Still nothing was seen, though five hundred men and more were crouching within musket range—crouching amid the long green braken, the thick purple heather, and the wild bloom which grew so luxuriantly that the crows and magpies built their nests in it; but the tartans of the Highlanders blended with the colours of Nature so admirably that they were still unseen, when at last the whole detachment, officers and men, were between the muzzles of the musketeers who lay in ambush on both sides of that narrow and gloomy gorge, and already the sergeant and his three advanced files were clambering over the boulders and stones that lay beyond the ambush.
Before MacGregor's horn could give the signal, his son Ronald, unable longer to restrain his anger and enthusiasm, fired his pistol, and the ball struck Clifford's holsters.
Then red fire flashed fiercely from both sides of the dusky hollow, as a hundred and sixty muskets poured their adverse volleys on the unfortunate soldiers, who in a moment were panic-stricken, thrown into confusion—a huddled mass—above their dead and dying.
Springing from amid the grey rocks, the MacGregors, with a simultaneous shout, flung down their plaids and muskets, drew their claymores, and amid the white curling smoke, rushed downward to the charge.
"Steady, men, steady!" cried Captain Clifford, loudly and rapidly. "Grenadiers to the centre! Keep shoulder to shoulder, and face outwards—close up in your ranks, and bayonet them as they come on! Be firm, my Royal Fusiliers!"
"Firm, in the king's name, and we shall yet bear back these Highland savages!" added Captain Dorrington, a brave officer who had served in the war of the Spanish succession.
Leaping over bank, bush, and rock, with heads stooped behind their targets in the usual Celtic fashion, their bodies bent, and sword and dirk in hand, down came the MacGregors, in front and on both flanks, like a herd of wild cats, all yelling, "Ard choille! ard choille! Dhia agus ar duthaich!"
A confused volley was fired by the soldiers; but almost before the bayonets could be brought from the "present" to the "charge," the swordsmen were among them. Stooping below the charged bayonets, they tossed them upward by the target, dirking the front rank men with the left hand, while stabbing or hewing down the rear rank men with the right; thus, as usual in all Highland onsets, the whole body of soldiers was broken, trod underfoot, and dispersed in a moment!
These were the whole tactics of the Scottish Highlanders. Hence their clan battles, no matter how many swordsmen might be engaged, seldom lasted more than five minutes. It was usually an instantaneous charge—a rout—a killing, and all was over!
Captain Dorrington rushed sword in hand upon Greumoch, who, by a single blow with his Lochaber axe, clove him literally through hat and wig to the teeth; then, by the hook of the same weapon, he dragged Captain Clifford from his saddle, and would have slain him had not Rob Roy strode across the fallen officer, and by receiving the blow on his own target, saved him.