CHAPTER XLIV.

THE BLACK LAKE OF STUBBENKAMER.

Without asking permission (for I knew that at such a time it would not be acceded to me), I selected Phadrig Mhor, and six of our musketeers who were western islemen, and consequently accustomed to boating; and having procured a long, light, and sharp boat (one of the many that lay moored and now unclaimed beside the deserted mole), we pulled softly out into the Sound, and, favoured by the obscurity of the night, passed undiscovered between the gallies and gun-barges of Wallenstein.

My men were all M'Donalds, and were stout and active as mountain deer; they were all armed with sword and pistol, dirk and musket, and had left their plaids and all their heavier trappings behind them.

We pulled straight across, towards the rocky isle of Rügen, which is indented by innumerable bays and inlets, so that we had no fear of finding a place wherein to conceal our boat. This island, which is one of the largest in the Baltic, and was famous of old for the bravery and valour of its inhabitants, the Rugii, who worshipped the barbarous idol Hertha, rose in dusky and broken outline ahead, as the twinkling lights of Stralsund sank in the midnight mist astern.

My sturdy Celts soon shot their light boat across the narrow Sound; we ran it into a small creek, which lay a few hundred yards to the left of the landing-place near Oldevehr, and there concealed it among the thick underwood that overhung the rocks.

Ascending the narrow and now untrodden pathway that led directly to Bergen, the little capital which lies nearly in the centre of the isle, we struck off immediately, by a road which Father Ignatius had described to me, as leading to the lurking-place of Bandolo, and which, though a small and obscure track, my followers, to whom I imparted my purpose and all the bearings of the place, found with the instinct of true Highland foresters.

This island, where in after years our regiment achieved one of its most brilliant victories, measures about thirty miles each way; but so deeply are its rocky shores embayed by the sea, that no part can be further than three miles from the shore. Ruden, a little islet now lying in der Rugische Bodden, and anciently a part of it, was rent from the mainland by a tempest in the fourteenth century, when the sea burst through the isthmus, and formed a deep channel, through which the largest vessels can sail. The centre of the isle was so fruitful, that it was called the Granary of Stralsund, but now it was all desolate; the cattle and horses had been shot or carried off; the fields lay untilled; the farm-houses were burned or otherwise destroyed; and all the inhabitants had fled to Pomerania, save a few miserable beings who lurked in the half-ruined town of Bergen, or Gingst, a village of linen-weavers, or Arcona, where o a stupendous rock there stands an ancient castle of the Vandals, containing the temple of their four-headed god, Sivantevite, in whose service were kept three hundred horses of spotless white; and whose worship was abolished by Waldemar of Denmark, when he conquered the island in 1168.

Aided by the rising moon, and guided by the landmarks, having frequently studied, during leisure hours at Stralsund, an old map of Pomerania and its islands, drawn by the geographer Ortelius, I led my party directly to that part of Rugen in which Father Ignatius had given me reason to believe Bandolo was lurking, like one of those wild wolves whose baying broke at times upon the solemn stillness of the midnight sky.

Unseen and in silence, we passed various little hamlets, such as Casnevitz on the right, Landau on the left, and Bergen, which lay fifteen miles distant from Stralsund, and was then diminished to about a hundred houses. By one of the country people (who speak a species of Sclavonian) we were directed to turn round the angle of a bay which lay on our left; the waves of the sea were dashing on our right, and we threaded our way along a narrow granite ridge, which leads to the wooded peninsula of Jasmünde, the northern extremity of which was that remarkable chalky cliff, six hundred feet high above the sea--the Stubbenkamer, the highest peak of which is named the Kœningstuhl, or King's-chair. We had now reached the north-east point of the isle, and were more than four-and-twenty miles from Stralsund. The hour was about two in the morning; and thus, thanks to our sturdy limbs and thews, we had got over a devious and difficult route in an incredibly short space of time.

