CHAPTER VII.

ST. MARK'S DAY.

Agitated by emotions of no ordinary kind, on the evening of the 26th April I saw the broad harbour of Eckernfiörd open to receive our ships; for in that little town, the painted walls and church spire of which I could see shining afar off in the cold yellow light of a stormy setting sun, Ernestine might be in safety by her father's side, or perhaps with Bandolo.

I cannot describe all that I endured of anger, bitterness, impatience, and anxiety during these weeks of warfare and wandering among the Danish isles and Juteland coasts. Relief could only be found by plunging into the fierce tumult and excitement of strife. When that passed away, my agony and suspense returned with redoubled force.

Old superstition has made the 26th of April, St. Mark's day, an unlucky time for an expedition; and I have known more than one worthy crofter and bien bonnet-laird, near my father's tower at home, who dared not plough on St. Mark's day, lest a blight should destroy the fruit of their labour; neither would their wives churn or spin, lest the milk should become soured and the rock ravelled. King Christian knew little of such fancies of the olden time, and cared less for them; thus, after deceiving the enemy by standing off to the seaward, he returned again when the darkness set in, and ordered all to be in readiness for breaking the strong boom which closed the harbour mouth, and for obtaining the town by storm.

By a sudden change in the weather, the snow had almost entirely disappeared, and vegetation had fully commenced; but a cold and stormy wind swept over the darkened waters of the bay, a pitchy gloom enveloped the whole sky, and shrouded in obscurity the low, flat shore of South Juteland. Steadily and noiselessly our vessel stood towards the harbour mouth, a fire-ship leading the van to burst and destroy the boom, and to force a passage for us. We expected to be all engaged in an hour, and mustered in our arms and in silence on the decks of the three royal ships. We endeavoured in vain to discover the bearing of the shore. It seemed to be visible to King Christian alone; for that able and valiant monarch, being a mariner as well as a warrior, sheathed in his full armour, stood by the tiller, steering the fireship in person, and gazing into the gloom with his keen but solitary eye.

"Phadrig," said I to my sergeant; "look to it, and see that our company have all their matches and bandoliers in service order."

"I have anticipated your orders, and looked well to their arms and powder," he replied in his native Gaëlic; but there was an expression in the tall sergeant's dark face, visible below his steel cap, which startled me, apathetic even as I had now become to casual circumstances.

"How is this, Phadrig?" said I; "are you ill, my good man?"

"It is a dark night even for this kind of work, and the darker the better, perhaps," said he; "but of all others in the year, St. Mark's night is the least lucky, either for fighting or ferrying on. I will tell you a story. On this night, fifteen years ago, my father, Dunachadh Bane, and two men of our tribe, who had been sent on a mission from M'Farquhar to M'lan of Glencoe, quarrelled with some M'Donalds, whom they met on a _creagh_ near Glen Etive and the Black Mountain. They fled by Keanlochleven. The night was dark as this; and like a well at the bottom of its steep, black hills, lay the deep but narrow waters of the Leven. It is said a spirit guards them--a dangerous, a shapeless, and revengeful spirit--whose form is concealed by a cloud, but whose voice is often heard before a storm, shrieking from among the rocks that overhang the lake. In the murky midnight they heard a wild cry tossed after them on the gusty wind, as they rushed down the steep Highland pass; again came the cry, and again loud, shrill, and wailing; now it seemed to come from the dark lake, now from the darker mountains, and now from the blasted pines that overhung the foaming stream which fed the narrow Leven. It curdled their hearts' blood and froze the marrow in their bones--for amid the starless gloom they could see a dark cloud floating over the bosom of the lake; but they were bold and desperate men, and heeding less this terrible warning than the arrows of the M'Donaids, they sprang down the side of the shelving mountain, and reached the still, black, solemn lake, the waters of which were partly frozen. A boat lay among the withered reeds; they leaped in--they put off with an exulting shout, and my father grasped the tiller.

"'Black be your end!' shouted a voice like thunder over their heads, and the Glencoe men heard it with terror, as they rushed to the shore of the Leven. '_Bu dubh a dhiol!_'" said Phadrig, pausing; "yes--black indeed was my father's fate. The dark vapour descended between the steep hills, a torrent of wind tore up the bosom of the Leven, revealing its ghastly depths; the water rose in billows, and lashed the overhanging hills; again the shriek was heard, the cloud of the angry spirit swept away; but the boat had vanished, for it had been engulfed by the ebbing water. The M'Donalds fled, abandoning in their terror all the cattle they had taken in the creagh. Dunachadh Bane and his two companions had perished, unshriven and unassoiled; and long the priest of our tribe, James of Jerusalem, prayed for their souls in the old kirk of Strathdee. Now, Captain Rollo," continued Phadrig, in a low impressive voice, and while drawing closer to me; "ever as St. Mark's night returns, a boat with three men in it is seen to cross the Leven."

"Pshaw, Phadrig--can a stout fellow like you believe this?"

"Firmly as I believe the blessed gospels. Once I saw it myself."

"It must have been mere imagination," said I.

"It was _not_," said he; "the April night was cold and clear. To the sorrow of the poor, the season had been backward, and the snow-wreaths lay deep in glen and corrie. With no companion but my dog, I had come through the savage glen of Larochmhor, and round by the base of Ben Nevis, on whose peaks the snow seldom melts. I reached Keanlochleven. Though the month was April, the water lay at my feet a sheet of waveless ice. All was still as death, and my own shadow spread far before me over the wilderness of snow, for the moon was low at the end of the narrow vale. It hung there like a silver shield, broad, round, and full, between a cleft of the rugged mountains.

"I paused a moment to mutter a prayer, and look on the place where my father had perished. The lake lay at my feet, I have said; but I had no fear of the water spirit, for then the moon was bright. I had a good dram under my belt, and my claymore at my side. Suddenly, I perceived something moving across the frozen surface of the lake--three hundred feet below me; my dog uttered a howl, and crept close to my side. 'Blessed be Heaven!--am I blind!' I exclaimed, pressing a hand upon my eyes; 'am I blind, or dreaming?' A boat with three Highlanders in it passed before me--I knew they were Strathdee men by the cock of their bonnets--one steered, while two pulled the oars; and, like the shadow of a cloud, the boat and its rowers glided across the _hard frozen surface_ of the Leven, slowly and noiselessly, until it disappeared under the dark shadow cast by the mountain side across the salt lake at its foot. A deathly chill came over me; my hair stood on end; for I knew that my father's spirit had passed before me.

"Since that hour, captain," said Phadrig, pressing his hand upon his brow; "I have never gone within twenty miles of Ben Nevis, nor would I for all the gold in the hill of Keir. I have gone round by the Braes of Rannoch, by the great desert and the Uisc Dhu, rather than pass the glen of the Leven. But how I crossed the mountains--how I came down the Devil's Staircase, and reached Glencoe (for I also was going on a mission from Ian Dhu to M'lan), the Lord alone knows; for of that dire April night--the night of St. Mark--I remember no more."

Phadrig had just finished this wild story when a blue light was burned low, almost under the counter of the fireship, as a warning to drop our anchors; and they were let go noiselessly, the rope-cables running through hauseholes deluged by buckets of grease, to prevent the sound alarming the enemy, whose batteries swept the boom and its vicinity.