, in bonnets, short coats, and trews, whose efforts sent
the boat to the little creek in which they usually landed, before one
could have conceived that it had left the side of the birling. Two of
the boatmen, in spite of Dalgetty's resistance, horsed the Captain on
the back of a third Highlander, and, wading through the surf with him,
landed him high and dry upon the beach beneath the castle rock. In
the face of this rock there appeared something like the entrance of a
low-browed cavern, towards which the assistants were preparing to hurry
our friend Dalgetty, when, shaking himself loose from them with some
difficulty, he insisted upon seeing Gustavus safely landed before he
proceeded one step farther. The Highlanders could not comprehend what he
meant, until one who had picked up a little English, or rather Lowland
Scotch, exclaimed, "Houts! it's a' about her horse, ta useless baste."
Farther remonstrance on the part of Captain Dalgetty was interrupted
by the appearance of Sir Duncan Campbell himself, from the mouth of
the cavern which we have described, for the purpose of inviting Captain
Dalgetty to accept of the hospitality of Ardenvohr, pledging his honour,
at the same time, that Gustavus should be treated as became the hero
from whom he derived his name, not to mention the important person
to whom he now belonged. Notwithstanding this satisfactory guarantee,
Captain Dalgetty would still have hesitated, such was his anxiety to
witness the fate of his companion Gustavus, had not two Highlanders
seized him by the arms, two more pushed him on behind, while a fifth
exclaimed, "Hout awa wi' the daft Sassenach! does she no hear the Laird
bidding her up to her ain castle, wi' her special voice, and isna that
very mickle honour for the like o' her?"

Thus impelled, Captain Dalgetty could only for a short space keep a
reverted eye towards the galley in which he had left the partner of his
military toils. In a few minutes afterwards he found himself involved in
the total darkness of a staircase, which, entering from the low-browed
cavern we have mentioned, winded upwards through the entrails of the
living rock.

"The cursed Highland salvages!" muttered the Captain, half aloud; "what
is to become of me, if Gustavus, the namesake of the invincible Lion of
the Protestant League, should be lamed among their untenty hands!"

"Have no fear of that," said the voice of Sir Duncan, who was nearer to
him than he imagined; "my men a