Part 25

The soldiers sung Gaelic songs to while away the time, and each shared with his comrade the contents of his canteen and havresack; for, having just left their homes in Strathspey, all were amply provided with bread and cheese, beef, venison, and plenty of good usquebaugh; thus, though the place of their halt was weird, wild, and--all save the little runnel that trickled down the heather slope--unholy, the night seemed likely to pass merrily enough.

Apart from all his men lay Evan MacPherson, of Ballychroan, who on this night was unusually sullen, gloomy, and taciturn; so much so, that the soldiers, all of whom knew him well, remarked that a _tarnecoill_, or black cloud, was upon him; for at times he had his dark or melancholy hour.

"And how could he be otherwise?" said old Sergeant Hamish, in a whisper, as he took a huge _sneishen_ from the silver-mounted mull of Corporal Shon Grant, his own cousin, "only seventeen times removed," as Bailie Jarvie has it. "Oich! oich! who but he would have halted in the Forest of Gaich, and at night too?"

"I'll sleep with one eye open, at all events," replied the corporal, impressively, with a wink.

"And I with both my ears," said Duncan Bane, the piper; "for, by the horns of the devil--"

"Whisht! Oich, don't name him here, for he is, perhaps, nearer than we know of; but what were you about to say?"

"That we shall be lucky if we pass the night without hearing the scream of Comyn's eagles as they fly towards the Tarff."

"It is said, they pass through the forest from Benoch Corrie Va always at midnight," said Donald Bane Grant, or Fair-haired Donald the piper, in a whisper.

Some of the younger soldiers laughed; but the older shrugged their shoulders, and took an additional dram and sneishen, as they thought of all the Forest of Gaich had witnessed in other times.

In a previous legend, the fate of the Red Comyn has been mentioned; but this forest was the death-scene of his father, the equally traitorous Black Comyn; and it was to the story of his terrible death the soldiers referred.

"He was killed," said one, "by a fall from his horse, which a weird woman had bewitched."

"Not at all," said the sergeant, bluntly; for he was well versed in all the oral literature of his native hills.

"How then--how?" asked several.

"His death happened thus," began the sergeant in Gaelic. "The Black Comyn was a fierce tyrant, who dwelt in the black Castle of Inverlochy, to which he added the great round western tower, that still bears his name; and there he and his wife, who was the Lady Marjorie, daughter of John Baliol, King of Scotland, were a terror and a grievance to the whole country by their exactions, extortions, and severity. Every one in Badenoch knows the story of his conceiving a love for two pretty girls whom he saw reaping in a field near Croc Barrodh, and whom, because they fled from him, he ordered his Lowland men-at-arms to strip nude as they came into the world, and in that condition he compelled to finish the reaping of the field in the light of open day, while he and his friends mocked them, and looked on.

"Two days after this, he was at the Cell of St. Eonaig, in Blair Athole, where he tarried at a wayside cottage to obtain a draught of beer. The baron was thirsty, and he drank deep; the day was hot--he had ridden far, and the beverage was cool, sharp, and refreshing.

"'This beer of yours pleases me much,' said he; 'whence get you it, dame?'

"'I am my own brewer,' replied the cottager; 'but the malt is brought from St. John's Town.'

"'And the water?'

"'From yonder stream.'

"'The Aldnehearlinn?'

"'Yes.'

"'Good! I shall have such beer made in my Castle of Inverlochy, if it cost me a thousand lives and fifty thousand silver crowns!' said Comyn, wiping the white froth from his coal-black beard with his steel glove.

"'Then you must make a road over the Grampians,' said the woman.

"'And a road I shall make, dame,' he exclaimed.

"The woman laughed covertly, and bitterly uttered a curse under her breath; for she was the mother of one of the young reapers whom he had so recently dishonoured. Now this woman was a witch, and the beer she had given the Lord of Badenoch was brewed under a spell; thus, whoever drank thereof became her victim and the instrument of her will.

