"Cousin Philip," said Ian, "a wretch so vile deserves not to die by the hand of a gentleman. And yet, good sooth! it is not meet that the blood of the humblest of our companions, should dye this foreign earth unavenged."
"There spoke the true Celt!" said the baron, laughing; "but I fear me, Major M'Farquhar, you shall have many to avenge before we see King Christian's camp again; for cut off, as we are here in Poel, by the thousands of the enemy, if the king's ships do not afford us timely relief in flight, we shall have but two alternatives—to die by our cannon, or die of starvation."
To prevent all possibility of the latter catastrophe we laid the whole country under contribution, as far as Grevismühlen in Mecklenburg; still, as the Imperial troops were pouring into Holstein, and a strong body of them under the Scottish colonel, Graham, had seized the free town of Wismar in our immediate vicinity, the chances of our ever rejoining the main army under the king, or reaching him through the duchies of Sleswig and Holstein became extremely slender.
After remaining at Poel more than a month, working constantly to strengthen the isle, and only laying aside the shovel and pickaxe to take up the sword and musket, disproving the assertion of Gustavus-Adolphus, "that, with all their bravery in the field, the Scots were too proud to work as pioneers," eight ships of Leith,* in the Danish service, came from Copenhagen to transport us to a point of Holstein where we were to land, and, at all risks, cut a passage to the king, whose circumstances were now more desperate than ever.
* Gustavus had at this time seventeen Scottish ships of war in his service.—See Hepburn's Memoirs.
These orders were a source of sincere satisfaction to my comrades, but I must own to feeling a singular indifference on the matter; for it seemed that, by this removal towards Denmark, I was conveyed further from that pretty chateau in Luneburg, and from Ernestine, to whom I owed so much; and whose memory came ever and anon to me, with mingled sensations of gratitude, pleasure and jealousy, for I knew not how high the Count of Kœningheim might stand in her favour; at all events, he was her father's choice, and handsome enough to be a dangerous rival to me. Returning from the daily turmoil of the trenches to indulge in reverie, I frequently asked myself, "What am I to Ernestine, or what is Ernestine to me, that I should think so much about her? nothing—of course." But her image was ever before me, and I pondered frequently on the distance that lay between us from Poel to the shore, and from thence to Luneburg—a bird's flight of seventy miles—and the chances of our ever—or rather never meeting more, were all considered again and again. I knew that I could never see her more but at the price of my liberty, and perhaps my life. This probably enhanced her value, for we are strange and perverse mortals; ever prizing that which is beyond our reach. It seemed odd to me, that I should think so much of this dark-haired girl—that the interests of my heart should wander so far beyond the Imperial outposts; and that there should now be a being who excited imaginary fears and pleasures in my breast—a being of whose existence I was perfectly ignorant three months ago. Let me fling these fancies from me, thought I; they are absurd!
Leaving Major-general Slammersdorf to defend the Isle of Poel with two thousand men, Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, embarked with eight thousand horse and foot, including our regiment of Strathnaver, and sailed for Heilinghafen, a town in the province of Wagria (an appendage of Holstein), which forms a peninsula in the Baltic; and there without loss or accident, on a beautiful day of September, that gallant prince landed his whole force, with their horses, arms, and cannon.
Notwithstanding the vast number of Tilly's forces, we had few doubts of our ability to force a passage through them, when led by the immortal Duke of Saxe-Weimar, the bravest of eleven brave brothers, all of whom had bled for German liberty. His valour at the great siege of Brissac, before the gates of which he was victorious in four pitched battles, where he captured four generals, and where he had no less than six horses killed under him, together with his long and desperate combat with Colonel John de Wert, have embalmed his memory in the annals of German chivalry; even as his generosity, which bequeathed his whole fortune to the wounded officers and soldiers who followed his banner, was long the theme of the veterans of Christian and Gustavus. Duke Bernard was all that a soldier should be—handsome, gallant, frank, and lavish of his means; for no soldier of any nation ever lacked money while the conqueror of Savelli, and the preceptor of Turenne, had a guilder to spare or a jewel to sell.
We cavaliers of fortune adored him, and it was with the utmost exultation that, on a beautiful evening of September, as I have said, when the last rays of the sun were shining on the broad blue Baltic, on the flat green isle of Fehmarn and the narrow Sound, that we put off in boats, pulled by the blue-bonneted mariners of our eight native ships, and with three hearty cheers drew up under our colours in the streets of Heilinghafen.
War and rapine have changed the town since those days; but I remember that its houses were old and irregular—that their upper stories projected far over the lower, and had steep gables, with galleried fronts that rested on gaudily painted wooden columns. Inscriptions in Latin or German were carved upon the door-lintels to keep away evil spirits, as in our Scottish towns at home; and the drowsy storks, with drooping wings, nestled under the lee of the chimneys. We saw these birds every where perched upon trees, steeples, and house-tops; for they are considered sacred and useful, as they kill the little snakes and adders that are bred among the slime and corruption of the marshes.