Obviously I must keep away from the railway. If the police were after
me in Morvern, that line would be warned, for it was a barrier I must
cross if I were to go farther north. I observed from the map that it
turned up the coast, and concluded that the place for me to make for
was the shore south of that turn, where Heaven might send me some luck
in the boat line. For I was pretty certain that every porter and
station-master on that tin-pot outfit was anxious to make better
acquaintance with my humble self.
I lunched off the sandwiches the Broadburys had given me, and in the
bright afternoon made my way down the hill, crossed at the foot of a
small fresh-water lochan, and pursued the issuing stream through
midge-infested woods of hazels to its junction with the sea. It was
rough going, but very pleasant, and I fell into the same mood of idle
contentment that I had enjoyed the previous morning. I never met a
soul. Sometimes a roe deer broke out of the covert, or an old
blackcock startled me with his scolding. The place was bright with
heather, still in its first bloom, and smelt better than the myrrh of
Arabia. It was a blessed glen, and I was as happy as a king, till I
began to feel the coming of hunger, and reflected that the Lord alone
knew when I might get a meal. I had still some chocolate and biscuits,
but I wanted something substantial.
The distance was greater than I thought, and it was already twilight
when I reached the coast. The shore was open and desolate—great
banks of pebbles to which straggled alders and hazels from the
hillside scrub. But as I marched northward and turned a little point
of land I saw before me in a crook of the bay a smoking cottage. And,
plodding along by the water’s edge, was the bent figure of a man,
laden with nets and lobster pots. Also, beached on the shingle was a
boat.
I quickened my pace and overtook the fisherman. He was an old man with
a ragged grey beard, and his rig was seaman’s boots and a much-darned
blue jersey. He was deaf, and did not hear me when I hailed him. When
he caught sight of me he never stopped, though he very solemnly
returned my good evening. I fell into step with him, and in his silent
company reached the cottage.
He halted before the door and unslung his burdens. The place was a
two-roomed building with a roof of thatch, and the walls all grown
over with a yellow-flowered creeper. When he had straightened his
back, he looked seaward and at the sky, as if to prospect the weather.
Then he turned on me his gentle, absorbed eyes. ‘It will haf been a
fine day, sir. Wass you seeking the road to anywhere?’
‘I was seeking a night’s lodging,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a long tramp on
the hills, and I’d be glad of a chance of not going farther.’
‘We will haf no accommodation for a gentleman,’ he said gravely.
‘I can sleep on the floor, if you can give me a blanket and a bite of
supper.’
‘Indeed you will not,’ and he smiled slowly. ‘But I will ask the wife.
Mary, come here!’
An old woman appeared in answer to his call, a woman whose face was so
old that she seemed like his mother. In highland places one sex ages
quicker than the other.
‘This gentleman would like to bide the night. I wass telling him that
we had a poor small house, but he says he will not be minding it.’
She looked at me with the timid politeness that you find only in
outland places.
‘We can do our best, indeed, sir. The gentleman can have Colin’s bed
in the loft, but he will haf to be doing with plain food. Supper is
ready if you will come in now.’
I had a scrub with a piece of yellow soap at an adjacent pool in the
burn and then entered a kitchen blue with peat-reek. We had a meal of
boiled fish, oatcakes and skim-milk cheese, with cups of strong tea to
wash it down. The old folk had the manners of princes. They pressed
food on me, and asked me no questions, till for very decency’s sake I
had to put up a story and give some account of myself.
I found they had a son in the Argylls and a young boy in the Navy. But
they seemed disinclined to talk of them or of the war. By a mere
accident I hit on the old man’s absorbing interest. He was passionate
about the land. He had taken part in long-forgotten agitations, and
had suffered eviction in some ancient landlords’ quarrel farther
north. Presently he was pouring out to me all the woes of the
crofter—woes that seemed so antediluvian and forgotten that I
listened as one would listen to an old song. ‘You who come from a new
country will not haf heard of these things,’ he kept telling me, but
by that peat fire I made up for my defective education. He told me of
evictions in the year. One somewhere in Sutherland, and of harsh
doings in the Outer Isles. It was far more than a political grievance.
It was the lament of the conservative for vanished days and manners.
‘Over in Skye wass the fine land for black cattle, and every man had
his bit herd on the hillside. But the lairds said it wass better for
sheep, and then they said it wass not good for sheep, so they put it
under deer, and now there is no black cattle anywhere in Skye.’ I tell
you it was like sad music on the bagpipes hearing that old fellow. The
war and all things modern meant nothing to him; he lived among the
tragedies of his youth and his prime.
