renching heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon
breakneck hills and among rude crags. We often wandered; we were often
so involved in fog, that we must lie quiet till it lightened. A fire was
never to be thought of. Our only food was drammach and a portion of
cold meat that we had carried from the Cage; and as for drink, Heaven
knows we had no want of water.
This was a dreadful time, rendered the more dreadful by the gloom of the
weather and the country. I was never warm; my teeth chattered in my
head; I was troubled with a very sore throat, such as I had on the isle;
I had a painful stitch in my side, which never left me; and when I slept
in my wet bed, with the rain beating above and the mud oozing below me,
it was to live over again in fancy the worst part of my adventures--to
see the tower of Shaws lit by lightning, Ransome carried below on the
men's backs, Shuan dying on the round-house floor, or Colin Campbell
grasping at the bosom of his coat. From such broken slumbers I would be
aroused in the gloaming, to sit up in the same puddle where I had slept,
and sup cold drammach; the rain driving sharp in my face or running down
my back in icy trickles; the mist enfolding us like as in a gloomy
chamber--or, perhaps, if the wind blew, falling suddenly apart and
showing us the gulf of some dark valley where the streams were crying
aloud.
The sound of an infinite number of rivers came up from all round. In
this steady rain the springs of the mountain were broken up; every glen
gushed water like a cistern; every stream was in high spate, and had
filled and overflowed its channel. During our night tramps, it was
solemn to hear the voice of them below in the valleys, now booming like
thunder, now with an angry cry. I could well understand the story of the
Water Kelpie, that demon of the streams, who is fabled to keep wailing
and roaring at the ford until the coming of the doomed traveller. Alan,
I saw, believed it, or half believed it; and when the cry of the river
rose more than usually sharp, I was little surprised (though, of course,
I would still be shocked) to see him cross himself in the manner of the
Catholics.
During all these horrid wanderings we had no familiarity, scarcely even
that of speech. The truth is that I was sickening for my grave, which is
my best excuse. But besides that, I was of an unforgiving disposition
from my birth, slow to take offence, slower to forget it, and now
incensed both agai
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