"The Black Comyn resolved that whatever might be the result, he would have beer of the same kind in his Castle of Inverlochy; but to procure the ingredients a road was necessary, and he at once ordered one to be made. Then thousands of men were soon seen at work, with axe and shovel hewing a path from the lonely little cell of St. Eonaig, through the dense fir woods of Craig Urrand, building a bridge across the Bruar in Athole, and digging a way straight to this Forest of Gaich; and thus far it was made when the work was stopped by witchcraft.

"Daily the Black Comyn came to survey the road and to watch its progress over hill and glen, and wood and water, and many observed that daily two eagles hovered above his head, but high in mid-air, where the arrows of his best archers failed to reach them; for these screaming eagles were witches, the mother of the two pretty reapers--the beer woman of St. Eonaig, and another cailloch who dwelt by the Lochy, and who came hither to scheme out vengeance and to destroy the Black Comyn's road, lest when finished it might prove an easy avenue for the Perthshire clans to march into Badenoch.

"By the day of St. Eonaig the road had been made nearly to Gaich, and the dun deer, roused from their lair, were flying before the workmen, when the screams of the two giant eagles were heard overhead; the men were dispersed or rendered powerless by a spell, while all their horses and oxen took to flight, as if possessed by the demons which entered the swine of old, and rushing headlong over the precipices were destroyed.

"Corayn beheld this sudden catastrophe with emotions of astonishment and rage, which were soon changed to fear, when the flapping wings and shrill cries of the furious eagles rang close in his ears, and with dusky wings outspread, and monstrous beaks open, he saw them descending swoop upon him.

"He turned his fleet horse, and goring him with his spurs, fled he knew not whither.

"The infernal birds pursued him closely, and the summer sun cast their shadows like flying clouds upon his path. He crossed the ridge of the Grampians, and galloped downward at a frightful pace towards Craignaheilar; but there they overtook him, though he cowered upon his horse's mane, and implored God to save him! His entreaties were in vain, for God seemed to have abandoned the Black Comyn to the fiends, even as He abandoned his son the Red Traitor to the dagger of Bruce; and now the eagles, plunging their beaks and talons in his flesh, tore him limb from limb, and scattered the reeking fragments of his body in the wilderness. One of his legs was still dangling in the silver stirrup when his terrified horse fell dead on the banks of the Tarff.*

* At a place still named _Lechois_, or _one foot_, according to Mr. Scrape. See his work on "Deerstalking."

"And once in every hundred years," concluded the sergeant, "his spirit is said to ride from Gaich, followed by the screaming eagles."

"And here, too," said the corporal, glancing about him and stirring the embers of the fire, "has been seen many a time, as I have heard my mother say, the great Black Cat of the Woods--the king of all cats."

"Aire Dhia!" exclaimed the sergeant, uneasily; "that is the devil himself."

"Cat or devil, I care not which," said the corporal; "but we all know the story of the Laird of Brae na Garacher, who fought in the wars of Montrose, and when hunting here in Gaich, on Yule Eve, shot a black cat of enormous size, and just as he approached, cautiously, to examine the scratching brute, to his astonishment it opened its red mouth and addressed him in very good Gaelic, begging that he would have the Christian charity to inform the cats at home of his untimely end. You may be sure that Brae na Garacher lost little time after that in making his way out of the forest and reaching home, where he related what had happened, and all the family laughed at him, saying, there was nothing in the world like good Campbelton whiskey for making even a cat speak!

"But lo! the moment his story was concluded, a little black kitten, that sat by the hearth, sprang with a fierce bound to the back of a high arm-chair, with its tail bushy like a fox's brush, its ears flat on its head, its yellow eyes glaring with rage, its back erect, and its little body swollen to all appearance thrice its usual size. There it sat for a minute spitting and howling like an evil spirit, and then vanished up the chimney! This event silenced the laughers, and sorely disturbed the mind of the laird, who resolved to consult with the minister about it on the morrow, and, in the meantime, to drink deep before going to bed. About midnight he was awakened by a sound, and, by the dim rays of his night-lamp, saw a black mass hovering over him.

"It was the huge black cat he had shot in the Forest of Gaich!

"Its eyes shone like those of a snake, its fierce claws were extended towards him, its red mouth was open, and its hot breath came balefully upon his cheek, as slowly, surely, and deliberately, it descended from the roof of his bed upon him, and clutching at his throat, lacerated and strangled him to death!"

