I found the time pass slowly, and I was glad that about noon one day we came into a bay blocked with islands and saw a clean little town sitting on the hills and the smoke of a railway engine.
I went ashore and purchased a better brand of hat in a tweed store. Then I made a bee-line for the post office, and asked for telegrams. One was given to me, and as I opened it I saw Gresson at my elbow.
It read thus:
_Brand, Post office, Oban. Page 117, paragraph 3. Ochterlony._
I passed it to Gresson with a rueful face.
‘There’s a piece of foolishness,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a cousin who’s a Presbyterian minister up in Ross-shire, and before I knew about this passport humbug I wrote to him and offered to pay him a visit. I told him to wire me here if it was convenient, and the old idiot has sent me the wrong telegram. This was likely as not meant for some other brother parson, who’s got my message instead.’
‘What’s the guy’s name?’ Gresson asked curiously, peering at the signature.
‘Ochterlony. David Ochterlony. He’s a great swell at writing books, but he’s no earthly use at handling the telegraph. However, it don’t signify, seeing I’m not going near him.’ I crumpled up the pink form and tossed it on the floor. Gresson and I walked to the _Tobermory_ together.
That afternoon, when I got a chance, I had out my _Pilgrim’s Progress_. Page 117, paragraph 3, read:
‘_Then I saw in my dream, that a little off the road, over against the Silver-mine, stood Demas (gentlemanlike) to call to passengers to come and see: who said to Christian and his fellow, Ho, turn aside hither and I will show you a thing._
At tea I led the talk to my own past life. I yarned about my experiences as a mining engineer, and said I could never get out of the trick of looking at country with the eye of the prospector. ‘For instance,’ I said, ‘if this had been Rhodesia, I would have said there was a good chance of copper in these little kopjes above the town. They’re not unlike the hills round the Messina mine.’ I told the captain that after the war I was thinking of turning my attention to the West Highlands and looking out for minerals.
‘Ye’ll make nothing of it,’ said the captain. ‘The costs are ower big, even if ye found the minerals, for ye’d have to import a’ your labour. The West Hielandman is no fond o’ hard work. Ye ken the psalm o’ the crofter?
_O that the peats would cut themselves, The fish chump on the shore,
And that I in my bed might lie
Henceforth for ever more!_’
‘Has it ever been tried?’ I asked.
‘Often. There’s marble and slate quarries, and there was word o’ coal in Benbecula. And there’s the iron mines at Ranna.’
‘Where’s that?’ I asked.
‘Up forenent Skye. We call in there, and generally bide a bit. There’s a heap of cargo for Ranna, and we usually get a good load back. But as I tell ye, there’s few Hielanders working there. Mostly Irish and lads frae Fife and Falkirk way.’
I didn’t pursue the subject, for I had found Demas’s silver-mine. If the _Tobermory_ lay at Ranna for a week, Gresson would have time to do his own private business. Ranna would not be the spot, for the island was bare to the world in the middle of a much-frequented channel. But Skye was just across the way, and when I looked in my map at its big, wandering peninsulas I concluded that my guess had been right, and that Skye was the place to make for.
That night I sat on deck with Gresson, and in a wonderful starry silence we watched the lights die out of the houses in the town, and talked of a thousand things. I noticed–what I had had a hint of before–that my companion was no common man. There were moments when he forgot himself and talked like an educated gentleman: then he would remember, and relapse into the lingo of Leadville, Colorado. In my character of the ingenuous inquirer I set him posers about politics and economics, the kind of thing I might have been supposed to pick up from unintelligent browsing among little books. Generally he answered with some slangy catchword, but occasionally he was interested beyond his discretion, and treated me to a harangue like an equal. I discovered another thing, that he had a craze for poetry, and a capacious memory for it. I forgot how we drifted into the subject, but I remember he quoted some queer haunting stuff which he said was Swinburne, and verses by people I had heard of from Letchford at Biggleswick. Then he saw by my silence that he had gone too far, and fell back into the jargon of the West. He wanted to know about my plans, and we went down into the cabin and had a look at the map. I explained my route, up Morvern and round the head of Lochiel, and back to Oban by the east side of Loch Linnhe.
‘Got you,’ he said. ‘You’ve a hell of a walk before you. That bug never bit me, and I guess I’m not envying you any. And after that, Mr Brand?’
‘Back to Glasgow to do some work for the cause,’ I said lightly.
‘Just so,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.’
We steamed out of the bay next morning at dawn, and about nine o’clock I got on shore at a little place called Lochaline. My kit was all on my person, and my waterproof’s pockets were stuffed with chocolates and biscuits I had bought in Oban. The captain was discouraging. ‘Ye’ll get your bellyful o’ Hieland hills, Mr Brand, afore ye win round the loch head. Ye’ll be wishin’ yerself back on the _Tobermory_.’ But Gresson speeded me joyfully on my way, and said he wished he were coming with me. He even accompanied me the first hundred yards, and waved his hat after me till I was round the turn of the road.
The first stage in that journey was pure delight. I was thankful to be rid of the infernal boat, and the hot summer scents coming down the glen were comforting after the cold, salt smell of the sea. The road lay up the side of a small bay, at the top of which a big white house stood among gardens. Presently I had left the coast and was in a glen where a brown salmon-river swirled through acres of bog-myrtle. It had its source in a loch, from which the mountain rose steeply–a place so glassy in that August forenoon that every scar and wrinkle of the hillside were faithfully reflected. After that I crossed a low pass to the head of another sea-lock, and, following the map, struck over the shoulder of a great hill and ate my luncheon far up on its side, with a wonderful vista of wood and water below me.
All that morning I was very happy, not thinking about Gresson or Ivery, but getting my mind clear in those wide spaces, and my lungs filled with the brisk hill air. But I noticed one curious thing. On my last visit to Scotland, when I covered more moorland miles a day than any man since Claverhouse, I had been fascinated by the land, and had pleased myself with plans for settling down in it. But now, after three years of war and general rocketing, I felt less drawn to that kind of landscape. I wanted something more green and peaceful and habitable, and it was to the Cotswolds that my memory turned with longing.
I puzzled over this till I realized that in all my Cotswold pictures a figure kept going and coming–a young girl with a cloud of gold hair and the strong, slim grace of a boy, who had sung ‘Cherry Ripe’ in a moonlit garden. Up on that hillside I understood very clearly that I, who had been as careless of women as any monk, had fallen wildly in love with a child of half my age. I was loath to admit it, though for weeks the conclusion had been forcing itself on me. Not that I didn’t revel in my madness, but that it seemed too hopeless a business, and I had no use for barren philandering. But, seated on a rock munching chocolate and biscuits, I faced up to the fact and resolved to trust my luck. After all we were comrades in a big job, and it was up to me to be man enough to win her. The thought seemed to brace any courage that was in me. No task seemed too hard with her approval to gain and her companionship somewhere at the back of it. I sat for a long time in a happy dream, remembering all the glimpses I had had of her, and humming her song to an audience of one black-faced sheep.
