Chapter XVIII: The Whistle of the Banshee

In the greyness of the dawn Muckle John called a halt.

"Rob," he said, "here is the day and only a mile covered since last night. Ye ken what that means? Within a few hours reinforcements will arrive from Fort Augustus, they will find the body of Strange--what must follow then?"

Rob shook his head. Escape seemed impossible.

"And yet," said Muckle John, "there must be a way--there's always a way, Rob, if you give your mind to it. There is no prison that cannot be broken, no wall that cannot be scaled--with luck and a cool head. I know, Rob, for have I not done it time and again? But I've always had a sound pair of legs. Let us look at the situation, Rob. Within an hour or two this country-side will be hotching with red-coats. They think the Prince is hereabouts. Now I cannot cover half a mile in that time, and there is no cover worth thinking about. Nor is the ground marshy or I could lie hid to my nose until it was night. But there is a way, Rob...."

He paused and fingered his ankle very tenderly, muffling a strip of his shirt tightly round it.

"Over the knoll there, Rob, is a ruined castle, little enough of it left now to be sure, but there are four walls, a huddle of stones upon the roof, and a burial-place."

"A burial place?"

"Aye, but there's no harm in that. There was a chief of the Macraes buried there, he was a very queer man it is said, but it's long since I looked at his stone. No one ever goes near it after dark, Rob, and mind ye I'm no just hankering after it mysel'."

"But surely they will search the place?"

"Rob," said Muckle John cannily, "there's searching and searching. There's a deal in hiding where folk do not look for ye."

Again they started laboriously on, Muckle John leaning upon Rob's shoulder and supporting himself with a rough crutch hewn from a tree upon the hill-side. Just over the knoll they saw the grey stones of the old stronghold Muckle John had spoken of, a poor enough refuge to all appearances, and certainly one not likely to be overlooked by the soldiers.

Inside the walls the grass was long and rank and in the midst of the grass stood a slab of granite upon four other slabs, making a square memorial very moss-covered and decayed, marking the burial-place of the Macrae.

Opposite it in the wall was a great open chimney-stack. To this Muckle John limped, and staring upwards beckoned to Rob.

"See here," he said, "there is about three feet up a place in the wall large enough for a small man to lie hid. You cannot see it for a very good reason, but it's a bonny spot to hide. Come, Rob, upon my shoulders--there's not a moment to lose."

"But what of you?" asked Rob.

"Up," said Muckle John, "I see them on the brow of the hill."

"No," said Rob, "I will not go until..."

But he had time for no more for Muckle John had him by the throat and was squeezing the very life out of him.

"Dinna clash words with me--you Fraser loon," he snarled, "up ye go or I'll break your neck."

After that Rob was only too ready to get out of reach of those terrible arms.

In the chimney-stack, just as Muckle John had said, there was a place very cunningly hollowed so as to be invisible from below, where a man looking upward saw only a square patch of sky and the broken masonry that fringed the top.

Crouching doubled up with his head upon his knees, he listened for a word from Muckle John. But none came. All he heard was a curious shuffling and a noise like the shutting of a door.

Suddenly, it seemed about a mile distant, a bugle sounded, and very faintly there drifted to him the echo of a shout.

Through the empty place below he heard the wind crying, and the singing of it in the long grass, but of Muckle John not a word.

Out on the moor he could hear the stream drumming cheerily over the stones. It was a bright spring morning full of the singing of birds, very difficult to associate with sudden death and a quick burying under the heather. Those who had met the English on their jaunts into the hills had small reason to hope for mercy and none for the dignity of a trial. It was better to leave home by the back door and dodge the bullets. In those far-off days an English soldier at fifty yards was comparatively harmless.

Rob craned his ears for any sound of their advance. But there was not the smallest hint of impending danger. For all he knew they might be scouring the country-side Loch Ness way. They might by this time be a couple of miles away. Already he was becoming exceedingly stiff. He struggled with a growing temptation to move one leg just an inch. Very cautiously he did so. He succeeded in making a noise--not a loud noise, indeed, but in that hollow place quite loud enough to make him turn cold with fear. But nothing happened, there was no whisper of spying red-coats creeping stealthily amongst the ruins, listening for all he could tell within three feet of his hiding-place.

Suddenly he heard a rustle in the grass below him, and a creak like the noise of a boot. He was instantly transfixed with terror. It is well enough to meet death in the open, though by no means a pleasant business there, but to sit cooped up in a chimney unable to see what is happening above or below is more than human nerves can tolerate. He had a tantalizing desire to peep over the edge, to catch one heartening glimpse of the green grass below, to assure himself that a red-faced English soldier was not peering up or fixing his bayonet to poke it about inside.

