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Title: A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys
Author: Buchan, John (1875-1940)
Author [epilogue]: Anonymous
Date of first publication:
   1922 [original edition]; May 1925 [this edition, which
   included a new epilogue and a set of illustrations different
   from those in the 1922 edition]
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London, Edinburgh, and New York: Thomas Nelson, September 1931
   [eighth printing of the 1925 edition]
   [The "Teaching of English" Series, no. 14]
Date first posted: 13 May 2012
Date last updated: 13 May 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #945

This ebook was produced by Al Haines

The printed edition on which this ebook is based included
as its frontispiece a portrait of the Marquis of Montrose
based on a drawing by Russell Reeve (1895-1970).
The frontispiece has been omitted from this ebook
because as of 2012 it was still under copyright in Canada.






_The "Teaching of English" Series_

_General Editor_--SIR HENRY NEWBOLT




A BOOK OF ESCAPES AND

HURRIED JOURNEYS




No. 14






A BOOK of ESCAPES

and Hurried Journeys



BY

JOHN BUCHAN




THOMAS NELSON & SONS, LTD.

LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK




  _First Edition in this Series published May 1925.
  Reprinted August, October, 1925; April 1926;
    March 1927; August 1928; October 1929;
    September 1931_




PREFACE

I have never yet seen an adequate definition of Romance, and I am not
going to attempt one.  But I take it that it means in the widest sense
that which affects the mind with a sense of wonder--the surprises of
life, fights against odds, weak things confounding strong, beauty and
courage flowering in unlikely places.  In this book we are concerned
with only a little plot of a great province, the efforts of men to
cover a certain space within a certain limited time under an urgent
compulsion, which strains to the uttermost body and spirit.

Why is there such an eternal fascination about tales of hurried
journeys?  In the great romances of literature they provide many of the
chief dramatic moments, and, since the theme is common to Homer and the
penny reciter, it must appeal to a very ancient instinct in human
nature.  The truth seems to be that we live our lives under the twin
categories of time and space, and that when the two come into conflict
we get the great moment.  Whether failure or success is the result,
life is sharpened, intensified, idealized.  A long journey even with
the most lofty purpose may be a dull thing to read of, if it is made at
leisure; but a hundred yards may be a breathless business if only a few
seconds are granted to complete it.  For then it becomes a "sporting
event," a race; and the interest which makes millions read of the Derby
is the same in a grosser form as that with which we follow an
expedition straining to relieve a beleaguered fort, or a man fleeing to
sanctuary with the avenger behind him.

I have included "escapes" in my title, for the conflict of space and
time is of the essence of all escapes, since the escaper is either
pursued or in instant danger of pursuit.  But, as a matter of fact,
many escapes are slow affairs and their interest lies rather in
ingenuity than in speed.  Such in fiction is the escape of Dants in
_Monte Cristo_ from the dungeons of Chateau d'If, and in history the
laborious tunnelling performances of some of the prisoners in the
American Civil War.  The escapes I have chosen are, therefore, of a
special type--the hustled kind, where there has been no time to spare,
and the pursuer has either been hot-foot on the trail or the fugitive
has moved throughout in an atmosphere of imminent peril.

It is, of course, in the operations of war that one looks for the
greater examples.  The most famous hurried journeys have been made by
soldiers--by Alexander, Hannibal, and Julius Csar; by Marlborough in
his dash to Blenheim; by Napoleon many times; by Sir John Moore in his
retreat to Corunna; by a dozen commanders in the Indian Mutiny; by
Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart in their whirlwind rides; by the
fruitless expedition to relieve Gordon.  But the operations of war are
a little beside my purpose.  In them the movement is, as a rule, only
swift when compared with the normal pace of armies, and the
cumbrousness and elaboration of the military machine lessen the feeling
of personal adventure.  I have included only one march of an
army--Montrose's, because his army was such a little one, its speed so
amazing and its purpose so audacious, that its swoop upon Inverlochy
may be said to belong to the class of personal exploits.  For a
different reason I have included none of the marvellous escapes of the
Great War.  These are in a world of their own, and some day I may make
a book of them.

