Lochinvar: A NovelCrockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
History
Lochinvar: A Novel
Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
Covenanters -- Fiction; Scotland -- History -- 17th century -- Fiction
It was in a little land-locked bay that they were disembarked. Great
slaty purple mountains stretched away to the north; a range of lower
hills, cut down to the roots by the narrow cleft of a pass, warded
the bay to the east; while to the south the comrades looked out
on a wilderness of isles and islets, reefs and spouting skerries,
which foamed and whitened as the black iron teeth of the rock showed
themselves, and the slow swell of the Atlantic came lumbering and
arching in.
Wat and Scarlett sat down on the shore, which stretched away lonely and
barren for miles on either side of them. They watched the boat return
to the ship, as she lay with her sails backed, and shivering in the
wind, waiting only for the crew to come on board before sailing for the
south.
A slight figure could be seen immediately above the bulwark on the
land side. Wat rose to his feet and waved his hand. The white speck
signalled a reply, and Kate McGhie, the maid of his love, carried the
heart of gold away with her to the lands of the south, and the spaces
of the sea widened every moment between the truest lovers the world
held.
Scarlett and Wat sat a long time watching the ship dwindling into a
mere tower of whiteness in the distance, the seas closing bluer and
bluer about her, and the whole universe growing lonely behind her,
wanting the Beloved.
At last Scarlett spoke.
"Lad, have ye had enough of adventures," he said, more sadly than
was his wont, "or are ye as keen after them as ever? It seems that
we have now put ourselves in every man's ill graces, so far as I can
see. Whether James or William bear the gree to us signifies not a jot;
for if James, then the first king's man that comes across us holds
you for the old outlawry in the matter of wounding my Lord Wellwood,
and me for taking your side when I brought you the king's letter to
Brederode; and if William wear the crown, lo, for prison-breaking and
manslaughter--aye, and for desertion of his army, both you and poor
silly John Scarlett are alien and outlaw in all the realms of the
Dutchman. I tell you we are doomed at either end of the stick, Wat, my
man."
"And faith, I care not much," quoth Wat, watching with wistful eyes
the _Sea Unicorn_ vanishing with the one thing that was dear to him on
earth.
"Care or no care," said Scarlett, "it is time for us to be on our feet!"
So Wat, rising obediently, kissed his hand behind his companion's back
to the white tower which was now sinking in the utmost south.
As soon almost as the two adventurers had left the sand and shingle
of the shore, they found themselves upon the short heather of certain
rough, moorish foothills. No house pleasantly reeking was to be
discerned--not so much as a deer nor even a wandering sheep in that
wide, wild place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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