I’m a Tory myself and a bit of a land-reformer, so we agreed well
enough. So well, that I got what I wanted without asking for it. I
told him I was going to Skye, and he offered to take me over in his
boat in the morning. ‘It will be no trouble. Indeed no. I will be
going that way myself to the fishing.’
I told him that after the war, every acre of British soil would have
to be used for the men that had earned the right to it. But that did
not comfort him. He was not thinking about the land itself, but about
the men who had been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was
not for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power of
any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad, reflective mood,
considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we must break down a
multitude of molehills and how desirable and unreplaceable was the
life of the moles.
In brisk, shining weather, with a wind from the south-east, we put off
next morning. In front was a brown line of low hills, and behind them,
a little to the north, that black toothcomb of mountain range which I
had seen the day before from the Arisaig ridge.
‘That is the Coolin,’ said the fisherman. ‘It is a bad place where
even the deer cannot go. But all the rest of Skye wass the fine land
for black cattle.’
As we neared the coast, he pointed out many places. ‘Look there, Sir,
in that glen. I haf seen six cot houses smoking there, and now there
is not any left. There were three men of my own name had crofts on the
machars beyond the point, and if you go there you will only find the
marks of their bit gardens. You will know the place by the gean trees.’
When he put me ashore in a sandy bay between green ridges of bracken,
he was still harping upon the past. I got him to take a pound—for the
boat and not for the night’s hospitality, for he would have beaten me
with an oar if I had suggested that. The last I saw of him, as I
turned round at the top of the hill, he had still his sail down, and
was gazing at the lands which had once been full of human dwellings
and now were desolate.
I kept for a while along the ridge, with the Sound of Sleat on my
right, and beyond it the high hills of Knoydart and Kintail. I was
watching for the Tobermory, but saw no sign of her. A steamer put
out from Mallaig, and there were several drifters crawling up the
channel and once I saw the white ensign and a destroyer bustled
northward, leaving a cloud of black smoke in her wake. Then, after
consulting the map, I struck across country, still keeping the higher
ground, but, except at odd minutes, being out of sight of the sea. I
concluded that my business was to get to the latitude of Ranna without
wasting time.
So soon as I changed my course I had the Coolin for company. Mountains
have always been a craze of mine, and the blackness and mystery of
those grim peaks went to my head. I forgot all about Fosse Manor and
the Cotswolds. I forgot, too, what had been my chief feeling since I
left Glasgow, a sense of the absurdity of my mission. It had all
seemed too far-fetched and whimsical. I was running apparently no
great personal risk, and I had always the unpleasing fear that
Blenkiron might have been too clever and that the whole thing might be
a mare’s nest. But that dark mountain mass changed my outlook. I began
to have a queer instinct that that was the place, that something might
be concealed there, something pretty damnable. I remember I sat on a
top for half an hour raking the hills with my glasses. I made out ugly
precipices, and glens which lost themselves in primeval blackness.
When the sun caught them—for it was a gleamy day—it brought out no
colours, only degrees of shade. No mountains I had ever seen—not the
Drakensberg or the red kopjes of Damaraland or the cold, white peaks
around Erzerum—ever looked so unearthly and uncanny.
Oddly enough, too, the sight of them set me thinking about Ivery.
There seemed no link between a smooth, sedentary being, dwelling in
villas and lecture-rooms, and that shaggy tangle of precipices. But I
felt there was, for I had begun to realize the bigness of my opponent.
Blenkiron had said that he spun his web wide. That was intelligible
enough among the half-baked youth of Biggleswick, and the pacifist
societies, or even the toughs on the Clyde. I could fit him in all
right to that picture. But that he should be playing his game among
those mysterious black crags seemed to make him bigger and more
desperate, altogether a different kind of proposition. I didn’t
exactly dislike the idea, for my objection to my past weeks had been
that I was out of my proper job, and this was more my line of country.
I always felt that I was a better bandit than a detective. But a sort
of awe mingled with my satisfaction. I began to feel about Ivery as I
had felt about the three devils of the Black Stone who had hunted me
before the war, and as I never felt about any other Hun. The men we
fought at the Front and the men I had run across in the Greenmantle
business, even old Stumm himself, had been human miscreants. They were
formidable enough, but you could gauge and calculate their capacities.