"And I have heard from my father, who was out with the Prince, God rest them both!" said the piper, "that on the same night of Brae na Garacher's death, when the minister of Kingussie was riding home by the skirts of this forest, he passed a mighty multitude of cats. They covered all the sides of the hills, and swarmed among the rocks and trees, like mites in an old cheese. On reaching home, he found that every cat in the village, and all the adjacent cottages, had disappeared, and gone towards the Forest of Gaich, from whence they never returned."

Just as this third veracious story was concluded by Donald Bane the piper, he, the sergeant, and others who yet lingered by the watch-fire, as if in that place, so weird and lone, they were loth to commit themselves to sleep, were startled by the presence of a man--a stranger--who suddenly appeared among them, without any one having seen or heard him approach--appeared as if he had sprung from the ground.

His aspect was remarkable, and had something alike impressive and terrible about it. He was dressed like a Lowland peasant; but his complexion was dark as that of a mulatto. His hair, beard, and whiskers were of raven blackness; the latter appendages, which he wore in great profusion, grew close up to his keen and restless eyes, which glared from under the shadow of his beetling brows and broad round bonnet, like those of a polecat from under a bush; but his grey plaid, the folds of which were full and ample, rose high upon his breast and concealed his mouth.

His eyes, which had all the fascinating glare of the fierce bright orbs of the rattle-snake, leisurely surveyed the quailing soldiers one after another in silence, and then he grinned, as if pleased by the startling impression his sudden appearance created, and spreading his strong, brown, swarthy hands over the flames, thrust them almost into the fire, without seeming to feel the heat in any way oppressive.

"Who are you?' asked the sergeant, firmly.

"One whom you may perhaps know well enough by-and-by," replied the other, with a grimace.

"Are you a Lowlander?" asked the corporal.

"Dioul!" growled the other; "did such pure Gaelic as mine ever come from the tongue of a bodach in breeks? But speak out, my friends; of what are you afraid?"

"I fear nothing human," replied the sergeant; "but I fear God, and hate the devil and all his works."

"What wrong has the devil ever done you?"

"He put it in the heart of a vile Cateran to draw his dirk on me at the Inverness cattle tryst in August last."

"Nay, sergeant, it was not the poor devil who caused this, but your hot Highland whiskey and temper to boot. Yet I do not think you have much to complain of, as you well nigh slew him afterwards."

"The devil?"

"No--the Cateran, as you call him. As for the devil, he, poor fellow, is very much maligned on earth, I assure you."

"'Twas only a dab with a dirk I gave the Cateran, and he gave me another."

"A dab--a severe wound?"

"Bah! I would let any honest man do as much to me, for a good dram, any day; like true Highlanders, we parted after the first blood drawn."

The dark man gave one of his ferocious grins, as he said,

"You parted--true; but how fared it with your assailant?"

"He was lodged by the meddling provost and bailies in the bottle dungeon in the middle arch of Inverness Bridge."

"Yes--confined there, with nothing between him and the rain and wind of heaven but an iron grating--a narrow hatch of steel ribs, over which the wayfarers tread, and there he is yet."*

* This _oubliette_ perished with the old Bridge of Inverness.

"All this is the provost's fault, _not_ mine. _We_ march by daybreak," said the sergeant, who had imbibed a strange mistrust and fear of this nocturnal visitor; "whither go you?"

"To a warmer place than even the warmest West Indian Isle," was the significant reply of the other, with a withering glance of malevolence and irony; "but it was not to talk with you I sought the Forest of Qaich to-night. My man is here!"

With these strange words, the tall dark man strode to the foot of a tree. There, muffled in his cloak and fast asleep, or to all appearance so, Captain MacPherson was lying with his head pillowed on the root of a gigantic larch, and when shaken roughly by the shoulder, he started up with one of his terrible oaths, but grew pale on beholding the person who aroused him. On recovering himself partially,

"What errand brings you here to-night?" he asked, in a low and stifled voice.

"To see you," was the brief reply.

"But why now, fiend?"

"Where so fitting a place as the Forest of Gaich?"

