CHAPTER XVII.

THE WARLOCK OF BALWEARIE.

"The morning e'e saw mirth and glee, In the hoary feudal tower; Of bauld Sir Alan Mortimer, The Lord o' Aberdour. But dool was there, and mickle care, When the moon began to gleam, For elve and fay held jubilee, Beneath her siller beam."--VEDDER.

While these events wore occurring in bonnie Dundee, Sir Andrew Wood, intent on avenging the fall of his friend, Sir Andrew Barton, but no way dreaming that the fate of two affectionate hearts, perhaps the fate of two rival kingdoms, depended on his severely overhauling the ships of Edmund Howard, was cruising with his frigates on the German Ocean.

The two ships, in pursuit of which we left the _Yellow Frigate_ and her consort some pages back, proved to be only large three-masted caravels, belonging to the Prior of Pittenweem, laden with wheat and malt for Denmark; and when hailed through the trumpet, if they had seen aught of three English ships, their skippers answered in the negative. This discovery proved a source of great satisfaction to Cuddy the coxswain, who had feared that his messmate Dalquhat was about to gain the promised reward. He took his place again in the main-cross-trees, and had not been there long before he reported other two sails in sight on the starboard quarter.

Barton eagerly mounted into the mizen-top. The upper sails of the distant vessels were then visible, even to his unassisted eye, for they shone white as snow in the light of the morning sun, which rose in unclouded brilliance from the eastern sea; and the shore of Fife, with the bold bluff Isle of May, were dimly mellowed in the morning haze.

"How do they steer, Cuddie?" asked Captain Burton.

"Dead for Dunbar Harbour."

"Have they any colours flying, do'st think?"

"Nane, sir."

"One is a large three-masted ship, with her mainmast fidded at the topcastle," said Barton, as he reached the deck; "her fore and mizen are in one spar each, but with every rag of canvas set aloft; the other is hull down yet, but I take her to be a small merchantman."

"It matters not," replied the admiral; "'bout ship and overhaul them."

The frigate was put about, a manoeuvre immediately followed by the _Queen Margaret_, and both steered for the Isle of May: by this time the two strange sails were placed upon the lee-bow. The bustle caused by this manoeuvre brought on deck Father Zuill, the ship's chaplain, a grave but kind old man, whose brains were so much steeped in abstruse study, lore, and scientific vagaries, as to be of little use either to himself or others. To defend him from the cool, fresh air of the morning sea, he was well muffled in a coarse blue over-coat, shaped like a cassock, with wide sleeves, and a cowl which fell behind; on his head was a coarse blue bonnet. A cord encircled his waist, and thereat hung his cross and rosary, with a pocket-dial, or perpetual almanack, of brass. In one hand he had a pen, in the other a little volume, bound in vellum and clasped with gold; he had been studying it overnight, till his eyes became red and inflamed, and he had applied himself to it immediately again, after morning prayers.

It was one of this good man's crotchets to imagine that, by discovering the true burning-glasses of the ancients, he would supersede the use of cannon and gunpowder, and this idea being ever uppermost in his head, he saw everything through its medium.

"If these should be English ships," said he, "have you no scruple, Sir Andrew anent fighting on Sunday?"

"Scruple! gadzooks, no--the devil a bit! There is no Sunday in five-fathom water; and here, I believe, we have somewhere about seventy by the line; besides, Father Zuill, bethink thee of the saw--'the better day, the better deed.' Barton, run out that spanker-boom, and sheet home the foretopsail; keep all hands or deck."

These orders were obeyed in the time I have taken to write them.

"Hast thou heard, father," resumed the admiral, "that Vasco de Gama, a certain valiant mariner of Portugal, hath sailed from the Rock of Lisbon to reach India by weathering the Cape of Storms?"

"Yes--but he will never do it," replied the friar, emphatically.

"I fear me so, for the good Bartholomew Diaz--he who gave me this Moorish poniard--tried it with two fair barks of fifty tons each, four years ago, and failed completely."

"'Tis because of an evil spirit who dwells on the top of the Table-Mountain," said the chaplain; "a spirit whose angry breath can whelm the largest caravel in the ocean."

