There was a brig at anchor in the bay, and it was along the heuchs towards her that I saw the horsemen ride. They were, I knew, going to run the cargo into shelter. I was thinking of how fine they looked, and wondering how long it would be till my father let me have a horse from the stable and a lingtow over my shoulder to go out to the Free Trade among the Manxmen like a lad of spirit, when all at once I got a sudden, horrid surprise.
I could hear the riders laughing and wagering among themselves, but I was too far away to hear what the game might be. Suddenly one of the foremost whipped a musket to his shoulder. I was so near the shore that I saw the flash of moonlight run along the barrel as he brought it to his eye. I wondered what he could be aiming at – a sea bird belike.
‘Clip! Splash!’ went something past my head and through the bow of the boat. Then on the back of the crack of the gun came a great towrow of laughter from the cliff edge.
‘A miss! a palpable miss!’ cried some one behind. ‘Haud her nose doon, ye gowk!’
‘Noo, Gil, ye are next. See you an’ mak’ a better o’t.’
I was somewhat dazed with the suddenness of the cowardly assault, but I seized my oars of instinct and rowed shorewards. I was in the black of the shadows in three strokes, and not a moment over soon, for another ball came singing after me. It knocked the blade of my left oar into flinders, just as the water dripped silver off it in the moonlight for the last time before I was submerged in the shadow. Again the laughter rang loud and clear, but heartless and hard.
‘Guid e’en to ye, gowk fisherman,’ cried the man who had first spoken. ‘The luck’s wi’ ye the nicht; it’s a fine nicht for flounders.’
I could have broken his head, for I was black angry at the senseless and causeless cruelty of the shooting. My first thought was to make for home; my second to draw to shore, and find out who they might be that could speed the deadly bullet with so little provocation at a harmless lad in his boat on the bay. So without pausing to consider of wisdom and folly (which indeed I have but seldom done in this life with profit), I sculled softly to the mainland with the unbroken oar.
Barefoot and bareleg I got into the shallow water, taking the little cleek anchor ashore and pushing the boat out that she might ride freely, for, as I said, the tide was running upwards like a mill-race.
Then I struck through the underbrush till I came to the wall of the deserted and overgrown kirkyard of Kirk Oswald. There stands a great old tomb in the corner from which, it ran in my mind, I might observe the shore and the whole route of the riders, if they were on their way to unload the brig in the offing.
There was a broad splash of moonlight on the rough grass between me and the tomb of the MacLurgs. The old tombstones reeled across it drunkenly, yet all was still and pale. I had almost set my foot on the edge of this white patch of moonshine to strike across it, when, with a rustle like a brown owl alighting swiftly and softly, someone took me by the hand, wheeled me about, and ere I had time to consider, carried me back again into the thickest of the wood.
Yet I looked at my companion as I ran, you may be sure. I saw a girl in a light dress, high-kilted – May Mischief of Craigdarroch, what other? But she pointed to her lip to show that there was to be no speech; and so we ran together even as she willed it to an angle of the old wall, where, standing close in the shade, we could see without being seen.
Now this I could not understand at all, for May Mischief never had a civil word for me as far back as I remember, but so many jibes and jeers that I never could endure the girl. Yet here we were, jinking hand in hand under the trees in the moonlight, for all the world like lad and lass playing at hide-and-seek. Soon we heard voices, and again the bits and chains rattling as the horses, suddenly checked, tossed their heads. Then the spurs jingled as the riders dismounted, stamping their feet as they came to the ground.
Twenty yards below us a man set his head over the wall. He whistled low and shrill.
‘All clear, Malcolm?’ he cried. I remember to this day the odd lilt of his voice. He was a Campbell, and gave the word Malcolm a strange twist, as if he had turned it over with his tongue in his mouth. And, indeed, that is to this day the mark of a Cantyre man.
A man stepped out of the doorway of the MacLurg tomb with a gun in his hand. May Maxwell looked up at me with something triumphant in her eyes, which I took to mean, ‘Where had you been now, if it had not been for me?’ And indeed the two shots at the boat in the moonlight told me where I would have been, and that was on the sward with a gunshot through me.
A dozen or more men came swarming over the broken wall. They carried a long, black coffin among them – the coffin, as it seemed, of an extraordinarily large man. Straight across the moon-whitened grass they strode, stumbling on the flat tombs and cursing one another as they went. There was no solemnity as at a funeral, for the jest and laughter ran light and free.
‘We are the lads,’ cried one. ‘We can lay the spirits and we can raise the dead!’
They went into the great tomb of the MacLurgs with the long, black coffin, and in a trice came out jovially, abusing one another still more loudly for useless dogs of peculiar pedigrees, and dealing great claps on each other’s backs. It was a wonder to me to see these outlaws at once so cruel and so merry.
Some of them went down by the corner of the kirkyard opposite to us. May Maxwell, who had kept my hand, fearing, I think, that we might have to run for it again round the circle of shade, plucked me sharply over to see what they were doing.
They were opening a grave, singing catches as their picks grated on the stones. I shivered a little, and a great fear of what we were about to see came over me. I think if May Maxwell had not gripped me by the hand I had fairly run for it.
The man we had first seen came out of the tomb and took a look at the sky. Another stretched himself till I heard his joints crack, and said ‘Hech How!’ as though he were sleepy. Whereat the others railed on him, calling him ‘lazy vagabond.’
Then all of them turned their ears towards the moors as though they listened for something of importance.
‘Do the Maxwells ride tonight?’ asked one.
‘Wheesh,’ said another. ‘Listen!’
This he said in so awe-stricken a tone that I also was struck with fear, and listened till my flesh crept.
From the waste came the baying of a hound – long, fitful, and very eerie.
There was a visible, uneasy stir among the men.
‘Let us be gone,’ said another, making for the wall; ‘’tis the Loathly Dogs. The Black Deil hunts himsel’ the nicht. I’m gaun hame.’
‘Stop!’ cried one with authority (I think the man that was called Gil). ‘I’ll put an ounce of lead through your vitals gin ye dinna stand in your tracks.’
But the others stayed neither for threat nor lead.
‘It’ll be waur for ye gin the Ghaistly. Hounds get a grip o’ your shins, Gil, my man. They draw men quick to hell!’
So at the word there seized the company a great fear, and they took to their heels, every man hastening to the wall. Then from the other side there was a noise of mounting steeds, and a great clattering of stirrup-irons.
May Mischief came nearer to me, and I heard her breath come in little broken gasps, like a rabbit that is taken in a net and lies beating its life out in your hands. At which I felt a man for the sole time that night.
Butnot for long, for I declare that what we saw in the next moment brought us both to our knees, praying silently for mercy. Over the wall at the corner farthest from us there came a fearsome pair. First a great grey dog, that hunted with its head down and