On the highroad half a mile below me, I saw a figure on a bicycle mounting the hill, and then getting off to mop its face at the summit. I turned my Ziess glasses on to it, and observed that it was a country policeman. It caught sight of me, stared for a bit, tucked its machine into the side of the road, and then very slowly began to climb the hillside. Once it stopped, waved its hand and shouted something which I could not hear. I sat finishing my luncheon, till the features were revealed to me of a fat oldish man, blowing like a grampus, his cap well on the back of a bald head, and his trousers tied about the shins with string.
There was a spring beside me and I had out my flask to round off my meal.
‘Have a drink,’ I said.
His eye brightened, and a smile overran his moist face.
‘Thank you, sir. It will be very warrm coming up the brae.’
‘You oughtn’t to,’ I said. ‘You really oughtn’t, you know. Scorching up hills and then doubling up a mountain are not good for your time of life.’
He raised the cap of my flask in solemn salutation. ‘Your very good health.’ Then he smacked his lips, and had several cupfuls of water from the spring.
‘You will haf come from Achranich way, maybe?’ he said in his soft sing-song, having at last found his breath.
‘Just so. Fine weather for the birds, if there was anybody to shoot them.’
‘Ah, no. There will be few shots fired today, for there are no gentlemen left in Morvern. But I wass asking you, if you come from Achranich, if you haf seen anybody on the road.’
From his pocket he extricated a brown envelope and a bulky telegraph form. ‘Will you read it, sir, for I haf forgot my spectacles?’
It contained a description of one Brand, a South African and a suspected character, whom the police were warned to stop and return to Oban. The description wasn’t bad, but it lacked any one good distinctive detail. Clearly the policeman took me for an innocent pedestrian, probably the guest of some moorland shooting-box, with my brown face and rough tweeds and hobnailed shoes.
I frowned and puzzled a little. ‘I did see a fellow about three miles back on the hillside. There’s a public-house just where the burn comes in, and I think he was making for it. Maybe that was your man. This wire says “South African”; and now I remember the fellow had the look of a colonial.’
The policeman sighed. ‘No doubt it will be the man. Perhaps he will haf a pistol and will shoot.’
‘Not him,’ I laughed. ‘He looked a mangy sort of chap, and he’ll be scared out of his senses at the sight of you. But take my advice and get somebody with you before you tackle him. You’re always the better of a witness.’
‘That is so,’ he said, brightening. ‘Ach, these are the bad times! in old days there wass nothing to do but watch the doors at the flower-shows and keep the yachts from poaching the sea-trout. But now it is spies, spies, and “Donald, get out of your bed, and go off twenty mile to find a German.” I wass wishing the war wass by, and the Germans all dead.’
‘Hear, hear!’ I cried, and on the strength of it gave him another dram.
I accompanied him to the road, and saw him mount his bicycle and zig-zag like a snipe down the hill towards Achranich. Then I set off briskly northward. It was clear that the faster I moved the better.
As I went I paid disgusted tribute to the efficiency of the Scottish police. I wondered how on earth they had marked me down. Perhaps it was the Glasgow meeting, or perhaps my association with Ivery at Biggleswick. Anyhow there was somebody somewhere mighty quick at compiling a _dossier_. Unless I wanted to be bundled back to Oban I must make good speed to the Arisaig coast.
Presently the road fell to a gleaming sea-loch which lay like the blue blade of a sword among the purple of the hills. At the head there was a tiny clachan, nestled among birches and rowans, where a tawny burn wound to the sea. When I entered the place it was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and peace lay on it like a garment. In the wide, sunny street there was no sign of life, and no sound except of hens clucking and of bees busy among the roses. There was a little grey box of a kirk, and close to the bridge a thatched cottage which bore the sign of a post and telegraph office.
For the past hour I had been considering that I had better prepare for mishaps. If the police of these parts had been warned they might prove too much for me, and Gresson would be allowed to make his journey unmatched. The only thing to do was to send a wire to Amos and leave the matter in his hands. Whether that was possible or not depended upon this remote postal authority.
I entered the little shop, and passed from bright sunshine to a twilight smelling of paraffin and black-striped peppermint balls. An old woman with a mutch sat in an arm-chair behind the counter. She looked up at me over her spectacles and smiled, and I took to her on the instant. She had the kind of old wise face that God loves.
Beside her I noticed a little pile of books, one of which was a Bible. Open on her lap was a paper, the _United Free Church Monthly_. I noticed these details greedily, for I had to make up my mind on the part to play.
‘It’s a warm day, mistress,’ I said, my voice falling into the broad Lowland speech, for I had an instinct that she was not of the Highlands.
She laid aside her paper. ‘It is that, sir. It is grand weather for the hairst, but here that’s no till the hinner end o’ September, and at the best it’s a bit scart o’ aits.’
‘Ay. It’s a different thing down Annandale way,’ I said.
Her face lit up. ‘Are ye from Dumfries, sir?’
‘Not just from Dumfries, but I know the Borders fine.’
‘Ye’ll no beat them,’ she cried. ‘Not that this is no a guid place and I’ve muckle to be thankfu’ for since John Sanderson–that was ma man–brought me here forty-seeven year syne come Martinmas. But the aulder I get the mair I think o’ the bit whaur I was born. It was twae miles from Wamphray on the Lockerbie road, but they tell me the place is noo just a rickle o’ stanes.’
‘I was wondering, mistress, if I could get a cup of tea in the village.’
‘Ye’ll hae a cup wi’ me,’ she said. ‘It’s no often we see onybody frae the Borders hereaways. The kettle’s just on the boil.’
She gave me tea and scones and butter, and black-currant jam, and treacle biscuits that melted in the mouth. And as we ate we talked of many things–chiefly of the war and of the wickedness of the world.
‘There’s nae lads left here,’ she said. ‘They a’ joined the Camerons, and the feck o’ them fell at an awfu’ place called Lowse. John and me never had no boys, jist the one lassie that’s married on Donald Frew, the Strontian carrier. I used to vex mysel’ about it, but now I thank the Lord that in His mercy He spared me sorrow. But I wad hae liked to have had one laddie fechtin’ for his country. I whiles wish I was a Catholic and could pit up prayers for the sodgers that are deid. It maun be a great consolation.’
I whipped out the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ from my pocket. ‘That is the grand book for a time like this.’
‘Fine I ken it,’ she said. ‘I got it for a prize in the Sabbath School when I was a lassie.’