Before us lay a wooded valley covered by dense timber, and darkened by the richest foliage. This was the forest of Jasmünde, which supplied all Rügen with fuel. Beyond it rose the headland called the cape of Stubbenkamer, against whose base of rock the Baltic rolled its waves; and between us and the moon, like a deep basin girdled in by the wooded hills, lay the _Black Lake_, overlooked by the cavern which, as the Jesuit had assured me, was occupied by Bandolo, and lay directly _opposite_ the path by which we approached its bank.

"Softly now, Phadrig," said I; "we are right upon the trail of the wolf; keep under the foliage, for although the lake is a quarter of a mile broad, he may detect us by the light of that beautiful moon."

"Some one has passed this way but a short time ago," said Phadrig, who was on his knees, examining like a Highland huntsman, the pathway which was covered with grass.

"Ah!--and in what direction?" I asked.

"Towards the water; for in that way the pressure lies, and the leaves and twigs on each side are tossed in that direction."

"You have sharp eyes, Phadrig! can you detect any thing more?"

"Only, that the footmarks are those of a man by their weight and size."

"Good--we are on the scent, then!"

"A barefooted man," added one of our soldiers; "see, Sergeant Mhor M'Farquhar, the blades of grass are neither broken nor cut by brogue nor boot, but just pressed flat."

"Eachin M'Donuil is right, sir," said Phadrig, erecting his tall figure; "and moreover," he added, sinking his voice, "at every second footmark there is the angular indent of a musket-butt. I will therefore say that the man has been armed, barefooted, and weary, and leaned on his gun as he walked towards the loch side; but there we lose the track."

"He has either swum over, or gone round by the water-side," said I, "for the cave lies opposite."

By stooping down, we could perceive under the dark brow of a wooded cliff, and close to the water, a darker spot, which we had no doubt was the identical and primitive habitation we were in search of.

"Let us separate," said Phadrig; "I will go round by the left, with Eachin M'Donuil and his brother; if you, Captain Rollo, will take the right, with their two comrades."

"Very good, Phadrig, and we will steal softly towards the cavern, which must be our meeting-place. Look once more to your muskets and powder--be wary, as if you were tracking a wild bull by the shores of Lochindall or the Mull of O'e at home in Isla--and every man of you shall have a piece of gold to string at his bonnet-lug for this night's work, and more."

We separated, and, diving into the coppice, crept stealthily round the lake, pausing frequently to listen to any passing sound; but all was still as the grave. Over the bare scalp of the Stubbenkamer, the cold white moonlight streamed into the silent and wooded hollow, silvering the leaves, and the still, waveless surface of the lake. Not a branch stirred, for the wind was breathless, and the fleecy clouds were floating unmoved in the wide blue sky.

As we crept round with panther-like steps, and with that noiseless motion which the foresters of the Highland woods naturally acquired, like the Indians of America, by their habits of war and hunting, my mind was fully occupied by the anticipation of capturing Bandolo, and meting out upon his head the punishment which his life of atrocity so well merited, and which I believed no human hand could make sufficiently severe, there recurred to me a story (concerning this very lake in the wood of Jasmünde) which I remembered to have read in Cluverius; and which, if I had related it to my followers, might have put them all to flight; for although they were fellows who would have faced Satan himself by daylight, the same personage in the dark was quite another matter.

Cluverius asserts that this Black Lake is of wondrous depth; that it is bottomless; and, though teeming with fish, is the abode of demons, who will not permit either boats to swim on its surface, or nets to sink into its waters, which, like the wood around them, were sacred to the goddess Hertha, and her brother Nikelas, on whose altars the early Christians were yearly sacrificed. Cluverius relates, that in his own time some of the Rugii brought a boat to the lake, one evening, and returned next day with the intention of fishing; but, lo! to their astonishment, it had disappeared. After a long search, the boat was discovered, thrown on the top of one of the most gigantic beech-trees, and dangling far beyond their reach. As they shrunk back, they muttered one to another--

"'Tis the devils of the Stubbenkamer who have done this!"

