"And all to be ours. All to be British!"
They passed the forests safely enough, and now got fairly into the mountain-land. Here were glens, as bonnie and bosky as any in Scotland. They entered one particularly beautiful dell.
They had paused to admire and wonder, when the distant sound of war-drums or tom-toms fell upon their ears, and presently a huge band of savage warriors appeared, as if by magic, on the opposite brae. So suddenly did they spring up, that the brave lines of the poet came back with a rush to Creggan's mind. Yonder, of course, were no waving tartans or plumes. Yet that dark army rose from the bush in the same startling way. It is in Roderick Dhu's interview with the Saxon Fitz-James on the Highland hills. Roderick cries:
"'Have, then, thy wish!' He whistled shrill
And he was answered from the hill;
Wild as the scream of the curlew,
From crag to crag the signal flew.
Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets and spears and bended bows;
On right, on left, above, below,
Sprang up at once the lurking foe;
From shingles gray their lances start,
The bracken bush sends forth the dart;
The rushes and the willow-wand
Are bristling into axe and brand,
And every tuft of broom gives life
To plaided warrior armed for strife.
That whistle garrisoned the glen
At once with full five hundred men,
As if the yawning hill, to heaven
A subterranean host had given."
"Why," said Colonel Fraser, pointing to the hillside, "just look yonder, Flint. We don't want to fight these poor hill-men. They are doubtless the same from whom the emissaries came."
"Well, anyhow," said Flint, "they look as vicious as vipers. Let us send our interpreter over at once. He will explain things."
"Good!"
So this was done.
But it was evident that the hill-men were not open to reason, for the poor fellow was immediately seized and bound.
"Now," cried the colonel, "we must and shall advance. If there were twice five hundred we should not submit to that indignity."