I turned the pages. I read out a passage or two, and then I seemed struck with a sudden memory.
‘This is a telegraph office, mistress. Could I trouble you to send a telegram? You see I’ve a cousin that’s a minister in Ross-shire at the Kyle, and him and me are great correspondents. He was writing about something in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ and I think I’ll send him a telegram in answer.’
‘A letter would be cheaper,’ she said.
‘Ay, but I’m on holiday and I’ve no time for writing.’
She gave me a form, and I wrote:
_Ochterlony. Post Office, Kyle. –Demas will be at his mine within the week. Strive with him, lest I faint by the way._
‘Ye’re unco lavish wi’ the words, sir,’ was her only comment.
We parted with regret, and there was nearly a row when I tried to pay for the tea. I was bidden remember her to one David Tudhole, farmer in Nether Mirecleuch, the next time I passed by Wamphray.
The village was as quiet when I left it as when I had entered. I took my way up the hill with an easier mind, for I had got off the telegram, and I hoped I had covered my tracks. My friend the postmistress would, if questioned, be unlikely to recognize any South African suspect in the frank and homely traveller who had spoken with her of Annandale and the _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
The soft mulberry gloaming of the west coast was beginning to fall on the hills. I hoped to put in a dozen miles before dark to the next village on the map, where I might find quarters. But ere I had gone far I heard the sound of a motor behind me, and a car slipped past bearing three men. The driver favoured me with a sharp glance, and clapped on the brakes. I noted that the two men in the tonneau were carrying sporting rifles.
‘Hi, you, sir,’ he cried. ‘Come here.’ The two rifle-bearers–solemn gillies–brought their weapons to attention.
‘By God,’ he said, ‘it’s the man. What’s your name? Keep him covered, Angus.’
The gillies duly covered me, and I did not like the look of their wavering barrels. They were obviously as surprised as myself.
I had about half a second to make my plans. I advanced with a very stiff air, and asked him what the devil he meant. No Lowland Scots for me now. My tone was that of an adjutant of a Guards’ battalion.
My inquisitor was a tall man in an ulster, with a green felt hat on his small head. He had a lean, well-bred face, and very choleric blue eyes. I set him down as a soldier, retired, Highland regiment or cavalry, old style.
He produced a telegraph form, like the policeman.
‘Middle height–strongly built–grey tweeds–brown hat–speaks with a colonial accent–much sunburnt. What’s your name, sir?’
I did not reply in a colonial accent, but with the hauteur of the British officer when stopped by a French sentry. I asked him again what the devil he had to do with my business. This made him angry and he began to stammer.
‘I’ll teach you what I have to do with it. I’m a deputy-lieutenant of this county, and I have Admiralty instructions to watch the coast. Damn it, sir, I’ve a wire here from the Chief Constable describing you. You’re Brand, a very dangerous fellow, and we want to know what the devil you’re doing here.’
As I looked at his wrathful eye and lean head, which could not have held much brains, I saw that I must change my tone. If I irritated him he would get nasty and refuse to listen and hang me up for hours. So my voice became respectful.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I’ve not been accustomed to be pulled up suddenly, and asked for my credentials. My name is Blaikie, Captain Robert Blaikie, of the Scots Fusiliers. I’m home on three weeks’ leave, to get a little peace after Hooge. We were only hauled out five days ago.’ I hoped my old friend in the shell-shock hospital at Isham would pardon my borrowing his identity.
The man looked puzzled. ‘How the devil am I to be satisfied about that? Have you any papers to prove it?’
‘Why, no. I don’t carry passports about with me on a walking tour. But you can wire to the depot, or to my London address.’
He pulled at his yellow moustache. ‘I’m hanged if I know what to do. I want to get home for dinner. I tell you what, sir, I’ll take you on with me and put you up for the night. My boy’s at home, convalescing, and if he says you’re pukka I’ll ask your pardon and give you a dashed good bottle of port. I’ll trust him and I warn you he’s a keen hand.’
There was nothing to do but consent, and I got in beside him with an uneasy conscience. Supposing the son knew the real Blaikie! I asked the name of the boy’s battalion, and was told the 10th Seaforths. That wasn’t pleasant hearing, for they had been brigaded with us on the Somme. But Colonel Broadbury–for he told me his name–volunteered another piece of news which set my mind at rest. The boy was not yet twenty, and had only been out seven months. At Arras he had got a bit of shrapnel in his thigh, which had played the deuce with the sciatic nerve, and he was still on crutches.
We spun over ridges of moorland, always keeping northward, and brought up at a pleasant white-washed house close to the sea. Colonel Broadbury ushered me into a hall where a small fire of peats was burning, and on a couch beside it lay a slim, pale-faced young man. He had dropped his policeman’s manner, and behaved like a gentleman. ‘Ted,’ he said, ‘I’ve brought a friend home for the night. I went out to look for a suspect and found a British officer. This is Captain Blaikie, of the Scots Fusiliers.’
The boy looked at me pleasantly. ‘I’m very glad to meet you, sir. You’ll excuse me not getting up, but I’ve got a game leg.’ He was the copy of his father in features, but dark and sallow where the other was blond. He had just the same narrow head, and stubborn mouth, and honest, quick-tempered eyes. It is the type that makes dashing regimental officers, and earns V.C.s, and gets done in wholesale. I was never that kind. I belonged to the school of the cunning cowards.
In the half-hour before dinner the last wisp of suspicion fled from my host’s mind. For Ted Broadbury and I were immediately deep in ‘shop’. I had met most of his senior officers, and I knew all about their doings at Arras, for his brigade had been across the river on my left. We fought the great fight over again, and yarned about technicalities and slanged the Staff in the way young officers have, the father throwing in questions that showed how mighty proud he was of his son. I had a bath before dinner, and as he led me to the bathroom he apologized very handsomely for his bad manners. ‘Your coming’s been a godsend for Ted. He was moping a bit in this place. And, though I say it that shouldn’t, he’s a dashed good boy.’
I had my promised bottle of port, and after dinner I took on the father at billiards. Then we settled in the smoking-room, and I laid myself out to entertain the pair. The result was that they would have me stay a week, but I spoke of the shortness of my leave, and said I must get on to the railway and then back to Fort William for my luggage.
So I spent that night between clean sheets, and ate a Christian breakfast, and was given my host’s car to set me a bit on the road. I dismissed it after half a dozen miles, and, following the map, struck over the hills to the west. About midday I topped a ridge, and beheld the Sound of Sleat shining beneath me. There were other things in the landscape. In the valley on the right a long goods train was crawling on the Mallaig railway. And across the strip of sea, like some fortress of the old gods, rose the dark bastions and turrets of the hills of Skye.