But this Ivery was like a poison gas that hung in the air and got into
unexpected crannies and that you couldn’t fight in an upstanding way.
Till then, in spite of Blenkiron’s solemnity, I had regarded him
simply as a problem. But now he seemed an intimate and omnipresent
enemy, intangible, too, as the horror of a haunted house. Up on that
sunny hillside, with the sea winds round me and the whaups calling, I
got a chill in my spine when I thought of him.
I am ashamed to confess it, but I was also horribly hungry. There was
something about the war that made me ravenous, and the less chance of
food the worse I felt. If I had been in London with twenty restaurants
open to me, I should as likely as not have gone off my feed. That was
the cussedness of my stomach. I had still a little chocolate left, and
I ate the fisherman’s buttered scones for luncheon, but long before
the evening my thoughts were dwelling on my empty interior.
I put up that night in a shepherd’s cottage miles from anywhere. The
man was called Macmorran, and he had come from Galloway when sheep
were booming. He was a very good imitation of a savage, a little
fellow with red hair and red eyes, who might have been a Pict. He
lived with a daughter who had once been in service in Glasgow, a fat
young woman with a face entirely covered with freckles and a pout of
habitual discontent. No wonder, for that cottage was a pretty mean
place. It was so thick with peat-reek that throat and eyes were always
smarting. It was badly built, and must have leaked like a sieve in a
storm. The father was a surly fellow, whose conversation was one long
growl at the world, the high prices, the difficulty of moving his
sheep, the meanness of his master, and the godforsaken character of
Skye. ‘Here’s me no seen baker’s bread for a month, and no company but
a wheen ignorant Hielanders that yatter Gawlic. I wish I was back in
the Glenkens. And I’d gang the morn if I could get paid what I’m
awed.’
However, he gave me supper—a braxy ham and oatcake, and I bought the
remnants off him for use next day. I did not trust his blankets, so I
slept the night by the fire in the ruins of an arm-chair, and woke at
dawn with a foul taste in my mouth. A dip in the burn refreshed me,
and after a bowl of porridge I took the road again. For I was anxious
to get to some hill-top that looked over to Ranna.
Before midday I was close under the eastern side of the Coolin, on a
road which was more a rockery than a path. Presently I saw a big house
ahead of me that looked like an inn, so I gave it a miss and struck
the highway that led to it a little farther north. Then I bore off to
the east, and was just beginning to climb a hill which I judged stood
between me and the sea, when I heard wheels on the road and looked
back.
It was a farmer’s gig carrying one man. I was about half a mile off,
and something in the cut of his jib seemed familiar. I got my glasses
on him and made out a short, stout figure clad in a mackintosh, with a
woollen comforter round its throat. As I watched, it made a movement
as if to rub its nose on its sleeve. That was the pet trick of one man
I knew. Inconspicuously I slipped through the long heather so as to
reach the road ahead of the gig. When I rose like a wraith from the
wayside the horse started, but not the driver.
‘So ye’re there,’ said Amos’s voice. ‘I’ve news for ye. The
Tobermory will be in Ranna by now. She passed Broadford two hours
syne. When I saw her I yoked this beast and came up on the chance of
foregathering with ye.’
‘How on earth did you know I would be here?’ I asked in some surprise.
‘Oh, I saw the way your mind was workin’ from your telegram. And says
I to mysel’—that man Brand, says I, is not the chiel to be easy
stoppit. But I was feared ye might be a day late, so I came up the
road to hold the fort. Man, I’m glad to see ye. Ye’re younger and
soopler than me, and yon Gresson’s a stirrin’ lad.’
‘There’s one thing you’ve got to do for me,’ I said. ‘I can’t go into
inns and shops, but I can’t do without food. I see from the map
there’s a town about six miles on. Go there and buy me anything that’s
tinned—biscuits and tongue and sardines, and a couple of bottles of
whisky if you can get them. This may be a long job, so buy plenty.’
‘Whaur’ll I put them?’ was his only question.
We fixed on a cache, a hundred yards from the highway in a place where
two ridges of hill enclosed the view so that only a short bit of road
was visible.
‘I’ll get back to the Kyle,’ he told me, ‘and a’body there kens Andra
Amos, if ye should find a way of sendin’ a message or comin’ yourself.
