Legendary Tales of the Highlands (Volume 3 of 3) / A sequel to Highland Rambles

by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

On hearing this command, the trooper uttered a half-smothered curse, and unwillingly turned to ride after his comrades, throwing back bitter execrations on John Smith as he went. John’s tongue was otherwise employed. He used it for the better purpose of returning thanks to that Almighty Providence who had thus so wonderfully protected him.

After this pious mental exercise, John thought that he felt himself somewhat better. He made a feeble effort to rise, but it was altogether abortive. The blood still continued to flow from his head—he began to feel very faint, and a raging thirst attacked him. Turning himself round in the peat-hag, he contrived to lap up a considerable quantity of the moss water, which, however muddy and distasteful it might be, refreshed him so much as to give him strength sufficient to raise himself up a little, so as to enable him to extend the circuit of his view. He had now a moment’s leisure to look about him, and to consider, as well as the confusion of his ideas would allow him, what he had best to do. But what was his surprise and dismay to see, that although many were yet flying in all directions, and many more pursuing after them, whole battalions of the enemy still remained unbroken in the vicinity of the field of battle, and that some were marching up, in close order, both to the right and left of him. There was but little time left him for farther consideration, as one of these battalions was so near to him, that he saw, from the course it was holding, that it must soon march directly over the spot where he was. The first thought that struck him was that his best plan would be to lie down and feign that he was dead. But it immediately afterwards occurred to him that a thrust from some curious or malicious person, who might be the bearer of one of those bayonets, which already glittered in his eyes, might do his business even more effectually than the sword of the trooper might have done. He became convinced that he had nothing left for it but to run. But although he was now somewhat revived, and that the dread of death gave new strength to exhausted nature, he felt persuaded of the truth, that if his wound should continue to bleed, as it had already again began to do, his race could not be a long one in any sense of the word, even if he should have the wonderful luck to escape the chance of its being shortened by the sword, bayonet, or bullet of an enemy. To give himself some small chance of life, John, though he was no surgeon, would have fain tried some means of stanching the blood, but he lacked all manner of materials for any such operation, and he could only try to cover the wound very ineffectually with both hands, whilst the red stream continued to run down through his fingers. At length, necessity, that great mother of invention, and wisest of all teachers, enabled him to hit off in a moment, a remedy, which, as it was the best he could have possibly adopted in his present difficult and distressing situation, might perhaps, even on an occasion where no such embarrassment exists, be found as valuable and effective as any other which the most favourable circumstances could afford, or the most consummate skill devise. Stooping down, he picked up a large mass of peaty turf, of nearly a foot square, and two or three inches thick. This had been regularly cut by the peat-diggers, but having tumbled by chance into the bottom of the peat-hag, it had been there lying soaking till the soft unctuous matter of which it was composed was completely saturated with water like a sponge. John proceeded upon no certain ratio medicandi, except this, that as his life’s blood was manifestly welling fast away from him, he thought that the wet peat would stop the flow of it, and as his head was in a burning fever, every fibre of his scalp seemed to call out for the immediate application of its cold and moist surface. John seized it then with avidity, and clapping it instantly on his head, with the black soft oleaginous side of it next to the wound, and the heathery top of it outwards, he pressed it down with great care all over his skull, and then quickly secured it fast, by tying a coarse red handkerchief over it, the ends of which he fastened very carefully under his chin. The outward appearance of this strange uncouth head-gear may be easily imagined, with the heather-bush rising everywhere around his head over the red tier that bound it on, and surmounting a countenance so rueful and bloody; but the effect within was so wonderfully refreshing and invigorating, that he felt himself almost immediately restored to comparative strength. He started to his feet; and, being yet uncertain as to which way he should run, he raised his head slowly over the peat-hag to reconnoitre.

Now, it happened, that, at this very moment, a couple of English foot soldiers came straggling along, thirsting for more slaughter, and prowling about for prey and plunder. Ere John was aware of their proximity to him, they were within a few yards of the peat-hag. As he raised his head, he beheld them approaching with their muskets and their bayonets reeking with gore. Believing himself to be now utterly lost, a deep groan of despair escaped from him. The soldiers had halted suddenly on beholding the bloody face and neck of what scarcely seemed to be a human being, with a huge overgrown forest of heather on the head instead of hair, appearing, as it were by magic, out of the very earth. They started back, and stood for an instant transfixed to the spot by superstitious fear.

“Waunds, Gilbert, wot is that?” cried one, his eyes staring at John with horror.

Seeing, that as he was now discovered, his only chance lay in working upon that dread which he saw that he had already excited, John first gradually drew down his head below the bank, and then again raised it slowly and portentously, and uttered another groan more deep and ghostly and prolonged than the first. The effect was instantaneous.

