“Ay, an’ I’ll gie you a proof o’t. What takes the town’s-folk to your shop when any thrawart matter comes in their way that they canna redd up o’ themselves? And why do they ask your advice before entering into a law-plea? or whether they should try the fishing? or whether the strange minister gied a gude discoorse; you’re no a lawyer, nor a boatman, nor a divine. Why do they call for you to lay a tulzie when you’re no a magistrate? and why do folk that quarrel wi’ everybody else, take care an’ no quarrel wi’ you? Just because they ken that you were born wi’ a bigger mind an’ a bolder heart than themsels—born a gentleman, as it were, in spite o’ your hamely birth an’ your serge coat; an’ now that the puir folk are starving, an’ a shipful o’ meal going down the Firth, you slink awa from your proper natural office o’ leader, an’ just let them starve on.”
“Sawney,” said the mechanic, “ye have such a natural turn for flattery, that ye fleech without hope o’ fee or bountith. But even allowing that I am a clever enough chiel to make an onslaught on the shipman’s meal (a man wi’ mair wit, I’m fear’d, would be hungrier than ony o’ us afore he would think o’t), I may hesitate a wee in going first in the ploy. I have a wife an’ twa bairnies. Were there naething to fear but the stroke o’ a cutlass, or the flash o’ a musket, I widna muckle hesitate, maybe; but the law’s a rather bad thing in these quiet times; an’ I daresay ’twould be better to want cravat an’ nightcap a’ thegither than to hae the ane o’ brown hemp an’ the ither o’ white cotton.”
“Hoot, man, ye’re thinking o’ Jock Porteous—we can surely get the meal without hanging onybodie. Hunger breaks through stone walls, an’ our apology will be written on the verra face o’ the affair. Besides, we’re no going to steal the meal; we’re only going to sell it out on behalf o’ the inhabitants, as Mr. Gordon did the meal o’ the parish. An’ as for risk—gang ye first, and here’s my hand I’ll go second:—if I had only your brow, I would willingly go first mysel.”
But why record the whole dialogue? Sandison, though characteristically wary, was, in reality, little averse from the scheme: he entered into it; and, after fully digesting it with the wily shopkeeper, set out to impart it to some of the bolder townsmen. “Now haud ye in readiness,” said he to the man of silk as he quitted his shop; “I shall call ye up at midnight.”
The hour of midnight arrived, and a party of about thirty men, their faces blackened, and their persons enveloped, some in women’s cloaks, some in their own proper vestments turned inside out, marched down the lane which, passing the shopkeeper’s door, led to the beach. They were headed by a tall active-looking man, wrapped up in a seaman’s greatcoat. No one, in the uncertain gloom of midnight, could have identified his sooty features with those of the peaceable mechanic Sandison; but there was light enough to show the but-ends of two pistols stuck in the leathern belt which clasped his middle, and that there hung by his side an enormous basket-hilted broadsword. Stopping short at the domicile of the shopkeeper, he tapped gently against a window;—no one made answer. He tapped again. “Wha’s there?” exclaimed a shrill female voice from within. “Sawney, man, Sawney, wauken up!”—“Oh, Sawney’s frae hame!” rejoined the voice; “there came an express for him ance errand, just i’ the gloamin’, an’ he’s awa to the sheriffdom to see his sick mither.”—“Daidlin’ deceitfu’ body!” exclaimed Sandison; “wha could hae reckoned on this! But it were shame, lads, to turn back now that we hae gane sae far; an’ besides, if ill comes o’ the venture, he canna escape. An’ now, shaw yoursels to be men, an’ keep as free frae fear or anger as if ye were in the parish kirk. Launch down the yawls ane by ane, and dinna let their keels skreigh alang the stanes; an’ be sure an’ put in the spile plugs, that we mayna swamp by the way. Let ilk rower muffle his oar wi’ his neckcloth, just i’ the clamp; an’, for gudesake, skaith nane o’ the crew. Willie, dinna forget the nails an’ the hammer; Bernard, man, bring up the rear.” The cool resolution of the leader seemed imparted to his followers; and, in a few minutes after, they were portioned into three boats, which, with celerity and in silence, glided towards the meal sloop.
