The Raiders: Being Some Passages In The Life Of John Faa, Lord And Earl Of Little Egypt
so pressing in the morning.
When I came in sight of the encampment I usually ran, for there I would see Silver Sand pottering about in front of his bit tent, with a frying-pan or a little black cannikin hung above his fire from three crooked poles in the fashion he had learned from the gypsies. Whenever I think of Paradise, to this day my mind runs on gypsy poles, and a clear stream birling down among trees of birk and ash that cower in the hollow of the glen from the south-west wind, and of Silver Sand frying Loch Grannoch trout upon a skirling pan. Ah, to me it was ever the prime of the morning and the spring of the year when Silver Sand camped on Rathan.
‘Shure, the top av the mornin’ to ye, Pathrick!’ cried Silver Sand, as soon as he had sight of me. He had a queer, smileless humour of his own, and often used to pretend that I was an evergreen Paddy because my father, for my future sins, had dubbed me Patrick.
‘Shure, an’ the same to you, and manny av thim, Brian Boru!’ it was my invariable custom to reply, which pleased him much. Then I would get a red speckled trout fresh out of the pan, which the night before had steered his easy way through the clear granite-filtered water of Loch Skerrow. It was hardly food for sinful mortals. And all the time Silver Sand told me strange tales and stirred the cold potatoes in the pan where the trouts had been frying, till they were burned crisp and delicious. On such mornings there were no breakfasts for me at all in the house. Indeed as long as Silver Sand remained on Isle Rathan, I only looked in occasionally at the tower to see that all went well, but if the weather were good I did not trouble the inside of it.
As for Silver Sand he never was comfortable inside a room for more than half an hour together. The wide lift was his house, and sun or shine, rain or fair, made little difference to him.
The tales he told about the wild country by the springs of Dee set me all agog to go there, and I often asked him to take me with him.
‘Ah, Pathrick, my lad, it’s no for me to be leading you there, and you with neither father nor mother. It’s a wild country and the decent folk in it are few. Wi’ man, I dinna even take Neddy into the thick of it. “No farder than the Hoose o’ the Hill for Neddy,” says he, “and thank you kindly.” But Quharrie and me’s another matter. Where Quharrie and his master canna gang, the Ill Thief himsel’ daurna ride. For Silver Sand can fill his bags o’ the fine, white granite piles on Loch Enoch shore, watched by a dozen of the bloody Macatericks and the wilder Marshalls, an’ no yin o’ them a hair the wiser.’
And this was no idle boast, as you shall hear ere the story ends.
Here I drew a long breath. These tales made my quiet life here on the island seem no better than that of the green mould which grew on the ‘thruch’ stones in the kirkyard.
I longed for the jingle-jangle of the Freetraders’ harness or the scent of the outlaws’ camp-fires among the great granite boulders.
‘No yin o’ them a hair the wiser,’ said Silver Sand, striking a light with his flint and steel, and transferring the flame when it lowed up to the bowl of his tiny elf ’s pipe, so small that it just let in the top of his little finger as he settled the tobacco in it as it began to burn.
So the days went on and the lads at the house buzzed about and went and came to their meals – the Allisons and Rab Nicoll. Only little Jerry came down to us by the waterside, for Silver Sand could be ‘doin’ wi’ him’ – boys in general, and even those under my protection, he held in utter abhorrence. Once Jerry brought tidings.
‘There’s a sharp-nosed brig with high sails setting in for Briggus Bay or Maxwell’s landing. She’s been beating off and on a’ day with her tops’ls reefed,’ said Jerry, in a careless way which intimated that he was of opinion that his news was important, but which yet left him a porthole if it did not turn out so to be.
In a moment Silver Sand sprang up the side of the bank to a favourite lookout station of his own.
He came down shaking his head. The news appeared important enough to Silver Sand to please even Jerry, who loved excitement of every sort.
‘There’s deviltry afoot!’ he said. ‘That’s Yawkins and his crew, an’ Silver Sand kens what they’re after brawly, the ill-contriving wirricows – but we’ll diddle them yet.’
Then looking down at the great dog, he cried, with a kind of daft glee:
Up an’ waur them a’, Quharrie,
Up an’ waur them a’, man;
There’s no a Dutchman i’ the pack
That’s ony guid ava, man – Hooch!
And Silver Sand, usually so dignified, executed a fandango on the beach, his long arms hanging wide from his sides and his light and limber legs twinkling. Quharrie also lifted up his forepaws, moving them solemnly as though he wished to join his master in his reel.
So it wore to evening and the stars came out. Silver Sand seemed far from easy. He ran repeatedly up to the lookout place, which he called Glim Point, but ever came back unsatisfied.
‘It’s no dark aneuch yet to see weel!’ he said, for his eyes seemed to be of greatest service at night when the light was shut from the eyes of others.
‘We’ll hae veesitors the nicht, doon by the Rogues’ Hole, I’m thinkin’,’ said Silver Sand.
It was about half an hour past nine o’clock when Silver Sand’s nervousness became very apparent and unsettling to myself. He ran about his camp and up to the hilltop – in and out all the while, like a dog at a fair. Quharrie also bristled up his hair and shot his short, sharp ears forward, and under his black lips there was a gleam of white teeth, like the foam line on the shore on a dark, blowy night.
Quite suddenly a light flickered out of the gloom across the water in the direction of the farmhouse of Craigdarroch, and then Silver Sand’s agitation became pitiful to see. He ordered me about like a dog – nay, like a very cur, for never a word uncivil did he say to Quharrie that was a dog indeed. The beast seemed to understand him without a word, watching his look with fierce eyes that shone like untwinkling stars.
‘Gae to the House of Rathan, and bid the lads bar every door and no sleep a wink the nicht. Tell them to loaden a’ your faither’s guns, but not to shoot unless the ill-doers try to break in the door. It’s little likely that they’ll meddle wi’ the big hoose o’ Rathan, that has no store of nowt or horse beasts. But wha kens? – wha kens? – the gleds are fatherin’ fra the north an’ frae the sooth. Ootland Dutchmen an’ French Monzies – broken men frae a’ the ports o’ Scotland, and the riff-raff o’ the Dungeon o’ Buchan’.
I ran to the house and startled the lads with my news. And here again was a strange thing. The boys that had hidden from their mothers so lately brisked up, and if any of them were down-hearted about their position, they did not let the others see it. It had been recognised among us that we might have some trouble with the bad crew of smugglers, whom my father’s reputation as a marksman and past-master in the Freetrade craft, had hitherto kept at a distance. But even I had no small conceit of myself, and I thought that I could soon make myself as respected among any Yawkins and his crew as ever my father had been. In which, as it happened, I was grievously mistaken, for without Silver Sand, I had been no better than a herring hung by the gills in the hand of these unscrupulous men. I named Andrew Allison captain of the stronghold of Rathan till my return, for we did everything in military fashion; and gave him the key of the glazed press of guns, which we often spent our wet days in oiling with immense care and forethought. It gave me pleasure only to look upon the row of them, shining like silver on the rack.
For myself I took a pair of pistols, and was for bringing the same out to Silver Sand, when I remembered that without doubt he had his own by him.