Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (241 page)

“What do ye want?” says he.  “A man should aye put his best foot forrit with the womankind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert them, the poor lambs!  It’s what ye should learn to attend to, David; ye should get the principles, it’s like a trade.  Now, if this had been a young lassie, or onyways bonnie, she would never have heard tell of my stomach, Davie.  But aince they’re too old to be seeking joes, they a’ set up to be apotecaries.  Why?  What do I ken?  They’ll be just the way God made them, I suppose.  But I think a man would be a gomeral that didnae give his attention to the same.”

And here, the luckie coming back, he turned from me as if with impatience to renew their former conversation.  The lady had branched some while before from Alan’s stomach to the case of a goodbrother of her own in Aberlady, whose last sickness and demise she was describing at extraordinary length.  Sometimes it was merely dull, sometimes both dull and awful, for she talked with unction.  The upshot was that I fell in a deep muse, looking forth of the window on the road, and scarce marking what I saw.  Presently had any been looking they might have seen me to start.

“We pit a fomentation to his feet,” the good-wife was saying, “and a het stane to his wame, and we gied him hyssop and water of pennyroyal, and fine, clean balsam of sulphur for the hoast. . . “

“Sir,” says I, cutting very quietly in, “there’s a friend of mine gone by the house.”

“Is that e’en sae?” replies Alan, as though it were a thing of small account.  And then, “Ye were saying, mem?” says he; and the wearyful wife went on.

Presently, however, he paid her with a half-crown piece, and she must go forth after the change.

“Was it him with the red head?” asked Alan.

“Ye have it,” said I.

“What did I tell you in the wood?” he cried.  “And yet it’s strange he should be here too!  Was he his lane?”

“His lee-lane for what I could see,” said I.

“Did he gang by?” he asked.

“Straight by,” said I, “and looked neither to the right nor left.”

“And that’s queerer yet,” said Alan.  “It sticks in my mind, Davie, that we should be stirring.  But where to? - deil hae’t!  This is like old days fairly,” cries he.

“There is one big differ, though,” said I, “that now we have money in our pockets.”

“And another big differ, Mr. Balfour,” says he, “that now we have dogs at our tail.  They’re on the scent; they’re in full cry, David.  It’s a bad business and be damned to it.”  And he sat thinking hard with a look of his that I knew well.

“I’m saying, Luckie,” says he, when the goodwife returned, “have ye a back road out of this change house?”

She told him there was and where it led to.

“Then, sir,” says he to me, “I think that will be the shortest road for us.  And here’s good-bye to ye, my braw woman; and I’ll no forget thon of the cinnamon water.”

We went out by way of the woman’s kale yard, and up a lane among fields.  Alan looked sharply to all sides, and seeing we were in a little hollow place of the country, out of view of men, sat down.

“Now for a council of war, Davie,” said he.  “But first of all, a bit lesson to ye.  Suppose that I had been like you, what would yon old wife have minded of the pair of us!  Just that we had gone out by the back gate.  And what does she mind now?  A fine, canty, friendly, cracky man, that suffered with the stomach, poor body! and was real ta’en up about the goodbrother.  O man, David, try and learn to have some kind of intelligence!”

“I’ll try, Alan,” said I.

“And now for him of the red head,” says he; “was he gaun fast or slow?”

“Betwixt and between,” said I.

“No kind of a hurry about the man?” he asked.

“Never a sign of it,” said I.

“Nhm!” said Alan, “it looks queer.  We saw nothing of them this morning on the Whins; he’s passed us by, he doesnae seem to be looking, and yet here he is on our road!  Dod, Davie, I begin to take a notion.  I think it’s no you they’re seeking, I think it’s me; and I think they ken fine where they’re gaun.”

“They ken?” I asked.

“I think Andie Scougal’s sold me - him or his mate wha kent some part of the affair - or else Charlie’s clerk callant, which would be a pity too,” says Alan; “and if you askit me for just my inward private conviction, I think there’ll be heads cracked on Gillane sands.”

“Alan,” I cried, “if you’re at all right there’ll be folk there and to spare.  It’ll be small service to crack heads.”

