Here Captain Torquil M'Coll of that Ilk lost his brother, who was sergeant of his pikes. Falling overboard into the muddy river, despite all our efforts to save him, the poor man sank under the weight of his headpiece, back, breast and bracelets, and was drowned, or rather suffocated. In my haste to succour this unfortunate, when floundering among that hideous mud, I nearly fell in after him, but was saved by Ian grasping my plaid.
"Dioul!" said he, "the tide is out—are you mad? the water is thick as piper's brose—the man is lost—would you too lose your life?"
It was fortunate my strong kinsman seized me, otherwise I might have perished with M'Coll. The sergeant was a brave man, and had fought for his majesty James VI. at the battle of Belrinnes, twenty-eight years before.
That maxim of the great Count Tilly, "a ragged soldier with a bright musket," applied not to us, for our harness was polished as bright as when the armourer had sent it from his shop; and I was astonished by the finery displayed among our poorest private soldiers. The mouths of their sporrans, the brooches of their plaids, and the hilts of their dirks, were either ornamented with silver, or such precious stones as their own mountains afforded—the topaz, the amethyst, the cairngorm, and the river pearl; for it was their ambition that, if they were slain, or should die far from their home, there should be wherewithal on their persons to pay for a respectable funeral.
My brave comrades! too many of them were doomed to find no other grave than the maws of the gorged and hideous crows that hovered over the battle-fields of Low Germanie, when the boom of the culverin summoned them from the four winds of heaven to their terrible feast.
We were formed in line, three ranks deep, on the quay, and there were exactly one thousand five hundred and forty men in their helmets; the colours, with the pipes and drums, were in the centre; the pikemen flanked the musketeers. Well mounted, and clad in a magnificent suit of Italian plate, which was covered with so many rare and gold devices that it was usually believed to be enchanted, Sir Donald, with his claymore drawn, gave the words of command rapidly, as became a cavalier of spirit.
"Gentlemen, height your musketeers—dress your ranks, pike-men! To the right—turn; quick march."
The colours bent forward rustling in the wind, five hundred pikes and a thousand muskets were sloped in the sunshine, and with our drums beating that brave Scottish march, which has led so often to death but never to defeat, we entered Glückstadt, being duly saluted at the gates with all the honours of war, by the Laird of Craigie's regiment of Danes, who formed line, with pikes advanced and drums beating.
This city of Glückstadt had been so strongly fortified by King Christian IV., in 1620, that it held out against the besieging forces of the Emperor Ferdinand II. for two years, and defied the whole power of the imperialists to take it by sea; and, being then all unused to regularly fortified towns, to me it seemed the strongest place in the world. Its locality was originally a mere swamp, and there is still a possibility of laying the whole outworks under water. We crossed several of the canals by which it is intersected, as we marched through the narrow streets into the quaint and old-fashioned market-place, where we halted before the great church, which stands at one corner thereof, and wherein the German colonists and the old Catholics were both allowed a chapel for their own worship—a toleration and good-fellowship which somewhat surprised our Scottish cavaliers, who believed it could exist nowhere but in the Highlands; for there the real and traditionary ties of clanship were dearer and stronger than those of religion, the powers of the patriarchal chief being superior alike to those of priest and presbyter.
In the market-place we received our billets from the burgomaster; and by good fortune, as it afterwards proved, my cousin the captain, M'Alpine our lieutenant, and myself, were quartered in one house—a tall building, situated immediately over against the great church.