"True--true! fool--madman that I was! What lured me to halt here?"

"What lured you?"

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you?" grinned the other.

"Yes."

"Fatality,"

"Alas! alas!"

"Come," said the visitor, fiercely, "for time presses."

"Hurry no man's cattle," grumbled MacPherson; "so begone, fiend, for I go not with you to-night."

"You will not?"

"No!"

The dark stranger laughed till the very hills seemed to echo; and that weird sound made the marrow freeze in the bones of the old sergeant, who was listening.

"Come," continued the visitor, "lest I drag you hence."

"Drag!" reiterated the captain, with a furious malediction.

"Yes, drag; for you are powerless as a suckling, and your will is mine."

For a moment their swarthy eyes glared like live coals upon each other. At last those of the Captain Dhu lowered, and he said, in a broken voice,

"Go to the place of tryst, and I shall be with you."

"When?"

"In the snapping of a flint," he groaned, while the perspiration rolled over his pallid brow.

"Ha! ha! Nay, I go not without you."

"Then the curse of God--the bitter, blighting curse that marked the front and withered up the soul of Cain--be on you!" exclaimed the captain, maddened with fear and rage. "Hound of hell, lead on--I follow you! Stand by your arms, men. Sergeant, at your peril, see that no man follows us!"

The swarthy man grinned again on hearing this outburst and these orders; and while the startled soldiers gazed in each other's faces with blank astonishment at the progress and issue of a conversation so strange, and at the aspect of one before whom this terrible officer, the Captain Dhu--he so stern and stormy, so fierce and unyielding--seemed to quail and bow, he and his weird-like visitor went from amidst them, and together sought a lonelier and more sequestered part of the forest.

They remained absent for some time. The whole party of soldiers were now awakened, and muttered strangely among themselves; while, regardless of the orders he had received, old Sergeant Hamish Grant, impelled by an irresistible and, perhaps, laudable curiosity, crept slowly forward on his hands and knees; but he had not proceeded far thus, when he heard the voices of the captain and his nocturnal visitor--the former in tones of entreaty, and the latter in those of authority and fierce derision. Creeping on a few paces further, with a drawn bayonet in his hand, he beheld a sight which, when he considered the proud and stern character of his leader, filled him with blank wonder.

The waning moon was now visible; it shone out for a moment from behind a mass of crapelike cloud. The dark figures of MacPherson and the stranger were distinctly seen. The place of their meeting was a green fairy ring, covered with rich grass, which waved solemnly in the breeze. Close by it towered three gigantic granite blocks, spotted with green lichens, silent, grim, and lonely, for they were Druidical obelisks; and in the middle of this circle of Loda lay the "mossy stone of power," the altar of other times. MacPherson was on his knees; the dark man towered over him, threatening and commanding, but what he said, the trembling sergeant knew not, though all around was deathly still, save the trembling of the wiry pine foliage; for at times a tremulous motion will agitate a wood, even when the breath of the wind has passed away. Wan, white, and ghastly, the rays of the sinking moon poured over Benoch-corri-va aslant, and threw the shadows of the Druid stones, and of those who lingered there, far beyond the ancient circle.

A cloud passed over her face, veiling everything for a moment.

When again the still white moonbeams fell on the fairy ring and the Druid stones, no one was there.

The place was lonely and silent

Full of terror and awe, the sergeant rushed back to the bivouac to tell what he had seen; but for a time his lips were sealed, for he heard the voice of the captain, who had reached the night-fire before him, ordering the whole to stand to their arms and prepare to march.

Evan MacPherson was deadly pale; his manner was wild and excited; but the strictness of discipline, and the known severity of his character, alike forbade inquiry or remark. The arms were unpiled in silence, knapsacks were strapped on, and just as the light of daybreak began dimly and faintly to eclipse the waning moon, the Strathspey men proceeded on their march, which lay across the Grampians, and through Glen Bruar towards Blair Atholl.