"Yea, father, the Storm Fiend," replied the admiral; "old Diaz told me that he saw his shadowy form in the clouds, over hanging his mainmast head, for many days."

"But De Gama hath received from his king a consecrated banner, having in its centre the white cross of the Military Order of Christ; and, moreover, he hath a letter to Prester John, of the Indies."

"Would that I were with him!" said Sir Andrew.

"By my faith, laird of Largo, thou art safer within a league of the auld Isle of May," replied the chaplain, who was somewhat piqued by the admiral's general unbelief in burning-glasses; "for I verily believe that none can inhabit the torrid clime beyond Cape Non, which lies in twenty-nine degrees north latitude."

"That maintopsail shivers, Barton," said Sir Andrew, stamping his foot, as he gazed alternately aloft and at the yet distant ships, which they were approaching by crossing their south-east course; "this devilish breeze is failing us already."

"Would that I could give you the winds in a bag," said the chaplain, "like the heathen, of whom we may read in this little book."

The admiral, who had no great love for the chaplain's books, which he thought savoured overmuch of sorcery, glanced suspiciously at the little tome, which was no other than "_The Boke of Eneydos_, made in Latin by that noble Poete and grete Clerke, Vyrgyle, and newly translated from the Frenche into Englishe"--a gift from James III, to the chaplain, who continued,--

"Ers long, Sir Andrew, I may serve you in other ways, and now I have a notable opportunity for experimenting."

"What, with thy devilish glasses again!" exclaimed the admiral, as the chaplain descended the ladder and entered the door of the poop without replying.

Almost immediately afterwards he reappeared, bearing in his arms a machine which very closely resembled something between those now used by a photographer and the theodolite of an engineer, for it consisted of a little oaken box, containing a long brass tube, with a multitude of little mirrors, screws, and glasses, Concave and convex, the whole being propped on three legs triangularly, and forming their apex. For want of a better name, this mysterious apparatus was christened by the unlettered crew, "Father Zuill's hurdy-gurdy," and it was a source of secret ridicule with some and of curiosity with others; for whenever he was seen to level his lenses at distant objects, there was a confident expectation that they would go off with a report like a brass cannon. The Romans used moveable types for stamping their names upon cloth and vessels of clay; thus they were very near discovering the whole art of printing. Father Zuill used lenses, and was quite as near discovering the telescope, yet no such idea ever occurred to him. Considering the whole affair as a mere whim-wham or harmless foible, the admiral, Barton, Falconer, the boatswain, and gunner, watched his operations, and made many a covert joke upon them; but the crew, who had long since tired of experiments which ended in nothing, were grouped forward watching the approaching ships, or dozing away the hours on the sunny deck.

Father Zuill levelled his lenses and arranged his glasses in such a way that the bright morning sun, then straight astern, shone lull upon one end, while the other was pointed at the head-most ship, which was now on the lee bow, and beating hard up against a head wind.

"Sir Alexander Mathieson will never sail ahead of us in a sunny day, Father Zuill," said Falconer, laughing; "for he fears your operating on his canvas, and burning holes in it;--what he calls your 'damnable hurdy-gurdy.'"

"Now, Father Zuill, dost thou really believe in the power of these bits of looking-glass?" asked the admiral; who, with an incredulous smile on his honest face, and his hands thrust into the pockets of his gaberdine, had been watching the futile attempts of the chaplain to ignite the white canvas of the head-most ship.

"As truly as I believe that Archimedes burned the Roman fleet with glasses at the siege of Syracuse!" retorted the chaplain. "He used concave mirrors; and if I could only construct a parabolic speculum, the focus of which would reach three bowshots off, and burn there, does it not indubitably follow, that by increasing the scale, I might construct another which would consume a city at three leagues, and scorch to death all who were in it? Hear me, sirs. If _one_ mirror will light a spot one-fourth of its size, at a certain distance, assuredly we may presume that the reflected light of a _hundred_ mirrors, all bearing on the same spot, will render the heat unbearable, and bring the light to that refulgent point at which it engendereth fire. So sayeth Anthemius, who used hexagonal mirrors surrounded by others; and so say Tzetzes, Zonaras, Lucian, and others. We read in ancient history, that the ships of Marcellus were consumed to ashes at the distance of a bowshot, when the sun's rays were at noon. I have heard of as much being done by two concave specula composed of polished brass. A little study, admiral, would make plain to thee (who use the cross-staff for striking the meridian), the geometrical mode of discovering the rectilineal propagation of heat and light, as it was understood by Eustathius and Ptolemy. Thou understandest me?"