CHAPTER SIX
The Skirts of the Coolin
Obviously I must keep away from the railway. If the police were after me in Morvern, that line would be warned, for it was a barrier I must cross if I were to go farther north. I observed from the map that it turned up the coast, and concluded that the place for me to make for was the shore south of that turn, where Heaven might send me some luck in the boat line. For I was pretty certain that every porter and station-master on that tin-pot outfit was anxious to make better acquaintance with my humble self.
I lunched off the sandwiches the Broadburys had given me, and in the bright afternoon made my way down the hill, crossed at the foot of a small fresh-water lochan, and pursued the issuing stream through midge-infested woods of hazels to its junction with the sea. It was rough going, but very pleasant, and I fell into the same mood of idle contentment that I had enjoyed the previous morning. I never met a soul. Sometimes a roe deer broke out of the covert, or an old blackcock startled me with his scolding. The place was bright with heather, still in its first bloom, and smelt better than the myrrh of Arabia. It was a blessed glen, and I was as happy as a king, till I began to feel the coming of hunger, and reflected that the Lord alone knew when I might get a meal. I had still some chocolate and biscuits, but I wanted something substantial.
The distance was greater than I thought, and it was already twilight when I reached the coast. The shore was open and desolate–great banks of pebbles to which straggled alders and hazels from the hillside scrub. But as I marched northward and turned a little point of land I saw before me in a crook of the bay a smoking cottage. And, plodding along by the water’s edge, was the bent figure of a man, laden with nets and lobster pots. Also, beached on the shingle was a boat.
I quickened my pace and overtook the fisherman. He was an old man with a ragged grey beard, and his rig was seaman’s boots and a much-darned blue jersey. He was deaf, and did not hear me when I hailed him. When he caught sight of me he never stopped, though he very solemnly returned my good evening. I fell into step with him, and in his silent company reached the cottage.
He halted before the door and unslung his burdens. The place was a two-roomed building with a roof of thatch, and the walls all grown over with a yellow-flowered creeper. When he had straightened his back, he looked seaward and at the sky, as if to prospect the weather. Then he turned on me his gentle, absorbed eyes. ‘It will haf been a fine day, sir. Wass you seeking the road to anywhere?’
‘I was seeking a night’s lodging,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a long tramp on the hills, and I’d be glad of a chance of not going farther.’
‘We will haf no accommodation for a gentleman,’ he said gravely.
‘I can sleep on the floor, if you can give me a blanket and a bite of supper.’
‘Indeed you will not,’ and he smiled slowly. ‘But I will ask the wife. Mary, come here!’
An old woman appeared in answer to his call, a woman whose face was so old that she seemed like his mother. In highland places one sex ages quicker than the other.
‘This gentleman would like to bide the night. I wass telling him that we had a poor small house, but he says he will not be minding it.’
She looked at me with the timid politeness that you find only in outland places.
‘We can do our best, indeed, sir. The gentleman can have Colin’s bed in the loft, but he will haf to be doing with plain food. Supper is ready if you will come in now.’
I had a scrub with a piece of yellow soap at an adjacent pool in the burn and then entered a kitchen blue with peat-reek. We had a meal of boiled fish, oatcakes and skim-milk cheese, with cups of strong tea to wash it down. The old folk had the manners of princes. They pressed food on me, and asked me no questions, till for very decency’s sake I had to put up a story and give some account of myself.
I found they had a son in the Argylls and a young boy in the Navy. But they seemed disinclined to talk of them or of the war. By a mere accident I hit on the old man’s absorbing interest. He was passionate about the land. He had taken part in long-forgotten agitations, and had suffered eviction in some ancient landlords’ quarrel farther north. Presently he was pouring out to me all the woes of the crofter–woes that seemed so antediluvian and forgotten that I listened as one would listen to an old song. ‘You who come from a new country will not haf heard of these things,’ he kept telling me, but by that peat fire I made up for my defective education. He told me of evictions in the year. One somewhere in Sutherland, and of harsh doings in the Outer Isles. It was far more than a political grievance. It was the lament of the conservative for vanished days and manners. ‘Over in Skye wass the fine land for black cattle, and every man had his bit herd on the hillside. But the lairds said it wass better for sheep, and then they said it wass not good for sheep, so they put it under deer, and now there is no black cattle anywhere in Skye.’ I tell you it was like sad music on the bagpipes hearing that old fellow. The war and all things modern meant nothing to him; he lived among the tragedies of his youth and his prime.
I’m a Tory myself and a bit of a land-reformer, so we agreed well enough. So well, that I got what I wanted without asking for it. I told him I was going to Skye, and he offered to take me over in his boat in the morning. ‘It will be no trouble. Indeed no. I will be going that way myself to the fishing.’
I told him that after the war, every acre of British soil would have to be used for the men that had earned the right to it. But that did not comfort him. He was not thinking about the land itself, but about the men who had been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was not for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power of any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad, reflective mood, considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we must break down a multitude of molehills and how desirable and unreplaceable was the life of the moles.
In brisk, shining weather, with a wind from the south-east, we put off next morning. In front was a brown line of low hills, and behind them, a little to the north, that black toothcomb of mountain range which I had seen the day before from the Arisaig ridge.
‘That is the Coolin,’ said the fisherman. ‘It is a bad place where even the deer cannot go. But all the rest of Skye wass the fine land for black cattle.’
As we neared the coast, he pointed out many places. ‘Look there, Sir, in that glen. I haf seen six cot houses smoking there, and now there is not any left. There were three men of my own name had crofts on the machars beyond the point, and if you go there you will only find the marks of their bit gardens. You will know the place by the gean trees.’
When he put me ashore in a sandy bay between green ridges of bracken, he was still harping upon the past. I got him to take a pound–for the boat and not for the night’s hospitality, for he would have beaten me with an oar if I had suggested that. The last I saw of him, as I turned round at the top of the hill, he had still his sail down, and was gazing at the lands which had once been full of human dwellings and now were desolate.
I kept for a while along the ridge, with the Sound of Sleat on my right, and beyond it the high hills of Knoydart and Kintail. I was watching for the _Tobermory_, but saw no sign of her. A steamer put out from Mallaig, and there were several drifters crawling up the channel and once I saw the white ensign and a destroyer bustled northward, leaving a cloud of black smoke in her wake. Then, after consulting the map, I struck across country, still keeping the higher ground, but, except at odd minutes, being out of sight of the sea. I concluded that my business was to get to the latitude of Ranna without wasting time.