"_It was not the devils,_" cried a terrible voice from the bosom of the lake; "_but only my brother Nikelas and I._"

"We can only suppose," adds Cluverius, "that the unclean spirits, being wroth at the abolition of their worship, still love to play their tricks where idolatry was practised of old."

After considerable labour in piercing the thick barriers of tangled briers, furze, and roots of old and decayed trees, that encircled the lake, but shrouded from Bandolo's eye by the foliage with which our dark green tartans blended, crawling on our hands and knees, and dragging our muskets after us, we softly approached the low brow of rock that overhung the water, and in the face of which there yawned a cavern, having a mouth like some low rustic arch, against the piers of which the water chafed in tiny riplets; but the recesses of which probably pierced the profundity of the Stubbenkamer.

A sound like the croak of a crow announced to us, that our comrades were within pistol-shot on the opposite side; a McDonald replied by another sound like the whirr of a partridge, these being the signals agreed upon. Suddenly a wild and haggard figure came forth from the chasm. It was Bandolo--the assassin of Gabrielle!

My breath came thick and fast, and I heard the click of locks as my men cocked their muskets. We were within twenty feet of him, yet he saw us not. He leaned with his hands crossed and his chin resting on the muzzle of a long Spanish musket, which I thus supposed to be unloaded. He was pale and ghastly; for wounds, want, fatigue, and danger, had wrought their worst upon him. His coal-black hair hung in matted elf-locks around his neck, and over his eyes and ears; a thick beard bristled on his chin; his hollow and glistening eye gazed with a wild and unsettled expression, alternately on the sailing moon, and the deep still waters of the placid lake. He was almost nude, having nothing upon him but the tattered remains of a shirt and a pair of breeches. His brown and muscular arms and legs, from knee downwards, were bare; his breast was also bare, save where crossed by the belt of a cartridge pouch, and the fluttering rags of what had been a shirt. He was the very personification of a hunted wild beast--of a devil cast out from the society of devils--or of what he was, a wretch against whom all men had lifted up their hands, and whose hands were uplifted against all men.

One of my soldiers blew his match, and the red glow caught Bandolo's haggard eye. He uttered a growl, snatched his musket, and, rushing on one side, was confronted by the towering figure of Phadrig Mhor, with his Lochaber axe upraised, and the barrels of two muskets levelled right at his head.

Gnashing his teeth with rage and astonishment, he uttered a bitter curse, and turned to the other side, between the lake and rocks, but was there met by the brass orb of my target, my uplifted claymore, and two musket-barrels also levelled straight at his head. Uttering a howl of wrath and fury, he made a motion as if to leap into the lake, and then, changing his intention, rushed into the cavern; and now we were somewhat puzzled, for we knew not the depth or the windings of the place, from the recesses of which he might easily shoot us all down by his deadly aim if we entered; for the reflection of the moon from the lake would enable him to fire with terrible precision while we could not give him back a shot in return.

There was a pause. Eachin M'Donuil stooped down and fired into the cavern at random; at the same moment a ball from Bandolo grazed his head, and the double report reverberated among the woods and in the far recesses of the granite rocks in which the fissure yawned.

"Dia! this will never do," said the islesman, as he drew back to reload; "it is always darkest under a lamp. We may be within arm's length of this fellow, and yet not see him."

"Let us all rush in," said I; "he cannot knock us all on the head. Come, my boys! with a good cause and a day's pay one may face the devil!"

But they were too wary; and, brave as they were, drew back, saying--

"And if _you_ are shot, Captain Rollo, who will tell the marshal why we left Stralsund?"

