Almost immediately afterwards, two sparks appeared about half-a-mile off; they brightened fast, and then two pale blue lights were seen burning close to the edge of the water. "'Tis the _Harry_! Give way, Jamie--give way, Borthwick!" said Sir Patrick. The oars dipped into the water, and the sharp-prowed boat shot over the waves towards the lights, which soon faded away and expired. The night was now intensely dark, for not a vestige of moon was visible; but soon a noise was heard above the incessant dashing of the sea. It was like the flapping of a sail; and then one faint blink of moonlight, as it broke through an opening in the clouds, showed, close by, a large and high-pooped vessel coming suddenly to the wind, as if the watch had descried the boat upon the water; and this proved to be the case, for almost immediately, a voice in English cried out, "Boat, a-hoy!" Gray, who answered the hail, and held the tiller, passed the fisher boat under the towering stern of the English ship, and sheering sharply round on her larboard side, the little craft was soon made fast; but Jamie was commanded to remain in her, while Sir Patrick Gray, Borthwick, and the third personage, who proved to be no other than Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, governor of Stirling, were introduced to the state-cabin, where, with some reluctance, we are compelled to accompany them. CHAPTER IX. THE BANE OF SCOTLAND. "By Chericul's dark wandering streams. Where cane-tufts shadow all the wild; Sweet visions haunt my waking dreams Of Scotland, loved while still a child; Of castled rocks stupendous piled, By Esk or Eden's classic wave, When loves of youth and friendship smiled, Uncursed by thee, vile yellow slave!" LEYDEN: _The Gold Coin_ For many hundred years a curse, or rather a fell spirit, hovered over Scotland, and time seems never to have lessened its force, or the evil produced by the blighting breath of that _yellow slave_, of which he who found a grave so far from her shore--poor Leyden, one of the sweetest of our bards--has sung, in his beautiful Ode to an Indian coin of gold. This curse has been the mal-influence of a party within the Scottish nation, whose interests were separated from its common weal, who throve on its ruin and disgrace, and have ever been the ready instruments of oppression, neglect, and misrule: I mean that party distinguished in the darkest pages of our annals as _the English fiction_--usually a band of paid traitors, whom even the Union could not abolish; men who surrendered themselves to work out the evil, disastrous, and insidious projects of the sister kingdom, for the purpose of weakening the power of the Scottish people; and thus, as Schiller says, "never has civil war embroiled the cities of Scotland, that an Englishman has not applied a brand to the walls."