Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty
John Stuart Mill · en
It was forty years last March since the Champion man-of-war entered
the bay below, with her _ancient_ suspended half-way over the deck.
Old seamen among the town’s-folk, acquainted with that language of
signs and symbols in which fleets converse when they meet at sea,
said that either the captain or one of his officers was dead; and the
town’s-people, interested in the intelligence, came out by scores to
gaze on the gallant vessel as she bore up slowly and majestically in
the calm, towards the distant roadstead. The sails were furled, and the
anchors cast; and as the huge hull swung round to the tide, three boats
crowded with men were seen to shoot off from her side, and a strain of
melancholy music came floating over the waves to the shore. A lighter
shallop, with only a few rowers, pulled far ahead of the others, and
as she reached the beach, the shovels and pickaxes, for which the crew
relinquished their oars, revealed to the spectators more unequivocally
than even the half-hoisted ensign or the music, the sad nature of their
errand. The other boats approached with muffled and melancholy stroke,
and the music waxed louder and more mournful. They reached the shore;
the men formed at the water’s edge round a coffin covered by a flag,
and bearing a sword a-top, and then passed slowly amid the assembled
crowds to the burying-ground of St. Regulus. Arms glittered to the sun.
The echoes of the tombs and of the deep precipitous dell below were
awakened awhile by unwonted music, and then by the sharp rattle of
musketry; the smoke went curling among the trees, or lingered in a blue
haze amid the dingier recesses of the hollow; the coffin was covered
over: a few of the officers remained behind the others; and there was
one of the number, a tall handsome young man, who burst out, as he was
turning away, into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. At length the
whole pageant passed, and there remained behind only a darkened little
hillock, with whose history no one was acquainted, but which was known
for many years after as the “officer’s grave.”