Chapter IV: The Book of the Boar

The sudden presence of Laura Everingham under my mother's roof had, for a moment, confused and astonished me, filling me with tremulous anxiety for the issue of their interview.

Laura was a lady-like girl, pretty rather than beautiful, and graceful rather than dignified, with a bright sunny English eye, a pale but interesting face, matchless hands and ankles, and a profusion of chestnut hair. She had trembled excessively when I presented her to my mother, whom she informed, as rapidly and coherently as her excessive agitation would permit, that Sir Horace, 'her dear, good, kind papa, would go to the summit of the mountain in the moonlight, in spite of all advice and the warnings of various shepherds.'

'The old gentlemen is, aw--aw, rather nocturnal in his tastes, madam,' yawned Mr. Snobleigh, who had been surveying the dining-room through his glass, with great apparent curiosity and much unmistakable depreciation; 'town habits, madam, won't suit this parallel--aw, of north latitude.'

'And he would visit the Craig-na-tuirc,' continued Laura; 'for dear papa is such an obstinate old thing, and we are always so afraid of the gout flying to his head, that we never dare to cross him. Well, we ascended that horrid mountain, and after great danger and labour reached the shoulder or cliff, Craig-na-tuirc, I think, you name it, just in time to see the moon rise above the hills, and a lovely moon it was--'

'Aw--for Scotland--very!' said Mr. Snobleigh.

'We were at the very verge of the precipice, with our little ponies, from which we had all dismounted, but dear old obstinate papa, who would keep his saddle, when suddenly an eagle soared up, with its huge flapping wings, from amid our feet--our wild ponies took to flight--scampered down the mountain, and vanished; that which bore papa accompanied them; we heard him crying piteously for help--oh, heaven, how piteously! And then, a white stag shot past--'

'God and Mary!--a white stag?' exclaimed my mother.

'Then all became still, so frightfully still, that I heard only my own heart beating. Oh, dear madam,' added Laura Everingham, clasping my mother's hand, emotion lending new charms to her winning face and manner, 'do you think there is danger?'

'Heaven alone knows; if indeed the sheltie galloped towards the Uisc Dhu--' my mother paused, for even her strong antagonism to this fair daughter of a man she hated, and against whom all her fierce and antiquated Celtic prejudices were enlisted, could not withstand the charm of Laura's winning eye; thus she left nothing unsaid to comfort her and to soothe her terror. In this she was joined by Miss Clavering, a fine, handsome, and showy English girl, whose beautiful and sparkling eyes, dark hair, and nose _retroussé_, piquant manner, and graceful _tournure_, made her, as her brother Tom Clavering, of the Grenadier Guards, constantly affirmed, 'one of the finest girls about town,' meaning London, of course.

'And you saw a white stag?'

'Yes--white as snow,' answered the girls, together.

'Dhia!' exclaimed my mother; 'if it should be the white stag of Loch Ora!'

'Why--what then?'

'It is said to be enchanted--it never dies, and never appears but as a harbinger of evil!'

'Heavens, dear madam, don't say so, pray!' urged Laura, weeping bitterly, and here Callum Dhu and I left them.

Followed by Captain Tom Clavering and his friend, Mr. Adolphus Frederick Snobleigh, who, with their glazed boots, scarlet shirts, and blue neckties, tight pantaloons, pomaded locks, and bandolined moustaches, were scarcely accoutred for ascending the sides of Ben Ora at midnight, over heather ankle-deep, and drenched in dew, or over--

'Crags, knolls and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.'

Callum Dhu and I hastened round the base of the mountain, and sought the Craig-na-tuirc for traces of the missing stranger. The moon was clear and bright, though obscured at times by fleecy cloudlets, and we soon reached the summit of the steep craig, or _Rock of the Boar_, and saw the wild glens and savage peaks of the western Highlands bounding the view on every side, while at our feet lay Loch nan Spiordan, or the Lake of Spirits, which was haunted by the water-horse and bull, and from which the Uisc Dhu, or _black stream_, brawled through a hundred rough ravines and stony chasms, into the deep dark basin of Loch Ora. Here we paused for a few minutes.

