dying Greek and Hebrew.

When King James II. was driven from his throne, in 1688, by the Prince
of Orange, these sufferers found release, they being on the Orange side.
But the castle of the Bass did not yield to William till 1690; it was
held for King James by Charles Maitland till his ammunition and stores
were exhausted. The Whigs, who were now in power, used the Bass for a
prison, as their enemies had done, and four Cavalier prisoners were shut
up in the cold, smoky, unwholesome jail, just as the Covenanters had
been before. These men, Middleton, Halyburton, Roy, and Dunbar, all of
them young, had been in arms for King James, and were taken when his
Majesty's forces were surprised and defeated by Livingstone at Cromdale
Haugh. Middleton was a lieutenant; his friends were junior in rank, and
were only ensigns.

These four lads did not devote their leisure to the composition of
religious treatises, nor to the learning of Latin and Greek. On the
other hand they reckoned it more worthy of their profession to turn the
Whig garrison out of the Bass, and to hold it for King James. For three
years they held it against all comers, and the Royal flag, driven out of
England and Scotland, still floated over this little rock in the North
Sea.

This is how the Four took the Bass. They observed that when coals were
landed all the garrison except three or four soldiers went down to the
rocky platform where there was a crane for raising goods. When they
went, they locked three of the four gates on the narrow rocky staircase
behind them.

On June 15, 1691, the soldiers went on this duty, leaving, to guard the
Cavaliers, La Fosse, the sergeant, Swan, the gunner, and one soldier.
These men were overpowered, or won over, by Middleton, Roy, Dunbar, and
Halyburton, who then trained a gun on the garrison below, and asked them
whether they would retire peacefully, or fight? They preferred to sail
away in the coal vessel, and very foolish they must have felt, when they
carried to the Whigs in Edinburgh the news that four men had turned them
out of an impregnable castle, and held it for King James.

Next night young Crawford of Ardmillan, with his servant and two Irish
sailors, seized a long-boat on the beach, sailed over, and joined the
brave little garrison of the Bass. Crawford had been lurking in disguise
for some time, and the two Irishmen had escaped from prison in
Edinburgh, and were not particularly well disposed to the governmen