And nightly bids her gulfs unbottomed quake,
While moonbeams, sailing o’er her waters blue,
Reveal the frequent tinge of blood-red hue.
The water-birds, with shrill discordant scream,
Oft rouse the peasant from his tranquil dream;
He dreads to raise his slow unclosing eye,
And thinks he hears an infant’s feeble cry.—Leyden.
Chapter I.
In one of those frequent incursions which the Scottish Borderers used to make into the sister territory, it was the misfortune of Sir John Douglas, a gallant and distinguished warrior, to be taken prisoner by Richard de Mowbray, who, to a naturally proud and vindictive temper, added a bitter and irreconcilable hatred to that branch of the house of Douglas to which his prisoner belonged. Instead of treating the brave and noble youth with that courtesy which the law of arms and the manners of the times authorised, he loaded his limbs with fetters, and threw him into one of the deepest dungeons of his baronial castle of Holme Cultrum. Earl de Mowbray, his father, was then at the English court, in attendance on his sovereign, so that he had none to gainsay his authority, but yielded, without hesitation or restraint, to every impulse of his passions. To what lengths the savage cruelty of his temper might have led him in practising against the life of his youthful prisoner is not known, for he was also summoned to London to assist in the stormy councils of that distracted period.
Meanwhile, Douglas lay on the floor of his dungeon, loaded with fetters, and expecting every hour to be led out to die. No murmur escaped his lips. He waited patiently till the fatal message arrived, only regretting that it had not pleased Heaven to suffer him to die sword in hand, like his brave ancestors. “Yes!” he exclaimed, as he raised his stately and warlike form from the ground, and clashing his fettered hands together, while his dark eye shot fire; “yes! let false tyrannical Mowbray come with all his ruffian band—let them give me death by sword or by cord—my cheek shall not blanch, nor my look quail before them. As a Douglas I have lived, as a Douglas I shall die!” But the expected summons came not. Day after day passed on in sullen monotony, more trying to a brave mind than even the prospect of suffering. No sound broke in on the silence around him, but the daily visit of a veteran man-at-arms, who brought him his scanty meal. No entreaties could induce this man to speak, so that the unfortunate prisoner could only guess at his probable fate. Sometimes despondency, in spite of his better reason, would steal over his mind. “Shall I never again see my noble, my widowed mother? my innocent, playful sister?—never again wander through the green woods of Drumlanrig, or hunt the deer on its lordly domain? Shall my sight never again be greeted by the green earth or cheerful sun? Will these hateful walls enclose me till damp and famine destroy me, and my withered limbs be left in this charnel-house, a monument of the cruelty and unceasing hatred of De Mowbray?”