The horses were soon saddled and their riders mounted. Though the wind had lulled, the rain poured down as furiously as ever. The time was now past nine in the evening; but the gloomy aspect of the sky made the drenched landscape and the sea look very dark, for the sun had set enveloped in dense banks of opaque and murky cloud, behind the Ochil peaks, Dumiat, and the hills of Alloa.
The riders soon passed the hamlet named the Fisher Row, and reached the ancient bridge of the Roman Municipium, the arches of which still span "the mountain Esk," the opposite bank of which was covered with copsewood, where the dark and heavy oak mingled its thick crisped foliage with the lighter spray of the pale-green sauch and the feathery ash-tree. This venerable bridge consists of three quaint high and narrow arches, "over which," says one of our modern writers, "all of noble or kingly birth that approached Edinburgh for at least a thousand years must have passed; which has witnessed the processions of monks, the march of armies, and the trains of kings; which has rattled beneath the feet of Mary's ambling steed, and thundered beneath the war-horse of Cromwell."
Swollen by the summer flood, the Esk was found by our troopers to be rolling in one vast sheet of foam under the three arches, each of which are fifty feet in width; and in froth and spray its red current lashed furiously against their strong abutments, sweeping the mingled spoil of field and fell, uprooted trees, straw, hay, and grass, farm implements, rafters, and garden-pales, with the rolling carcasses of sheep and cattle, into the harbour, which was then so deep as to admit the largest merchantmen of Norway, of Pomerania, and of Holland; and many of these vessels, built in that quaint style which the Dutch have yet retained unchanged, were riding with all their anchors out, to stem the furious speat.
The narrow pathway of the bridge was then barred or spanned by a transverse arch and an iron gate, traces of which are yet remaining in the parapets. The warder dwelt in a small house on the other side, and as the barrier was closed, the night darkening fast, and the rain still pouring down, the two lords and their drenched mosstroopers halloed loudly and impatiently for passage through; but the keeper of the gate paid not the slightest attention to their loud and angry summons.
"Hark," said Lord Hailes; "what hour is that now striking?"
The mournful notes of an old bell were now heard, but faintly and far between, upon the gusts of wind.
"Ten by Musselburgh clock," said Borthwick; "ten, and we still loiter here!"
Above the trees they could discern, against the murky sky, quaint steeple of the Town House, in which there yet remains a bell-clock of the fifteenth century, which was presented to the burgh by their High Mightinesses, the States of Holland.
The dusk was now so deep that the foliaged bank opposite seemed all black and solid; and the white and foaming river boiled and thundered past so rapidly and fiercely, that the boldest trooper among our adventurers shrunk from attempting to swim his horse across it; for if they essayed it above the bridge, they ran the chance of being brained against the arches, on which the stream had risen; and if below it, of being powerlessly swept with the débris of its banks among the boats and shipping. Red and fiery, the stars were seen to peep at times between the flying scud, while the dark trees tossed their foliage on the gusty wind, like the black plumes of our modern Scottish infantry.
At times a mournful cry rose amid the gloom that enveloped the rolling river, and the grim horsemen reined back their reeking steeds, and looked darkly and inquiringly in each other's faces.