The first was piloted by Sandison. It contained nearly two-thirds of the whole party; and when the other two boats prepared to moor close to the vessel, one on each side, and their crews, as they had been instructed, remained at their respective posts, Sandison steered under the stern, and laying hold of the taffrail, leaped aboard. He was followed by about twelve of his companions, and the boat then dropped alongside. Every manœuvre had been planned with the utmost deliberation and care. One of Sandison’s apprentices nailed down the forecastle hatchway, and thus imprisoned the crew; the others opened the hold, unslung the tackling on each side, and immediately commenced lowering the meal-sacks into their boats; while Sandison himself, accompanied by a neighbour, groped his way down the cabin stairs to secure the master. Simpson, a large powerful man, had got out of bed, alarmed by the trampling on deck, and, with no other covering than his shirt, was cautiously climbing the stairs, when, coming in sudden contact with the descending mechanic, he lost footing, and rolled down the steps he had ascended, drawing the other along with him. “Murder, murder, thieves!” he roared out; and a desperate struggle ensued on the floor of the cabin. The place was pitch dark, and when the other Cromarty man rushed into the fray, he received, all unwittingly, from his Herculean leader, who had half wrested himself out of the grasp of Simpson, a blow that sent him reeling against the vessel’s side. Again the combatants closed in an iron grapple, and rolled over the floor. But the mechanic proved the more powerful; he rose over his antagonist, and then flinging himself upon him, the basket-hilt of the broadsword dashed full against his breast. “Oh, oh, oh!” he exclaimed; “mercy, hae mercy—onything but the sweet life;” and coiling himself up like a huge snake, he lay passive under the grasp of the mechanic, who, kneeling by his side, drew a pistol, which he had taken the precaution to load with powder only, and discharged it right above his face; disclosing to him for a moment the blackened features that frowned over him, and a whole group of dingy faces that now thronged the cabin stairs. Meanwhile the work proceeded; the sloop gradually lightened as the boats became heavier, and at length a signal from the deck informed Sandison that the object of the expedition was accomplished. Before liberating Simpson, however, the Cromarty men forced him upon his knees, and extorted an oath from him that he should not again return to the north of Scotland for meal.
THE MEAL MOB.
Before morning, about sixty large sacks, the lading of the three boats, were lodged in a cellar, possessed, says my authority, by Mr. James Rabson, a meal and corn merchant of Cromarty; but James, though fully authorized by all his neighbours to dole out the contents to the inhabitants, and account to Simpson for the money, prudently lodged his key under the door, and set out for the country on some pretext of business. In the meanwhile Simpson applied to the Sheriff of the county, a warrant was granted him, the meal was seized in behalf of the proper owner; and the pacific Mr. Donald Sandison was appointed, on the recommendation of the Sheriff, to stand sentry over it. On the following day, a posse of law-officers from the ancient burgh of Tain, the farmers and farm-servants of Easter-Ross, and Simpson and the sailors, were to come, it was said, to transport his charge from the cellar to the vessel. Sandison, with a half-ludicrous, half-melancholy expression of face, took up his station before the door; and enveloped in his greatcoat, but encumbered with neither pistols nor broadsword, he stalked up and down before it until morning.
