It was an odd company that gathered on the strand while the ship beat inshore with the half of a light, uncertain wind. The Prince was there, Lochiel and Rupert, and a small band of loyal gentry who had been in hiding round about their homes. Yet a beggar in his rags and tatters might have joined them and claimed free passage to the French coast, so far as outward seeming went. Their clothes were made up of odds and ends, begged or borrowed during the long retreat. All were itching from the attacks of the big, lusty fleas that abound along the loyal isles. The one sign that proved them the Stuart’s gentlemen was a certain temperate ease of carriage, a large disdain of circumstance, a security, gay and dominant, in the faith that preferred beggarman’s rags to fine raiment bought by treachery. They did not fear, did not regret, though they were leaving all that meant home and the cosy hearth.
The Prince, while the French ships were beating inshore, took Lochiel aside. Through the wild campaign they had been like twin brothers, these two, showing the same keen faith, the like courage under hardship.
“Lochiel, you know the country better than I. You’re bred to your good land, while I was only born to it. You will tell me where the Isle of Skye lies from here.”
“Yonder,” said the other, pointing across the grey-blue haze of summer seas.
And the Prince stood silent, thinking of the victory there in Skye—the victory that had left him wearier than Culloden’s sick defeat had done. And Lochiel, who had had his own affairs to attend to lately, and had been aloof from gossip, wondered as he saw the trouble in the other’s face.
The Prince turned at last. “Lochiel,” he said, with a tired smile, “how does the Usurper’s proclamation run? Thirty thousand pounds on my head—dead or alive! Well, alive or dead, I wish this tattered body of mine were still in Skye—in Skye, Lochiel, where I left the soul of me.”
“You are sad, your Highness——”
“Sad? Nay, I’ve waded deeper than mere sadness, like the Skye mists out yonder. Well, we stand where we stand, friend,” he added, with sharp return from dreams, “and the ship is bringing to.”
There was still a little while before the boats were lowered from the shore, and the Prince, pacing up and down the strand, encountered Rupert. “A fine ending!” he said, with temperate bitterness. “I landed in Lochaber from France with seven gentlemen. I go back with a few more. This is the fruit of your toil, Mr. Royd—and of mine.”
And, “No, by your leave,” said Rupert. “Your Highness has lit a fire that will never die—a fire of sheer devotion——”