Oh, and I’ve got a word to ye from a lady that we ken of. She says,
the sooner ye’re back in Vawnity Fair the better she’ll be pleased,
always provided ye’ve got over the Hill Difficulty.’
A smile screwed up his old face and he waved his whip in farewell. I
interpreted Mary’s message as an incitement to speed, but I could not
make the pace. That was Gresson’s business. I think I was a little
nettled, till I cheered myself by another interpretation. She might be
anxious for my safety, she might want to see me again, anyhow the mere
sending of the message showed I was not forgotten. I was in a pleasant
muse as I breasted the hill, keeping discreetly in the cover of the
many gullies. At the top I looked down on Ranna and the sea.
There lay the Tobermory busy unloading. It would be some time, no
doubt, before Gresson could leave. There was no row-boat in the
channel yet, and I might have to wait hours. I settled myself snugly
between two rocks, where I could not be seen, and where I had a clear
view of the sea and shore. But presently I found that I wanted some
long heather to make a couch, and I emerged to get some. I had not
raised my head for a second when I flopped down again. For I had a
neighbour on the hill-top.
He was about two hundred yards off, just reaching the crest, and,
unlike me, walking quite openly. His eyes were on Ranna, so he did not
notice me, but from my cover I scanned every line of him. He looked an
ordinary countryman, wearing badly cut, baggy knickerbockers of the
kind that gillies affect. He had a face like a Portuguese Jew, but I
had seen that type before among people with Highland names; they might
be Jews or not, but they could speak Gaelic. Presently he disappeared.
He had followed my example and selected a hiding-place.
It was a clear, hot day, but very pleasant in that airy place. Good
scents came up from the sea, the heather was warm and fragrant, bees
droned about, and stray seagulls swept the ridge with their wings. I
took a look now and then towards my neighbour, but he was deep in his
hidey-hole. Most of the time I kept my glasses on Ranna, and watched
the doings of the Tobermory. She was tied up at the jetty, but
seemed in no hurry to unload. I watched the captain disembark and walk
up to a house on the hillside. Then some idlers sauntered down towards
her and stood talking and smoking close to her side. The captain
returned and left again. A man with papers in his hand appeared, and a
woman with what looked like a telegram. The mate went ashore in his
best clothes. Then at last, after midday, Gresson appeared. He joined
the captain at the piermaster’s office, and presently emerged on the
other side of the jetty where some small boats were beached. A man
from the Tobermory came in answer to his call, a boat was launched,
and began to make its way into the channel. Gresson sat in the stern,
placidly eating his luncheon.
I watched every detail of that crossing with some satisfaction that my
forecast was turning out right. About half-way across, Gresson took
the oars, but soon surrendered them to the Tobermory man, and lit a
pipe. He got out a pair of binoculars and raked my hillside. I tried
to see if my neighbour was making any signal, but all was quiet.
Presently the boat was hid from me by the bulge of the hill, and I
caught the sound of her scraping on the beach.
Gresson was not a hill-walker like my neighbour. It took him the best
part of an hour to get to the top, and he reached it at a point not
two yards from my hiding-place. I could hear by his labouring breath
that he was very blown. He walked straight over the crest till he was
out of sight of Ranna, and flung himself on the ground. He was now
about fifty yards from me, and I made shift to lessen the distance.
There was a grassy trench skirting the north side of the hill, deep
and thickly overgrown with heather. I wound my way along it till I was
about twelve yards from him, where I stuck, owing to the trench dying
away. When I peered out of the cover I saw that the other man had
joined him and that the idiots were engaged in embracing each other.
I dared not move an inch nearer, and as they talked in a low voice I
could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one phrase, which
the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically. ‘To-morrow night,’
he said, and I noticed that his voice had not the Highland inflection
which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced at his watch, and then
the two began to move downhill towards the road I had travelled that
morning.
I followed as best I could, using a shallow dry watercourse of which
sheep had made a track, and which kept me well below the level of the
moor. It took me down the hill, but some distance from the line the
pair were taking, and I had to reconnoitre frequently to watch their
movements. They were still a quarter of a mile or so from the road,
when they stopped and stared, and I stared with them. On that lonely
highway travellers were about as rare as roadmenders, and what caught
their eye was a farmer’s gig driven by a thick-set elderly man with a
woollen comforter round his neck.
