All rushed to the windows or to the roof, and lo! with their broadsides to the shore, there lay two of the frigates, the Mermaid, under Commander Samuel Goodiere, and the Dover, under Nicolas Robertson, with their foreyards backed, and opened ports, from which the red flashes of the ordnance broke incessantly, as they commenced a vigorous cannonade on Eilan Donan, which they had special orders to destroy, as a stronghold of the house of Seaforth.
"This is no place for us now, lads," said Rob, "so, ho for the march home. We have many a step between this and Balquhidder, so the sooner we depart the better."
Dislodged thus unexpectedly from Eilan Donan, to reach the mainland Rob and his hardy followers forded that portion of the isthmus which lay under water when the tide was at half ebb, and just as the clear summer twilight was brightening into day, they retired among the mountains that look down on the Sheil.
For some hours they could hear the din of the cannonade against Eilan Donan, which was so completely battered and destroyed, that little or nothing remains of it now, save its foundations, and a well in which, a few years ago, a quantity of plate and firearms was discovered. Several of the cannon-balls fired on this occasion have been found from time to time by the country people, who used them as weights for the sale of butter and cheese.
Not content with the demolition of the castle, the commanders of the frigates landed their crews, and with great wantonness burned the old church of Killduich to the ground, and pillaged the poor peasantry.
This severity was not unrequited by fate; for we learn from Shomberg's "Naval Chronology," that Captain Nicolas Robertson was soon after tried by a court-martial for keeping false musters and defrauding the Government, in whose cause he was so zealous when in the Highland lochs; and on the 4th April, 1740, Samuel Goodiere, then a captain, was hanged for the murder of his own brother on board H.M.S. Ruby in the Bristol Channel.
CHAPTER XLVII.
THE HARPER'S RANSOM.
Towards the evening of the next day the MacGregors, on their homeward march, found themselves in the country of the Camerons, at the head of Loch Arkeig, a long and narrow sheet of water, lying between rugged mountains, and stretching far away towards Glen Mhor n'Albyn, or the great valley of Caledonia, which runs diagonally across the kingdom from the German Sea to the Atlantic. They bivouacked at the head of the loch, lighted a fire, and having no enemies in the neighbourhood, prepared to pass the night pleasantly, wrapped in their plaids, on the soft blooming heather; but first Rob Roy placed two sentinels on the drove road that led to and from their halting-place, that perfect security might not be neglected.
The summer night was clear and warm, and every star shone brightly amid the blue ether; all was stillness and deep silence, save where a mountain stream, a tributary of Loch Arkeig, swept down, now over falls and stony rapids, or among bold impending rocks spotted with lichens and tufted with broom, and now among pale hazel groves and black clumps of red-stemmed pine.