Part 7

But the broken tower of Duntulm still abode in my memory, and I began to make inquiries concerning it. I was told that it was long the seat of the Macdonalds, but that after the family had been driven out of it by the ghost of Donald Gorm, they removed to Mugstot. "Donald Gorm!" I said; "were they driven out by the restless spirit of the Donald who flouted Macleod at his own table at Dunvegan--who, when he was asked to show his dirk, held it up in the torch-light in the face of Macleod and of his gentlemen, with the exclamation, 'Here it is, Macleod of Dunvegan, and in the best hand for pushing it home in the four and twenty islands of the Hebrides?'" "They were driven away by the spirit of the same Donald," said our host. "That chieftain had been stricken by a lingering yet mortal illness, and removed to Edinburgh, and placed himself under the care of the leeches there. His body lay on a sick-bed in Edinburgh, but his spirit roamed about the passages and galleries of the castle. The people heard the noises, and the slamming of doors, and the waving of tartans on the staircases, and did not know that it was the spirit of their sick master that troubled them. It was found out, however. The servants were frightened out of their wits by the unearthly voices, and the sounds of weeping, the waving of shadowy tartans, and the wringing of shadowy hands, and declared that they would no longer abide in the castle. At last a young man, from Kilmuir over there, said that if they would provide him with a sword and a Bible, and plenty to eat and drink, he would sit up in the hall all night and speak to the apparition. His offer was accepted, and he sat down to supper in the great hall with his sword drawn and his Bible open on the table before him. At midnight he heard doors open and close, and the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and before he knew where he was there was Donald Gorm, dressed in tartan as if for feast or battle, standing on the floor and looking at him. 'What do you want with me, Donald?' said the young man. 'I was in Edinburgh last night,' said the spirit, 'and I am in my own castle to-night. Don't be afraid, man; there is more force in the little pebble which you chuck away from you with your finger and thumb than there is in my entire body of strength. Tell Donald Gorm Og--("Donald's son, you know," interpolated the photographer)--tell Donald Gorm Og to stand up for the right against might, to be generous to the multitude, to have a charitable hand stretched out to the poor. Woe's me! woe's me! I have spoken to a mortal, and must leave the castle to-night,' and so the ghost of Donald vanished, and the young man was left sitting in the hall alone. Donald died in Edinburgh and was buried there; but after his death, as during his life, his spirit walked about here until the family was compelled to leave. It was a fine place once, but it has been crumbling away year by year, and is now broken and hollow like a witch's tooth. The story I have told you is devoutly believed by all the fishermen, herdsmen, and milkmaids in the neighbourhood. I think Mr Maciver, the clergyman at Kilmuir, is the only person in the neighbourhood who has no faith in it." This ghost story the photographer capped by another, and when that was finished we went to bed.

[Sidenote: Flora Macdonald's grave.]

Next morning we went out to inspect the old castle, and found it a mere shell. Compared with its appearance the night before, when it stood in relief against the red sky, it was strangely unimpressive; a fragment of a tower and a portion of flanking wall stood erect; there were traces of building down on the slope near the sea, but all the rest was a mere rubble of fallen masonry. It had been despoiled in every way; the elements had worn and battered it, the people of the district had for years back made it a quarry, and built out of it dwellings, out-houses, and dikes--making the past serve the purposes of the present. Sheep destined for the London market were cropping the herbage around its base--suggesting curious comparisons, and bringing into keener contrast antiquity and to-day. While we were loitering about the ruins the photographer came up, and under his guidance we went to visit Kilmuir churchyard, in which Flora Macdonald rests. We went along the stony road down which we had driven the night previously--the cliffs lately so rosy, gray enough now, and the seethe of the fresh sea amongst the boulders and shingle beneath rather exhilarating than otherwise. After a walk of about a couple of miles we left the road, climbed up a grassy ascent, and found the churchyard there, enclosed by a low stone wall. Everything was in hideous disrepair. The gate was open, the tomb-stones were broken and defaced, and above the grave of the heroine nettles were growing more luxuriously than any crop I had yet had the good fortune to behold in the island. Skye has only one historical grave to dress--and she leaves it so. On expressing our surprise to the photographer, he told us that a London sculptor passing that way, and whose heart burned within him at the sight, had offered at several dinner-tables in the district to execute a bronze medallion of the famous lady, gratis, provided his guests would undertake to have it properly placed, and to a have fitting inscription carved upon the pedestal. "The proposal was made, I know," said the photographer, "for the sculptor told me about it himself. His proposal has not been taken up, nor is it likely to be taken up now. The country which treats the grave of a heroine after that fashion is not worthy to have a heroine. Still,"--he went eyeing the place critically, with his head a little to one side--"it makes a picturesque photograph as it stands--perhaps better than if it were neat and tidy." We plucked a nettle from the grave and then returned to Duntulm to breakfast.

