How Ludar took Dunluce.
At first I saw nothing but a jagged line of cliff-top, lower than where we stood, with the sea beyond. Then I perceived that where Ludar pointed the line broke suddenly, and disclosed a great naked rock standing alone, sheer out of the water which leapt wildly all round it and thundered into the cave at its base. I looked further. I saw a narrow bridge across the chasm, while what I had first thought to be rugged piles of rock took the form of grim battlements and towers, rising so straight from the edge of the rock that I had thought them a part of it. Across the bridge frowned an angry portcullis. As the place stood, it looked as if one man could hold it against a thousand, so unapproachable did it seem. On our side the bridge, on the mainland, was a large courtyard or barrack, with an outer wall and moat round it, of itself no easy place to carry; and when, beyond that, hung this angry castle, perched like an eagle over the sea, I marvelled not so much that the McDonnells should hope to take it, as that they should ever have lost it.
I could understand Ludar’s excitement as he stood there and gazed at this old fortress of his fathers, with the standard of the foreign invader floating above its top-mast tower. He said nothing; yet, I could tell by the heaving of his chest, what thoughts were passing in his mind, what hatred of the usurper, what impatience to stand once more on those battlements and fling open the gate to his noble father.
The light faded from the sky as we stood there, until turrets and rock and flag melted away into a common blackness, and left us only the thunder of the waves in the hollows below, to tell us where Dunluce stood. Then Ludar led me quickly back to his men.
We found no little stir afoot. For the McDonnells’ scouts had come in with a man of the English garrison whom they had found foraging for meat; while, almost at the same moment, a herdsman from Ramore (which was a district westward of us), had come to tell us news of the enemy.
Ludar heard the soldier first.
“We be but thirty men in yonder hold,” said he. “For so soon as the alarm spread that Castleroe and the town of Coleraine were to be attacked, fifty of our guard and three cannon were drawn away thither this very morning. I know it, for I stood sentinel when Captain Merriman—”
“He! is he there?” demanded Ludar.
“No, in truth,” said the soldier, “’twas he rode over from Castleroe and took away half our men, leaving us, in place, a parcel of puling women to mind, whom he might have kept with better grace at Castleroe.”
“And who are these women?” asked Ludar with heightened colour.