“Oh Lord! oh Lord! one of them Highland warlocks of the bog, wot dewours men, women, and children!” cried Gilbert. “Fly—fly, Warner, for dear life!”

Off he ran, and his comrade staid not to question farther, but darted away after him, and John had the satisfaction to see the two heroes, from whom he had looked for nothing but sudden death, scouring away over the field, and hardly daring to look behind them.

John Smith was considerably emboldened by the discovery that his appearance was so formidable to his foes. He again applied himself to the consideration of the question as to which way it was best for him to fly. He cast his eyes all over the field of action around him; and, much to his satisfaction, he perceived that the officer at the head of the red regiment of Englishmen, which had previously given him so much alarm, had been so very obliging as to determine this difficult question for him. Some movement of the flying clans, who had retreated on Strath Nairn, had induced the officer to alter his line of march; and, in a very short time, John had the happiness of seeing himself very much in the rear of the red battalion, instead of being immediately in its front, as he had formerly been. Looking to the north-eastward, he perceived that all was comparatively clear and quiet, so far as he could see. There were now no longer any regular masses of men on the field, neither were there any signs of flight or pursuit in that direction. A few stragglers were to be seen, it is true, moving about, like evil spirits among the killed, and perhaps performing the office of messengers of death to the wounded. Strange, indeed, was the change that had taken place, upon that which had been so lately a scene of stormy and desperate conflict. A few large birds of prey were soaring high in air, in eager contemplation of that banquet which had been so liberally spread for them on the plain by ferocious man. But, in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where John Smith was, the terrified pewit had already settled down again with confidence on her nest, the robin had again begun to chirp, and to direct his sharp eye towards the earth in search of worms; and the lark was again heaving herself up into the sky, giving forth her innocent song as she rose,—all apparently utterly unconscious that any such terrible and bloody turmoil had taken place between different sections of the human race. John therefore made up his mind at once; and, scrambling out of the peat-hag, he darted away over the moor, and flying like a ghost across the very middle of the field of battle, through the heaps of dead and dying, to the utter terror and discomfiture of those wolves and hyenas in the shape of men—aye, and of women too—who were preying, as well upon those who had life, as upon those who were lifeless, he scattered them to right and left in terror at his appalling appearance, and dived amid the thick woods of Culloden.

Having once found shelter among the trees, John stopped to breathe awhile, and then he again set forward to unravel his way. It so happened, that, as he proceeded, he chanced to come upon the very spot where he had feasted with MacTaggart and his comrades on his mistress the Pensassenach’s sow, and the other good things which the Highlanders had taken from her. The gnawing demon of hunger that possessed him, inserted his fell fangs more furiously into his stomach, from very association with the scene. What would he not have now given for the smallest morsel of that goodly beast, the long and ample side of which arose upon his mind’s eyes, as he had beheld her carcase hanging from the bough of a tree, previous to the rapid subdivision which it underwent. Alas! the very thought of it was now an unreal mockery. Yet he could not help looking anxiously around, though in vain, among the extinguished remains of the fires of the bivouacs; and he figured to himself the joy and comfort and refreshment he would have experienced, if his eyes could have lighted even on a half-broiled fragment of one of the pettitoes, which he might have picked at as he fled. John’s eyes were so intently turned to the ground, that he saw not the unfortunate Mr. Dallas, who still dangled from the bough of the fir tree above him.

Whilst John was poking about in this manner, earnestly turning over the ashes, and looking amongst them as if he had been in search of a pin, he suddenly heard the tramp of horses at some little distance. The sound was evidently coming towards him; and he could distinguish men’s voices. He cast his eyes eagerly around him, to discover some ready place of concealment; and now, for the first time, he caught sight of the wasted figure of Mr. Dallas, swinging at some distance above him, with the dull glassy eyeballs apparently fixed upon him. His heart sank within him; for the corpse of the wretched man seemed to typify his own immediate fate. He was paralyzed for a moment. But the sound drew nearer; and, spying a holly-tree with a reasonably tall stem, and a very thick and bushy head, which happened to grow most fortunately near him, he ran towards it, reached up his hands, seized hold of its lower branches, and, weak though he was, the energy of self-preservation enabled him very quickly to coil himself up amongst its dense foliage, where he sat as still as death, and scarcely allowing himself to breathe. The holly-tree stood by the side of a horse-track that led through the wood, and which crossed the small open space where most of the fires of Captain M’Taggart’s bivouac had been kindled. Two troopers came riding leisurely up through the wood along it, their horses considerably jaded by the work of the day.