“As I stood watching upon the hill, I looked towards Birnam, and anon, methought, the wood began to move.”
“Liar and slave!” cried Macbeth, livid with fury, and striking the man to the ground.
“Let me endure your wrath if it be not so,” persisted the messenger. “Within these three miles you may see it coming; I say, a moving grove.”
“If thou speak false, upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive till famine cling thee,” said Macbeth. “If thy speech be true, I care not if thou dost as much for me.”
His resolution faltered, and he began to doubt the falseness of the fiends that lied like truth. “Fear not till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,” they had said. And now a wood was coming to Dunsinane!
“Arm, arm, and out!” thundered Macbeth.—“If this which he avouches be true, there is no flying hence nor tarrying here,” he thought, sick at heart. “I begin to be aweary of the sun, and wish the estate of the world were now undone.” Then, with a sudden return of fury, “Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back!”
The strange occurrence reported by the messenger was indeed true, but the explanation was simple. When the English and Scotch troops met near Birnam Wood, in order the better to conceal the soldiers as they marched to Dunsinane, Malcolm commanded that every man should hew down a leafy bough, and bear it before him, thereby making it impossible that the number of their host could be discovered. From a distance this mass of waving green boughs looked exactly as if Birnam Wood were advancing on Dunsinane.
The first of the witches’ safeguards had failed Macbeth, but he fell back with desperate reliance on the other. Besides, in any case, it was now too late to retreat; he must fight the matter out to the end, and either conquer or be lost for ever.
“They have tied me to a stake,” he cried. “I cannot fly, but, bear-like, I must fight the course. What’s he that was not born of woman? Such a one am I to fear, or none.”
In his furious fighting on the battle-field he presently encountered one of the English leaders, whom he promptly slew. Macbeth laughed in triumph, for he felt himself secure; he feared no weapon brandished by any man born of woman.