Macglashan and his companions waited for nearly half an hour; night was fast falling, and the ruinous cottages, as the twilight darkened round them, assumed a more dismal appearance. From the window of the inhabited one there glimmered a dull red light, which was repeatedly eclipsed, as if by the shadows of persons passing between the window and the fire. At length the door opened, and the sharp harsh voice of Stine Bheag was heard calling from the entrance. Macglashan stepped up to her, and received the stoup, stoppled with a bunch of straw. “Set off,” said she, as she delivered it, “on the first blink of to-morrow; but as ye love life, touch not the wisp till ye reach Cromarty.” Macglashan promised a strict observance of the injunction, and, taking his leave, set out with his companions for the tent.
The wind lowered during the night, and when early next morning Macglashan raised the edge of the sail, the wide extent of the Moray Firth presented a surface as glassy as that of a mirror; though it still heaved in long ridges, on which the reflection of the red light that preceded sunrise, danced and flickered like sheets of flame. He roused his companions; the tent was struck, the boat launched, the thwarts manned; and before the sun had risen, the whole party were toiling at the oar. A light breeze from the north-east began to ruffle the surface of the water; it increased into a brisk gale, and the boat, with both her sails set, was soon scudding before it. The ancient towers of Balone, the still more ancient towers of Cadboll, Hilton with its ruinous chapel, and Shandwick with its sculptured obelisk, neared and then receded, as she swept along the shore; and the sun was yet low in the sky, when, after passing the steep overhanging precipices of the hill of Nigg, she opened the bay of Cromarty. “What in the name of wonder,” asked one of the crew, “can Stine Bheag hae put in the stoup?” “Rax it this way,” said another; “we would better be ony gate than in Cromarty should the minister come to hear of it; I’m thinking Mac had as weel fling out the wisp here as on the shore.”—“Think you so?” said Macglashan, “then send the stoup this way.” He drew out the stopple, and flung it over his head into the sea; but in the next moment, when half-a-dozen necks were stretched out to pry into the vessel, which proved empty, the man stationed at the bows roared out, “For heaven’s sake, lads, mind your haulyards! lower, lower, a squall from the land! we shall back-fill and go down like a mussel-shell.” The crew clustered round the sails, and had succeeded in lowering them, when the squall struck the boat ahead with the fury of a tornado, and almost forced her out of the water. The thwarts were maimed, but ere the rowers had bent to the first stroke, the oars were wrested out of their hands by the force of the hurricane. The bay around them was agitated as if beaten by rods; the wind howled in one continuous gust, without pause or intermission; and a cloud of spray which arose from the waves, like a sheet of drift from a field of snow, swept over them in so dense a volume, that it hid the land and darkened the heavens. As the boat drifted before the tempest, the bay receded, the cliffs, the villages, the castles, were passed in hasty succession, and before noon the crew had landed at Tarbat Ness, where they found Stine Bheag sitting on the shore, as if waiting their arrival.
“Donnart deevils, what tak’s ye here?” was the first salutation of the witch. “Ah, mother, that cursed wisp!” groaned out Macglashan. “Wisp!—Look ye, my frack young man, your weird may have hemp in it, an’ sae ye may tempt salt water when ye like; but a’ the ither drookit bodies there have nae such protection. An’ now ye may tak’ the road, for here maun your boat gizzen till the drift o’ Januar be heapit oure her gunwale.” “Ah, mother!” said Macglashan, “what could we do on the road? and home were but a cold home without either our fish or our winbread. Od, it were better for us to plenish the old bothies at the bay, and go and live wi’ yoursel’; but ye must just try and put another wisp in the stoup.” To this she at length consented; and on the following morning the party arrived in Cromarty without any new adventure. The one detailed did not become history until many years after, when it was related by Macglashan. He was probably well enough acquainted with the tenth book of Homer’s Odyssey to know of that ill-improved gift bestowed on Ulysses by old king Æolus, when
“The adverse winds in leathern bags he braced,
Compressed their force, and locked each struggling blast,
Securely fettered by a silver thong.”
CHAPTER XX.
“Implore his aid, for Proteus only knows
The secret cause and cure of all thy woes,
But first the wily wizard must be caught,