So soon as I changed my course I had the Coolin for company. Mountains have always been a craze of mine, and the blackness and mystery of those grim peaks went to my head. I forgot all about Fosse Manor and the Cotswolds. I forgot, too, what had been my chief feeling since I left Glasgow, a sense of the absurdity of my mission. It had all seemed too far-fetched and whimsical. I was running apparently no great personal risk, and I had always the unpleasing fear that Blenkiron might have been too clever and that the whole thing might be a mare’s nest. But that dark mountain mass changed my outlook. I began to have a queer instinct that that was the place, that something might be concealed there, something pretty damnable. I remember I sat on a top for half an hour raking the hills with my glasses. I made out ugly precipices, and glens which lost themselves in primeval blackness. When the sun caught them–for it was a gleamy day–it brought out no colours, only degrees of shade. No mountains I had ever seen–not the Drakensberg or the red kopjes of Damaraland or the cold, white peaks around Erzerum–ever looked so unearthly and uncanny.
Oddly enough, too, the sight of them set me thinking about Ivery. There seemed no link between a smooth, sedentary being, dwelling in villas and lecture-rooms, and that shaggy tangle of precipices. But I felt there was, for I had begun to realize the bigness of my opponent. Blenkiron had said that he spun his web wide. That was intelligible enough among the half-baked youth of Biggleswick, and the pacifist societies, or even the toughs on the Clyde. I could fit him in all right to that picture. But that he should be playing his game among those mysterious black crags seemed to make him bigger and more desperate, altogether a different kind of proposition. I didn’t exactly dislike the idea, for my objection to my past weeks had been that I was out of my proper job, and this was more my line of country. I always felt that I was a better bandit than a detective. But a sort of awe mingled with my satisfaction. I began to feel about Ivery as I had felt about the three devils of the Black Stone who had hunted me before the war, and as I never felt about any other Hun. The men we fought at the Front and the men I had run across in the Greenmantle business, even old Stumm himself, had been human miscreants. They were formidable enough, but you could gauge and calculate their capacities. But this Ivery was like a poison gas that hung in the air and got into unexpected crannies and that you couldn’t fight in an upstanding way. Till then, in spite of Blenkiron’s solemnity, I had regarded him simply as a problem. But now he seemed an intimate and omnipresent enemy, intangible, too, as the horror of a haunted house. Up on that sunny hillside, with the sea winds round me and the whaups calling, I got a chill in my spine when I thought of him.
I am ashamed to confess it, but I was also horribly hungry. There was something about the war that made me ravenous, and the less chance of food the worse I felt. If I had been in London with twenty restaurants open to me, I should as likely as not have gone off my feed. That was the cussedness of my stomach. I had still a little chocolate left, and I ate the fisherman’s buttered scones for luncheon, but long before the evening my thoughts were dwelling on my empty interior.
I put up that night in a shepherd’s cottage miles from anywhere. The man was called Macmorran, and he had come from Galloway when sheep were booming. He was a very good imitation of a savage, a little fellow with red hair and red eyes, who might have been a Pict. He lived with a daughter who had once been in service in Glasgow, a fat young woman with a face entirely covered with freckles and a pout of habitual discontent. No wonder, for that cottage was a pretty mean place. It was so thick with peat-reek that throat and eyes were always smarting. It was badly built, and must have leaked like a sieve in a storm. The father was a surly fellow, whose conversation was one long growl at the world, the high prices, the difficulty of moving his sheep, the meanness of his master, and the godforsaken character of Skye. ‘Here’s me no seen baker’s bread for a month, and no company but a wheen ignorant Hielanders that yatter Gawlic. I wish I was back in the Glenkens. And I’d gang the morn if I could get paid what I’m awed.’
However, he gave me supper–a braxy ham and oatcake, and I bought the remnants off him for use next day. I did not trust his blankets, so I slept the night by the fire in the ruins of an arm-chair, and woke at dawn with a foul taste in my mouth. A dip in the burn refreshed me, and after a bowl of porridge I took the road again. For I was anxious to get to some hill-top that looked over to Ranna.
Before midday I was close under the eastern side of the Coolin, on a road which was more a rockery than a path. Presently I saw a big house ahead of me that looked like an inn, so I gave it a miss and struck the highway that led to it a little farther north. Then I bore off to the east, and was just beginning to climb a hill which I judged stood between me and the sea, when I heard wheels on the road and looked back.
It was a farmer’s gig carrying one man. I was about half a mile off, and something in the cut of his jib seemed familiar. I got my glasses on him and made out a short, stout figure clad in a mackintosh, with a woollen comforter round its throat. As I watched, it made a movement as if to rub its nose on its sleeve. That was the pet trick of one man I knew. Inconspicuously I slipped through the long heather so as to reach the road ahead of the gig. When I rose like a wraith from the wayside the horse started, but not the driver.
‘So ye’re there,’ said Amos’s voice. ‘I’ve news for ye. The _Tobermory_ will be in Ranna by now. She passed Broadford two hours syne. When I saw her I yoked this beast and came up on the chance of foregathering with ye.’
‘How on earth did you know I would be here?’ I asked in some surprise.
‘Oh, I saw the way your mind was workin’ from your telegram. And says I to mysel’–that man Brand, says I, is not the chiel to be easy stoppit. But I was feared ye might be a day late, so I came up the road to hold the fort. Man, I’m glad to see ye. Ye’re younger and soopler than me, and yon Gresson’s a stirrin’ lad.’
‘There’s one thing you’ve got to do for me,’ I said. ‘I can’t go into inns and shops, but I can’t do without food. I see from the map there’s a town about six miles on. Go there and buy me anything that’s tinned–biscuits and tongue and sardines, and a couple of bottles of whisky if you can get them. This may be a long job, so buy plenty.’
‘Whaur’ll I put them?’ was his only question.
We fixed on a cache, a hundred yards from the highway in a place where two ridges of hill enclosed the view so that only a short bit of road was visible.
‘I’ll get back to the Kyle,’ he told me, ‘and a’body there kens Andra Amos, if ye should find a way of sendin’ a message or comin’ yourself. Oh, and I’ve got a word to ye from a lady that we ken of. She says, the sooner ye’re back in Vawnity Fair the better she’ll be pleased, always provided ye’ve got over the Hill Difficulty.’
A smile screwed up his old face and he waved his whip in farewell. I interpreted Mary’s message as an incitement to speed, but I could not make the pace. That was Gresson’s business. I think I was a little nettled, till I cheered myself by another interpretation. She might be anxious for my safety, she might want to see me again, anyhow the mere sending of the message showed I was not forgotten. I was in a pleasant muse as I breasted the hill, keeping discreetly in the cover of the many gullies. At the top I looked down on Ranna and the sea.
There lay the _Tobermory_ busy unloading. It would be some time, no doubt, before Gresson could leave. There was no row-boat in the channel yet, and I might have to wait hours. I settled myself snugly between two rocks, where I could not be seen, and where I had a clear view of the sea and shore. But presently I found that I wanted some long heather to make a couch, and I emerged to get some. I had not raised my head for a second when I flopped down again. For I had a neighbour on the hill-top.