I was somewhat at a loss how to proceed, for to besiege Bandolo in the cavern and starve him out, would be a tedious and dangerous process; as we would have to starve ourselves in the first place, and run the risk of being killed or captured if any of the Imperialists paid the isle a visit from the Duke of Friedland's camp; but Phadrig and our four M'Donalds were well versed in all the tactics of mountain warfare, and prepared at once to smoke him out. While two kept guard with their muskets cocked, the others hewed down a quantity of decayed wood, and hurled over bundles of withered grass and the last year's leaves. In the midst of these I threw a flaming match, ignited by snapping a musket; the leaves, grass, and branches, shot up into a flame, and upon that flame we threw a vast number of branches freshly hewn from pine-trees. Phadrig continued to cleave down the resinous boughs and green saplings, and these, which were to smoulder, were mingled with drier branches to burn, thus the fire and smoke rapidly increased together. As they rose, they were caught by the arch of the fissure, into which they were rolled by a west wind that blew across the Black Lake.

The wooded amphitheatre, of which its placid waters seemed to form the arena, glowed in light; the leaves of the distant trees reddened in the gleam, and a long line of wavering fire streamed from the narrow rocks across the bosom of the lake, whose woods and waters were all unchanged, as when the priests of Hertha raised their flaming altars by its wild sequestered shore.

The M'Donalds continued this work in grim silence, which they interrupted only by a low and fierce remark in Gaëlic; for these four men were the sole survivors of the clan Donald of Eigg, nearly the whole of whom were smoked to death in a great cavern by M'Lean of that Ilk.*

* Their bones may still be seen, strewing the floor of this cavern in Eigg, one of the Western isles.

I now applied my sword to the work, and hewed away with right good-will, heaping branches of every kind upon the flame below us; the rocks soon became blackened, and the flame, as it licked their granite faces, scorched off the grass and flowers. The smoke rapidly became a dark volume, stifling even to ourselves, and now day began to dawn on the bare scalp of the Kœningstuhl.

For nearly an hour the fire had burned, and Phadrig was beginning to express fears that Bandolo was no longer in the cavern, but had escaped by some secret outlet; when, lo! I heard a wild and despairing cry, followed by the discharge of two muskets, and, escaping both, Bandolo darted out of his lurking-place, scattering the blazing brands with his bare feet; and with his eyes starting from their sockets, his face pale as fear, fury, and wrath could make it, his long black hair streaming on the wind, his long musket brandished aloft, butt uppermost, burst out through the smoke and flame, and with a thousand red sparks adhering to his hair and tattered garments, fled like a dun deer up the side of the wooded hill.

Unwearied by our long march from Oldevehr, and being refreshed by the halt at the cavern mouth, and the cool morning air, we sprang away in pursuit, dashing up the ascent like true mountaineers, or like the Luath and Bran of other times. Bandolo frequently paused and staggered round to fire a shot at whoever chanced to be foremost in pursuit; but whenever he halted, we either threw ourselves flat among the long rank grass, or darted behind the nearest tree, for the mossy trunks of the firs and ashes grew thickly on the sides of the Kœningstuhl.

As we followed him in a half circle, keeping about a hundred yards apart, and thus forming a radius of six hundred yards, he soon found the impossibility of outflanking us on either side; and had to abandon what was evidently his wish, to descend again towards that wooded hollow from whence we had driven him. He was now compelled to continue his flight towards the Kœningstuhl, whose bare chalky scalp we could perceive above us, gilded by the rising sun, as we left the woods behind, and pursued this frantic and desperate man to the very summit of the mountain, which, being hewn into two halves by some mighty convulsion of nature, has formed an abrupt precipice above the chafing waves, and is named the Stubbenkamer--or most northern promontory of Rugen. Before him lay the wide expanse of the Baltic ocean, gleaming in purple and yellow, as the sun arose from its shining waters, then dotted by many a distant sail, bearing away towards the far-off gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. At his feet yawned an abyss, where the waves foamed on the reefs of chalky rock, and behind were six strong and active men, all armed to the teeth, and bent on his destruction.

Poor wretch! on every side was death, and in his heart--despair!