The voice and image of Laura Everingham were still before me; for one more fair or polished had never been beneath the roof-tree of our mountain dwelling, and on regaining my breath, I said, with some emotion, to Callum,

'If he has fallen into the Black Water!'--

'Well--he may turn up about Christmas-time--a bag of bones, stranded on the margin of the loch,' was the grim response.

'And we allowed him to ascend--what will people say?'

'There will be none here to say anything,' was the sharp response; 'by that time Glen Ora will be desolate--its people gone to the shores of the Far West, and the warm hearths where they sit now, will be silent, cold, and grassy.'

'But the Englishman's daughter, Callum?'

'Let her weep to the night wind, and it will hear her, as it has often heard our women weep, when the roofs were torn down and the fires extinguished; when the cabers were tossed upon the heath, and the cottagers were driven in fetters to the shore, like slaves for market.'

'But his daughter is beautiful.'

'Dioul! do _you_ begin to think so?'

'Fair, delicate, and gentle, too, Callum,' I urged, warming a little.

'But what of that? she is a stranger, and not one of us! It was not at such dainty breasts as hers that Lachlan Mohr, who could twist a horse-shoe, or Angus your ancestor, or Alisdair Mac Coll Keitach, who could cleave men from beard to breeks, were suckled.'

'What the deuce does all this matter? I would rather have a silver pound in my pocket than a pedigree an ell long; but wind your horn, and then let us shout.'

Callum blew his horn, but the echoes of the rocks alone replied in prolonged reverberations to the sound. Then we shouted together, and again the echoes were our sole reply. The more I thought of the fair and timid girl now at my mother's house, the more anxious I felt for her father's fate.

Myriads of stars were mirrored in the lone and deep blue Loch of the Spirits, a thousand feet below us, and as we traversed the beetling cliff, the stones we disengaged, rolled over and plashed into the water, with a dull faint sound that was long in ascending to the ear.

'By the Black Stone of Scone,' said Callum, with a Highland grin, 'if the stranger _has_ gone over here on the sheltie, he will have a skinful of cold water by this time.'

'For heaven's sake, don't say so, Callum!'

'Why not?' returned my companion, tartly; 'his first threat, on coming among us, was to put me in prison, because a deer-hide was found in my hut; if he has gone over the Craig-na-tuirc it was his own fate, and you know our proverb--Ni droch dhuine dan na fein! _Me_ in prison, indeed! I swore that I found the deer drowned in the moss, though I shot him at the waterfall, and a brave animal he was--thirty-four stone weight--devil an ounce less, after the gralloch was out of him; so every man in the glen had a savoury supper that night. Must _we_ starve, while the Englishman and the Lowlander have sport enough and to spare, and when the poor are driven mad by the depredations of the game on the crops?'

'Hark! I hear voices!'

Turning in the direction from whence they proceeded, we met Captain Clavering and his companion, the exquisite Mr. Snobleigh, who had just succeeded in overtaking us, breathless, and in great anxiety for Sir Horace.

'It was in _that_ direction Sir Horace was carried by his pony,' said the captain, pointing westward down the rocks.

'Dioul! that is straight for the linn of Glen-dhu-uisc (the glen of the black water), and if so, God save him!' added Callum, touching his bonnet, 'for his bones--before _we_ find them--will have been picked white as china by the gled and iolar. However, let us do what we can, Mac Innon,' he added, hastening onward, his natural kindness of heart penetrating the crust of prejudice and animosity with which he had resolved to protect it from any emotion of sympathy for the new possessor of our lands.

'The mountain sheltie went like lightning,' said Captain Clavering; 'its hoofs struck fire from the rocks at every bound.'

'Aw--yes,' added his companion, the great head of the dynasty of Snobleigh; 'I daresay the poor baronet thought himself astride one of Scott's demmed water kelpies.'

