CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE EARL'S DARING.

Dione, then: Thy wrongs with patience bear; And share those griefs inferior powers must share; Unnumbered woes mankind from us sustain, And men with woes afflict the gods again." _The Iliad_, Book V.

A few chapters back we left the Earl of Ashkirk alone upon the solitary beach near the cavern, on the morning of that day which beheld his unhappy sister for the first time an inmate of the Castle of Edinburgh.

His more bitter feelings of hostility to James had been soothed, for the monarch possessed the charm of the Stuart race--that charm which won the hearts of all whom they addressed; but, being still unforgiven, Lord Ashkirk felt himself an outlaw, with the axe of the doomster hanging over his head, while he had to suspect a spy or a foeman in every man he met.

With his eyes fixed on the island castle where his mother and Sybil Douglas of Kilspindie were imprisoned,--with all his thoughts centred there, and bent on visiting and freeing them from the thraldom and captivity of a Hamilton, he walked along the sandy shore, revolving a thousand rash but gallant plans and projects.

He was buried in deep thought, and gradually his head sank upon his breast.

A draught of water from a spring, a bannock and a piece of cheese received at a cottage where he tarried, and, in the hospitable fashion of the olden time, asked for it without shame and obtained it with a welcome, sufficed him for food; and, retracing his steps, he wandered westward up the margin of the broad river, until he reached the little kirktown of Wester-Kinghorn (which now bears another name), lying behind the Burnt-island, nestling under the brow of hills that are upheld by basaltic columns, whose summits have been scorched by volcanic fire, and whose rifted sides have repelled the waves of the antediluvian world.

On the high and rocky island, which, though it has now become a promontory, was then completely surrounded by the sea at high water, stood a tower belonging to the Duries of Durie.

Crossing the sandy neck or isthmus while the tide was low, the earl concealed himself among the copsewood which covered the island on the eastward, from whence he had a view of Inchkeith, distant about three miles, reddened by the setting sun which covered with a golden tint the calm, broad waters of the Firth.*

* Firth, from _Fiord_; not _Frith_, from _Fretum_, as Dr. Johnson erroneously supposed.

The wood was in full foliage, and cast a pleasant shade upon the rocks, which were spotted with grey lichens or covered with verdant moss. Here passed the day; and evening came, with silence and darkness, for even the stillness of that lonely isle became more still. The wild bees and the buzzing flies forsook the caps of the closing flowers for their homes in the hollows of the old pine-tree; the notes of the mavis and merle died away; the deer came no more to drink of the stream that trickled from the rocks, and the foliage of the isle became moist with the falling dew.

As if in contrast to the storm of the previous evening, the night came on clear, cloudless, starry, and beautiful.

Avoiding that side of the isle which was overlooked by the Duries' castle of Ross-end, the earl sought the beach, where a few fisher-boats were moored to rings in the rocks of a lonely creek.

The place was deserted, and not an eye beheld him. His resolutions and execution were brief: selecting the smallest, he sprang on board, cast off the painter, and seizing a pair of oars, each one of which would have required an ordinary man to handle it, he pulled away from the shore with a strength and activity that the sturdiest of our fisher-wights might have viewed with satisfaction and envy. Though as accomplished a knight as ever rode to battle, the earl was somewhat of a seaman, for his father's castle in Forfarshire looked down on Lunan Bay.

He was master of the little bark both by sail and oar; and knowing somewhat of the dangerous navigation of that stately river, avoiding those perilous rocks known as the Gunnel, on gaining the mid-stream he set the brown lug-sail, which the unsuspecting proprietor had prepared for the little fishing voyage of the morrow, and, favoured by the ebb-tide, the current, and a soft west wind, bore with the speed of a seagull straight down towards Inchkeith.

If the wind freshened, he had a thousand chances to one of being swept helplessly out into the German Ocean; but the bold earl never thought of that.

Alone in the middle of the broad and rapid Firth, its aspect seemed to him magnificent, as the deep red light that lingered behind the western Ochills tinged all its waves with a purple hue; but their foam became a shower of silver, and white as winter frost, when it broke against the shining cliffs, whereon rose the castle at the west end of the island.

As the earl had resolved on freeing his mother and Sybil from their captivity, his natural boldness prevented him from seeing any difficulty in achieving this project, though he was alone in the enterprise, armed only with his poniard and an old sword which he had picked up in the brawl of the preceding night, and though the castle was commanded by Sir James Hamilton of Barncleugh, with a small but chosen party of soldiers.

"If a Seton could fear, I should certainly be afraid now," said the earl, on seeing how the waves burst in foam on all sides of the Inch--one moment sinking low, to show the reefs, which rose like jagged teeth above them, and the next dashing in torrents against the black volcanic bluffs. "Tut! by the pope! what a mouthful of salt-water!" he added, as the spray was blown in his face, when he dashed his boat through the breakers, and then, running along the lee of the shore, struck his sail and slowly crept near the little creek, which there forms the only landing-place; for on the east rushes the whole current of the Firth, and on the west breaks the thundering force of the German Sea.

