Latest / Classic Adventure Books Collection / 16 - Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
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- Chapter sixteen, The lad with the Silver Button. Across Morven. There is a regular ferry from torres Say to Kinloch Aleeen on the mainland, both shores of the sound, or in the country of the strong clan of the Mcleans, and the people that passed the ferry with me were almost all of that clan. The skipper of the boat, on the other hand, was called neil Roy Macrob, And since Macrob was one of the names of Allan's clansmen, and Allan himself had sent me to that ferry, I was eager to come to private speech of neil Roy in the crowded boat. This was, of course impossible, and the passage was a very slow affair. There was no wind, and as the boat was wretchedly equipped, we could pull but two oars on one side and one on the other. The men gave way, however, with a good will, the passengers taking spells to help them, and the whole company giving the time in Gaelic boat's songs. And what were the songs and the sea and the good nature and spirit of all concern and the bright weather. The passage was a pretty thing to have seen. But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of lach Aline, we found a great sea going ship at anchor, and this I supposed at first to be one of the King's cruisers, which were kept along that coast both summer and winter, to prevent communication with the French. As we got a little nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise. And what still more puzzled me. Not only her decks, but the sea beach also were quite black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between them. Yet nearer, and there began to come to our ears a great sound of mourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart. Then I understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the American colonies. We put the ferryboat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow passengers, among whom they counted some near friends. How long this might have gone on I do not know, for they seemed to have no sense of time. But at last the captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself and no great wonder in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and begged us to depart. Thereupon Neil sheered off, and the chief singer in our boat struck into a melancholy air, which was presently taken up both by the emigrants and their friends upon the beach, so that it sounded from all sides like a lament for the dying. I saw the tears run down the cheeks of the men and women in the boat, even as they bent at the oars. And the circumstances and the music of the song, which is one called lach Abra no More, were highly affecting, even to myself. At Kinloch Aleen, I got Neil Roy upon one side on the beach and said, I made sure he was one of Appin's men. And what for, no, said he. I am seeking somebody, said I, and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him. Alan breck Stewart is his name. And very foolishly, instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his hand. At this he drew back. I am very much affronted, he said, And this is not the way that one gentleman should behave to another at all. The man you asked for is in France, but if he were in my sporn, says he, and your belly full of shillings that would not hurt a hair upon his body. I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and without wasting time upon apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm. Hahuil. Wuil said Neil, and I think you might have begun with that end of the stick whatever. But if you are the lad with silver button, all is well, and I have the word to see that you come safe. But if you will pardon me to speak plainly, says he, there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Alan Breck. And there is a thing that you would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a heilen gentleman. It was not very easy to apologize, for I could scarce tell him what was the truth that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so. Neil, on his part, had no wish to prolong his dealings with me, only to fulfill his orders and be done with it, and he made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the Knight in king Lacheleen and the public inn, to cross Morvan the next day to Ardgour, and lie the Knight in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come the third day to be set across one lock at Korn and another at Balak foolish, and then asked my way to the house of James of the Glens at Okhrn Endure of Appen. There was a good deal of faring, as you hear the sea in all this part, running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots. It makes the country strong to hold and difficult to travel, but full of prodigious, wild and dreadful prospects. I had some other advice from Neil to speak with no one by the way, to avoid Whigs, Campbell's and the Red soldiers. To leave the road and lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming, for it was never chancey to meet in with them, And in brief to conduct myself like a robber or a Jacobite agent, as perhaps Neil thought me. The inn at Kinloch Aleen was the most beggarly vile place that ever. Pigs were stied in, full of smoke, vermin and silent highlanders. I was not only discontented with my lodging, but with my for my mismanagement of Neil, and thought I could hardly be worse off, but very wrongly, as I was soon to see. For I had not been half an hour at the inn, standing in the door most of the time to ease my eyes from the peat smoke. When a thunder storm came close by, the springs broke in the little hill on which the inn stood, and one end of the house became a running water. Places of public entertainment were bad enough all over Scotland in those days. Yet it was a wonder to myself when I had to go from the fireside to the bed in which I slept, weeding over the shoes. Early in my next day's journey, I overtook a little stout solemn man, walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a book and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed decently and plainly in something of a clerical style. This I found to be another Catechist, but of a different order from the blind Man of Mull, being indeed one of those sent out by the Edinburgh Society for propagating Christian knowledge to evangelize the more savage places of the Highlands. His name was Henderlund. He spoke with a broad south country tongue, which I was beginning to weary for the sound of. And besides common country ship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest. For my good friend, the Minister of Essendean had translated into the Gaelic in his by time a number of hymns and pious books, which Henderlund used in his work and held in great esteem. Indeed, it was one of these he was carrying and reading when we met. We fell in company at once, our ways, lying together as far as to Kingerloch. As we went, he stopped and spoke with all the wayfarers and workers that we met or passed. And though of course I could not tell what they discoursed about, yet I judge mister Hendelin must be well liked in the country