I had a bad moment, for I reckoned that if Gresson recognized Amos he
might take fright. Perhaps the driver of the gig thought the same, for
he appeared to be very drunk. He waved his whip, he jiggoted the
reins, and he made an effort to sing. He looked towards the figures on
the hillside, and cried out something. The gig narrowly missed the
ditch, and then to my relief the horse bolted. Swaying like a ship in
a gale, the whole outfit lurched out of sight round the corner of hill
where lay my cache. If Amos could stop the beast and deliver the goods
there, he had put up a masterly bit of buffoonery.
The two men laughed at the performance, and then they parted. Gresson
retraced his steps up the hill. The other man—I called him in my mind
the Portuguese Jew—started off at a great pace due west, across the
road, and over a big patch of bog towards the northern butt of the
Coolin. He had some errand, which Gresson knew about, and he was in a
hurry to perform it. It was clearly my job to get after him.
I had a rotten afternoon. The fellow covered the moorland miles like a
deer, and under the hot August sun I toiled on his trail. I had to
keep well behind, and as much as possible in cover, in case he looked
back; and that meant that when he had passed over a ridge I had to
double not to let him get too far ahead, and when we were in an open
place I had to make wide circuits to keep hidden. We struck a road
which crossed a low pass and skirted the flank of the mountains, and
this we followed till we were on the western side and within sight of
the sea. It was gorgeous weather, and out on the blue water I saw cool
sails moving and little breezes ruffling the calm, while I was glowing
like a furnace. Happily I was in fair training, and I needed it. The
Portuguese Jew must have done a steady six miles an hour over
abominable country.
About five o’clock we came to a point where I dared not follow. The
road ran flat by the edge of the sea, so that several miles of it were
visible. Moreover, the man had begun to look round every few minutes.
He was getting near something and wanted to be sure that no one was in
his neighbourhood. I left the road accordingly, and took to the
hillside, which to my undoing was one long cascade of screes and
tumbled rocks. I saw him drop over a rise which seemed to mark the rim
of a little bay into which descended one of the big corries of the
mountains. It must have been a good half-hour later before I, at my
greater altitude and with far worse going, reached the same rim. I
looked into the glen and my man had disappeared.
He could not have crossed it, for the place was wider than I had
thought. A ring of black precipices came down to within half a mile of
the shore, and between them was a big stream—long, shallow pools at
the sea end and a chain of waterfalls above. He had gone to earth like
a badger somewhere, and I dared not move in case he might be watching
me from behind a boulder.
But even as I hesitated he appeared again, fording the stream, his
face set on the road we had come. Whatever his errand was he had
finished it, and was posting back to his master. For a moment I
thought I should follow him, but another instinct prevailed. He had
not come to this wild place for the scenery. Somewhere down in the
glen there was something or somebody that held the key of the mystery.
It was my business to stay there till I had unlocked it. Besides, in
two hours it would be dark, and I had had enough walking for one day.
I made my way to the stream side and had a long drink. The corrie
behind me was lit up with the westering sun, and the bald cliffs were
flushed with pink and gold. On each side of the stream was turf like a
lawn, perhaps a hundred yards wide, and then a tangle of long heather
and boulders right up to the edge of the great rocks. I had never seen
a more delectable evening, but I could not enjoy its peace because of
my anxiety about the Portuguese Jew. He had not been there more than
half an hour, just about long enough for a man to travel to the first
ridge across the burn and back. Yet he had found time to do his
business. He might have left a letter in some prearranged place—in
which case I would stay there till the man it was meant for turned up.
Or he might have met someone, though I didn’t think that possible. As
I scanned the acres of rough moor and then looked at the sea lapping
delicately on the grey sand I had the feeling that a knotty problem
was before me. It was too dark to try to track his steps. That must be
left for the morning, and I prayed that there would be no rain in the
night.
I ate for supper most of the braxy ham and oatcake I had brought from
Macmorran’s cottage. It took some self-denial, for I was ferociously
hungry, to save a little for breakfast next morning. Then I pulled
heather and bracken and made myself a bed in the shelter of a rock
which stood on a knoll above the stream. My bed-chamber was well
hidden, but at the same time, if anything should appear in the early
dawn, it gave me a prospect. With my waterproof I was perfectly warm,
and, after smoking two pipes, I fell asleep.