He was about two hundred yards off, just reaching the crest, and, unlike me, walking quite openly. His eyes were on Ranna, so he did not notice me, but from my cover I scanned every line of him. He looked an ordinary countryman, wearing badly cut, baggy knickerbockers of the kind that gillies affect. He had a face like a Portuguese Jew, but I had seen that type before among people with Highland names; they might be Jews or not, but they could speak Gaelic. Presently he disappeared. He had followed my example and selected a hiding-place.
It was a clear, hot day, but very pleasant in that airy place. Good scents came up from the sea, the heather was warm and fragrant, bees droned about, and stray seagulls swept the ridge with their wings. I took a look now and then towards my neighbour, but he was deep in his hidey-hole. Most of the time I kept my glasses on Ranna, and watched the doings of the _Tobermory_. She was tied up at the jetty, but seemed in no hurry to unload. I watched the captain disembark and walk up to a house on the hillside. Then some idlers sauntered down towards her and stood talking and smoking close to her side. The captain returned and left again. A man with papers in his hand appeared, and a woman with what looked like a telegram. The mate went ashore in his best clothes. Then at last, after midday, Gresson appeared. He joined the captain at the piermaster’s office, and presently emerged on the other side of the jetty where some small boats were beached. A man from the _Tobermory_ came in answer to his call, a boat was launched, and began to make its way into the channel. Gresson sat in the stern, placidly eating his luncheon.
I watched every detail of that crossing with some satisfaction that my forecast was turning out right. About half-way across, Gresson took the oars, but soon surrendered them to the _Tobermory_ man, and lit a pipe. He got out a pair of binoculars and raked my hillside. I tried to see if my neighbour was making any signal, but all was quiet. Presently the boat was hid from me by the bulge of the hill, and I caught the sound of her scraping on the beach.
Gresson was not a hill-walker like my neighbour. It took him the best part of an hour to get to the top, and he reached it at a point not two yards from my hiding-place. I could hear by his labouring breath that he was very blown. He walked straight over the crest till he was out of sight of Ranna, and flung himself on the ground. He was now about fifty yards from me, and I made shift to lessen the distance. There was a grassy trench skirting the north side of the hill, deep and thickly overgrown with heather. I wound my way along it till I was about twelve yards from him, where I stuck, owing to the trench dying away. When I peered out of the cover I saw that the other man had joined him and that the idiots were engaged in embracing each other.
I dared not move an inch nearer, and as they talked in a low voice I could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one phrase, which the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically. ‘Tomorrow night,’ he said, and I noticed that his voice had not the Highland inflection which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced at his watch, and then the two began to move downhill towards the road I had travelled that morning.
I followed as best I could, using a shallow dry watercourse of which sheep had made a track, and which kept me well below the level of the moor. It took me down the hill, but some distance from the line the pair were taking, and I had to reconnoitre frequently to watch their movements. They were still a quarter of a mile or so from the road, when they stopped and stared, and I stared with them. On that lonely highway travellers were about as rare as roadmenders, and what caught their eye was a farmer’s gig driven by a thick-set elderly man with a woollen comforter round his neck.
I had a bad moment, for I reckoned that if Gresson recognized Amos he might take fright. Perhaps the driver of the gig thought the same, for he appeared to be very drunk. He waved his whip, he jiggoted the reins, and he made an effort to sing. He looked towards the figures on the hillside, and cried out something. The gig narrowly missed the ditch, and then to my relief the horse bolted. Swaying like a ship in a gale, the whole outfit lurched out of sight round the corner of hill where lay my cache. If Amos could stop the beast and deliver the goods there, he had put up a masterly bit of buffoonery.
The two men laughed at the performance, and then they parted. Gresson retraced his steps up the hill. The other man–I called him in my mind the Portuguese Jew–started off at a great pace due west, across the road, and over a big patch of bog towards the northern butt of the Coolin. He had some errand, which Gresson knew about, and he was in a hurry to perform it. It was clearly my job to get after him.
I had a rotten afternoon. The fellow covered the moorland miles like a deer, and under the hot August sun I toiled on his trail. I had to keep well behind, and as much as possible in cover, in case he looked back; and that meant that when he had passed over a ridge I had to double not to let him get too far ahead, and when we were in an open place I had to make wide circuits to keep hidden. We struck a road which crossed a low pass and skirted the flank of the mountains, and this we followed till we were on the western side and within sight of the sea. It was gorgeous weather, and out on the blue water I saw cool sails moving and little breezes ruffling the calm, while I was glowing like a furnace. Happily I was in fair training, and I needed it. The Portuguese Jew must have done a steady six miles an hour over abominable country.
About five o’clock we came to a point where I dared not follow. The road ran flat by the edge of the sea, so that several miles of it were visible. Moreover, the man had begun to look round every few minutes. He was getting near something and wanted to be sure that no one was in his neighbourhood. I left the road accordingly, and took to the hillside, which to my undoing was one long cascade of screes and tumbled rocks. I saw him drop over a rise which seemed to mark the rim of a little bay into which descended one of the big corries of the mountains. It must have been a good half-hour later before I, at my greater altitude and with far worse going, reached the same rim. I looked into the glen and my man had disappeared.
He could not have crossed it, for the place was wider than I had thought. A ring of black precipices came down to within half a mile of the shore, and between them was a big stream–long, shallow pools at the sea end and a chain of waterfalls above. He had gone to earth like a badger somewhere, and I dared not move in case he might be watching me from behind a boulder.
But even as I hesitated he appeared again, fording the stream, his face set on the road we had come. Whatever his errand was he had finished it, and was posting back to his master. For a moment I thought I should follow him, but another instinct prevailed. He had not come to this wild place for the scenery. Somewhere down in the glen there was something or somebody that held the key of the mystery. It was my business to stay there till I had unlocked it. Besides, in two hours it would be dark, and I had had enough walking for one day.
I made my way to the stream side and had a long drink. The corrie behind me was lit up with the westering sun, and the bald cliffs were flushed with pink and gold. On each side of the stream was turf like a lawn, perhaps a hundred yards wide, and then a tangle of long heather and boulders right up to the edge of the great rocks. I had never seen a more delectable evening, but I could not enjoy its peace because of my anxiety about the Portuguese Jew. He had not been there more than half an hour, just about long enough for a man to travel to the first ridge across the burn and back. Yet he had found time to do his business. He might have left a letter in some prearranged place–in which case I would stay there till the man it was meant for turned up. Or he might have met someone, though I didn’t think that possible. As I scanned the acres of rough moor and then looked at the sea lapping delicately on the grey sand I had the feeling that a knotty problem was before me. It was too dark to try to track his steps. That must be left for the morning, and I prayed that there would be no rain in the night.