[Sidenote: Quirang.]

Shortly after breakfast our dog-cart was at the door, and followed by Duntulm and the photographer in a similar machine, we were on our way to Quirang. A drive of a couple of hours brought us to the base of the singular mountain. Tilting our vehicles, leaving the horses to roam about picking the short grass, and carrying with us materials for luncheon on the crest, we began the ascent. The day was fine, the sky cloudless, and in an hour we were toiling past the rocky spire of the needle, and in fifteen minutes thereafter, we reached the flat green plateau on the top. Here we lunched and sang songs, and made mock heroic speeches in proposing each other's health. I had ascended the Quirang before in rain, and wind, and vapour, and could hardly recognise it now under the different atmospherical conditions. Then every stone was slippery, every runnel a torrent, the top of the needle lost in the flying mist, everything looking spectral, weird, and abnormal. On the present occasion, we saw it in fair sunlight; and what the basalt columns, the shattered precipices, the projecting spiry rocks lost in terror they gained in beauty. Reclining on the soft green grass--strange to find grass so girdled by fantastic crags--we had, through fissures and the rents of ancient earthquake, the loveliest peeps of the map-like under world swathed in faint sea azure. An hour, perhaps, we lay there; and then began the long descent. When we reached the dog-carts we exchanged a parting cup, and then Duntulm and the photographer returned home, and we hied on to Uig.

Arriving at Uig we dined--the bill of fare identical with that on the preceding day; the hard-boiled eggs, only a shade harder boiled perhaps; and then having settled with the kilted landlord--the charge wondrously moderate--we got out our own horse, and with the setting sun making splendid the Minch behind us, we started for Portree. It was eleven P.M. before we reached the little town, the moon was shining clearly, a stray candle or two twinkling in the houses, and when we reached the hotel door the building was lighted up--it had been a fair day, the prices for cattle were good, and over whisky punch farmer and drover were fraternising.

Next morning, in the soft sky was the wild outline of the Cuchullins, with which we were again to make acquaintance. Somehow these hills never weary, you never become familiar with them, intimacy can no more stale them than it could the beauty of Cleopatra. From the hotel door I regarded them with as much interest as when, from the deck of the steamer off Ardnamurchan ten years ago, I first beheld them with their clouds on the horizon. While at breakfast in the public room, farmer and drover dropped in--the more fiery-throated drinking pale ale instead of tea. After breakfast we were again in the dog-cart driving leisurely toward Sligachan--the wonderful mountains beyond gradually losing tenderness of morning hue and growing worn and hoary, standing with sharper edges against the light, becoming rough with rocky knob and buttress, and grayly wrinkled with ravines. When we reached the inn we found it full of company, bells continually jangling, half a dozen machines at the door, and a party of gentlemen in knickerbockers starting with rods and fishing-baskets. Here we returned the dog-cart to the landlord, and began to address ourselves to the desolate glen stretching between the inn and Camasunary.

[Sidenote: Glen Sligachan.]

