His English failed him entirely, and he resorted to that language in which he was most fluent. Hepborne mounted his horse, and, waving him another farewell, rode on to overtake his guides, who were standing on a distant eminence waiting for him; and as he receded from the humble mansion of Master Duncan MacErchar, he for several minutes distinguished his voice vociferating in pleased but unintelligible accents.
CHAPTER XXV.
Wild Scottish Bisons—Fight with a Bull—Cold and Fatigue.
Sir Patrick Hepborne and the page, followed by Mortimer Sang and the rest of the party, rode slowly on after their savage guides, along sideling paths worn in the steep acclivities of the mountains, by the deer, wild bisons, and other animals then abounding in the wilderness of Scotland. The fir forests appeared endless; the trees were of the most gigantic stature, and might have been of an age coeval with that second creation that sprang up over the surface of the renovated and newly-fructified earth, after the subsiding waters had left their fertilising mud behind them. Long hairy moss hung streaming from their lateral branches, which, dried by the lack of air and moisture, occasioned by the increasing growth of the shade above, had died from the very vigour of the plant they were [[185]]attached to. As Hepborne beheld the two mountaineers striding before them in their rough attire, winding among those enormous scaly trunks, or standing on some rocky point above, leaning against one of them, to wait for the slow ascent of himself and party, he could not help comparing them with those vegetable giants, and indulging his fancy in the whimsical notion that they were as two of them, animated and endowed with the powers of locomotion. The ground they travelled was infinitely rough and varied in surface, hills and hollows, knolls, gullies, rivers, and lakes; but all was forest, never-ending forest. Sometimes, indeed, they crossed large tracks of ground, where, to open a space for pasture, or to banish the wolves, or to admit a more extended view around for purposes of hunting, or perhaps by some accidental fire, the forest had been burnt. There the huge trunks of the trees, charred black by the flames, and standing deprived of everything but a few of their larger limbs, added to the savage scenery around.
Before entering one of these wastes, in a little plain lying in the bottom of a valley, where the devastation had been arrested in its progress by some cause before it had been carried to any great extent, their guides descried a herd of the wild bisons, which were natives of Scotland for ages after the period we are now speaking of. The animals were feeding at no very great distance, and the mountaineers were instantly all eagerness to get at them. Pointing them out to Hepborne, they made signs that he and his party should halt. He complied with their wishes; and they immediately secured their dogs to the trees, to prevent the risk of giving any premature alarm, and, setting off with inconceivable speed through the skirting wood that grew on the side of the mountain, were soon lost to view. Hepborne kept his eye on the herd. They were of a pure milk-white hue, and, as the sun was reflected from their glossy hides, they appeared still more brilliant, from contrast with the blackened ruins of the burnt pines among which they were pasturing. At their head was a noble bull with a magnificent mane.
As Hepborne and the page were admiring the beauty and symmetry of this leader of the herd, noting the immense strength indicated by the thickness and depth of his chest with the lightness and sprightliness of his head, and his upright and spreading horns, of a white rivalling that of ivory in lustre, and tipt with points of jet black, they observed a fat cow near to him suddenly fall to the ground, by an arrow from the covert of the trees, while another having been lodged in his flank at [[186]]the same moment, he started aside, and bounded off in a wide circuit with great swiftness, and the whole herd, being alarmed, darted after him. Out rushed the mountaineers from their concealment, and, making for the wounded cow, soon despatched her with their spears.
They then attempted to creep nearer to the herd, and even succeeded in lodging more than one arrow in the bull; but as none of them took effect in a vital part, they only served to madden the animal. He turned, and, ere they wist, charged them with a fury and speed that left them hardly time to make their escape. They ran towards the place where Hepborne and his party were concealed, and, just as the knight moved forward into the open ground, they succeeded in getting up into trees. Sir Patrick’s manœuvre had the desired effect in checking the attack of the bisons, for they stopped short in the middle of their career, gazed at the party, and then, led by the bull at their head, again galloped off in a wide circle, sweeping round a second time towards the knight, and coming to a sudden stand beyond bow-shot. After remaining at rest for some minutes, with their heads all turned towards the party, the bull began pawing the ground and bellowing aloud, after which he charged forward the half of the distance, and then halted.
Hepborne, seeing him thus detached from his followers, put his lance in the rest, and was preparing to attack him; but just as he was rising in his stirrup, and was about to give his horse the spur, the page, with a countenance pale as death, and a hand trembling with apprehension, seized his bridle-rein, and looking anxiously in his face—
“Do not peril thy life, Sir Knight,” said he—“do not, I beseech thee, peril thy life against a vulgar beast, where thou canst gain no honour; do not, for the sake of the blessed Virgin—do not essay so dangerous and unprofitable an adventure.”