There were neither remedy, succour, hope, nor escape--and now, like a famished or hunted wolf, he turned and faced us at the verge of the precipice. Wild, ferocious, strong, and athletic, blackened and scorched by the fire through which he had passed--he stood, like a naked Hercules, with his muscular figure towering in full relief against the brightness of that orient morning sky which spread behind him.

As we approached him all our muskets were empty, and my men were deliberately reloading. His we knew to be loaded, and he was examining the lock and priming as we drew near. He was a deadly shot, and out of six of us _one_ was certain to fall. I had no doubt that his last bullet was meant for me; so I covered my breast with my light Highland target as we advanced, resolving, at all risks, to rush upon him sword in hand whenever I came near enough. Instead of levelling his musket against us, he placed the butt upon the ground and the muzzle under his chin--

"Ha--ha!" said he in a husky voice; "did you think of taking Bandolo alive? My hour is come--all is confused and terrible! see--there are other men among you--and women too--dim shadows, with glaring eyes and bosoms gashed by pistol shots and dagger wounds! (he passed his hand over his eyes.) Ha, ha, ha! 'tis all a dream--I rave. Look upon my sufferings--these wasted arms, these tattered rags--these hollow cheeks, these wounds and bruises--these scorched and blackened scars! Gloat upon them even as I would have gloated upon your confusion, shame, and agony in an hour like this; but Bandolo eludes you thus in death, as in life he has eluded thousands!"

He touched the trigger with his foot--shot himself through the head, and fell whizzing through the air into the abyss below.

At the moment he did this, we were almost within arm's-length of him; and never, until my own hour comes, shall I forget the terrible expression of his ghastly face, and the convulsed heaving of his vast chest and shoulders. We peered over the giddy verge, where, five hundred feet below, the white-edged waves were chafing on the chalky beach; but we could see no trace of the wretched suicide.

And yet, strange though it may appear, he did not then die.

Three days afterwards, Sir Nickelas Valdemar, when cruising off the Stübbenkamer, perceived the body of a man lying upon the beach, and sent a boat's crew ashore; and Bandolo (though the sailors knew him not) was found by them with life still lingering in his shattered frame. But what was his condition?

The ball, which entered his chin, had passed out through his nose, by the angle at which he held his head; thus no vital part was injured. The sea refused to drown him, and had flung him back upon the shelving shore, and there, with his shattered head and broken limbs, he lay naked and slowly dying, for the powers of life were wonderfully tenacious within him. The seagulls and cormorants had sat upon his breast, and torn the flesh from his face, and the hair from his temples, yet he could not resist them. Swarms of insects had buzzed about his wounds, and inserted their suckers, till the spray of the ocean washed them off, and left its bitter salt to render sharper yet the gnat and hornet's sting.

We are left to imagine the despairing cries he may have uttered to God for pity, and to man for help--cries heard only by the wild and the flitting seabirds; we are left to imagine the burning thirst that must have scorched his vitals, and the complication of agony endured by him from so many wounds and sores; and, greater yet than all, the scorpion's sting of wakened conscience, that, like boiling lead, and falling drop by drop upon his breast, must have tortured his dying hours--for they were many.

Why pursue further this revolting description of the wrath and retribution exercised by fate upon his miserable frame? Blind, for the gulls had torn his eyes from their sockets; maimed, for his limbs had been shattered by falling into the shallow water; tortured to madness by thirst, by the reptiles and salt that festered together in his wounds--he was found by the sailors of Sir Nickelas, who could only survey him with horror and astonishment, as he lay dying and despairing with his battered frame partly merged in the rippling water.

One, less feeling than his companions, stirred Bandolo with an oar, and he immediately expired. Then a shot was attached to his heels, and, dragged off the shelf of rock by a boat-hook, the body was immediately buried in the sea.

It was not for some months after this, that I learned this terrible sequel to the story of his fate, and to our adventure on the Stubbenkamer.