The night had now come on, and solemn stillness reigned upon the isle.

The gates of the square tower which crowned its highest summit were closed; but here and there a red ray glimmered from the deep windows of its dusky mass.

"One of these lights," thought the earl, as he gazed upward, "may shine on my dear Sybil's dark glossy hair and snow-white brow."

The tide was low, and he ran the boat into a little cavern which lay near the creek; it was, in reality, but the top of a deep chasm in the rocks, having a clear sandy bottom, where he could distinctly perceive the layers of dark pebbles, of bright shells, and waving sea-weed, far down below, when the clear moon rose above the Lammermuir, to shed its radiance on the heaving water.

Resolving to wait till midnight, when all the inhabitants of the town most probably would be asleep, and when, with more security, he could make a reconnaissance of the isle and the barbican wall, the earl guided his boat into the narrow little fissure, which is one of many that perforate the island. While endeavouring to prevent its jarring on the flinty rocks, he was greatly alarmed by perceiving a human figure spring off a shelf of the volcanic wall, and plunge heavily into the deep dark water of the chasm, which penetrated, he knew not how far, into the heart of the island, but which, as it receded, became more appalling by its utter obscurity and subterranean character.

Incident to the age, rather than the man, the earl's supernatural fears of kelpies, gnomes, and water-spirits, now became altogether secondary to the dread of having been discovered by some human denizen of the place. He felt for his poniard, and paused. Behind him yawned the pointed arch of the cavern, with the distant sea-beach shining in the moonlight; before him lay rocks and water buried in darkness. He lingered, oar in hand, scarcely daring to breathe, but heard only the ripple of the rising tide as it chafed on the walls of the chasm.

Suddenly, another sound smote his ear, that as of a diver rising to the surface; then came a hard breathing on the water, and the regulated plashing as of some one swimming away into that very obscurity which the earl's eyes ached with regarding, but failed to penetrate. His hair bristled, and his heart quailed with momentary terror of a spirit, or evil thing; but from that very terror he gathered a courage, and, by his oar and hands, feeling the rocks on each side, shot further in his sharp-prowed boat, intent on overtaking the swimmer, and discovering whether it was a man or devil; but he had not gone twenty yards when the chasm terminated in a sheer wall of rock; and again he paused to listen. The dash of the water had ceased.

He thought he heard other sounds, like those of footsteps clambering up the rock; but feared he was mistaken, for all became immediately still, and he heard only the murmur of the water as it boiled among the reefs without.

"Tush!" thought he, reddening with shame at his own alarm; "it has only been some poor seal or sea-dog basking on the rocks in the summer moonlight. By midnight the moon will be in the west--till then let me sleep, for these last two nights I have never closed an eye;" and looping a rope round a pinnacle of rock, he securely moored the boat, and reclined within it to sleep.

Such was the effect of the weariness oppressing him, that in three minutes he was buried in profound slumber, rocked by the motion of the boat, which gently rose and fell on the undulations of the water; for though around the isle the swell was heavy, the waves being broken by the jutting of the rocks at the cavern mouth, they rolled gently and smoothly into its dark recesses.

Now while the earl all unconsciously was sleeping, this little cavern of the sea was filling fast; for as the rising tide on the German Ocean met the downward current of the Forth, the water rose rapidly against the impending walls.

Ashkirk knew not how long he slept, when he was suddenly awakened by an unusual sound, and, on attempting to rise, struck his head with violence against the stone roof of the cave, close up to which his boat had floated on the rising tide.

His situation was fraught with danger and horror.

Moored fast to a point of rock now far beyond his reach, the boat was wedged between the top of the cavern and the surface of the swollen water, leaving him thus imprisoned, coffined, as it were, in utter darkness, and with the deadly fear that the whole of this now submarine grot would be covered by the gurgling tide, in which case he would assuredly be drowned, "and die the death (as he thought) of a rat in a drain."

The partial gleam of moonlight which had illuminated the mouth of this frightful trap had now passed away, and the darkness within and around it seemed palpable and opaque. He could no longer discern where the entrance lay, and his heart sank in the fear that the water had risen over it. He now heard the wavelets rippling, with a thousand hollow echoes, in the fissures and recesses, and gurgling with a sucking sound as they filled each in succession, and rose towards the gunwale of his boat, which had become perfectly immovable.

And the tide was still rising!