"May I never more go to sea, if I do," replied the admiral, scratching his beard in sore perplexity. "I think all this sounds as like sorcery as one ropeyarn seems like another. No, no! the gunner to his lintstock, the steersman to his helm, and the cook to the foresheet. Thou to thy book lear, and I to my seamanship. By my father's soul! I would put more reliance in a good cannon-royale with a smooth bore, and a calm sea under the counter, than in all the glass hurdy-gurdies that ever were seen!"

By this time the _Yellow Frigate_ had the wind upon her beam, and she was close upon the two vessels, which proved to be merely merchant-traders of Blackness, whose crews had seen nothing of the English ships in question; and the admiral was beginning to fear that Jamie Gair had been mistaken, or that he had been sent on some false errand, for purposes unknown. His ships then stood close in shore, and steered again for the Tay, under easy sail; and as they were near the dangerous rock named the Carrwick, Master Wad, the gunner, took the helm, and steered on the spire of the old Cistertian kirk at Crail.

"I agree wi' the admiral, Sir David," said the boatswain to the captain of the arquebussiers, as they leaned over the larboard bulwark, gazing at the coast of Fife, which was then sparkling under a brilliant noon-day sun; "and I believe there is mickie mair o' sorcery than theology in Father Zuill's box o' glasses. I never kent o' man, wife, or bairn that throve under the influence o' sic fause contrivances."

"Yet it may not be magic," replied Falconer; "for the same thing was thought of our mariner's compass when it was invented. For there are many things in nature, Archy, which such simple fellows as thou and I cannot comprehend."

"I ken this, Sir David," replied the boatswain, "that I never heard o' a skipper buying a fair wind frae the witches o' Pittenweem or Anster, but was laid bare on his beam-ends some day. I would rather hear the close-reefed foresail blawn to ribbons, and feel the saut spray hissing owre my head, than resort to siccan contrivances; and I could spin ye a yarn that would let ye see, Sir David, how puir mortal men should just content them wi' whatever God is pleased to gie."

"Spin away, then, boatswain; out with it, off the reel, while the line will run."

"It was told me by my father, puir auld bodie, who is now keeping his deid reckoning in the kirkyard o' Anster Easter, where he has been aground these thirty years and mair. Weel, sir, it was this:--

"In the days when the last King Alexander kept court at Scone, and whiles in the auld Castell o' Crail, the ruins o' whilk ye may see through the simmer mist on yonder hazy headland, auld Sir Michael Scott, the warlock, byded at Balwearie, near the Linktoun o' Kirkcaldy, where his great castle is yet to be seen; and where, on the anniversary o' the night on whilk he was summoned awa frae earth, as men say, the shadow o' a great hand, wi' a forefinger as lang as the spritsail yard, appears on the wall; thrice in the moonshine it beckons an unseen spirit awa; and when the bell at the Abbotsha' tolls one, it vanishes. Being a Fife man mysel, though frae the East Neuk, I ken the place as well as the trout-holes o' the Dreel Burn. I have seen the gate where, when Sir Michael stamped his foot, the deevil came up in the form of a black Barbary courser, with a silver bridle and saddle o' crommosie, the same on whilk he was carried to Paris in one night, and whilk, by every stamp of its foot, made every bell dance in the kirk of Notre Dame. I ken the window, where, by a wave o' his hand, Sir Michael raised the storm that rolled the German Sea upon the Links o' Forgue in Aberdeenshire, and there they will roll for ever; that tore the Lang Craig frae the Inch at Leith, and swallowed up the boat wi' the dead body o' his mortal enemy, Sir Alan Mortimer, when, at midnight, the monks, wi' tapers and torches lighted, wi' censers smoking and choristers chaunting, were rowing the funeral barge wi' muffled oars, frae the Castle o' Aberdour to the Abbey of St. Colme; and there, where the yawning sea engulfed the crusader's corpse, in its leaden coffin, cross-legged, with sword-at-side and spur-on-heel, men to this day call the place the _Mortimer's Deep_; and deep it is, I trow! for ye may pay out a thousand fathoms of line, and never reach the bottom. On that awesome night, the Donjon o' Aberdour was rent frae cope to ground-stane, and Sir Patrick Spens,