My night’s rest was broken. First it was a fox which came and barked
at my ear and woke me to a pitch-black night, with scarcely a star
showing. The next time it was nothing but a wandering hill-wind, but
as I sat up and listened I thought I saw a spark of light near the
edge of the sea. It was only for a second, but it disquieted me. I got
out and climbed on the top of the rock, but all was still save for the
gentle lap of the tide and the croak of some night bird among the
crags. The third time I was suddenly quite wide awake, and without any
reason, for I had not been dreaming. Now I have slept hundreds of
times alone beside my horse on the veld, and I never knew any cause
for such awakenings but the one, and that was the presence near me of
some human being. A man who is accustomed to solitude gets this extra
sense which announces like an alarm-clock the approach of one of his
kind.
But I could hear nothing. There was a scraping and rustling on the
moor, but that was only the wind and the little wild things of the
hills. A fox, perhaps, or a blue hare. I convinced my reason, but not
my senses, and for long I lay awake with my ears at full cock and
every nerve tense. Then I fell asleep, and woke to the first flush of
dawn.
The sun was behind the Coolin and the hills were black as ink, but far
out in the western seas was a broad band of gold. I got up and went
down to the shore. The mouth of the stream was shallow, but as I moved
south I came to a place where two small capes enclosed an inlet. It
must have been a fault in the volcanic rock, for its depth was
portentous. I stripped and dived far into its cold abysses, but I did
not reach the bottom. I came to the surface rather breathless, and
struck out to sea, where I floated on my back and looked at the great
rampart of crag. I saw that the place where I had spent the night was
only a little oasis of green at the base of one of the grimmest
corries the imagination could picture. It was as desert as Damaraland.
I noticed, too, how sharply the cliffs rose from the level. There were
chimneys and gullies by which a man might have made his way to the
summit, but no one of them could have been scaled except by a
mountaineer.
I was feeling better now, with all the frowsiness washed out of me,
and I dried myself by racing up and down the heather. Then I noticed
something. There were marks of human feet at the top of the deep-water
inlet—not mine, for they were on the other side. The short sea-turf
was bruised and trampled in several places, and there were broken
stems of bracken. I thought that some fisherman had probably landed
there to stretch his legs.
But that set me thinking of the Portuguese Jew. After breakfasting on
my last morsels of food—a knuckle of braxy and a bit of oatcake—I
set about tracking him from the place where he had first entered the
glen. To get my bearings, I went back over the road I had come myself,
and after a good deal of trouble I found his spoor. It was pretty
clear as far as the stream, for he had been walking—or rather
running—over ground with many patches of gravel on it. After that it
was difficult, and I lost it entirely in the rough heather below the
crags. All that I could make out for certain was that he had crossed
the stream, and that his business, whatever it was, had been with the
few acres of tumbled wilderness below the precipices.
I spent a busy morning there, but found nothing except the skeleton of
a sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was a thankless job, and I got
very cross over it. I had an ugly feeling that I was on a false scent
and wasting my time. I wished to Heaven I had old Peter with me. He
could follow spoor like a Bushman, and would have riddled the
Portuguese Jew’s track out of any jungle on earth. That was a game I
had never learned, for in the old days I had always left it to my
natives. I chucked the attempt, and lay disconsolately on a warm patch
of grass and smoked and thought about Peter. But my chief reflections
were that I had breakfasted at five, that it was now eleven, that I
was intolerably hungry, that there was nothing here to feed a
grasshopper, and that I should starve unless I got supplies.
It was a long road to my cache, but there were no two ways of it. My
only hope was to sit tight in the glen, and it might involve a wait of
days. To wait I must have food, and, though it meant relinquishing
guard for a matter of six hours, the risk had to be taken. I set off
at a brisk pace with a very depressed mind.
From the map it seemed that a short cut lay over a pass in the range.
I resolved to take it, and that short cut, like most of its kind, was
unblessed by Heaven. I will not dwell upon the discomforts of the
journey. I found myself slithering among screes, climbing steep
chimneys, and travelling precariously along razor-backs. The shoes
were nearly rent from my feet by the infernal rocks,which were all
pitted as if by some geological small-pox. When at last I crossed the
divide, I had a horrible business getting down from one level to
another in a gruesome corrie, where each step was composed of smooth
boiler-plates. But at last I was among the bogs on the east side, and
came to the place beside the road where I had fixed my cache.
The faithful Amos had not failed me. There were the provisions—a
couple of small loaves, a dozen tins, and a bottle of whisky. I made
the best pack I could of them in my waterproof, swung it on my stick,
and started back, thinking that I must be very like the picture of
Christian on the title-page of Pilgrim’s Progress.