He found that he could not survive ten minutes longer. Already the air was stifling, and the necessity of making one desperate struggle for life became immediately apparent. Lying almost on his back, he groped breathlessly around him, and discovered a vacant shelf of rock upon his right. Clambering within it, he found with joy that it led to an inner and upper cavern. He had scarcely left the boat when, with a hoarse gurgle, the tide rushed in and filled it.

As he ascended, a faint red light now flickered on the dark, stony walls of this slimy retreat; then, indeed, the heart of the gallant earl began to tremble, as his dread of supernatural beings returned. He remembered the strange figure which had disappeared so suddenly into the lower cavern when he first entered it. Again the terror of the water-kelpie came vividly upon him; for, in that time, all Scotsmen feared that evil denizen of their native seas and lakes.

Though dark, damp, and slimy, it was evident to the earl that the water did not usually rise so far as this upper retreat; and as the light reddened and increased around him, it revealed the solid masses of whinstone rock which composed the enormous walls of this subterranean vault. Here and there were columns of basalt, or perpendicular lava, with masses of sparkling spar, pitchstone, and porphyry. Still this strange and crimson light brightened and wavered, dying and growing again, till, overcome by dread of dwarfs and fairies, or spirits still more fell, several seconds elapsed before the earl removed his hand from his eyes, and looked steadily around him.

At the upper end of the grotto, which measured somewhere about twenty feet square, there burned a fire of wood, green bushes, and crackling sea-grass; and thereat was seated--neither a witch brewing hell-kail, nor a wizard working spells; neither a stunted dwarf forging fairy trinkets, nor some fair water-spirit rising in her naked beauty from a silver shell, but simply a man roasting one of those wild rabbits with which the island has in all ages abounded, and who, with his breath, was blowing aside the smoke, which curled to the upper air through a chasm in the roof.

Lord Ashkirk paused irresolutely; for, in advancing, he might fall upon an enemy, and in retiring, he would inevitably fall into the water, which murmured angrily in the cavern below. The whole aspect of this subterranean cook was wild and strange; and though he stooped immediately over the red embers that gleamed on a shelf of basalt, the intruder failed to discover his features.

Suddenly, something familiar in the attitude flashed upon his memory.

"Sabrino!" he exclaimed, and approached him.

Sabrino--for this mysterious personage was no other--turned round, and bounded backward with a terror which was ludicrously expressed by the blue aspect of his usually sable visage, his dilated yellow eyes and expansive mouth, in the recesses of which he rolled about the voiceless fragment of his mutilated tongue.

"O--ah!" he stuttered, capering with terror, "O--ah--ees a-mee!"

"Now, by St. Mary! I thought thee the devil himself roasting some poor man's child. Why art thou not attending my mother in that rascally old tower above us? How camest thou to be hiding thus, and in a condition so dilapidated? But, first of all, how is my Lady Sybil--tush! I waste my time in questioning thee, poor pagan, who art incapable of Christian speech."

As Sabrino's whole vocabulary consisted of a few guttural sounds, a vast number of contortions of visage and shark-like grins, which were seldom very intelligible to any one save the countess or Lady Jane, who had acquired a knowledge of his meaning by habit, an answer to the earl's three questions was not to be expected. After his first terror and the extravagance of his after-joy had subsided, his story, if he could have told it, might have been related in a few words.

The blow inflicted by the oar had neither killed nor stunned him; for, luckily, that portion of his frame whereon it fell, namely, his head, was stronger, by nature, than a casque of steel; thus, he merely sank to come up again a few yards distant; but he dared neither to swim after the boat, nor return to the tower where his mistress was imprisoned, and from which he had been so unceremoniously repulsed. Full of hatred and fear of the white men among whom his evil fortune had cast him, the unhappy black page had found this shelter when pursuing a rabbit by moonlight among the rocks. Externally, a thick clump of whin-bushes concealed the fissure that gave admittance to this upper grotto, where, for fourteen days, Sabrino had lurked, coming forth only at night to pick up fuel and shell-fish, crabs, mussels, whelks, and other _debris_ of the ocean on the beach, and to catch the wild rabbits as they slept among the long reedy grass in the moonlight.

During the day he remained close in his retreat; for he knew well that Sir James Hamilton's men in the tower would have thought as little of shooting him, by bow or arquebuse, as of winging a Solan goose.

In these fourteen days, much of the original savageism of the African's aspect and disposition had returned. He looked wild, haggard, and strange, as his glassy eyeballs, and the gold earrings with which the countess had adorned his large ears, glittered in the light of the embers. On his thick woolly head was a cap or crown, which he had woven of seaweed, and ornamented with the crabs' claws and the cockleshells of his late repasts; his once gay doublet of white satin slashed with scarlet silk and laced with gold, his tight white hose and trunk breeches, together with the metallic collar of thrall, which had the Countess Margaret's arms and cipher engraved thereon, were all wofully changed in aspect, the former being torn to rags, and the latter encrusted with salt by the saline atmosphere of the Firth.

