"Sir," said the priest proudly, "the order of Jesus are the best soldiers of the church of Rome!"
"Likely enough," retorted Gideon; "for it's a kirk that's been unco fond of war of late."
Then arming himself with the famous folio Bible of Andro Hart of Edinburgh, and Calvin's Commentaries, he returned to the charge against Lent and images, and assailed poor Father Ignatius with such vigour and vituperation, and with such a noisy storm of hard Hebrew names, that he had great difficulty in keeping his ground; for our preacher was one of those clever fellows who take care to keep all the argument to themselves. At this crisis, when the battle was at the fiercest, a file of the quarter-guard were sent by Major Fritz, who separated the angry disputants, and conveyed the Jesuit to his own billet, at the house of the widow.
CHAPTER XLIV.
THE BLACK LAKE OF STUBBENKAMER.
Without asking permission (for I knew that at such a time it would not be acceded to me), I selected Phadrig Mhor, and six of our musketeers who were western islemen, and consequently accustomed to boating; and having procured a long, light, and sharp boat (one of the many that lay moored and now unclaimed beside the deserted mole), we pulled softly out into the Sound, and, favoured by the obscurity of the night, passed undiscovered between the gallies and gun-barges of Wallenstein.
My men were all M'Donalds, and were stout and active as mountain deer; they were all armed with sword and pistol, dirk and musket, and had left their plaids and all their heavier trappings behind them.
We pulled straight across, towards the rocky isle of Rügen, which is indented by innumerable bays and inlets, so that we had no fear of finding a place wherein to conceal our boat. This island, which is one of the largest in the Baltic, and was famous of old for the bravery and valour of its inhabitants, the Rugii, who worshipped the barbarous idol Hertha, rose in dusky and broken outline ahead, as the twinkling lights of Stralsund sank in the midnight mist astern.
My sturdy Celts soon shot their light boat across the narrow Sound; we ran it into a small creek, which lay a few hundred yards to the left of the landing-place near Oldevehr, and there concealed it among the thick underwood that overhung the rocks.
Ascending the narrow and now untrodden pathway that led directly to Bergen, the little capital which lies nearly in the centre of the isle, we struck off immediately, by a road which Father Ignatius had described to me, as leading to the lurking-place of Bandolo, and which, though a small and obscure track, my followers, to whom I imparted my purpose and all the bearings of the place, found with the instinct of true Highland foresters.