But he knew in his heart that did he look down he would most surely see what he most dreaded, and so he lay still with every bone in his body aching and one leg tingling with numbness as though a score of needles were pricking it from every side.

And still nothing happened, and there was only the crying of wind about the crumbling walls, and the ceaseless drumming of stream water on the moor.

He fell into a kind of doze at last when the blood seemed to stop circulating in his body, and once he knocked his head most painfully against the sharp edges of the crevice, having nodded with fatigue. His eyes would not stay open, and a terrible struggle against sleep began. He had already suffered a rude awakening by the soldiery outside Captain Campbell's tent, and he was not desirous of undergoing another. He began to hear noises that he knew in his heart did not exist, or if they did were caused by the creatures of the wild or birds settling for a moment up above his head. He took to staring at the opposite of the chimney where very dimly he could see the pebbles stuck in the mortaring and the rude chipped stones. These he counted for a time in order to rid his mind of the bayonet. But always he saw its gleaming steel-cold point just before his face. He could see it now. Surely it was a bayonet? Rob shut his eyes very tightly, then opened them again. It was still there. More than that it moved--it scraped against the stone just an inch from his foot. He saw a small piece chipped neatly off. He actually heard it rattle down upon the empty floor below.

With a blinding shock he realized that it was a bayonet--that they were come--that in secrecy and silent as ghosts the place was full of soldiers, had been perhaps for hours. Sleep was instantly banished and fear set him once more alert. His only hope lay in utter silence. Again the bayonet hovered like a snake within a few inches of his knees. He knew the man was staring upwards, vaguely suspicious, despite the apparent smooth emptiness of the chimney. He was not satisfied. The bayonet worked its way round the place again. Another piece chipped off, this time a larger piece. Why, Rob wondered, with the sweat upon his brow, did the man not try the other side? It was just as likely there. Did he really know? Was this a little sport to while away the time? It was almost more than he could bear.

Very carefully the bayonet worked its blind course round again, and this time it carried about an eighth of an inch off his brogue. Next time it would be his bare flesh. Suddenly the bayonet vanished. The man apparently tired of it, or satisfied that there was no hidden place in the chimney, drew his musket down and all was quiet again.

Rob was half-minded to ease his aching limbs when a peculiar sweet smell came drifting past him. There was some one smoking in the place below, and what was more very close to the chimney to send the fragrance up the shaft of it. Rob considered the matter very carefully. It seemed possible that the soldier was alone, and quite unconscious of his presence. A man did not smoke in silence unless he was solitary, and smoking was an idle recreation not associated with premeditated murder. Perhaps the fellow was lost or tired. Perhaps (most comforting thought of all) he would fall asleep. He wondered just how he was sitting, and whether he was leaning against the hearthstone with his eyes half-closed and the top of his head not so far below him.

With the utmost caution Rob leaned forward and peeped over.

It was just as he had pictured it. In the open fire-place a soldier was huddled at his ease, his hat upon the ground, his back against the slab of blackened stone, the pipe stuck at an angle in his mouth and his lank hair dishevelled and on end. He was dozing. Even as Rob watched him the pipe in his mouth slid upon his coat, where it lay on its side with a thin curl of smoke twining from the bowl.

Rob considered the situation. He was convinced that the man was alone, but there was the likelihood that he had been dispatched there to await the search-party. The state of that district was hardly one to encourage solitary English soldiers to sleep at their good pleasure. The ghastly pine-tree within a mile or two of this very spot was a grim enough reminder of that.

Rob was strongly inclined to fall upon him while he slept, and trust to knocking him senseless or dirking him as he struggled in the narrow fire-place. Those were not gentle times. Dirking seemed a very natural action to Rob. He looked on the soldier below him as a sworn foe beyond the claims of pity--an invader and murderer of his people. Under no possible circumstances could Rob have regarded an Englishman with sympathy or admiration since for centuries he had been looked upon as a natural enemy, and now a very bitter one indeed.

But if he failed to kill the man, then the game was up, and even if he did succeed in his design they were not much better off, Muckle John could not reach a place of safety, and another slaughtered Englishman would only point to their near presence in the neighbourhood and redouble the soldiers' previous energies.

And then as though to settle the matter once and for all, a bugle sounded near at hand, the soldier awoke and scrambled to his feet, there was a noise of marching on the moor outside and the splashing of a horse passing through the burn. Rob heard an order given and the grounding of arms. He listened to the roll-call being read and the words of dismissal.

The short afternoon was closing in, and to his horror he realized that they were camping for the night.