All this and much more the poor mute endeavoured to explain by signs, which were totally unintelligible to the Earl of Ashkirk; who, however, understood one point of the narrative, the necessity of remaining closely concealed.

As Sabrino, to avoid discovery, had to cook all his viands in the night, another rabbit was put to the spit before his fire, on which he threw some of the driftwood and dried seaweed procured from the creek; and there can be little doubt that the glow of this subterranean fire, appearing at times through the fissure in the rocks that bounded the western side of the little valley, formed the gleams of fairy light, which were the source of such alarm to the countess.

Her outlawed son made a hearty meal, which passed for both supper and breakfast, as by the time it was concluded Sabrino had carefully extinguished his fire, for morning had dawned, and the beams of the rising sun shone far into the lower cavern, glittering on its wet walls, and casting their reflection on its slimy recesses. The tide, which in full flow completely filled it, had now ebbed; but there were many fathoms of water, dark and deep, in the chasm where the earl's boat lay floating, swamped and brimful to the gunwale; and the task of baling it with his bonnet, for lack of another vessel, was a long and protracted one.

"Now, my friend Sabrino," said he, "dost thou know what has brought me to this rascally island?"

A knowing leer glittered in the shining eyes of Sabrino; and pointing to the tower, he kissed his hand, laid it on his heart, and then pointed to the water.

"Thou art right: to take my black-eyed Sybil from that villanous prison-house. By my faith, thou wouldst make a glorious lover! what a bright leer thou gavest! I would give a hundred golden unicorns to find a sable Venus for thee, my poor Sabrino; and who knoweth, but through the kind offices of the prior of Torphichen and other knights of Rhodes, I may do so. Now, dost thou know in what part of yonder tower Lady Sybil Douglas and the good lady my mother dwell?" asked the earl, pointing to the castle of the Inch, from the whin-bushes which screened the entrance to their hiding-place, and faced the little valley overlooked by the island fortress, and the winding path which ascended to it. "Not those chambers which overhang the ocean, I hope?" he added, anxiously.

Sabrino nodded his head sorrowfully.

"Ah! twenty furies! dost thou say so? How shall I ever reach them, unless I become a hoodie-crow or a Solan goose? Do they ever walk in the valley?"

Sabrino nodded again.

"Close to these rocks--eh?"

Sabrino shook his woolly head.

"Are they guarded? The devil! thou noddest thy head again. Indeed, this wary old trooper, Barncleugh, keeps a sure watch over them. By Satan's horns! I may mar his wardship yet. Do he or they know that thou art here?"

Another shake of the head replied in the negative.

"Sabrino, my dark-complexioned friend, listen and look; open thy huge eyes, prick up thy capacious ears, and attend to me. To-night I will scale that castle wall, and thou shalt assist me."

"Ees."

"I have observed that the windows on that side are not barred, because they overlook the water. Thou wilt clamber, and not be afraid?"

"Ees--ees," replied the negro, capering about.

"But we may be shot by the arquebuses of the watchmen."

"O--ah!" howled Sabrino, scratching his woolly head.

"But do not let that affright thee, my Ethiopian; for it hath been the hap of better men before us. An unlucky cannon slew King James II. at Roxburgh, at the very moment he was passing a jest with my gallant grandsire. What matters it whether we are shot now, or die quietly twenty years after this, for in the twenty-first year time would be all the same with us, at least so far as I am concerned personally; but I have it imperatively upon my mind to send certain Hamiltons to the other world before me, ere I can give up the ghost in peace."

The eyes of the negro gleamed, and he laid his hand on his dagger.

"How readily thou snuffest blood, my sable devil. I doubt not thou gottest it with thy mother's milk; for, among the knights of Torphichen, I have heard it said, that in the far-away land from whence thou camest, a child receives its first food on a spear, even as our fierce clansmen in the north give the young Celt his first food on the point of his father's claymore. Well, then, listen. Thou seest the wall of yonder barbican, all grey, weatherbeaten, and tufted with grass; well, where that wall joins the tower, I will ascend, and so reach the windows of their apartment. Thou starest. Ah, my friend, thou knowest not my capabilities in the climbing way. I have done as much before for the mere love of life, and shall I not do thrice as much again for the love of Sybil Douglas, who is dearer to me than a thousand lives?"

The negro clapped his hands, lolled out the fragment of his tongue, and danced about to the jangle of his long earrings, which clanked on his metallic collar.

Being naturally at all times of a sociable and convivial turn, the young earl, to while away the time, talked constantly to the poor mute, gravely and with drollery by turns, amusing himself with his childish wonder and savage simplicity, for they served to pass the otherwise dreary day; and gladly Ashkirk beheld the sun sink, and the hour for more active employment draw near.