"'The best sailor That ever sailed the sea,'

was weel nigh wrecked at St. Margaret's Hope; for his topsails were blawn clean out o' the boltropes; and the Laird o' Hartshaw, as he walked on the deck, was brained by a flap o' his mainsail.

"In these days, there was an auld fisherman, called Logan o' the Weem, who served King Alexander wi' fish, when he byded at the Castle of Crail. Logan and his gudewife, Mysie, had ance seven sons, but six o' them had perished off Elie, in that fearful storm after which the herrings forsook the coast, and there wasna a fish to be had in a' the fishing grounds between Kinghorn Craig and the Red Head o' Angus. The time of Lent was at hand, and then King Alexander, wi' a great train o' lords and knights, auld Bruce, the pawkie Lord o' Annandale, the Earls o' Mar and Buchan, true Sir Thomas the Rhymer, and mony mair, were to keep the festival at Crail; and a helmetfu' o' bannet-pieces were offered for a creelfu' o' fish.

"On the first day o' Lent, Logan o' the Weem, a dour and determined auld carle, presented himsel at the Castle o' Balwearie, and begged permission to see Sir Michael Scott; and, without muckle ceremony, but wi' a beating heart, he was ushered into a wee dark chalmer, like a coal-sloop's cabin, where, chin-deep amang great books, wi' a globe on ae side o' him, and a stuffed monster on the other, Sir Michael, a' dressed in sable taffeta, sat reading by the light of a lamp, which threw nae shadow behind him, for the warlock knicht had _nane_. Aboon his head, a blue star burned on the tapestried wall, and Logan could scarcely keep his een off it, for it glinted and shone, as it grew sma' and broad, and flashed and shrunk, by turns.

"Auld Michael's hair was white as the thistle-down, his beard descended to his girdle, on whilk was graven a row of shining letters. His head was bald, but his eyen shone like two diamonds, or like those o' the black cat and white owl that sat on the back o' his chair, from whence the one spat and the other whistled like the de'il in a gale o' wind, as Logan approached bauldly, but wi' his braid bonnet in his hand.

"'Well, Carle Logan,' said the warlock, sternly, 'what seek ye here?'

"'Fish,' quo' Logan, trembling a wee.

"'Dog! dost thou take me for a fisher-loon?' asked the Knicht o' Balwearie, wi' a terrible frown.

"'No,' said Logan, growing desperate; 'but I tak ye for a mischevious auld warlock, that will ruin a' the fisher-touns o' Fife, by scaring the herrings frae every firth and bay; and I've come to beg as a boon that ye will tak the spell off the water, so that the herring draves may again come back to Crail and St. Monan's.'

"'Sayst thou that I have layed a _spell_ upon the water?' Balwearie, furiously.

"'I do--ever since the night when Mortimer's corpse was lost.'

"'Then I tell thee thou art a presumptuous liar, whom I shall yet see hanging in hell by the tongue!' cried the warlock, rising, while the cat flattened its ears, erected its back, and spat again; the owl croaked, whistled, and ruffled its feathers, and the blue star on the tapestry flashed wi' sparks o' fire; but Logan never flinched, for he remembered that his gudewife, and the gudewives o' many, were starving at hame.

"'Thou hast a son?' asked the warlock.

"'The last, Sir Michael, that you and the storm have left me--alake! alake!'

"'Carle Logan, thou hast dared to do what never mortal man has done before; thou hast bearded Michael Scott under his own roof-tree in the Castle of Balwearie, and it is but fair that such insolent courage should have its reward. To-morrow, at midnight, commences the Feast of St. Adrian, the martyr of the May, launch then your boat alone, and cast your line in Mortimer's Deep, and thou wilt see what will happen then. Bid your son, at sunrise, drop his nets off the Cave of St. Monan, and he will have in it such a strange haul as never fisherman, since the days of the blessed St. Peter, brought out of the great deep before!'

