Already, however, the main body of the Highlanders was wavering. The first wild charge had shattered their ranks. The English cavalry were advancing and some one shouted that the Prince was killed. Panic began to do its work. Soon after the left wing commenced to march off the field.
All about Rob arose hoarse cries, groans, eddying smoke, and the roar and clatter of arms. Into the thick of the conflict he struggled onwards. He thrust and parried and thrust again with his claymore. Well for him was it that his father had taught him the secrets of a stiff wrist and the upper cut. An English soldier rushed at him red with battle madness, and shouting as he came. Rob, receiving a blow from an upraised musket on his targe, drove home his claymore and heard the cry die out in the man's throat into a choking sob, and—silence.
Then, before he could disengage his sword, a dragoon, spurring his horse over the heaps of fallen men, slashed at his head with his sabre, and, missing him, pulled up his beast and charged again. For Rob the situation was desperate, but seeing a little solitary group of Highlanders near by, he took to his heels and reached them, picking up an English musket as he ran. He was barely in time; had not a huge Cameron armed with a broadsword hewn down his opponent, it would have fared badly indeed with him. As it was, he clubbed his musket, and standing back to back with the others, prepared to fall as hardly as possible.
The tide of battle swept backwards and forwards; but all over the fatal moor the Jacobite army was in retreat. Gradually the little group about him thinned, until only a bare dozen remained, and it was in a breathing-space that Rob suddenly perceived Muckle John amongst them.
His head was bound in a piece of tartan, and bleeding profusely; but the smile was in his eyes, and his claymore rose and fell, and every time a man floundered upon the ground. Before him there lay a heap of Englishmen as high as his elbow.
Presently the smoke of powder cleared a little, and over the moor came a squadron of dragoons at a loose canter, killing all who stood in their way, both wounded and unarmed. Round the little circle of faces Muckle John looked swiftly.
"Now," said he, "it is each for himself," and he whistled a sprig of a tune as he began to swing his sword-arm.
With a hoarse yell the dragoons were on them. Two fell to Muckle John, there was a wild clash, and a man beside Rob dropped with a groan. And then came an oppressive weight of horses kicking, plunging, rearing—and a blinding blow flung him unconscious beneath their flying feet.
It was well indeed for Rob that death seemed to have snatched him from the cruel hands of his enemies, and the pile of dead and dying about him sheltered his body from the search parties of Hanoverians now busy upon their work of butchery.
When at last he opened his eyes and stared about him silence had fallen over the field—a silence infinitely tragic and menacing, pent up with disaster and following retribution.