“Hech, sirs! it’s but a puir, ill-faur’d, outlandish sort o’ country. I wad fain hope the hieland hills of our location inland are mair pleasant-lookin’ than this.”
“Keep up your spirits, Sandy Black,” observed a sturdy Highlander who stood at his side; “those who know the country best say that our location is a splendid one—equal to Scotland itself, if not superior.”
“It may be so, Mr McTavish,” replied Sandy, in a doubtful tone of voice, “it may be so.”
“Hallo!” suddenly and loudly exclaimed a dapper little man, whose voice betokened him English.
“What is’t, Jerry?” demanded Sandy Black, turning his eyes seaward, in which direction Jerry was gazing.
The question needed no reply, for Sandy, and indeed all the various people in the barge who stood high enough on its sides or lading to be able to look over the gunwale, observed a mighty wave coming up behind them like a green wall.
“Haul hard!” roared the seamen in charge.
“Ay, ay,” shouted the soldiers on shore.
As they spoke the billow lifted the boat as if it had been a cork, fell under it with a deafening roar and bore it shoreward in a tumult of seething foam. Next moment the wave let it down with a crash and retired, leaving it still, however, in two or three feet of water.
“Eh, man, but that was a dunt!” exclaimed Sandy, tightening his hold on the gunwale, while several of his less cautious or less powerful neighbours were sent sprawling into the bottom of the boat among terrified women and children.