"On this the cat purred, the owl whistled, the star flashed fire, and wi' a surly laugh the warlock received the thanks o' auld Logan, who was right glad when he found himsel clear o' the great Castle o' Balwearie, and hurrying alang the bright green links o' Kirkcaldy, when the summer sun was setting behind the Lowmonds o' Fife.

"The morrow's midnight came; the Feast o' St. Adrian was held in a' the fisher-touns o' Fife, and the priests o' Pittenweem were saying solemn mass for the souls of him, of the Bishop Stalbrand, and of the six thousand six hundred that perished wi' them when the heathen Danes sacked all the Isle o' May and the towns o' the East Neuk. Logan's gudewife, Mysie, as she lay alane in her warm box-bed at Pittenweem, put up many a prayer to St. Adrian o' the May for her puir auld fisherman, who had launched his boat alane, and sailed to the Mortimer's Deep. The night was calm and clear; her son was away to the fishing-ground off St. Monan's Cave, and there he was to drop his nets, as the warlock had said, at the uprising o' the sun.

"It was about the middle watch o' the night when Mysie dreamed that she saw her gudeman's boat wi' its lugsail floating on the dark waters o' Mortimer's Deep. A bright moon shone on the Isle o' St. Colme, and the abbey lights were glinting on the water; but the great Castle of Aberdour, and its wooded beach, cast a gloomy shade on the place where Logan's boat was drifting, and where the dead crusader lay. She saw him drop his line, and stoop owre the gunnel; then she saw him bringing it in hand-owre-hand--for all in a dream passes quick; he had caught something! Was it a fine fish, for which the chamberlain would gie a golden price at the Castell o' Crail? Up it came, slowly and heavily, and lo! a mailed hand arose from the water, it grasped her husband by the throat, and dragged him down--down beneath the sea--and the empty boat drifted awa' in the munelight, with its lug-sail flapping in the wind.

"Wi' a shriek--a wild despairing cry in her ears, the fisherman's wife awoke, and before her on the wall there glinted a _blue star_; afar off she heard the splash o' water, a hissing, gurgling sound, and the voice of her gudeman moaning as he drowned, _thirty_ miles awa'. The star faded, as the awesome sounds sank, and mirk darkness, terror, dool, and silence fallowed! ....

"But I maun e'en be quick, or I'll hae to pipe the larboard watch before my yarn's spun.

"The sun rose brightly frae the sea, and Mysie's son, when the first blink o't glittered along the water, lowered his nets into the clear green waves that danced off auld St. Monan's; the kirk windows, the steep red-streets and rocky shore were a shining in the glowing light. Young Logan let his boat drift by the net for a wee while; at last the floats began to bob and sink! ha! there was something heavy in the net at last, and he dragged it in, thinking this braw haul would be brave news for the auld couple at hame. Hand-owre-hand he brought the wet twine, floats, and bladder on board; and then he could see something glittering in the net as slowly it rose to the surface. Up, up it came at last, and lo! there was not even a codling in the net--but there was the dead body o' his puir auld white-headed father! And surely, never fisherman had such a haul before. Now, Sir David, what think ye o' that yarn o' sorcery and devilry?"

"That, if true, boatswain, it is more wonderful than the story of the Imp that strangled Gibbie o' Crail, for stealing his top-light."

"True! by my faith, Sir David, it is as true as that mermaids sing when the wind rises, and drag doon drooning men."

The frigates continued their course, and keeping outside the Inch Cape Bock, passed the broad estuary of the Tay about sunset. Sir Andrew then gave orders to keep them away "north and by east," and still in search of the Englishmen, they stood along the coast as far as the Red Head of Angus, favoured by the strong current, which there runs alternately south-sou'-west and north-nor'-east. In his impatience he carried all the sail he could crowd, till the masts strained, and he ordered the watch to heave the log every quarter of an hour, to ascertain the ship's speed.

At this very time, and favoured by the same wind, the three vessels of Captain Edmund Howard were boldly, and under cover of the descending night, bearing straight for the mouth of the Tay, with topgallant-sails set, a fair breeze, and a smooth sea.