"And it will be the brighter morning when I come back," answered the young man, for he could not mistake the intention of the words.
"Yes, indeed, Sir Keith; and now you will go into the boat, and you will take care of your footing, for the night is dark, and the rocks they are always slippery whatever."
But Keith Macleod's foot was as familiar with the soft sea-weed of the rocks as it was with the hard heather of the hills, and he found no difficulty in getting into the broad-beamed boat. The men put out their oars and pushed her off. And now, in the dark night, the skirl of the pipes rose again; and it was no stately and mournful lament that young Donald played up there at the bow as the four oars struck the sea and sent a flash of white fire down into the deeps.
"Donald," Hamish had said to him on the shore, "when you are going out to the steamer, it is the 'Seventy-ninth's Farewell to Chubralter' that you will play, and you will play no other thing than that."
And surely the Seventy-ninth were not sorry to leave Gibraltar when their piper composed for them so glad a farewell.
At the high windows of Castle Dare the mother stood, and her niece, and as they watched the yellow lamp move slowly out from the black shore, they heard this proud and joyous march that Donald was playing to herald the approach of his master. They listened to it as it grew fainter and fainter, and as the small yellow star trembling over the dark waters, became more and more remote. And then this other sound—this blowing of a steam whistle far away in the darkness?
"He will be in good time, aunt; she is a long way off yet," said Janet Macleod. But the mother did not speak.
Out there on the dark and moving waters the great steamer was slowly drawing near the open boat; and as she came up, the vast hull of her, seen against the starlit sky, seemed a mountain.
"Now, Donald," Macleod called out, "you will take the dog—here is the string; and you will see he does not spring into the water."
"Yes, I will take the dog," muttered the boy, half to himself. "Oh yes, I will take the dog; but it is better if I was going with you, Sir Keith, than any dog."