I ate for supper most of the braxy ham and oatcake I had brought from Macmorran’s cottage. It took some self-denial, for I was ferociously hungry, to save a little for breakfast next morning. Then I pulled heather and bracken and made myself a bed in the shelter of a rock which stood on a knoll above the stream. My bed-chamber was well hidden, but at the same time, if anything should appear in the early dawn, it gave me a prospect. With my waterproof I was perfectly warm, and, after smoking two pipes, I fell asleep.
My night’s rest was broken. First it was a fox which came and barked at my ear and woke me to a pitch-black night, with scarcely a star showing. The next time it was nothing but a wandering hill-wind, but as I sat up and listened I thought I saw a spark of light near the edge of the sea. It was only for a second, but it disquieted me. I got out and climbed on the top of the rock, but all was still save for the gentle lap of the tide and the croak of some night bird among the crags. The third time I was suddenly quite wide awake, and without any reason, for I had not been dreaming. Now I have slept hundreds of times alone beside my horse on the veld, and I never knew any cause for such awakenings but the one, and that was the presence near me of some human being. A man who is accustomed to solitude gets this extra sense which announces like an alarm-clock the approach of one of his kind.
But I could hear nothing. There was a scraping and rustling on the moor, but that was only the wind and the little wild things of the hills. A fox, perhaps, or a blue hare. I convinced my reason, but not my senses, and for long I lay awake with my ears at full cock and every nerve tense. Then I fell asleep, and woke to the first flush of dawn.
The sun was behind the Coolin and the hills were black as ink, but far out in the western seas was a broad band of gold. I got up and went down to the shore. The mouth of the stream was shallow, but as I moved south I came to a place where two small capes enclosed an inlet. It must have been a fault in the volcanic rock, for its depth was portentous. I stripped and dived far into its cold abysses, but I did not reach the bottom. I came to the surface rather breathless, and struck out to sea, where I floated on my back and looked at the great rampart of crag. I saw that the place where I had spent the night was only a little oasis of green at the base of one of the grimmest corries the imagination could picture. It was as desert as Damaraland. I noticed, too, how sharply the cliffs rose from the level. There were chimneys and gullies by which a man might have made his way to the summit, but no one of them could have been scaled except by a mountaineer.
I was feeling better now, with all the frowsiness washed out of me, and I dried myself by racing up and down the heather. Then I noticed something. There were marks of human feet at the top of the deep-water inlet–not mine, for they were on the other side. The short sea-turf was bruised and trampled in several places, and there were broken stems of bracken. I thought that some fisherman had probably landed there to stretch his legs.
But that set me thinking of the Portuguese Jew. After breakfasting on my last morsels of food–a knuckle of braxy and a bit of oatcake–I set about tracking him from the place where he had first entered the glen. To get my bearings, I went back over the road I had come myself, and after a good deal of trouble I found his spoor. It was pretty clear as far as the stream, for he had been walking–or rather running–over ground with many patches of gravel on it. After that it was difficult, and I lost it entirely in the rough heather below the crags. All that I could make out for certain was that he had crossed the stream, and that his business, whatever it was, had been with the few acres of tumbled wilderness below the precipices.
I spent a busy morning there, but found nothing except the skeleton of a sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was a thankless job, and I got very cross over it. I had an ugly feeling that I was on a false scent and wasting my time. I wished to Heaven I had old Peter with me. He could follow spoor like a Bushman, and would have riddled the Portuguese Jew’s track out of any jungle on earth. That was a game I had never learned, for in the old days I had always left it to my natives. I chucked the attempt, and lay disconsolately on a warm patch of grass and smoked and thought about Peter. But my chief reflections were that I had breakfasted at five, that it was now eleven, that I was intolerably hungry, that there was nothing here to feed a grasshopper, and that I should starve unless I got supplies.
It was a long road to my cache, but there were no two ways of it. My only hope was to sit tight in the glen, and it might involve a wait of days. To wait I must have food, and, though it meant relinquishing guard for a matter of six hours, the risk had to be taken. I set off at a brisk pace with a very depressed mind.
From the map it seemed that a short cut lay over a pass in the range. I resolved to take it, and that short cut, like most of its kind, was unblessed by Heaven. I will not dwell upon the discomforts of the journey. I found myself slithering among screes, climbing steep chimneys, and travelling precariously along razor-backs. The shoes were nearly rent from my feet by the infernal rocks,which were all pitted as if by some geological small-pox. When at last I crossed the divide, I had a horrible business getting down from one level to another in a gruesome corrie, where each step was composed of smooth boiler-plates. But at last I was among the bogs on the east side, and came to the place beside the road where I had fixed my cache.
The faithful Amos had not failed me. There were the provisions–a couple of small loaves, a dozen tins, and a bottle of whisky. I made the best pack I could of them in my waterproof, swung it on my stick, and started back, thinking that I must be very like the picture of Christian on the title-page of _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
I was liker Christian before I reached my destination–Christian after he had got up the Hill Difficulty. The morning’s walk had been bad, but the afternoon’s was worse, for I was in a fever to get back, and, having had enough of the hills, chose the longer route I had followed the previous day. I was mortally afraid of being seen, for I cut a queer figure, so I avoided every stretch of road where I had not a clear view ahead. Many weary detours I made among moss-hags and screes and the stony channels of burns. But I got there at last, and it was almost with a sense of comfort that I flung my pack down beside the stream where I had passed the night.
I ate a good meal, lit my pipe, and fell into the equable mood which follows upon fatigue ended and hunger satisfied. The sun was westering, and its light fell upon the rock-wall above the place where I had abandoned my search for the spoor.
As I gazed at it idly I saw a curious thing.
It seemed to be split in two and a shaft of sunlight came through between. There could be no doubt about it. I saw the end of the shaft on the moor beneath, while all the rest lay in shadow. I rubbed my eyes, and got out my glasses. Then I guessed the explanation. There was a rock tower close against the face of the main precipice and indistinguishable from it to anyone looking direct at the face. Only when the sun fell on it obliquely could it be discovered. And between the tower and the cliff there must be a substantial hollow.
The discovery brought me to my feet, and set me running towards the end of the shaft of sunlight. I left the heather, scrambled up some yards of screes, and had a difficult time on some very smooth slabs, where only the friction of tweed and rough rock gave me a hold. Slowly I worked my way towards the speck of sunlight, till I found a handhold, and swung myself into the crack. On one side was the main wall of the hill, on the other a tower some ninety feet high, and between them a long crevice varying in width from three to six feet. Beyond it there showed a small bright patch of sea.