Into the open room below he heard several men enter, and their conversation reached him in his hiding-place. There was little comfort in what they said. As far as he could judge the officer in charge was questioning the soldier who had fallen asleep under the chimney.

"Seen no one I suppose?" He spoke with a Highland accent.

"No, sir, and I've searched the place high and low."

"Been up the chimney?"

"Yes, sir."

"Looked under that gravestone there?"

"No, sir, it's not possible to move that."

"Call two of the men, we'll soon see to that."

There was a moment's silence and then a sound of heaving.

"Can't budge it, sir."

"Here let me have a hand."

A sudden fear came to Rob that perhaps Muckle John had taken refuge there--but no, what four men could not move it was unlikely he could lift with his injured ankle.

"Sergeant," said the officer, "march back to the cave where the engagement took place yesterday with twelve men, leave the other four with me, we'll spend the night here."

"Here, sir--with that stone?"

"It takes more than a dead Jacobite to frighten me," replied the officer, and a few minutes later Rob heard the tramp of feet die away again.

It was darkening fast and he wondered what Muckle John was doing and where he was, whether if he was lying hid in the heather he would make a sign, or whether he must spend the whole frightful night cooped up like a fowl in a pen.

He must have dozed a little when a curious noise made him start and listen with strained ears. It was a familiar enough sound--just the sharp crackling of firewood, but there was a horrible significance in it now, for a whiff of smoke curling up into his face set his eyes watering.

They had lit a fire in the hearth below. The thin wisp of smoke grew into a column swirling unsteadily upwards. It became a solid volume choking and hot. With a sob of pain and despair Rob covered his face with his bonnet. For a few minutes that relieved his eyes and nose, but the danger of being suffocated was only subordinate to being roasted alive. It was a great roaring fire they were laying. He heard the loose sticks and dried heather falling in bundles on the blaze.

His ears sang with the suffocation of it, his brain swirled and his breath came in short gasps as a fish gasps upon a bank. And then with a pitiful cry he fell forward, down upon the fire itself and with a swirl of smoke and sparks, into the midst of the soldiers.

The officer thinking that the blackened, tattered figure might be the Prince himself hastened to stamp out the tongues of flame upon his clothes, and dragging him to his feet stared into his face.

"Tuts," he said in a tone of deep disappointment. "It's only a boy."

"It's the lad who escaped," cried a soldier peering at him; "the Duke offers fifty pounds for his arrest."

"What lad?" asked the officer, eyeing Rob with some interest.

"Rob Fraser, he knows...," but the officer broke in, "Never mind what he knows," he said testily, "bind him and set him against the wall."

Long after when Rob was come to himself and his eyes more accustomed to the light from the great fire he watched the officer at his supper. He was a small red-haired man with cold blue eyes and white eyebrows, for all the world like a badger, and with Campbell written all over him. It was an evil day when a Campbell could strut over the country-side at his ease.

Having finished his food and offering none to Rob, who nearly begged him for a mouthful so famished was he, the officer lit his pipe and called in his men, telling them they could sleep along the walls of the place.

Greatly affable through meat and drink he also fell into conversation, and being like most little men very anxious to show what a terrible fellow he was, with the spirit of a giant, he related the tale of the banshee of Loch Fyne, and told it so capably that the soldiers drew a little together and sent the bottle round in some uneasiness.

"It came from a lonely island," he said, "and none saw it pass over the grey face of the loch--but there was a mournful cry that seemed to be far up in the clouds and a cold wind passing like a wraith along the barren shore. Oh it was the rare one the banshee of Loch Fyne, and some said it lived in the lonely island where the dead lay, for it always passed that way, and it never travelled alone."

"I don't like these Highland tales," said one Englishman with a shiver, "least of all hereabouts. There was a ghost I've heard tell in Holmbury Hall..."

"Whisht to your ghosts," broke in a large Lowland Scot, whose eyes were great with the story of the banshee. "Captain here has seen the banshee, have ye no, sir?"

Now the officer had never before claimed that privilege. It is improbable that he had ever been to the shores of Loch Fyne, being a Glen Etive man, and it is also open to question whether the dreaded banshee was not a traveller's tale. However that may be he was not prepared to disappoint his hearers at so propitious a time.

"Once--once," he replied, being a man as truthful as a lie would permit, "only once and that at midnight--a clear moon in the sky and no wind to speak of. I was a youngster at the time, barely twenty, and as reckless as could be. It was always said that the banshee rose from the ancient burial-place at twelve o'clock, and floating across the loch set out on her evil errand. There are those who heard poor Angus Campbell wailing all through a winter's night and his voice up in the clouds, 'Tha e lamhan fuar: Tha e lamhan fuar! It has a cold, cold hand!'"

