Lochinvar: A Novel

by S. R. Crockett

Wat Gordon of Lochinvar was not drowned—it is hardly necessary to say so much. For had his body been lying in some eddy of the swirling waters about the outer reef of the Aoinaig narrows, this narrative of his history could not have been written. And of his life with its chequered good and bad, its fine instincts, clear intents, and halting performances, there would have been left no more than a little swarded mound in the bone-yard of dead and forgotten mariners.

When their boat overset among the whirlpools and treacherous water volcanoes of the Suck of Suliscanna, Wat Gordon had been sculling at the stern. And when the water swallowed him, pulling him down as though he had been jerked through a trap-door by the arm of some invisible giant—or, more exactly, drawn slowly under by the tentacle of the dread Kraken of these Northern seas—he kept a tight grip on the oar with which he had been alternately steering and propelling the boat, as Jack Scarlett cried him his orders from the bows.

Wat Gordon had been born in the old tower of Lochinvar, in the midst of that strange, weird, far-withdrawn moorland loch, set amid its scanty pasture-meadows of sour bent-grass and its leagues of ambient heather. As a boy he had more often gone ashore by diving from his window or paddling out from the little stone terrace than by the more legitimate method of unhooking the boat from its iron lintel and pulling himself across to the main-land. But this was a different kind of swimming, for here in the tumble and tumultuous swirl of angry waters Wat was no more than a plaything tossed about, to be tantalized with the blue sky and the summer sea, and then again to be pulled under and smothered in the seething hiss of the Suck of Suliscanna.

Nevertheless, Wat found space to breathe occasionally, and as he was driven swiftly towards the north along the face of the great Lianacraig precipices and close under them he clutched his oar tighter, holding it under his arm and leaning his chest upon it. So close to the land was he that he voyaged quite unseen by the watchers on the cliffs above, who supposed that he had gone down with the boat. But the current had seized him in its mid-strength, and after first sweeping him close inshore it was now hurrying him northward and westward of the isle, under the vast face of the mural precipice in which the cliffs of Lianacraig culminated. The boat had cleared itself of its mast and sail, and Wat could see that she floated, upturned indeed, but still becking and bowing safely on the humps and swirls of the fierce tidal current which swept both master and vessel along, equally derelict and at its mercy.

The whole northern aspect of the Isle of Suliscanna is stern and forbidding. Here the cliffs of Lianacraig break suddenly down to the sea in one great face of rock many hundreds of feet in height. So precipitous are they that only the cragsmen or the gatherer of seabirds' eggs can scale their crests of serrated rock even from the south, or look down upon the little island of Fiara, the tall southern cliffs of which correspond humbly to the mightier uprising of the precipices of Lianacraig upon the larger isle. But Fiara has for ages been set in the whirl of the backwater which speeds past its greater neighbor on either side, and has taken advantage of its position to thrive upon the waste of its rival. For the tide-race of the Suck, which sets past Suliscanna with such consuming fury, sweeps its prey, snatched in anger from the cliffs and beaches of Suliscanna, and spreads it in mud and sand along the lower northern rocks of Fiara. So that this latter island, instead of frowning out grimly towards the Pole, extends green and pastoral on the other side of the deep strait and behind its frowning southward front of rocks.

At this time Fiara was wholly without inhabitant, and remained as it had come from the shaping hand of the tides and waves. And so mainly it abides to this day. The islanders of Suliscanna had indeed a few sheep and goats upon it, the increase of which they used to harvest when my Lord of Barra's factor came once a year in his boat to take his tithes of the scanty produce of their barren fortress isle.

It was, then, upon the northern shore of this islet of Fiara that Wat, exhausted with the stress and the rough, deadly horseplay of the waves, was cast ashore still grasping his oar. He landed upon a long spit of sand which stretched out at an obtuse angle into the scour of the race, forming a bar which was perpetually being added to by the tide and swept away again when the winds and the waters fought over it their duels to the death in the time of storm.

Thus Wat Gordon found himself destitute and without helper upon this barren isle of Fiara. His companion he had seen sink beneath the waves, and he well knew that it was far out of the power of the soldier Scarlett to reach the shore by swimming. Also he had seen him entangled in the cordage of the sail. So Wat heaved a sigh for the good comrade whom he had brought away from the solvent paymasters and the excellently complaisant landladies of Amersfort, to lay his bones for his sake upon the inhospitable shores of Suliscanna—and, what was worse, without advantage to the quest upon which they had ventured forth with so much recklessness.

Wat knew certainly that his love was upon that island of Suliscanna. For months he had carefully traced her northward. With the aid of Madcap Mehitabel he had been able to identify the spot at which the chief's boat had taken off Captain Smith's passenger, and a long series of trials and failures had at last designated Suliscanna as the only possible prison of his love.

So soon as he was certain of this he had come straight to the spot with the reckless confidence of youth, only to see his hopes shattered upon the natural defences of the isle, before ever he had a chance to encounter the other enemies whom, he doubted not, Barra had set to guard the prison of Kate of the Dark Lashes.