The details of this affair are as follows:—
On the night after the battle, Rob, on learning that Duncan nan Creagh and other MacRaes were wandering over the field, dirking and plundering the wounded, went there to drive them off, and to save as many as possible of the poor fellows.
The early June morning dawned brightly in the dewy glen, which was dotted thickly with red and yellow coats, among whom lay nearly thirty Spaniards; and Rob saw with regret the body of Captain Dawnes; it presented a deplorable spectacle, for both his eyes were shot out, and his face was a mass of blood.
Near him was a Spanish officer, seated half upright against a large stone; his dark-olive face was pale, ghastly, and sorrowful. As Rob approached, he raised his head, and opened his black and now lack-lustre eyes with a vacant stare, as if the poor fellow sought to assure himself that blindness and death had not yet come upon him. His uniform was blue, richly laced with silver, and on his left breast was the gold and eight-pointed cross of Malta. He had received two bullet wounds in the body, and appeared to be sinking fast.
As Rob Roy, like most of the loyal Highlanders, was perhaps more a Catholic than a Protestant, the cross upon the breast of the dying Spaniard excited his interest, and stooping down, he asked in English if he could assist him.
"Aqua—aqua!" (water—water!) muttered the sufferer, hoarsely, and then added in good English, "Water, for the love of Heaven!"
"Run to the linn, Greumoch, and fill your quaich," said Rob, raising the sufferer against his knee; "our forefathers lie under the shadow of the old cross on Inchcailloch, and they died believing in it as the sign of redemption unto men, so it would ill become us to neglect the stranger, who, with the cross on his breast, dies here for King James VIII. Quick, Greumoch, dash in some whisky too—it comes not amiss to the Saxons, and won't to the Spaniards!"
As soon as it was brought, he applied the quaich of cool spring water and usquebaugh to the parched lips of the wounded officer, whose tongue seemed to have become baked and hard by loss of blood and a night of agony.
Rob now proposed to have his wounds looked to and the blood stanched; but there were no surgeons near, and the Spaniard shook his head sadly, as if to indicate that their efforts were useless, and his eyes dilated wildly when Greumoch approached him with a bunch of wild nettles, the old Highland panacea for all manner of cuts, stabs, and slashes.
Then the Spanish cavalier smiled sadly, for he knew that he was mortally wounded, and felt death in his heart.