There was more, for at the point where I entered it there was an overhang which made a fine cavern, low at the entrance but a dozen feet high inside, and as dry as tinder. Here, thought I, is the perfect hiding-place. Before going farther I resolved to return for food. It was not very easy descending, and I slipped the last twenty feet, landing on my head in a soft patch of screes. At the burnside I filled my flask from the whisky bottle, and put half a loaf, a tin of sardines, a tin of tongue, and a packet of chocolate in my waterproof pockets. Laden as I was, it took me some time to get up again, but I managed it, and stored my belongings in a corner of the cave. Then I set out to explore the rest of the crack.
It slanted down and then rose again to a small platform. After that it dropped in easy steps to the moor beyond the tower. If the Portuguese Jew had come here, that was the way by which he had reached it, for he would not have had the time to make my ascent. I went very cautiously, for I felt I was on the eve of a big discovery. The platform was partly hidden from my end by a bend in the crack, and it was more or less screened by an outlying bastion of the tower from the other side. Its surface was covered with fine powdery dust, as were the steps beyond it. In some excitement I knelt down and examined it.
Beyond doubt there was spoor here. I knew the Portuguese Jew’s footmarks by this time, and I made them out clearly, especially in one corner. But there were other footsteps, quite different. The one showed the rackets of rough country boots, the others were from un-nailed soles. Again I longed for Peter to make certain, though I was pretty sure of my conclusions. The man I had followed had come here, and he had not stayed long. Someone else had been here, probably later, for the un-nailed shoes overlaid the rackets. The first man might have left a message for the second. Perhaps the second was that human presence of which I had been dimly conscious in the night-time.
I carefully removed all traces of my own footmarks, and went back to my cave. My head was humming with my discovery. I remembered Gresson’s word to his friend: ‘Tomorrow night.’ As I read it, the Portuguese Jew had taken a message from Gresson to someone, and that someone had come from somewhere and picked it up. The message contained an assignation for this very night. I had found a point of observation, for no one was likely to come near my cave, which was reached from the moor by such a toilsome climb. There I should bivouac and see what the darkness brought forth. I remember reflecting on the amazing luck which had so far attended me. As I looked from my refuge at the blue haze of twilight creeping over the waters, I felt my pulses quicken with a wild anticipation.
Then I heard a sound below me, and craned my neck round the edge of the tower. A man was climbing up the rock by the way I had come.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I Hear of the Wild Birds
I saw an old green felt hat, and below it lean tweed-clad shoulders. Then I saw a knapsack with a stick slung through it, as the owner wriggled his way on to a shelf. Presently he turned his face upward to judge the remaining distance. It was the face of a young man, a face sallow and angular, but now a little flushed with the day’s sun and the work of climbing. It was a face that I had first seen at Fosse Manor.
I felt suddenly sick and heartsore. I don’t know why, but I had never really associated the intellectuals of Biggleswick with a business like this. None of them but Ivery, and he was different. They had been silly and priggish, but no more–I would have taken my oath on it. Yet here was one of them engaged in black treason against his native land. Something began to beat in my temples when I remembered that Mary and this man had been friends, that he had held her hand, and called her by her Christian name. My first impulse was to wait till he got up and then pitch him down among the boulders and let his German accomplices puzzle over his broken neck.
With difficulty I kept down that tide of fury. I had my duty to do, and to keep on terms with this man was part of it. I had to convince him that I was an accomplice, and that might not be easy. I leaned over the edge, and, as he got to his feet on the ledge above the boiler-plates, I whistled so that he turned his face to me.
‘Hullo, Wake,’I said.
He started, stared for a second, and recognized me. He did not seem over-pleased to see me.
‘Brand!’ he cried. ‘How did you get here?’
He swung himself up beside me, straightened his back and unbuckled his knapsack. ‘I thought this was my own private sanctuary, and that nobody knew it but me. Have you spotted the cave? It’s the best bedroom in Skye.’ His tone was, as usual, rather acid.
That little hammer was beating in my head. I longed to get my hands on his throat and choke the smug treason in him. But I kept my mind fixed on one purpose–to persuade him that I shared his secret and was on his side. His off-hand self-possession seemed only the clever screen of the surprised conspirator who was hunting for a plan.
We entered the cave, and he flung his pack into a corner. ‘Last time I was here,’ he said, ‘I covered the floor with heather. We must get some more if we would sleep soft.’ In the twilight he was a dim figure, but he seemed a new man from the one I had last seen in the Moot Hall at Biggleswick. There was a wiry vigour in his body and a purpose in his face. What a fool I had been to set him down as no more than a conceited fidneur!
He went out to the shelf again and sniffed the fresh evening. There was a wonderful red sky in the west, but in the crevice the shades had fallen, and only the bright patches at either end told of the sunset.
‘Wake,’ I said, ‘you and I have to understand each other. I’m a friend of Ivery and I know the meaning of this place. I discovered it by accident, but I want you to know that I’m heart and soul with you. You may trust me in tonight’s job as if I were Ivery himself.’
He swung round and looked at me sharply. His eyes were hot again, as I remembered them at our first meeting.
‘What do you mean? How much do you know?’
The hammer was going hard in my forehead, and I had to pull myself together to answer.
‘I know that at the end of this crack a message was left last night, and that someone came out of the sea and picked it up. That someone is coming again when darkness falls, and there will be another message.’
He had turned his head away. ‘You are talking nonsense. No submarine could land on this coast.’
I could see that he was trying me.
‘This morning,’ I said, ‘I swam in the deep-water inlet below us. It is the most perfect submarine shelter in Britain.’
He still kept his face from me, looking the way he had come. For a moment he was silent, and then he spoke in the bitter, drawling voice which had annoyed me at Fosse Manor.
‘How do you reconcile this business with your principles, Mr Brand? You were always a patriot, I remember, though you didn’t see eye to eye with the Government.’
It was not quite what I expected and I was unready. I stammered in my reply. ‘It’s because I am a patriot that I want peace. I think that . . . I mean . . .’
‘Therefore you are willing to help the enemy to win?’
‘They have already won. I want that recognized and the end hurried on.’ I was getting my mind clearer and continued fluently.
‘The longer the war lasts, the worse this country is ruined. We must make the people realize the truth, and–‘
But he swung round suddenly, his eyes blazing.
‘You blackguard!’ he cried, ‘you damnable blackguard!’ And he flung himself on me like a wild-cat.
I had got my answer. He did not believe me, he knew me for a spy, and he was determined to do me in. We were beyond finesse now, and back at the old barbaric game. It was his life or mine. The hammer beat furiously in my head as we closed, and a fierce satisfaction rose in my heart.
He never had a chance, for though he was in good trim and had the light, wiry figure of the mountaineer, he hadn’t a quarter of my muscular strength. Besides, he was wrongly placed, for he had the