The Jacobite Trilogy: The Flight of the Heron, The Gleam in the North & The Dark Mile. D. K. Broster

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ success that the Baltimore was ordered thither to open fire and cover a landing. But the Highlanders’ position was so good that the bombardment made no impression, and Captain How had to withdraw baffled.

      Ewen was with these adventurers at Corpach, enjoying himself and finding in conflict an anodyne for his thoughts; it made the blood run pleasantly and enabled him to forget Alison for an hour or so. But the ordinary business of the siege was less stimulating, since he had nothing to do with the artillery under Stapleton and Grant and their Franco-Irish gunners, and the only chance of hand-to-hand fighting lay in repelling the constant raids of the garrison and trying to protect the unfortunate dwellers in the countryside who suffered by them. He seemed to himself to live in a series of disconnected scenes, sometimes here in Lochaber, where Ben Nevis, thickly capped with snow, looked down impartially on assailants and defenders alike, sometimes back in Inverness, going through every moment of those short two days with Alison. But no one who did not observe him constantly and closely could have guessed this. Lochiel, who knew him well and did observe him closely, gave him as much to do as possible.

      But it was certainly not Lochiel who enjoined on him the feat which brought his share in the siege to an abrupt end.

      * * * * *

      It was a fine morning in the latter half of March, blown through with a gusty wind. Brigadier Stapleton, having got some mortars into position on one of the little eminences about half a mile from the fort, had started to shell it from that point, and the fort was replying. Since its fire was directed towards destroying the hostile batteries, there was no great danger from it to those not serving the guns, and the Highlanders had no doubt grown a little careless, which might account for the fact that near the crest of another hillock, about a quarter of a mile away from Stapleton’s mortars and the same distance as they from Fort William, Lochiel and Keppoch were standing unconcernedly in the midst of a little group of Camerons and MacDonalds. Below them, on the slope looking towards the fort, a half-ruined stone wall hinted at a bygone attempt at cultivation or enclosure. The two chiefs were interested in some rather suspicious activities on board the Baltimore sloop, visible at anchor in the loch beyond the counterscarp and bastions of the fort.

      “I vow it seems like another raid preparing,” said Alexander MacDonald. “Do you look, Lochiel.”

      He passed the Cameron his spyglass. Ewen, who was sitting comfortably in the heather at a few yards’ distance, nearer the battery, rested his elbows on his knees and shaded his eyes the better to see also, his brain at these words busy with a vision of a possibly gratified desire for what he considered real fighting.

      Suddenly, as it were with half an eye, he became aware of something unusual in the fort, where, a mere eight hundred yards away, movements were perfectly visible. Surely the defenders had altered the position of one of their six-pounders . . . could they be intending . . . Lochiel standing there with the glass to his eye looking at the sloop was fully exposed to their view . . .

      In a second Ewen was on his feet, shouting a warning, but as he sprang came the flash and the roar. “God!” he cried in agony, and with another bound was up on the crest of the hillock, his arms wide. Could one man’s body suffice?

      There was a crash as the shot pitched into the ruined wall on the slope below, breaking and scattering the big rough stones in all directions. Ewen never saw what struck him, but at the moment of impact, which seemed to drive his soul from his body, he had just time to think, “It is for him! Alison, forgive me . . .” Then he went into darkness.

      When he came out of it again he found himself lying on the farther slope in the midst of a group of people, with his head on someone’s arm, and hands unfastening his coat. A voice said, “No, the head wound is only slight; ’tis here on the breast that the large stone must have struck him.”

      Ewen tried to get his own voice. It was difficult, and the world heaved. “Is . . . Lochiel safe?”

      Archibald Cameron, kneeling beside him, looked up for a second. “He is holding you at this moment, dear lad. No—lie still!” He went on with his examination.

      But Ewen disobediently turned his swimming head a little, and saw that he was indeed in Lochiel’s hold, so Lochiel must be unharmed. Why then had he his other hand over his eyes? Puzzled but content, he shut his own again.

      When next he thought much about his surroundings he was lying in the same place, wrapped in a plaid, with Lachlan squatting near, gazing at him with anguished eyes. Over the level top of Ben Nevis clouds, as white as the snow which crowned it, were hurrying against the blue. It came back to Ewen that he had heard Archie say that he was greatly bruised, but that no bones seemed broken, and no internal injury, he hoped, inflicted; so, after speaking a word or two of reassurance to his foster-brother, he relapsed into his state of happy content, with pain every time he drew a breath and a violent headache. But Lochiel was safe.

      Presently he felt his hand taken, and there was Lochiel himself kneeling by him, and Lachlan on the other side removing himself respectfully to a distance.

      “Ewen, Ewen,” said the well-beloved voice, with trouble in it, “you should not have done it!”

      Ewen gave him a radiant smile. He felt neither penitence nor any need for it.

      “I saw . . . what was going to happen,” he observed.

      “I do not think that anything would have reached me. No one was struck but you, who deliberately threw yourself in the way of the fragments, and one of Keppoch’s gillies, slightly. If you had been killed on my behalf——” Lochiel left the sentence unfinished, and glanced down at the cuff of his coat; there was a stain on it.

      Ewen’s eyes had followed his. “Do not say that you are hurt after all!” he exclaimed in a tone of horror.

      “It is your own blood, Ewen. Your head was not much cut, Archie says. But oh, my child, if I had had your death too at my door, when there is so much that I must answer for!”

      And the young man saw that his Chief was moved—more deeply moved than he had ever seen him; but, being still stupid from the blow on the head, he thought, “Why does he say that . . . whose death is at his door?” And he lay looking with a mixture of affection and perplexity at the kinsman who was still as much his pattern of all that was noble, wise and generous as when he himself had been a boy under his tutelage. Then the fort fired one of its twelve-pounders at the battery, and through the din Lochiel told him that a litter had been sent for to take him to Glen Nevis House, where he should see him again later.

      Soon after, therefore, four of his men carried Ewen to that house of Alexander Cameron’s at the opening of the glen which Lochiel and Keppoch had made their head-quarters; and he heard the voice of the Nevis, telling of the heights from which it had descended; and a little later, when that had faded from his hearing, a less agreeable one, Lowland and educated, saying how disgraceful it was that a peaceful writer could not go a mile from Maryburgh to visit a client without being seized by cattle-thieves; that indeed the said thieves could do no less than send him back under escort and safe-conduct. And here the indignant speaker’s gaze must have fallen upon the litter with its burden, for his next remark was: “What have we here—another of ye killed? I’m rejoiced to see it!”

      Ewen felt constrained to deny this imputation. “I am not in the least killed,” he rejoined with annoyance, opening his eyes to find himself almost at the door of Glen Nevis House, and to see, in the midst of a group of rather shamefaced Highlanders, Mr. Chalmers, the Whig notary of Maryburgh, whom he knew and who knew him. The lawyer gave an exclamation.

      “Gude sakes, ’tis Mr. Ewen Cameron of Ardroy! I’m unco sorry to see you in this condition—and СКАЧАТЬ