I was liker Christian before I reached my destination—Christian after
he had got up the Hill Difficulty. The morning’s walk had been bad,
but the afternoon’s was worse, for I was in a fever to get back, and,
having had enough of the hills, chose the longer route I had followed
the previous day. I was mortally afraid of being seen, for I cut a
queer figure, so I avoided every stretch of road where I had not a
clear view ahead. Many weary detours I made among moss-hags and screes
and the stony channels of burns. But I got there at last, and it was
almost with a sense of comfort that I flung my pack down beside the
stream where I had passed the night.
I ate a good meal, lit my pipe, and fell into the equable mood which
follows upon fatigue ended and hunger satisfied. The sun was
westering, and its light fell upon the rock-wall above the place where
I had abandoned my search for the spoor.
As I gazed at it idly I saw a curious thing.
It seemed to be split in two and a shaft of sunlight came through
between. There could be no doubt about it. I saw the end of the shaft
on the moor beneath, while all the rest lay in shadow. I rubbed my
eyes, and got out my glasses. Then I guessed the explanation. There
was a rock tower close against the face of the main precipice and
indistinguishable from it to anyone looking direct at the face. Only
when the sun fell on it obliquely could it be discovered. And between
the tower and the cliff there must be a substantial hollow.
The discovery brought me to my feet, and set me running towards the
end of the shaft of sunlight. I left the heather, scrambled up some
yards of screes, and had a difficult time on some very smooth slabs,
where only the friction of tweed and rough rock gave me a hold. Slowly
I worked my way towards the speck of sunlight, till I found a
handhold, and swung myself into the crack. On one side was the main
wall of the hill, on the other a tower some ninety feet high, and
between them a long crevice varying in width from three to six feet.
Beyond it there showed a small bright patch of sea.
There was more, for at the point where I entered it there was an
overhang which made a fine cavern, low at the entrance but a dozen
feet high inside, and as dry as tinder. Here, thought I, is the
perfect hiding-place. Before going farther I resolved to return for
food. It was not very easy descending, and I slipped the last twenty
feet, landing on my head in a soft patch of screes. At the burnside I
filled my flask from the whisky bottle, and put half a loaf, a tin of
sardines, a tin of tongue, and a packet of chocolate in my waterproof
pockets. Laden as I was, it took me some time to get up again, but I
managed it, and stored my belongings in a corner of the cave. Then I
set out to explore the rest of the crack.
It slanted down and then rose again to a small platform. After that it
dropped in easy steps to the moor beyond the tower. If the Portuguese
Jew had come here, that was the way by which he had reached it, for he
would not have had the time to make my ascent. I went very cautiously,
for I felt I was on the eve of a big discovery. The platform was
partly hidden from my end by a bend in the crack, and it was more or
less screened by an outlying bastion of the tower from the other side.
Its surface was covered with fine powdery dust, as were the steps
beyond it. In some excitement I knelt down and examined it.
Beyond doubt there was spoor here. I knew the Portuguese Jew’s
footmarks by this time, and I made them out clearly, especially in one
corner. But there were other footsteps, quite different. The one
showed the rackets of rough country boots, the others were from
un-nailed soles. Again I longed for Peter to make certain, though I
was pretty sure of my conclusions. The man I had followed had come
here, and he had not stayed long. Someone else had been here, probably
later, for the un-nailed shoes overlaid the rackets. The first man
might have left a message for the second. Perhaps the second was that
human presence of which I had been dimly conscious in the night-time.
I carefully removed all traces of my own footmarks, and went back to
my cave. My head was humming with my discovery. I remembered Gresson’s
word to his friend: ‘Tomorrow night.’ As I read it, the Portuguese Jew
had taken a message from Gresson to someone, and that someone had come
from somewhere and picked it up. The message contained an assignation
for this very night. I had found a point of observation, for no one
was likely to come near my cave, which was reached from the moor by
such a toilsome climb. There I should bivouac and see what the
darkness brought forth. I remember reflecting on the amazing luck
which had so far attended me. As I looked from my refuge at the blue
haze of twilight creeping over the waters, I felt my pulses quicken
with a wild anticipation.
Then I heard a sound below me, and craned my neck round the edge of
the tower. A man was climbing up the rock by the way I had come.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — Mr Standfast/Chapter 6. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.