[CHAPTER XLII]
THE FIERY CROSS
Wat and Scarlett found themselves landed in a country which to all intents was one both savage and hostile. It was not indeed Barra's country, but the danger was scarcely less on that account. They were strangers and Sassenach. Wat carried gold in his belt, more than many a Highland chief had ever seen at one time in his life—gold which at Perth or Inverness could be exchanged for a prince's wealth of swords and daggers, pistols and fighting-gear.
It was in a little land-locked bay that they were disembarked. Great slaty purple mountains stretched away to the north; a range of lower hills, cut down to the roots by the narrow cleft of a pass, warded the bay to the east; while to the south the comrades looked out on a wilderness of isles and islets, reefs and spouting skerries, which foamed and whitened as the black iron teeth of the rock showed themselves, and the slow swell of the Atlantic came lumbering and arching in.
Wat and Scarlett sat down on the shore, which stretched away lonely and barren for miles on either side of them. They watched the boat return to the ship, as she lay with her sails backed, and shivering in the wind, waiting only for the crew to come on board before sailing for the south.
A slight figure could be seen immediately above the bulwark on the land side. Wat rose to his feet and waved his hand. The white speck signalled a reply, and Kate McGhie, the maid of his love, carried the heart of gold away with her to the lands of the south, and the spaces of the sea widened every moment between the truest lovers the world held.
Scarlett and Wat sat a long time watching the ship dwindling into a mere tower of whiteness in the distance, the seas closing bluer and bluer about her, and the whole universe growing lonely behind her, wanting the Beloved.
At last Scarlett spoke.
"Lad, have ye had enough of adventures," he said, more sadly than was his wont, "or are ye as keen after them as ever? It seems that we have now put ourselves in every man's ill graces, so far as I can see. Whether James or William bear the gree to us signifies not a jot; for if James, then the first king's man that comes across us holds you for the old outlawry in the matter of wounding my Lord Wellwood, and me for taking your side when I brought you the king's letter to Brederode; and if William wear the crown, lo, for prison-breaking and manslaughter—aye, and for desertion of his army, both you and poor silly John Scarlett are alien and outlaw in all the realms of the Dutchman. I tell you we are doomed at either end of the stick, Wat, my man."
"And faith, I care not much," quoth Wat, watching with wistful eyes the Sea Unicorn vanishing with the one thing that was dear to him on earth.