“It would aye be a satisfaction though,” says Alan.  But bide a bit; bide a bit; I’m thinking - and thanks to this bonny westland wind, I believe I’ve still a chance of it.  It’s this way, Davie.  I’m no trysted with this man Scougal till the gloaming comes.  But,” says he, “if I can get a bit of a wind out of the west I’ll be there long or that,” he says, “and lie-to for ye behind the Isle of Fidra.  Now if your gentry kens the place, they ken the time forbye.  Do ye see me coming, Davie? Thanks to Johnnie Cope and other red-coat gomerals, I should ken this country like the back of my hand; and if ye’re ready for another bit run with Alan Breck, we’ll can cast back inshore, and come to the seaside again by Dirleton.  If the ship’s there, we’ll try and get on board of her.  If she’s no there, I’ll just have to get back to my weary haystack.  But either way of it, I think we will leave your gentry whistling on their thumbs.”

“I believe there’s some chance in it,” said I.  “Have on with ye, Alan!”

CHAPTER XIII - GILLANE SANDS

I did not profit by Alan’s pilotage as he had done by his marchings under General Cope; for I can scarce tell what way we went.  It is my excuse that we travelled exceeding fast.  Some part we ran, some trotted, and the rest walked at a vengeance of a pace.  Twice, while we were at top speed, we ran against country-folk; but though we plumped into the first from round a corner, Alan was as ready as a loaded musket.

“Has ye seen my horse?” he gasped.

“Na, man, I haenae seen nae horse the day,” replied the countryman.

And Alan spared the time to explain to him that we were travelling “ride and tie”; that our charger had escaped, and it was feared he had gone home to Linton.  Not only that, but he expended some breath (of which he had not very much left) to curse his own misfortune and my stupidity which was said to be its cause.

“Them that cannae tell the truth,” he observed to myself as we went on again, “should be aye mindful to leave an honest, handy lee behind them.  If folk dinnae ken what ye’re doing, Davie, they’re terrible taken up with it; but if they think they ken, they care nae mair for it than what I do for pease porridge.”

As we had first made inland, so our road came in the end to lie very near due north; the old Kirk of Aberlady for a landmark on the left; on the right, the top of the Berwick Law; and it was thus we struck the shore again, not far from Dirleton.  From north Berwick west to Gillane Ness there runs a string of four small islets, Craiglieth, the Lamb, Fidra, and Eyebrough, notable by their diversity of size and shape.  Fidra is the most particular, being a strange grey islet of two humps, made the more conspicuous by a piece of ruin; and I mind that (as we drew closer to it) by some door or window of these ruins the sea peeped through like a man’s eye.  Under the lee of Fidra there is a good anchorage in westerly winds, and there, from a far way off, we could see the Thistle riding.

The shore in face of these islets is altogether waste.  Here is no dwelling of man, and scarce any passage, or at most of vagabond children running at their play.  Gillane is a small place on the far side of the Ness, the folk of Dirleton go to their business in the inland fields, and those of North Berwick straight to the sea-fishing from their haven; so that few parts of the coast are lonelier.  But I mind, as we crawled upon our bellies into that multiplicity of heights and hollows, keeping a bright eye upon all sides, and our hearts hammering at our ribs, there was such a shining of the sun and the sea, such a stir of the wind in the bent grass, and such a bustle of down-popping rabbits and up-flying gulls, that the desert seemed to me, like a place alive.  No doubt it was in all ways well chosen for a secret embarcation, if the secret had been kept; and even now that it was out, and the place watched, we were able to creep unperceived to the front of the sandhills, where they look down immediately on the beach and sea.

But here Alan came to a full stop.

“Davie,” said he, “this is a kittle passage!  As long as we lie here we’re safe; but I’m nane sae muckle nearer to my ship or the coast of France.  And as soon as we stand up and signal the brig, it’s another matter.  For where will your gentry be, think ye?”

“Maybe they’re no come yet,” said I.  “And even if they are, there’s one clear matter in our favour.  They’ll be all arranged to take us, that’s true.  But they’ll have arranged for our coming from the east and here we are upon their west.”

“Ay,” says Alan, “I wish we were in some force, and this was a battle, we would have bonnily out-manoeuvred them!  But it isnae, Davit; and the way it is, is a wee thing less inspiring to Alan Breck.  I swither, Davie.”

“Time flies, Alan,” said I.

“I ken that,” said Alan.  “I ken naething else, as the French folk say.  But this is a dreidful case of heids or tails.  O! if I could but ken where your gentry were!”

“Alan,” said I, “this is no like you.  It’s got to be now or never.”