About two hours after sunrise, four large boats, crowded with people, were seen approaching the town, and, in a few minutes after, seven-eighths of the whole inhabitants, men, women, and children, armed with stones and bludgeons, were drawn out on the beach to oppose their landing. Such an assemblage! There were the parish schoolboys, active little fellows, that could hit to a hair’s-breadth; and there the town apprentices of all denominations, stripped of their jackets, and with their aprons puffed out before them with well-selected pebbles. There, too, were the women of the place, ranged tier beyond tier, from the water’s edge to the houses behind, and of all ages and aspects, from the girl that had not yet left school, to the crone that had hobbled from her cottage assisted by her crutch. The lanes were occupied by full-grown men, who, armed with bludgeons, reserved themselves for the final charge, and now crouched behind their wives and sisters to avoid being seen from the boats. A few young lads, choice spirits of the place, had climbed up to the ridges of the low cottages, which at that time presented, in this part of the town, a line parallel to the beach. Some of them were armed with pistols, some with satchels full of stones; and farther up the lanes there was a second party of women, who meditated an attack on Rabson’s cellar. Dire was the combination of sound. The boys shouted, the girls shrieked, the apprentices, tapping their fingers against their throats, bleated like sheep in mockery of the farmers, the women yelled out their defiance in one continuous howl, interrupted occasionally by the hoarse exclamations and loud huzzas of the men. The boats advanced by inches. After every few strokes, the rowers would pause over their oars, and wrench themselves half round to reconnoitre the myriads of waving arms and threatening faces which thronged the beach. As they creeped onwards, a few stones flung from slings by some of the boys went whizzing over their heads, “Now pull hard, and at once!” shouted out Simpson; “we have to deal with but women and children, and shall disperse them before they have fired half a broadside.” The rowers bent them to their oars, the boats started shorewards like arrows from the string, there arose a shout from the assembled multitude, which the distant hills echoed back to them in low thunder, and a shower of stones from the boys, the apprentices, the women, the men—from the shore, the lanes, the cottage roofs, the chimney tops, came hailing down upon them thick and ceaseless, rattling, pattering, crashing, like the débris of a mountain rolled over its precipices by an earthquake. The water was beaten into foam as if lashed by a hurricane. Every individual of the four crews disappeared in an instant; the oars swung loose on the gunwales, or slipped overboard. At length, however, the boats, propelled partly by the wind, partly by the force of the missiles, drifted from the shore; and melancholy was the appearance of the people within, when, after the stones began to fall short, they gathered themselves up, and looked cautiously over the sides. There were broken and contused heads among them beyond all reach of reckoning; and one poor man of Easter-Ross, who had been marked out by a young fellow named Junor, the best slinger in town, had carried two good eyes with him into the conflict, and only one out of it. They rowed slowly to the other side, and the victors could see them, until they landed, unfolding neckcloths and handkerchiefs, and binding up heads and limbs.
The attack on the boats had no sooner commenced, than the female party, who had been stationed in the lanes, proceeded to Rabson’s cellar. “We maun hae meal!” said the women to Sandison, who was lounging before the door with his arms folded in his greatcoat, and a little black tobacco-pipe in his mouth. “Puff,” replied the mechanic, shooting a huge burst of smoke into the face of the fairest of the speakers. “We maun hae meal!” reiterated the women. “Puff—weel neebours—puff—I mauna betray trust, ye ken—puff; an’ what else am I stationed here for, but just to keep the meal frae you?—puff, puff.” “But we maun hae’t, an’ we will hae’t, an’ we sall hae’t, whether you will or no!” shrieked out a virago armed with a huge axe, which the mechanic at once recognised as his own, and who dealt, as she spoke, a tremendous blow on the door. “Gudesake, Jess!” said the mechanic, losing in his fear for his favourite tool somewhat of his self-possession; “Gudesake, Jess, keep the edge frae the nails!” Stepping back a few paces, he leisurely knocked out the ashes of his pipe against his thumb-nail; and with the remark, that “strong han’ (force) was a masterfu’ argument; and that one puir working man, who hadna got his night’s rest, was no match for a score o’ idle queans,” he relinquished his post, and took sanctuary in his own dwelling. In less than half an hour after, the whole contents of the cellar had disappeared. There was a hale old woman, a pauper of the place, who did not claim her customary goupens for two whole years thereafter; and a shoemaker named Millar was not seen purchasing an ounce of meal for a much longer time.