Thereupon I flung him his lawing, and we rushed from the house.
CHAPTER V
EAGLESHAM
It was dawning morn, grey and misty, with a thaw setting in on the surface of the snow. Down the narrow, crooked streets, with a wind shivering in our teeth, we went at a breakneck gallop. I lashed my horse for its life, and the poor brute, wearied as it was by the toils of the night, answered gallantly to my call. Sometimes, in a steep place, we slipped for yards; often I was within an ace of death; and at one street-turning with a mighty clatter Nicol came down, though the next minute he was up again. A few sleepy citizens rubbed their eyes and stared from their windows, and in the lighted doorway of a tavern, a sailor looked at us wonderingly.
In less time than it takes to tell, we were at the water-edge. Here there is a rough quay, with something of a harbour behind it, where lie the sugar-boats from the Indies, when the flood-tide is too low to suffer them to go up stream to the city. Here, also, the ferry four times daily crosses the river.
Before us the water lay in leaden gloom, with that strange, dead colour which comes from the falling of much snow. Heavy waves were beginning to roll over the jetty, and a mist was drooping lower and ever lower. Two men stood by an old anchor coiling some rope. We pulled up our horses and I cried out in impatience where the ferry might be.
"Gone ten meenutes syne," said one, with no change on his stolid face. "There she is gin ye hae een i' your heid to see."
And he pointed out to the waste of waters. I looked and saw a sail rising and sinking in the trough of the waves.
"When does she return?" I cried out, with many curses on our laggard journey.
"Whiles in an 'oor, whiles in twae. She'll be twae the day ere she's back, for the ferryman, Jock Gellatly, is a fou' as the Baltic wi' some drink that a young gentleman gave him."