Among many bodies that were floated by the sea near our outworks, we found, some days after, the remains of poor Angus M'Alpine; which, though mutilated by the fish, and distorted by death, we could easily recognise, by his dress, his harness, and the crape scarf, which as usual was bound to his left arm. We buried him with all the honours of war, placing in the same grave Sergeant M'Gillvray of Drumnaglas, who died of a wound received by a musket-shot on the night of the sortie.
I have since been told, though I cannot vouch for the truth of it, that at the very time poor Angus fell (between the night and morning) the bell of his village kirk emitted a deep and hollow sound.
Captain M'Coll was not killed, being found alive by some German harridans who where stripping the dead; he was saved from their knives by the famous Colonel Gordon of Tzerchkzi's regiment, by whom he was made prisoner and sent to Wallenstein. The latter committed him to the castle of Dillingen on the Danube (where the Scottish Colonel Ramsay was starved to death), and there he remained in captivity for eight long years. Being released by Count Leslie, he returned home to find that his good lady, after waiting seven years and a day, had become weary or despaired in his absence; and after having him summoned by name, with all possible legal formality, by sound of a horn, at the nearest market-cross, and thrice over at the pier-end of Leith, had taken unto herself another spouse, who met poor M'Coll at the door of his own dwelling, and threatened to hang him as an impostor upon his own dule-tree.
Disgusted by such a reception, and shrinking from the shame of having to sue for his own wife before the Lords of Session, he returned again to Germany, and fell, as major of Sir John Hepburn's regiment, at the great battle of Nordlingen.
Book the Thirteenth
CHAPTER XLI.
THE WHITE FLAG.
The provisions, procured at so much danger and with such loss, were a seasonable, but scanty relief; for nineteen waggon-loads of flour and butter went but a short way among the starving population of Stralsund; and I remember that the strong taste of the Griefswalde garlic made most of our men ill. The fields around that notable Hans Town abound with this plant, which usually flowers about Whitsuntide; thus all the flesh of their cattle, with the milk and butter, taste of it—at least we thought so.
Provoked by the alarm and loss he had suffered, and by the temporary supply of a day's food procured for Stralsund, Wallenstein ordered the trenches to be pushed on with greater vigour, and urged the blockade by sea, taking advantage of the absence of King Christian, who was then lingering about Wolgast (the capital of a duke of the house of Pomerania), in the hope of being joined by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, and Major-general Slammersdorf, who were endeavouring to rouse the timid boors of the Danish isles; but it always happened unfortunately, that when the eloquence, ardour, or gold of the gallant duke mustered a few recruits, the terrible aspect of the old grumbler Slammersdorf, minus a leg, an arm, an eye, and all over cuts and patches, invariably scared and scattered them to their farms and fastnesses in the woods.
The cannonading continued daily without cessation; but so admirable were the means of defence, and so excellent were the precautions taken by Marshal Leslie, that the loss of life in Stralsund was trifling when compared to the slaughter, made by our cannon and musketry, among the Imperial pioneers and trench-guards; but still starvation stared us gauntly in the face; and some of the poorer class of citizens, after devouring dogs and cats, and every animal, even to their household storks, perished of sheer destitution.