CHAPTER XXXVI.

A FOREST ON FIRE!

The poultry gleaned up by our foragers from the houses we had passed (_deserted_ houses, remember), and the beef provided by our _Fourrier de Campement_ before leaving the good ship, _Scottish Crown_ of Leith, were boiled together in camp-kettles; and while I, with Lieutenant Lumsdaine and my ensign, Hugh Rose (of the Kilravock family), and Phadrig, with Gillian M'Bane, and three other gentlemen-musketeers of my company, formed one little mess, the rest of our comrades formed another, and were squatted on the grass, rending the tough beef with their teeth, and cutting the fowls with their dirks and skenes, and each was as merry as a man may be whose life is so uncertain as a soldier's, and who tries to make the most of it while it lasts.

Phadrig and Gillian were both duinewassals, and when at home in Strathdee both wore the wing of the Iolar in their bonnets. Honest Phadrig had lately declined a commission in another Scottish regiment, preferring his sergeant's halbert to the certainty of rank and being separated from Ian Dhu, whom his mother had nursed, and to whom he was hereditary henchman, loving him with that strong and reverential love which none but a Scottish Celt or an Irish peasant can understand.

Supper over, we rolled our plaids about us, and, after posting fresh sentinels at the verge of the wood, lay down to sleep on the soft dry moss and grass which grew under the thick trees of this old primeval wood--the last fragment of an ancient forest that once had spread from sea to sea.

At the same hour last night we had been breasting the waves of the Baltic.

Watching the changing features of the wood as the last embers shed their fitful light upon the tossing branches, I endeavoured to court sleep--but in vain, for the anxiety necessarily felt by every officer--especially a young one--when in charge of that most important of all duties, an outpost, kept me restlessly wakeful. I knew that the Baron of Klosterfiord was far in advance of me with his pistoliers; but then I expected momently to hear the sharp report of pistols and clang of hoofs upon the distant roadway, announcing that his reconnoitring troop was driven in by Tilly's Reitres.

As the few brands that crackled on our watch-fire brightened and reddened up to die away again, I lay watching the varying and fantastic shadows of the midnight wood, the gnarled trunks of whose red pines shone ruddily in the casual glow, then wavered indistinctly, and became black even as their wiry foliage, or the deeper black beyond, where the thick vista stretched away into obscurity. Above, not a star was visible; for the thick, broad branches were densely interwoven, and formed a roof, beyond which the tall black spires of the firs rose against the sky; and as the passing wind, when penetrating to the place where we lay, fanned the dying brands into a scarlet glow again, the passing gleam revealed the old knotty stems and branches twisted into a thousand fantastic shapes, red and black, or silver grey, like the freakish demons and stinted gnomes of Danish story, or the rude carvings in some grotesque cathedral aisle.

In the middle and dark ages, that peninsula had been covered by dark forests, in whose depths the pagan Wends, when spreading along the shores of the Baltic, worshipped their four-headed god of light; even in his own time (the 11th century), Adam of Bremen tells us, that only the shores of Denmark were inhabited, the interior being all a dark and impenetrable forest. I remembered the wild Holstein legend of the Pale Horse, which yearly bore the assassin of St. Erik the king, sweeping over hill and hollow, accompanied by shadowy hounds and the distant echoes of infernal horns, from that morass near the Eyder, where, embarrassed by the weight of his armour, he sunk and died; to the river where, in the preceding year, he had thrown the body of his murdered prince, and from thence to the royal vault at Ringsted, where the canonized victim lay. Once in each returning year, since that fatal night in 1252, the Holsteiners see the shadowy assassin making his terrible pilgrimage to the scenes of his sorrow, his crime, and his grave, where horse and man go down with a shriek that startles the Eyder in its oozy bed.

I thought of this and many another tale, while to my drowsy eyes all was becoming indistinct: my bare-kneed comrades slept beside me soundly and in close ranks; officers and men lay side by side, for, like friendship and misfortune, campaigning levels many petty distinctions. The lingering light of the fire fell upon their piled muskets with one last gleam, and then expired.

The almost palpable darkness of the forest banished my drowsiness, and I began to reflect on the strange tide of circumstances which had brought me so far from my secluded home, that old tower among the woods and rocks of Cromartie, and from my quiet and gloomy little chamber at the King's College, in the granite city, to the land of these wild scenes and bloody conflicts; and all because--but you will laugh when I say it--an antique silver spoon would not suit my poor little mouth when a child.

