I fell to with a will. He was not a man to be thanked in words. Long since I had found out that Captain Roy was one to spend himself for his friends and make nothing of it. This was one of his many shining qualities that drew me so strongly to him. If he had a few of the Highland faults he did not lack any of the virtues of his race.
Shortly we were on our way once more, and were fortunate enough before night to fall in with Cluny and his clan, who having heard of our reverse had turned about and were falling back to Badenoch. At Trotternich we found a temporary refuge at the home of a surgeon who was distantly related to the Macdonald, but at the end of a fortnight were driven away by the approach of a troop of Wolfe’s regiment.
The course of our wanderings I think it not needful to detail at length. For months we were forever on the move. From one hiding-place to another the redcoats and their clan allies drove us. No sooner were we fairly concealed than out we were routed. Many a weary hundred miles we tramped over the bleak mountains white with snow. Weariness walked with us by day, and cold and hunger lay down with us at night. Occasionally we slept in sheilings (sheep-huts), but usually in caves or under the open sky. Were we in great luck, venison and usquebaugh fell to our portion, but more often our diet was brose (boiling water poured over oatmeal) washed down by a draught from the mountain burn. Now we would be lurking on the mainland, now skulking on one of the islands or crossing rough firths in crazy boats that leaked like a sieve. Many a time it was touch and go with us, for the dragoons and the Campbells followed the trail like sleuths. We fugitives had a system of signals by which we warned each other of the enemy’s approach and conveyed to each other the news. That Balmerino, Kilmarnock, and many another pretty man had been taken we knew, and scores of us could have guessed shrewdly where the Prince was hiding in the heather hills.
CHAPTER XI
THE RED HEATHER HILLS
A sullen day, full of chill gusts and drizzle, sinking into a wet misty night! Three hunted Jacobites, dragging themselves forward drearily, found the situation one of utter cheerlessness. For myself, misery spoke in every motion, and to say the same of Creagh and Macdonald is to speak by the card. Fatigue is not the name for our condition. Fagged out, dispirited, with legs moving automatically, we still slithered down cleughs, laboured through dingles and corries, clambered up craggy mountainsides all slippery with the wet heather, weariness tugging at our leaden feet like a convict’s chain and ball. Our bones ached, our throats were limekilns, composts of sores were our ragged feet.
On every side the redcoats had hemmed us in, and we knew not whether we tramped to a precarious safety or to death. Indeed, ’twas little we cared, for at last exhaustion had touched the limit of endurance. Not a word had passed the lips of any of us for hours, lest the irritation of our worn nerves should flame into open rupture.
At length we stood on the summit of the ridge. Scarce a half mile from us a shieling was to be seen on the shoulder of the mount.