The roar of the cataract, formed by the Uisc Dhu forcing its way through a chasm, and rolling over a ledge of rocks into Loch Ora, now broke the solemn stillness of the midnight hills. We reached a plateau of rock, which overhung the fall, and we felt it trembling and vibrating in the concussion of the waters, which roared and rushed in one broad, ceaseless, and snow-white torrent, into a deep dark pool below. Its height was startling; its sides bristled with ghastly rocks, and these were fringed by tangled masses of green shrubbery and wild plants. Glittering in the moonlight like dew, or a continual shower of revolving diamonds, the transparent foam arose from the profundity into which the descending waters bellowed, and beyond which they swept away round the mountain in placid silence, forming Loch Ora, where the black ouzel and the wild swan floated in the radiance of the summer moon.

Captain Clavering appeared to be impressed by this majestic scene, but his companion, a restless Londoner, prattled and talked, and ever and anon shouted 'Sir Horace!' in the voice of a peacock proclaiming rain.

'Stay; I hear something,' said I; 'it comes from yonder rock.'

'No, no,' replied Callum, hastily; 'do not say so--that is Sien Sluai (the dwelling of a multitude). Often when my father was benighted, he has seen lights glitter there, and heard the sound of music, dancing feet, and merry little voices.'

A moment after, we heard a lamentable cry, that was quite different from the echoes.

'Good heaven!' exclaimed Captain Clavering, 'there is some one over the fall--or _in it_. Did you not hear a voice? There it is again!'

'Dioul! I have heard it twice already, but thought it was a hart roaring in the forest,' said Callum; 'and here are the hoofmarks of a pony, fresh in the turf, at the very edge of the Fall.'

'Help!' cried a piteous voice, which ascended from the abyss beneath us, and sounded above the hiss and roar of the hurrying waters; 'help, in the name of the blessed God!'

'Merciful heaven, it is Sir Horace!' exclaimed Captain Clavering, peering over.

'Aw--aw, good gwacious--gwacious goodness! aw-aw, what a dreadful situation!' added Snobleigh, aghast.

Upon a ledge of rock that jutted over the fall about twenty feet below the plateau on which we stood, lay the unfortunate baronet, crouching in a place where the beetling rocks rose above him, and where they descended sheer below to a depth which the eye and mind shrank from contemplating. His pony had become unmanageable, or disliked the severity with which it was whipped and spurred; thus on getting the bit between its teeth, it scoured along the terrible ridge of the Craig-na-tuirc like the wind, and rushed headlong towards the cascade. In deadly terror, the portly baronet had thrown himself off this fierce and shaggy little charger, but too late; he was just at the edge of the fall over which the pony went headlong like a flying Pegasus. Desperately Sir Horace clung to the bracken and heather on the verge of the chasm; but both gave way, and he toppled over!--sight, sound, hearing, and sensation left him as he fell into the abyss, believing all was over; but the sharp, cool, smoky spray revived him, and on recovering, he found himself safely and softly shelved on a turf-covered ledge of rock, from which an ascent unaided was totally impracticable, as the cliff above him was a sheer wall of twenty feet high; and a safe descent was equally impossible, for below, two hundred feet and more, pouring like ceaseless thunder, the cascade roared, boomed, boiled, and whirled; he shut his eyes, and for the first time since childhood, perhaps, endeavoured to arrange his thoughts in prayer.

Imagine the sensations of this right honourable baronet, and M.P. for 'the gentlemanly interest'--this old Regent-street lounger and man-about-town, accustomed to all the butterfly enjoyment, the ease, elegance, and luxury wealth can procure, and London furnish, on finding himself at midnight in the region of old romance and much imaginary barbarism---in the land of caterans, brownies, and bogles, cowering like a water-rat on a narrow ledge of rock, and on the verge of that tremendous cascade!

Prayer was difficult, new, and unnatural to him; he closed his eyes, and after shouting hopelessly and vainly, he endeavoured not to think at all; terror absorbed all his faculties, and now were he to live for a thousand years he could never forget the miseries and horrors he endured.

