Not a shot had been fired. Except for that one cry from the man who lay so still at their feet, no sound but the scuffling and cursing on the barque disturbed the quiet. Ferrier’s men hustled their prisoners below into the cabin, where they were gagged and secured and left under the charge of a couple of soldiers. No roving citizen troubled the neighbourhood at this hour, for the fly-by-nights of Montrose looked farther inland for their entertainment, and the fisher-folk, who were the principal dwellers in the poor houses skirting the quays, slept sound, and recked little of who might be quarrelling out of doors so long as they lay warm within them. The barque was some way up-stream from the general throng of shipping—apart, and, as Hall had thought, the more safe for that, for his calculations had taken no count of an enemy who might come from anywhere but the town. He had never dreamed of the silent band which had been yielded up by the misty stretches of the Basin.
James leaned over the vessel’s side towards the Venture, and thought of Captain Hall. He had seen him in a tavern of the town, and had been as little impressed by his looks as was Flemington. He had noticed the uncertain eye, the restless fingers, the trotting gait, and had held him lightly as a force; for he knew as well as most men know who have knocked about this world that character—none other—is the hammer that drives home every nail into the framework of achievement.
But he had no time to spend in speculations, for his interest was centred in the ferry-boat that was now slipping noiselessly towards them on the current, guided down-stream by the couple of soldiers who had unmoored her. As she reached the barque a rope was tossed down to her, and she was made fast. The stolen guns were hauled from their storage, and a six-pounder lowered, with its ammunition, into the great tub that scarcely heaved on the slow swirl of the river; and whilst the work was going on, Ferrier and James stepped ashore to the quay, and walked each a short way along it, watching for any movement or for the chance of surprise. There was nothing: only, from far out beyond the shipping, a soft rush, so low that it seemed to be part of the atmosphere itself, told that the tide was on the turn.
In the enshrouding night the boat was loaded, and a dozen or so of the little company pushed off with their spoil. Ferrier went with them, and Logie, who was to follow with the second gun, watched the craft making her way into obscurity, like some slow black river monster pushing blindly out into space.
The scheme he had been putting together since the arrival of the Venture was taking reality at last, and though he could stand with folded arms on the bulwark looking calmly at the departing boat, the fire in his heart burned hot. Custom had inured him to risks of every kind, and if his keenness of enterprise was the same as it had been in youth, the excitement of youth had evaporated. It was the depths that stirred in Logie, seldom the surface. Like Archie Flemington, he loved life, but he loved it differently. Flemington loved it consciously, joyously, pictorially; James loved it desperately—so desperately that his spirit had survived the shock which had robbed it of its glory, for him. He was like a faithful lover whose mistress has been scarred by smallpox.
He could throw himself heart and soul into the Stuart cause, its details and necessities—all that his support of it entailed upon him, because it had, so to speak, given him his second wind in the race of life. Though he was an adventurer by nature, he differed from the average adventurer in that he sought nothing for himself. He did not conform to the average adventuring type. He was too overwhelmingly masculine to be a dangler about women, though since the shipwreck of his youth he had more than once followed in the train of some complaisant goddess, and had reaped all the benefits of her notice; he was no snatcher at casual advantages, but a man to whom service in any interest meant solid effort and unsparing sacrifice. Also he was one who seldom looked back. He had done so once lately, and the act had shaken him to the heart. Perhaps he would do so oftener when he had wrought out the permanent need of action that lay at the foundation of his nature.
When the boat had come back, silent on the outflowing river, and had taken her second load, he lowered himself into the stern as her head was pulled round again towards Inchbrayock.
The scheme fashioned by the two men for the capture of the vessel depended for its success on their possession of this island. As soon as they should land on it, they were to entrench the two guns, one on its south-eastern side, as near to the Venture as possible, and the other on its northern shore, facing the quays. By this means the small party would command, not only the ship, but the whole breadth of the river and its landing-places, and would be able to stop communication between Captain Hall and the town. Heavy undergrowth covered a fair portion of Inchbrayock, and the only buildings upon it—if buildings they could be called—were the walls of an old graveyard and the stones and crosses they encircled. Though the island lay at a convenient part of the strait, no bridge connected it with Montrose, and those who wished to cross the Esk at that point were obliged to use the ferry. The channel dividing its southern shore from the mainland being comparatively narrow, a row of gigantic stepping-stones carried wayfarers dry-shod across its bed, for at low tide there was a mere streak of water curling serpent-wise through the mud.
When the guns were got safely into position on the island it was decided that Ferrier was to return to the barque and take the remaining four-pounders with all despatch to a piece of rising ground called Dial Hill, that overlooked the mass of shipping opposite Ferryden.
He did not expect to meet with much opposition, should news of his action be carried to the town, for its main sympathies were with his side, and the force on the Government vessel would be prevented from coming over the strait to oppose him until he was settled on his eminence by the powerful dissuaders he had left behind him on Inchbrayock. He was to begin firing from Dial Hill at dawn, and James, who was near enough to the Venture to see any movement that might take place on her, was to be ready with his fire and with his small party of marksmen to check any offensive force despatched from the ship to the quays. Hall would thus be cut off from the town by the fire from Inchbrayock, on the one hand, and, should he attempt a landing nearer to the watermouth, by the guns on Dial Hill, on the other.