In Glen Sligachan, although you lose sight of the Cuchullins proper, you are surrounded by their outlying and far-radiating spurs. The glen is some eight miles in length, and is wild and desolate beyond conception. Walking along, too, the reticulations of the hills are picked out with that pale greenish tint, which I had noted as characteristic of the hills seen from Lord Macdonald's deer forest, and which gives one the idea of the overflow of chemical fluids, of metallic corrosions and discolorations. There is no proper path, and you walk in the loose debris of torrents; and in Glen Sligachan, as in many other parts of Skye, the scenery curiously repels you, and drives you in on yourself. You have a quickened sense of your own individuality. The enormous bulks, their gradual recedings to invisible crests, their utter movelessness, their austere silence, daunt you. You are conscious of their presence, and you hardly care to speak lest you be overheard. You can't laugh. You would not crack a joke for the world. Glen Sligachan would be the place to do a little bit of self-examination in. There you would have a sense of your own meannesses, selfishnesses, paltry evasions of truth and duty, and find out what a shabby fellow you at heart are--and looking up to your silent father-confessors, you would find no mercy in their grim faces. I do not know what effect mountains have on the people who live habitually amongst them, but the stranger they make serious and grave at heart. Through this glen we trudged silently enough, and when two-thirds of the distance had been accomplished, it was with a feeling of relief that a lake was descried ahead. The sight of anything mobile, of an element that could glitter and dimple and dance, took away from the sense of the stony eternities, gray and wrinkled as with the traces of long-forgotten passion, listening for ever, dumb for ever. After rounding the lake, which plashed merrily on its margin, and clambering over a long waste of boulder, we saw as we ascended a low flank of Blaavin, the Bay of Camasunary, the house, and the very boat which M'Ian had borrowed on the day we went to visit Loch Coruisk, below us. The tobacco-less man was nowhere visible, and I marvelled whether his messenger had yet returned from Broadford.

[Sidenote: Kilmaree.]

When we got to the top of the hill we had to descend the slope to Kilmaree; and as on my return from Loch Coruisk I had come down pleasantly under the guidance of M'Ian, I fancied, naturally enough, that I could act as guide on the present occasion. But there is a knack in descending hills as there is in everything else. First of all, I lost the narrow footpath at the top; then as we were bound to reach Loch Eishart, and as Loch Eishart lay below us distinctly visible, I led directly for it; but somehow we were getting continually on the wrong bank of a pestilent stream, which, through chasm and ravine, found its way to the sea by apparently the most circuitous of courses. This stream we forded a dozen times at the least, and sometimes in imminent danger of a ducking. It was now late in the afternoon, and the weather had changed. The tops of the hills began to be lost in mist, and long lines of sea fog to creep along the lower grounds. There was at intervals a slow drizzle of rain. Fetching a cunning circuit, as I supposed, we found the inevitable stream again in our front, and got across it with difficulty--happily for the last time. After we had proceeded about a hundred yards we came upon the lost pathway, and in fifteen minutes thereafter we were standing upon the shore of the Loch watching the flying scud of Atlantic mist, and the green waves rolling underneath with their white caps on.

[Sidenote: The wood-choppers.]

The question now arose--By what means could we reach Mr M'Ian? There was no ferry at Kilmaree, but sundry boats were drawn up on the shore, and a couple were bobbing on the restless water at the stony pier. There were the boats certainly enough, but where were the boatmen? In the neighbourhood men could surely be obtained who, for a consideration, would take us across. We directed our steps to the lodge at Kilmaree, which seemed untenanted, and after some little trouble penetrated into the region of the offices and outhouses. Here we found a couple of men chopping sticks, and to them my companion--who as a man of business and learned in the law was the spokesman on such occasions--addressed himself. "You want to go over to Mr M'Ian's to-night?" said the elder, desisting from his task, and standing up with his axe in his hand. "Yes, we are particularly anxious to get across. Can you take us?" "I don't know; you see we are no ferrymen, an' if we take you across we must leave our work." "Of course you must; but we'll pay you for your trouble." Here the two men exchanged a sentence or two of Gaelic, and then the elder wood-chopper asked, "Do you know Mr M'Ian?" "Oh, yes, we know him very well." "Does he expect you this night?" "No; but we are anxious to see him, and he will be glad to see us." "I'm no sure we can take you across," said the man hesitatingly; "you see the master is from home, an' the wind is rising, an' we're no ferrymen, an' we'll need to borrow a boat, an'"--here he hesitated still more--"it would cost you something." "Of course it will. What will you expect." "Wad you think ten shillings too much?" "No, we'll give you ten shillings," said Fellowes, clinching the bargain. "And," said I, coming in like a swift charge of lancers on a half-disorganised battalion, and making victory complete, "we'll give you a glass of spirits at the house, too, when you get across." The men then threw down their axes, put on their jackets, which hung on nails on the walls, and talking busily in Gaelic, led the way to the little stony pier where the boats were moored.