His senses wandered, and while the endless linn, stunning and dashing, poured in full flood and mighty volume over the trembling rocks, at one time he imagined himself addressing the House on the Abjuration Oath, the Scottish Appellate Jurisdiction, or some other equally sane and useful institution; or at the opera listening to Mario, Alboni, or Piccolomini; now it was the voice of his daughter, and then the laugh of his ward, Fanny Clavering. The quaint wild stories of the Highland foresters flitted before him, and while strange voices seemed to mingle with the ceaseless roar of that eternal cataract; damp kelpies sprawled their long and clammy fingers over him; paunchy imps and bearded brownies swarmed about his ears like gnats in the moonshine; while grey spectres seemed to peer and jabber at him, from amid the pouring foam and impending rocks.

He grew sick and faint with fear and hopelessness, for he was a cold, proud, and narrow-hearted man; hence the agony of his mind was the greater when he found himself face to face, and front to front, with Death!

Hours passed away; they seemed months, years, ages, still he remained there in a state of torpor and coma. He might fall into the stream; then all would be over; he might linger on for days, his cries unheard, for the country was desolate and depopulated--for days until he perished of slow starvation, and his bones would be left to whiten on that shelf of rock after his flesh had been carried away by the hawks and eagles!

'Horror! horror!' he exclaimed, and shut his eyes.

Suddenly, voices that seemed human met his ear!

He uttered a wild cry for mercy and for succour and the loud Highland _haloo_ of Callum Mac Ian responded. By a lucky chance we had discovered the lost man, when every hope was dying in his arid heart.

A mountain-ash, the sinewy roots of which grasped the fissures of the rocks, and were knotted round them, overhung the chasm, and from this Callum, supported by Clavering and me--the captain was a brave, active, and athletic fellow--lowered down a stout rope, which we desired Sir Horace to tie securely round him; but he was so paralyzed by fear, or so benumbed by cold, that though we reiterated the request again and again, with all the energy his urgent danger could inspire, we were unheeded.

'Dioul! 'smeas so na'n t-alam!' (the devil! this is worse than alum!) grumbled Callum in Gaelic; this old fellow will have the cat's departure in the cascade if he closes his ears thus!'

'What in heaven's name shall we do?' asked Captain Clavering; 'good fellows, can't you advise?'

'Go down into the cascade,' said I.

'Eh--aw--the deuce! good gwacious, you cawnt mean that,' said Snobleigh, with a chill shudder; 'deaw me--what a boaw!'

'He does mean it,' replied Callum, coldly; 'but that shall be my task, for though his spirit is brave, his arm is less strong than mine, and I shall meet the danger first. It was our task of old--I am his co-dhalta, and come of race that were the leine chrios of his father's on many a bloody field--but I forget that you are Englishmen, and know not what I speak of.'

Even while he said this, Callum had flung aside his bonnet and plaid; tied one end of the rope round the ash, and knotted the other round his waist, and begun to descend into the chasm, finding grasps for his hands and rests for his feet where other men would have felt for them in vain; and scaring the polecat from its lair, and the chattering night-hawk from its perch, by his hearty shout of triumph, as he reached Sir Horace, and transferred the rope round his inert and passive form.

'Air Dhia! the old man is like a bundle of dry bracken,' said the bold Highland forester with some contempt; 'hoist away sirs, and be sure that you have a tight hold of _your_ end of the rope!'

Assisted by Mr. Snobleigh, who was in a high state of excitement, the Captain and I drew up the poor baronet, who was almost dead with renewed terror on finding himself suspended like the golden fleece over that roaring gulf; however, we landed him safely, and laid him at length on the thick soft heather to recover his breath and animation, while we lowered the rope to Callum, who with our assistance scrambled up the wall of rock like a squirrel, and stood beside us again.

'Mona mon dioul!' said he, with a hearty laugh, such as can only come from a throat and lungs braced by the keen mountain air; 'this will be a night for the new laird to remember!'