The Project Gutenberg EBook of Salute to Adventurers, by John Buchan

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Title: Salute to Adventurers

Author: John Buchan

Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10046]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Aldarondo, Carol David and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS

BY

JOHN BUCHAN

[Illustration: 1798 EDINBURGH]

TO MAJOR-GENERAL THE HON. SIR REGINALD TALBOT, K.C.B.

     I tell of old Virginian ways;
       And who more fit my tale to scan
     Than you, who knew in far-off days
       The eager horse of Sheridan;
     Who saw the sullen meads of fate,
       The tattered scrub, the blood-drenched sod,
     Where Lee, the greatest of the great,
       Bent to the storm of God?

     I tell lost tales of savage wars;
       And you have known the desert sands,
     The camp beneath the silver stars,
       The rush at dawn of Arab bands,
     The fruitless toil, the hopeless dream,
       The fainting feet, the faltering breath,
     While Gordon by the ancient stream
       Waited at ease on death.

     And now, aloof from camp and field,
       You spend your sunny autumn hours
     Where the green folds of Chiltern shield
       The nooks of Thames amid the flowers:
     You who have borne that name of pride,
       In honour clean from fear or stain,
     Which Talbot won by Henry's side
       In vanquished Aquitaine.

The reader is asked to believe that most of the characters in this tale and many of the incidents have good historical warrant. The figure of Muckle John Gib will be familiar to the readers of Patrick Walker.

CONTENTS.

* * * * *

I. THE SWEET-SINGERS II. OF A HIGH-HANDED LADY III. THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH IV. OF A STAIRHEAD AND A SEA-CAPTAIN V. MY FIRST COMING TO VIRGINIA VI. TELLS OF MY EDUCATION VII. I BECOME AN UNPOPULAR CHARACTER VIII. RED RINGAN IX. VARIOUS DOINGS IN THE SAVANNAH X. I HEAR AN OLD SONG XI. GRAVITY OUT OF BED XII. A WORD AT THE HARBOUR-SIDE XIII. I STUMBLE INTO A GREAT FOLLY XIV. A WILD WAGER XV. I GATHER THE CLANS XVI. THE FORD OF THE RAPIDAN XVII. I RETRACE MY STEPS XVIII. OUR ADVENTURE RECEIVES A RECRUIT XIX. CLEARWATER GLEN XX. THE STOCKADE AMONG THE PINES XXI. A HAWK SCREAMS IN THE EVENING XXII. HOW A FOOL MUST GO HIS OWN ROAD XXIII. THE HORN OF DIARMAID SOUNDS XXIV. I SUFFER THE HEATHEN'S RAGE XXV. EVENTS ON THE HILL-SIDE XXVI. SHALAH XXVII. HOW I STROVE ALL NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL XXVIII. HOW THREE SOULS FOUND THEIR HERITAGE

SALUTE TO ADVENTURERS.

CHAPTER I.

THE SWEET-SINGERS.

When I was a child in short-coats a spaewife came to the town-end, and for a silver groat paid by my mother she riddled my fate. It came to little, being no more than that I should miss love and fortune in the sunlight and find them in the rain. The woman was a haggard, black-faced gipsy, and when my mother asked for more she turned on her heel and spoke gibberish; for which she was presently driven out of the place by Tarn Roberton, the baillie, and the village dogs. But the thing stuck in my memory, and together with the fact that I was a Thursday's bairn, and so, according to the old rhyme, "had far to go," convinced me long ere I had come to man's estate that wanderings and surprises would be my portion.

It is in the rain that this tale begins. I was just turned of eighteen, and in the back-end of a dripping September set out from our moorland house of Auchencairn to complete my course at Edinburgh College. The year was 1685, an ill year for our countryside; for the folk were at odds with the King's Government, about religion, and the land was full of covenants and repressions. Small wonder that I was backward with my colleging, and at an age when most lads are buckled to a calling was still attending the prelections of the Edinburgh masters. My father had blown hot and cold in politics, for he was fiery and unstable by nature, and swift to judge a cause by its latest professor. He had cast out with the Hamilton gentry, and, having broken the head of a dragoon in the change-house of Lesmahagow, had his little estate mulcted in fines. All of which, together with some natural curiosity and a family love of fighting, sent him to the ill-fated field of Bothwell Brig, from which he was lucky to escape with a bullet in the shoulder. Thereupon he had been put to the horn, and was now lying hid in a den in the mosses of Douglas Water. It was a sore business for my mother, who had the task of warding off prying eyes from our ragged household and keeping the fugitive in life. She was a Tweedside woman, as strong and staunch as an oak, and with a heart in her like Robert Bruce. And she was cheerful, too, in the worst days, and would go about the place with a bright eye and an old song on her lips. But the thing was beyond a woman's bearing; so I had perforce to forsake my colleging and take a hand with our family vexations. The life made me hard and watchful, trusting no man, and brusque and stiff towards the world. And yet all the while youth was working in me like yeast, so that a spring day or a west wind would make me forget my troubles and thirst to be about a kindlier business than skulking in a moorland dwelling.

My mother besought me to leave her. "What," she would say, "has young blood to do with this bickering of kirks and old wives' lamentations? You have to learn and see and do, Andrew. And it's time you were beginning." But I would not listen to her, till by the mercy of God we got my father safely forth of Scotland, and heard that he was dwelling snugly at Leyden in as great patience as his nature allowed. Thereupon I bethought me of my neglected colleging, and, leaving my books and plenishing to come by the Lanark carrier, set out on foot for Edinburgh.

The distance is only a day's walk for an active man, but I started late, and purposed to sleep the night at a cousin's house by Kirknewton. Often in bright summer days I had travelled the road, when the moors lay yellow in the sun and larks made a cheerful chorus. In such weather it is a pleasant road, with long prospects to cheer the traveller, and kindly ale-houses to rest his legs in. But that day it rained as if the floodgates of heaven had opened. When I crossed Clyde by the bridge at Hyndford the water was swirling up to the key-stone. The ways were a foot deep in mire, and about Carnwath the bog had overflowed and the whole neighbourhood swam in a loch. It was pitiful to see the hay afloat like water-weeds, and the green oats scarcely showing above the black floods. In two minutes after starting I was wet to the skin, and I thanked Providence I had left my little Dutch Horace behind me in the book-box. By three in the afternoon I was as