“This is no me, quo’ he,”

sang Alan, with a queer face betwixt shame and drollery.

“Neither you nor me, quo’ he, neither you nor me.

Wow, na, Johnnie man! neither you nor me.”

And then of a sudden he stood straight up where he was, and with a handkerchief flying in his right hand, marched down upon the beach.  I stood up myself, but lingered behind him, scanning the sand-hills to the east.  His appearance was at first unremarked: Scougal not expecting him so early, and my gentry watching on the other side.  Then they awoke on board the Thistle, and it seemed they had all in readiness, for there was scarce a second’s bustle on the deck before we saw a skiff put round her stern and begin to pull lively for the coast.  Almost at the same moment of time, and perhaps half a mile away towards Gillane Ness, the figure of a man appeared for a blink upon a sandhill, waving with his arms; and though he was gone again in the same flash, the gulls in that part continued a little longer to fly wild.

Alan had not seen this, looking straight to seaward at the ship and skiff.

“It maun be as it will!” said he, when I had told him, “Weel may yon boatie row, or my craig’ll have to thole a raxing.”

That part of the beach was long and flat, and excellent walking when the tide was down; a little cressy burn flowed over it in one place to the sea; and the sandhills ran along the head of it like the rampart of a town.  No eye of ours could spy what was passing behind there in the bents, no hurry of ours could mend the speed of the boat’s coming: time stood still with us through that uncanny period of waiting.

“There is one thing I would like to ken,” say Alan.  “I would like to ken these gentry’s orders.  We’re worth four hunner pound the pair of us: how if they took the guns to us, Davie!  They would get a bonny shot from the top of that lang sandy bank.”

“Morally impossible,” said I.  “The point is that they can have no guns.  This thing has been gone about too secret; pistols they may have, but never guns.”

“I believe ye’ll be in the right,” says Alan.  “For all which I am wearing a good deal for yon boat.”

And he snapped his fingers and whistled to it like a dog.

It was now perhaps a third of the way in, and we ourselves already hard on the margin of the sea, so that the soft sand rose over my shoes.  There was no more to do whatever but to wait, to look as much as we were able at the creeping nearer of the boat, and as little as we could manage at the long impenetrable front of the sandhills, over which the gulls twinkled and behind which our enemies were doubtless marshalling.

“This is a fine, bright, caller place to get shot in,” says Alan suddenly; “and, man, I wish that I had your courage!”

“Alan!” I cried, “what kind of talk is this of it!  You’re just made of courage; it’s the character of the man, as I could prove myself if there was nobody else.”

“And you would be the more mistaken,” said he.  “What makes the differ with me is just my great penetration and knowledge of affairs.  But for auld, cauld, dour, deadly courage, I am not fit to hold a candle to yourself.  Look at us two here upon the sands.  Here am I, fair hotching to be off; here’s you (for all that I ken) in two minds of it whether you’ll no stop.  Do you think that I could do that, or would?  No me!  Firstly, because I havenae got the courage and wouldnae daur; and secondly, because I am a man of so much penetration and would see ye damned first.”

“It’s there ye’re coming, is it?” I cried.  “Ah, man Alan, you can wile your old wives, but you never can wile me.”

Remembrance of my temptation in the wood made me strong as iron.

“I have a tryst to keep,” I continued.  “I am trysted with your cousin Charlie; I have passed my word.”

“Braw trysts that you’ll can keep,” said Alan.  “Ye’ll just mistryst aince and for a’ with the gentry in the bents.  And what for?” he went on with an extreme threatening gravity.  “Just tell me that, my mannie!  Are ye to be speerited away like Lady Grange?  Are they to drive a dirk in your inside and bury ye in the bents?  Or is it to be the other way, and are they to bring ye in with James?  Are they folk to be trustit?  Would ye stick your head in the mouth of Sim Fraser and the ither Whigs?” he added with extraordinary bitterness.

“Alan,” cried I, “they’re all rogues and liars, and I’m with ye there.  The more reason there should be one decent man in such a land of thieves!  My word in passed, and I’ll stick to it.  I said long syne to your kinswoman that I would stumble at no risk.  Do ye mind of that? - the night Red Colin fell, it was.  No more I will, then.  Here I stop.  Prestongrange promised me my life: if he’s to be mansworn, here I’ll have to die.”