"Allan? Allan?" they faintly said.
And then Kenric raised himself on his elbow.
"The great God be thanked!" gasped Allan, and he fell upon his knees at Kenric's side.
Kenric spoke not again: he was faint and sore of limb. Allan took off his plaid and spread it upon the damp, rocky floor. Then he raised Kenric in his arms, and wrapping him in the plaid carried him to the bottom of the shaft where hung the rope. Making a sling of his plaid and securing it to the rope he called to his men to draw up the line, and in a few minutes Earl Kenric lay in the upper chamber breathing the fresher air.
Not long was Allan Redmain in following, and in the space of another hour they had carried Kenric on board the Kraken of Bute.
For six long days and nights no food had passed his lips, and had it not been that his frame was of uncommon strength he must have died in that noisome cell. For many days afterwards his mind wandered, his eyes stared blankly, his voice failed him, and not until two weeks after his rescue, when he was back again in the castle of Rothesay, did he recognize anyone.
Allan Redmain's two galleys were but a few miles outward from the coast of Coll when they fell in with the four galleys of Bute that Kenric and Duncan had left. They had been pursued about the seas by the ships of Sweyn of Colonsay, but having outdistanced him they were now returning to the island to search for their lost leader. Either alive or dead, he must, they said, be found. Had it not been for Duncan Graham, who alone, of all men, knew where Kenric was imprisoned, all search for him must have been fruitless. On some day long after he might have been discovered, as Allan had found the starved and forgotten prisoner in that dungeon, a grim and unrecognizable skeleton.
[CHAPTER XXI. HOW KENRIC MADE HIMSELF STRONG.]
This expedition against the island kings had been attended with small enough success. Many of the islands had indeed been invaded and some of the smaller ones conquered. Several of the kings, wavering between service of two masters, had quietly yielded to the persuasions of King Alexander's ambassadors. But it must be said that, despite their seeming compliance, they were ready to turn the other way again with equal ease, or even to evade their duties to either monarch and assume the dignity of independent rulers. In a political sense the result of the expedition was a failure, the conquests being incomplete, and the compliance of the less warlike kings being of the very shortest duration.
The misfortunes that had attended Kenric of Bute and Sir Piers de Currie were due almost entirely to the bad work of the wild men of Galloway, whose lust for slaughter and pillage, whose wanton plunderings of churches and slaying of women and children brought down upon the Scots the hatred of the Norsemen in whose lands these depredations had been made.