I smiled at my father's ridiculous prejudices, and, blessing the poor old man, uttered a fervent wish that in this protracted war I might yet win me a name, which would make him hail with pride the return of the son he had banished. Already I was a captain of musketeers, and I made a mental resolution that the fame of many a great feat should precede my return to my home, or that, like too many perhaps of my gallant comrades, I would lay my bones on the foreign battle-field for ever.

And Ernestine! I thought then of Ernestine--of her goodness and her beauty; of her father's wishes concerning that rough Reitre, Count Kœningheim; I writhed in my plaid at the thought of them, and grasped my dirk on recalling the conversation between Tilly and his ruffian follower.

By separation from Ernestine, the tender impression she had made upon me was increased--for such is the strength of imagination. This fancy or attachment I might doubtless have vanquished by an effort; but I had no reason to exert this effort, and so the fancy lingered in my breast, and strengthened there.

Something startled me.

Raising myself on an elbow, I looked round. Near me a hundred men were sleeping in the darkness; but beyond, at the skirts of the wood, a strange glow appeared between the trees. Some distant town was perhaps in flames; but no, it grew redder, deeper, broader, and then came a crackling sound, with a strong smell of smoke and burning wood. On turning round, the same appearance met my eye on two opposite points; and the lights brightened so fast, that I could see the helmets of the sleepers close beside me shining in the yet distant gleam.

Our sentinels fired their muskets. A pang of horror and dismay shot through my heart.

"Up, up! gentlemen and comrades!" I exclaimed, starting to my feet; "to your arms--to your arms! In three places _the wood is on fire!_"

At this appalling cry, the whole company sprang to their feet and unpiled their arms.

"The Imperialists are upon us!" cried Lumsdaine.

"The four corners of the wood are on fire," added Hugh Rose, drawing his claymore.

"Iosa--Iosa!" shouted the soldiers; "here come the flames!"

"What matters it, Captain Rollo," said Phadrig Mhor, brandishing his Lochaber axe, and belting his plaid about his giant figure; "the cowards would smoke brave men like rats, but we will break through, and do as Conan did with the devil. If bad they give, they will get no better. Into your ranks, my brave lads--close in, close in!"

"Put your plaids above your bandoleers, or they will explode!" I exclaimed; "hammer-stall your locks and matches--follow me--forward!"

"Quick, Donald M'Vurich!" cried Phadrig, administering a cuff with his gauntlet to a Highlander who lingered to poke his dirk into an abandoned camp-kettle, in the faint hope of fishing out something that might be left; "into your ranks! _Is faide t-fhacail na t-fhéosag_! By the Holy Iron! your teeth are longer than your beard!"

How shall I describe the scene of horror that immediately ensued!

Around us the whole wood was in flames!

Many of the pines were aged, dry, and decayed, and they stood in a bed of parched moss, thickly strewn with the old leaves and the withered branches of past summers. Running like wildfire along this inflammable stratum, the spreading flame caught the pines by their hollow trunks, and, narrowing on all sides to the centre, its frightful circle rapidly enclosed us. The glare, as the flame shot from pine to pine, from root to root, and branch to branch, though almost shrouded in the suffocating smoke of the green wood, was blinding; and the heat, blaze, and smoke increased--approaching nearer and more near.

My company became bewildered as the fiery circle narrowed round them; they were uncertain whether to advance or retreat--to keep together or to break and scatter. Volumes of smoke and columns of fire surrounded us; every knot and gnarl on the trunks of the trees, every leaf and blade of grass, every check in our tartans, became visible, as the red, livid glow that hemmed us in became closer and closer. From the broad yellow blaze which sheeted all the background, the solemn pines came forward in black outline--gloomy, tall, and towering, like conical spires. My soldiers were appalled; for the same brave hearts that would have stormed a breach or charged a brigade with all the heedless valour of their race, now quailed at the prospect of being roasted alive; and I cursed my own folly in bivouacking so far in the centre of the wood, instead of lying on its skirts; but who could have foreseen such a horrible catastrophe? Was it the result of chance, or the diabolical spirit of Bandolo?