A dead silence pervaded the ranks: if any spoke, it was in a whisper, and each man suggested to his comrade that Evan Dhu of Ballychroan had sold himself to the Evil One. If further proofs were required than those afforded by this night-interview, Sergeant Hamish Grant and the piper, Donald Bane, were ready to aver on oath that in every place around the fire and across the forest towards the fairy ring whereon the foot of that mysterious visitor had trod, the grass was scorched and withered. Their clansman, the corporal, who was somewhat sceptical on this point, suggested that these black spots might have been caused by the birch and pine sparks from their watchfires, but old Hamish indignantly repelled the idea; and the future career of Evan of Ballychroan more than corroborated all that was averred to have taken place on that eventful night, in the haunted Forest of Gaich.

About the end of September, MacPherson, with his Strathspey men, joined the regiment, which embarked on the 27th October for the West Indies, forming part of the expedition of twenty-two thousand one hundred and fifty-nine infantry, and three thousand and sixty cavalry, led by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and destined to reduce the isles of St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad. Tempestuous weather succeeded the embarkation, and on the 29th the wind blew a hurricane, which drove many of the Indiamen and transports from their anchors, dismasted some, and bulged others on the beach. The expedition was thus delayed until the 11th November, when again the whole fleet, consisting of three hundred sail, put to sea; but the flagship _Impregnable_ was stranded on a sand-bank, and unable to proceed; other disasters succeeded; the _Middlesex_, with five hundred of the Black Watch on board, had her bowsprit and foretopmast carried away by the _Undaunted_ when off the Isle of Wight, and was thus left astern of the whole squadron; which had no sooner cleared the British Channel, than it was dispersed by another dreadful tempest, which totally disabled the _Commerce de Marseilles_, a hundred-and-twenty-gun ship (French prize), having the 57th Regiment on board, and caused the loss of several transports and many hundred lives. The admiral was driven back to Portsmouth, and his fleet, after being long tempest-tossed, and scattered over the stormy winter sea, reached Barbadoes in detail.

In the Black Watch, this strange series of disasters were secretly but unanimously attributed to the malevolence and interference of the Devil. The mysterious meeting in the Forest of Gaich was remembered, and Evan of Ballychroan was viewed with anything but favour by the soldiers under his command; yet he did his duty bravely and cheerfully, and was stern and severe as ever when any fault or dereliction of orders occurred. The superstitious dread with which his mountaineers regarded the events of the voyage need not excite surprise, when we remember that, about the same period, the crew of one of his Majesty's crack frigates flatly refused to sail until the captain thereof sent his black tom-cat ashore, or had its ears and tail docked, to alter its feline aspect.

But this long succession of mishaps by sea, and upon the events which preceded the voyage, were forgotten by the Strathspey men, when, on the 9th of February next year, the _Middlesex_ ran into one of the harbours of Barbadoes, and the clear brilliant sky and blue waters of the Caribbean Sea were beaming around them; and then the charming greenness and fertility of this place, the most eastern of these lovely Indian isles, made all long for the shore, eager to disembark, and to escape the vertical heat of a tropical sun blazing on the decks of a crowded transport.

Brigades were now detailed to attack and reduce the principal isles of the West Indies. General Whyte, with the brave 39th ("_Primus in India_"), the Sutherland Highlanders, and the old 99th, sailed against Demerara and Berbice, which he captured almost without resistance; while Brigadier-General Moore (the future hero of Corunna), with our old friends the 42nd and other troops, sailed to favour the French in St. Lucia with a visit and found themselves off the Pigeons' Isle on the 27th April, when they were ordered to land at a little sandy bay, into which the bright blue water ran in glittering ripples, under shadowy foliage of the most luxuriant and brilliant green.

The landing was made by the troops in four divisions, at four different points; and the first man who leaped ashore was Evan MacPherson of the Black Watch. His company followed with a loud hurrah! and when the four united columns advanced against Morne Fortunée, the principal military post in the island, on officers desirous of leading the forlorn hope being requested "to enclose their cards to the brigade-major," the first on the list for this perilous work was the Captain Dhu!

This caused his men to consider and have serious doubts of the affair during the halt in Gaich; for, at Sergeant Grant said, a man who had really sold himself to the Devil would have chosen some less dangerous trade than soldiering; and, moreover, would not have been in such a deuced hurry to risk promotion to a warmer climate than the West Indies.