Sweeping down glen and corrie, the night wind came in squally gusts to furrow up the waters of the Loch. About the bare summits of the mighty mountains which overlooked it, the red sheet-lightning gleamed at times, giving a weird aspect to the black and silent scenery, as rock, hill, and tree came forth for a moment in dark outlines upon the lurid background, and then vanished into obscurity.
No sound broke the solemn stillness save those gusts of wind, or the rushing cascade of the mountain burn that brawled from Inversnaid over rocks and stones towards the loch, while the MacGregors arriving in parties of ten, twenty—even forty—from the banks of Loch Arclet, from Glengyle, Glenstrae, and the braes of Balquhidder, mustered at the appointed place, every man armed with sword and dirk, target and pistol.
In addition to these (the invariable weapons of the Highlander) many had long muskets with bayonets, taken from the troops, and the terrible tuagh, or pole-axe, and each wore a sprig of pine in his bonnet.
A wild and warlike yet resolute band, they were anxious for the conflict, as they had the traditionary and actual wrongs of their race to avenge—the violation of their clan territory; and, moreover, many of them had suffered by the spoliation or appropriation of their cattle and sheep, which had been taken or shot by the king's garrison; for, as stated elsewhere, cattle were then the whole wealth of our mountaineers. Forty head were a woman's dowry; the rents were paid, daughters were portioned, and sons provided for in life by herds and flocks.
With MacAleister, Greumoch, Alaster Roy, Rob found his eldest son Coll already there. There, too, came even old Paul Crubach, armed with the hiltless sword on which he had impaled the unfortunate cat; and on reckoning his force, Rob found that it consisted of five hundred and two claymores, all men resolute and true as the steel of which their weapons were made.
The milky light of the stars glimmered at times through the flying clouds, on their swords and round shields studded with polished nails and bosses of brass and steel, as they sat or stood in picturesque groups, muttering and whispering, and chewing the muilcionn, as the Highlanders name the spignel, which they were wont to chew like liquorice or quids of tobacco, in winter and spring.
Measures for the attack were soon resolved on by a force alike destitute of cannon, petards, or scaling-ladders. They were simply these: To advance to the gate in the ancient and classic form of a wedge, led by Rob Roy; and if Oina had failed to remove or overcome the sentinel, to trust to the sledge-hammer first and the sword-blade after.
Those nearest in blood, highest in rank in the clan, and the best armed, were to keep close by Rob in the conflict; so Coll, MacAleister, and Greumoch were immediately in his rear, as the march was begun in silence up the side of the stream, towards the point of attack.
The cuarans, or shoes of untanned deerskin, then worn by-the Highlanders, strapped sandalwise over the instep and ankles, enabled this mass of men to advance over the rocky and rough ground as silently and noiselessly as if they trod on the soft heather, or on "the down of Cana," the cotton grass of which Ossian sang, and which whitens the Highland mosses in spring, when the sheep crop it, before it bursts into flower.
After a march of something less than a mile, before them, on an eminence, rose the strong walls and black outline of the fort and barrack they were about to assail.