[Sidenote: On Loch Eishart.]

"There's a gale rising," said one of the men, as he pulled in a boat to the pier by a rope, "an' it'll no be easy taking you across, and still harder to get back ourselves." As, however, to this expression of opinion we made no response, the men busied themselves with getting the boat to rights, testing the rollock pins, rolling in stones for ballast, examining the sail and ropes, and such like matters. In a short time we took our seats, and then the men pulled slowly out to sea in the opposite direction from Mr M'Ian's house, in order to catch the wind, which was blowing freshly inland. The course of the boat was then changed, the oars shipped, the sail shaken out, and away we went through the green seas with long lurches, the foam gathering up high at the bows, hissing along the sides, and forming a long white wake behind. The elder man sat with the rope of the sail in his hand, and taking a shrewd squint at the weather at intervals. When not so engaged, he was disposed to be talkative. "He's a fine gentleman, Mr M'Ian, a vera fine gentleman; an' vera good to the poor." "I understand," I said, "that he is the most generous of mankind." "He is that; he never lets a poor man go past his door without a meal. Maybe, sir, ye'll be a friend o' his?" "Yes, both of us are friends of his, and friends of his son's too." "Maybe ye'll be a relation of his?--he has many relations in the south country." "No," I said, "no relation, only a friend. Do you smoke?" "Oh, yes, but I have forgot my spleuchan." "I can provide you with tobacco," I said, and so when his pipe was lighted he became silent.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian and the boatmen.]

We were now two-thirds across, and the white watery mists hung low on the familiar coast as we approached. Gradually the well-known objects became defined in the evening light--the clumps of birch-wood, the huts seated on the shore, the house, the cliffs behind on which the clouds lay half-way down. When we drew near the stony quay we noticed that we were the subjects of considerable speculation. It was but seldom that a boat stood across from the Strathaird coast, and by our glass we could see a group of the men-servants standing at the corner of the black kitchen watching our movements, and Mr M'Ian himself coming out with his telescope. When the keel grated on the pebbles we got out. "Now, my men," said Fellowes, "come up to the house and have your promised glass of spirits!" To our astonishment the men declined; they could not wait, they were going back immediately. "But you must come," said my companion, who acted as purser, "for before I can pay you I must get Mr M'Ian to change me a sovereign. Come along." We climbed up to the house, and were welcomed by Mr M'Ian, father and son, in the ivy-covered porch. "By the way," said Fellowes, "I wish you to change me a sovereign, as we have ten shillings to pay these men." "Did the scoundrels charge that sum for bringing you over? It's extortion; five shillings is quite enough. Let me go and speak to them." "But," remonstrated Fellowes, "we don't consider the charge immoderate: we made the bargain with them: and so anxious were we to be here that we would willingly have paid them double." "Don't talk to me," cried M'Ian, as he put on his hat and seized his stick. "Why, you rascals, did you charge these gentlemen ten shillings for taking them across the Loch? You know you are well enough paid if you get half." "Sir," said the elder man respectfully, while both touched their bonnets, "we'll just take what you please; just anything you like, Mr M'Ian." "Don't you see the mischief you do and the discredit you bring on the country by this kind of thing? Every summer the big lying blackguard _Times_ is crammed with complaints of tourists who have been cheated by you and the like of you--although I don't believe half the stories. These fools"--here the old gentleman made reference to us by a rapid backward chuck of his thumb--"may go home to the south and write to the newspapers about you." "The bargain the gentlemen made was ten shillings," said the man, "but if you think we have asked too much we'll take six. But it's for your sake we'll take it, not for theirs." "They're honest fellows these," cried the old gentleman, as he poured the coins into the palm of the elder man; "Alick, bring them out a dram." The dram, prefaced by a word or two of Gaelic, to which Mr M'Ian nodded, was duly swallowed, and the men, touching their bonnets, descended to their boat. The old gentleman led the way into the house, and we had no sooner reached the porch than my companion remembered that he had left something, and ran down to fetch it. He returned in a little while, and in the course of the evening he gave me to understand that he had seen the boatmen, and fully implemented his promise.

[Sidenote: Lamb-branding.]