The flight of the heron

by D. K. Broster

Furious, he began to run back along the road; its sandy surface was already too much churned up to show any hoof-marks. He did not remember passing any crofts as he came. Though a man could hide in the thick bushes on the seaward side, a horse could not be concealed in them. He turned abruptly and went back again, remembering that there was a dwelling or two farther along, between him and the river. If some of these MacDonalds had stolen his horse and hidden it there, by Heaven it should be the worse for them!

What, however, was of paramount importance now was not the finding of his horse, but the beating up of the patrol with the least possible delay. Yet by the time that he, on foot, could get round to their quarters, or at least by the time that the soldiers arrived on the spot, the boat would probably have put out with her freight. That was why his horse had been spirited away by the ambushed spy in league with to-night’s fugitives.

Keith set his jaw and cursed himself most fervently for having come alone. The extraordinarily skilful way in which his horse had been made to vanish, joined to the inexplicable lateness of the patrol, only confirmed his conviction that it was the Pretender’s son for whom that boat was waiting. Then, at all costs, he must delay its putting out. . . . Could he disable it in some way? Not easily, without tools, but he would do his best.

Once more he plunged down the sandy slope. But the boat, though old, was solid. A knife, a sword, could make no impression on those timbers. Keith had a moment of angry despair; then he remembered having seen in one of these craft the other day a plugged hole, designed to allow water to drain out if necessary. Suppose this boat had one!

Getting in he peered and felt over the bottom, and at last, to his joy, his fingers encountered, toward the after end, a rough peg of wood sticking up like a cork. After some tugging he succeeded in wrenching it out, and slipped it into his pocket. He could get his thumb through the hole he had thus unplugged. He leapt out and ran towards the slope again in triumph. One of two things would happen now: either the Pretender’s son and his companions would discover what had been done, and a new plug would have to be fashioned to fit the hole, which would delay them not a little, or—what seemed to Keith more probable—they would launch the boat and pull off without examining it, on which it would almost immediately fill and sink, and its occupants be forced to struggle back at a disadvantage to a shore by that time, it was to be hoped, straitly guarded.

Keith was half-way up the slope again when he stopped abruptly, for in the stillness he had distinctly heard voices—low voices at no very great distance. The patrol at last, perhaps? He did not think so. The speakers seemed to be coming along the tree-shadowed road between him and the end of the inlet, the very road along which he was preparing to hasten. A party of Jacobite fugitives would most certainly not allow a soldier in uniform to run past them if they could help it. Was the prize going to slip through his fingers after all?

No, hardly, in that unseaworthy boat! But he must perforce let the owners of these cautious voices pass him and get on to the beach before he started for the quarters of the patrol. Had the tide not already been so high he could have cut across the sands and swum or waded the river, but that was out of the question now; he could only go by the road. He looked round for shelter, and slipped cautiously into a high bush of hazel which itself stood in a patch of shadow so deep that he felt sure of being invisible.

Not only voices, but muffled footsteps were audible by this time, and presently a man—a fisherman, he thought—ran down the slope towards the boat. He had scarcely passed before it came to Keith with a gust of despair that he had set himself an almost impossible task. Now that the fugitives were already here, before he had even started, he could never get round and fetch the patrol in time, for if the Jacobites were left to embark undisturbed they would discover and repair the loss of the plug—that man down there was probably discovering it now. But there was another way of rousing his dilatory men, for, unbelievably negligent as they were this evening, they could not fail to hear a pistol-shot. That would bring them to the place in double quick time; and although to fire would naturally alarm the fugitives, and make them embark with all the greater despatch, there was gain in that, since—if it were not already done—they would pretty certainly not discover the loss of the plug. Keith drew the loaded pistol from his belt, but he put it at half-cock only, because he must wait until the party was well past him before firing, seeing that he was only one against he knew not how many.

Centuries seemed to pass while he waited, and considered, only to dismiss, the idea of deliberately shooting at the Pretender’s son with a view to disabling him; for he could not in this light be sure of stopping short at that. His heart beat faster than ever it had done at Fontenoy or Culloden Moor, for this business was fraught for him with issues more momentous than any battle. What happened in the next quarter of an hour would decide his whole future—and no fighting had done that for him.

A sudden fall of sand behind him startled him for a moment, but he dared not turn his head to look what had caused it, for three . . . four dim shapes were coming at last out of the shadows above and beyond him, and beginning to descend the slope. The tallest was limping badly; and he was also the principal figure, for the others, he could see now, were only gillies, and one was a boy. Had the Pretender’s son gone lame in his wanderings? It was quite possible.