"Dioul!" snorted Phadrig Mhor, half choked and half blinded; "we wander here like hornless cattle in a strange fold. Oich! we'll all be birselled in our iron, like partans in their shells!"

Surrounded on all sides by falling and flaming trees, and a terrific glare which, brightened and reddened as the forky flames waved in every puff of wind; while the roar of the conflagration, the hiss of the green branches, and the crackling of the knots and fissures as the old fir trunks were torn asunder, increased, till at last we felt the frightful glow upon our faces; and the burning moss, as the spreading fire consumed it almost under our feet, raised a smoke that had already suffocated more than one of my poor comrades.

Driven from their nests in the branches above, and their lairs in the roots and brambles below, the birds and other wild tenants of the wood flitted about us, blinded by terror.

Bewildered as we were, another minute had perhaps destroyed us; for the crash of every tapering pine, as it fell prostrate across our devious path, shot a million of sparkles and burning brands in every direction. Suddenly I perceived one dark spot!

There a rivulet trickled through the moss, in a broad and swampy channel, which the flame could not pass, and thus as yet the trees that overhung it were untouched.

"This way, comrades!" I exclaimed; "follow me--quick! Let us pursue the track of the burn; on--on! we have not an instant to lose."

This saved us; but still we had many perils to encounter, and by the way lost several men, who were suffocated by the smouldering moss, and the smoke it emitted, or were mutilated by the explosion of their bandoliers, or by the falling trees; for every moment, as I have said, some tall pine sheeted with flame came thundering down across our tortuous path, hissing in the little stream, scorching our bare legs, and blinding us still more with sparks and smoke. In a few minutes we were free, though fifteen men were left behind us; and next day we found them roasted in their corslets like tortoises in their shells.

On getting clear of this frightful place, the smoke of which enveloped all the country, and rolled across the waters of the Sound, we found ourselves upon the highway, where three of our sentinels, who had been posted in front of the wood, joined us. The fourth we found lying dead, with a poniard buried in his neck, and his musket gone, together with all the silver buttons which had adorned his doublet. To the poniard was attached a slip of paper. On this one word was written--_Bandolo!_

"And this act of horror has been his!" I exclaimed, looking back to the yet blazing wood; "truly, Count Tilly fights with worthy weapons."

"Tush!" said Lieutenant Lumsdame, shaking from his plaid and hair the sparks that yet retained there; "I heard Tilly order poor Dunbar's heart to be torn from his gallant breast, and then to be forced between his teeth! He saw this done by the hands of Bandolo, and then he turned deliberately to pray to an old pewter Madonna that adorns the band of his steeple-crowned hat. Ah!--you don't quite know Tilly yet."

And his ruffian had escaped me but a few hours before, though I had determined to have shot him like a wild beast, if there was not time for hanging him. In imagination, I often had him within my grasp as closely as once upon a time he was; and now I had seen him, conversed with him, and been again baffled by his confidence and matchless cunning! When I thought of that, and the sixteen brave men we had lost, I clenched my hands and ground my teeth with grief and anger.

"Gentlemen and soldiers!" I exclaimed, unsheathing my sword; "like true Highlandmen, swear with me to avenge the deed of this night. By wayside or hillside, by field or by forest, in hall or in homestead, swear that, if you cannot give him up to graver justice, you will slay this man Bandolo without mercy, even as the king has commanded; for, had he a thousand lives, his crimes require them all."

The whole company unsheathed their claymores, took one step forward, and, raising their eyes to heaven with their blades raised aloft, exclaimed in Gaëlic, and with an energy excited by the hot smart of many a scorch and scar--

"By M'Farquhar's soul, and by our fathers' graves, we swear it!"

Then in the Highland fashion, when swearing thus upon the _Holy Iron_, they kissed the bare blades, and, thrusting the points into the turf at their feet, stood for a moment in solemn silence.

"Now, my brave hearts," said I, "fall into your ranks--take off your hammerstalls and prepare for service! Hark, I hear the clink of hoofs!"

"And the drone of the Piob Mhor," added Phadrig, pricking up his ears; "hark you, my captain--if that is not _Beallach na Broige_, call me a Lowland bodach."

And as he spoke, the morning wind--for it was then about the hour of three--brought towards us distinctly the notes of the bagpipe.