"My goodness," gasped the Lowlander, dragging himself nearer to the fire.

On every face about the dying blaze superstitious fear was written. Even Rob, weak with want of food and full of misery, heard his teeth chatter at the picture the little man drew--for he was an artist in gruesome effects.

"Over I rowed," he continued, "and the whole clachan watched me go. I rowed out over the silvery loch under a rising moon, and there was no whisper of what was to come, not even the soft music that the banshee..."

"What was that?" gasped one of the soldiers in a trembling voice.

They all turned about and listened.

"I thought I heard a tune far away," he whispered, shaking with fright.

"Tuts," said the officer, but none too happily, "it was nothing. But the tune that the banshee plays is a queer twisted tune, and once ye hear it there's no getting away--what was that? I'll swear I heard something."

This from the little officer himself set all aquiver with agitation. Some one tried to throw some more wood on the fire and found there was none, while the two nearest to the open space in the wall drew so close to their comrades that they were hunched up together like cattle in a drove.

Rob crouched under the shadow of the wall overcome with a kindred fear. Forgotten was Muckle John--forgotten was his impending fate--there only remained the dreaded banshee and the far away haunting echo of a tune, and the strangeness of the place they were in.

"Come, come," said the officer with some attempt at soothing them, "it's queer the way the courage goes in these forlorn places. As I was saying I lay watching the great tombstone that the moonlight rested upon, when I heard a bit ripple of music that fairly made the flesh creep on my bones and my hair stand up quite crisp and prickling. And will ye believe me the stone of the tomb began to rise..."

"Listen!" screamed Rob.

His shrill warning acted on them like an electric shock. They scrambled to their feet in a perfect paroxysm of terror. And then far away like a ghostly measure sounded a lilting, ghastly melody. Ghastly it sounded in that dim place with only the sullen red light upon the broken, haunted walls--ghastly just because it was a trifling mocking catch of tune played in a grim and heartless manner.

But more was to come.

"Let us get out of here," groaned one of the Englishmen in a hoarse voice, but he spoke too late.

For before their starting eyes the top of the massive tomb began to lift--lift--lift, and the tune to grow clearer coming ever nearer like a man marching slowly into their midst.

Then there was such a scene as that lonely moor had never seen before and will never see again. For with one united howl of terror they rushed together for the door. And first of them all was the little officer. Into the silent night they tore, tripping, falling, never daring to look back, but set on reaching Fort Augustus in the swiftest possible manner.

Only once did the little officer pause, having fallen head-first into a bog, and as he scrambled out he heard (or says he heard) the thing at his very heels floating ten feet from the ground and playing as it came.

Rob, unable to fly, was forced to a bravery he did not relish. And so with tightly closed eyes and his head buried under a tuft of grass he prepared for the end. Look at that dreadful sight again he would not. He heard the mad tumult of the flying soldiers--he caught a loud bang like a heavy door clanging to--he listened with trembling limbs to the ghostly melody dying upon the moor.

And then back again he caught the sound of footsteps, and he knew that the banshee was come to eat him at its leisure.

It was groping across the floor towards him. Now it was touching him. Its hands were as cold as the little officer had said.

"Rob!" said Muckle John, shaking him.

He uttered a muffled cry partly because of his mouth being so stuffed with grass, partly through the shock of it all, but mostly because it was all so unexpected.

Muckle John said nothing but cut him free, and taking the strips of rope threw them on the fire.

"Should they ever come back, which will only be by day if at all," he said, "they will know that it ate ye up every scrap. But I'm doubting if they will. Let us make up the fire, Rob, and take our sleep, for there'll be few meddling us awhile."

"But how could you do it, Muckle John?"

He put some sticks upon the embers and began to eat the remnants of the soldiers' supper.

"Did I no say there is always a way, Rob, div ye but find it. There are few places hereabouts that I do not know, Rob, and maybe that's in my favour. But if I was to say that the tombstone is no tombstone at all, and that Macrea is merely a manner of speech, I'll allow I might seem to have deceived ye. But just as the fox, bless him, knows his hiding-place before he sets ahunting, so I, Rob, have made wee preparations long syne. They may come in useful some day, and when I lay hid in that same stone in the year '41 for a private matter, I was glad enough to have taken the precaution."

"What was that for?" asked Rob, his head nodding with sleep.

But Muckle John only handed him a bannock and a cup of water from the burn.

"That would be telling," he said, and wrapping himself up in his plaid he sat blinking at the fire.