side, for I observed many of them to bring out their mulls and share a pinch of snuff with him. I told him as far in my affairs as I judge wise, as far that is, as they were none of Allan's, and gave balicoulish as the place I was traveling to to meet a friend, for I thought Akharan or even Duror would be too particular and might put him on the scent. On his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among, the hiding priests and Jacobites, the Disarming Act, the dress, and many other curiosities of the time and place. He seemed moderate, blaming Parliament in several points, and especially because they had framed the act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons. This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the red Fox and the app and tenants, questions which I thought would seem natural enough in the mouth of work one traveling to that country. He said it was a bad business. It's wonderful, said he. Where the tenants find the money for their life is mere starvation. You don't carry such a thing as snuff, do you, mister Balfour. No, well, I'm better wanting it. But these tenants, as I was saying, are doubtless partly driven to it. James Stewart Endure, that's him. They call James of the Glens, his half brother to Ardshield, the captain of the clan, and he is a man much looked up to and drives very hard. And then this one they call Alan Breck. Ah, I cried, what of him? What of the wind that bloweth where it listeth? Said Henderlen. He's here in a way, here to day and gone tomorrow a fair heather cat. He might be glowering at the two of us out of yon Windbush. And I wouldn't wonder you now carry such a thing a snuff? Will you told him now? And that he had asked the same thing more than once. It's highly possible, said he, sighing. But it seems strange you shouldn't carry it, However, I was saying this. Alan Breck is a bold, desperate customer, and well kent to be James's right hand. His life is forfoot already. He would boggle at nehin and maybe if a tenant body were to hang back, he would get a dirk in his way. You make a poor story of it all, mister Hendlen, said I if it is all fear upon both sides. I care to hear no more of it, nah, said mister Henderlen. But there's love too, and self denial that should put the like of you and meat to shame. There's something fine about it, No, perhaps Christian, but humanly fine. Even Alan breck By all that I hear is a chield to be respected. There's many a lion's snack draw sits closing kirk in our own part of the country, and stands well in the world's eye. And maybe he is a far worse man, mister Balfour, than Yon misguided shadder of man's blood. II II we might take a lesson by them. You'll perhaps think I've been too long in the highlands, he added, smiling to me. I told him not at all, that I had seen much to admire among the highlanders. And if he came to that, mister Campbell himself was a highlander, I said he that's true. It's a fine blood. And what is the King's agent about, I asked Colin Campbell, says Handelen, putting his head in a bees bike. He is to turn the tenants out by force, I hear, said, I yes, says he. But the business is gone back and forth, as folks say. First James of the Glens rode to Edinburgh and got some lawyer, a Stewart. In no doubt they all hang together like bats and a steeple, and had the proceedings staid. And then Colin Campbell came in again and had the upper hand before the barons of Exchequer. And now they tell me the first of the tenants are to flit tomorrow. It's to begin at Durer under James's very windows, which doesna seem wise by my humble way of it. Do you think they'll fight? I asked, Well, says Henderland. They're disarmed, or supposed to be, for there's still a good deal of cold iron lying by in quiet places. And then Colin Campbell has the soldiers coming. But for all that, if I was his lady wife, I wouldn't be well pleased till I got him home again. They're queer customers, the appen Stuarts. I asked if they were worse than their neighbors. No, they said he And that's the worst part of it. For if Colin Roy can get his business done and appen, he has it all to begin again. In the next country, which they call Memoir, and which is one of the countries of the Camerons. He's king's factor upon both, and from both he has to drive out the tenants. And indeed, mister Balfour, to be open with you, it's my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he'd get his death by the other. So we continued talking and walking the great part of the day, until at last mister Hendelen, after expressing his delight in my company and satisfaction at meeting with a friend of mister Campbell's, whom says he and would make the bold to call that sweet singer of our confident in Zion, propose that I should make a short stage and lie the night in his house a little beyond Kingerloch. To say truth, I was overjoyed, for I had no great desire for John of the Claymore, and since my double misadventure first with a guide and next with the gentleman's skipper, I stood in some fear of any highland stranger. Accordingly, we shook hands upon the bargain and came in the afternoon to a small house standing alone by the shore of the line Loch the sun was already gone from the desert mountains of Ardgour upon the hither side, but shone on those of append On the farther. The loch lay as still as a lake. Only the gulls were crying round the sides of it, and the whole place seemed solemn and uncouth. We had no sooner come to the door of mister Henderlen's dwelling than to my great surprise, for I was now used to the politeness of Highlanders. He burst rudely past me, dashed into the room, bought up a jar in a small horn spoon, and began ladling snuff into his nose in most excessive quantities than he had a hearty fit of sneezing, and looked round upon me with a rather silly smile. It's a vow I took, says he. I took a vow upon me that I would not carry it. Doubtless it's a great privation. But when I think upon the martyrs, not only to the Scottish Covenant, but to other points of Christianity, I think shame to mind it. As soon as we had eaten and porridge, and why were the best of the good man's diet. He took a grave face and said he had a duty to perform by mister Campbell, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God. I was inclined to smile at him, since the business of the snuff, but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. There are two things that men should never weary of goodness and humility. We get none too much of them in this rough world, among cold, proud people. But mister Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue. And though I was a good deal puffed up with my adventures and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colors, yet he soon had me on my knees beside, a simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there. Before we went to bed, he offered me sixpence to help me on my way out of a ganty's store he kept in the turf wall of his house, at which excess of goodness I knew not what to do. But at last he was so earnest with me that I thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way, and so left him poorer than myself. End of chapter