I have retold the stories, which are all strictly true, using the best
evidence I could find and, in the case of the older ones, often
comparing a dozen authorities.  For the account of Prince Charlie's
wanderings I have to thank my friend Professor Rait of Glasgow, the
Historiographer Royal for Scotland.  My aim has been to include the
widest varieties of fateful and hasty journey, extending from the
hundred yards or so of Lord Nithsdale's walk to the Tower Gate to the
4,000 miles of Lieutenants Parer and M'Intosh, from the ride of the
obscure Dick King to the nights of princes, from the midsummer tragedy
of Marie Antoinette to the winter comedy of Princess Clementina.

J.B.



[Illustration: _Alexander_.]



[Illustration: _Hannibal crossing the Alps_.]




CONTENTS

    I. The Flight to Varennes
   II. The Railway Raid in Georgia
  III. The Escape of King Charles after Worcester
   IV. From Pretoria to the Sea
    V. The Escape of Prince Charles Edward
   VI. Two African Journeys
  VII. The Great Montrose
 VIII. The Flight of Lieutenants Parer and M'intosh across the World
   IX. Lord Nithsdale's Escape
    X. Sir Robert Cary's Ride to Edinburgh
   XI. The Escape of Princess Clementina
  XII. On the Roof of the World
       Epilogue--On Re-reading the Stories




[Illustration: _Aristocrats_. (_French Revolution_)]




A BOOK OF ESCAPES AND HURRIED JOURNEYS




I

THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES

I

On the night of Monday, 20th June, in the year 1791, the baked streets
of Paris were cooling after a day of cloudless sun.  The pavements were
emptying and the last hackney coaches were conveying festive citizens
homewards.  In the Rue de l'Echelle, at the corner where it is cut by
the Rue St. Honor, and where the Htel de Normandie stands to-day, a
hackney carriage, of the type which was then called a  "glass coach,"
stood waiting by the kerb.  It stood opposite the door of one Ronsin, a
saddler, as if expecting a fare; but the windows were shuttered, and
the honest Ronsin had gone to bed.  On the box sat a driver in the
ordinary clothes of a coachman, who while he waited took snuff with
other cabbies, and with much good-humoured chaff declined invitations
to drink.

The hour of eleven struck; the streets grew emptier and darker; but
still the coach waited.  Presently from the direction of the Tuileries
came a hooded lady with two hooded children, who, at a nod from the
driver, entered the coach.  Then came another veiled lady attended by a
servant, and then a stout male figure with a wig and a round hat, who,
as he passed the sentries at the palace gate, found his shoe-buckle
undone and bent to fasten it, thereby hiding his face.  The glass coach
was now nearly full; but still the driver waited.

The little group of people all bore famous names.  On the box, in the
driver's cloak, sat Count Axel Fersen, a young Swedish nobleman who had
vowed his life to the service of the Queen of France.  The first hooded
lady, whose passport proclaimed that she was a Russian gentlewoman, one
Baroness de Korff, was the Duchess de Tourzel, the governess of the
royal children.  The other hooded lady was no other than Madame
Elizabeth, the King's sister.  One of the children was the little
Princess Royal, afterwards known as the Duchess d'Angoulme; the other,
also dressed like a girl, was the Dauphin.  The stout gentleman in the
round hat was King Louis XVI.  The coach in the Rue de l'Echelle was
awaiting the Queen.

For months the royal family had been prisoners in the Tuileries, while
the Revolution marched forward in swift stages.  They were prisoners in
the strictest sense, for they had been forbidden even the customary
Easter visit to St. Cloud.  The puzzled, indolent king was no better
than a cork tossed upon yeasty waters.  Mirabeau was dead--Mirabeau who
might have saved the monarchy; now the only hope was to save the royal
family, for the shades were growing very dark around it.  Marie
Antoinette, the Queen, who, as Mirabeau had said, was "the only man the
King had about him," had resolved to make a dash for freedom.  She
would leave Paris, even France, and seek her friends beyond the
borders.  The National Militia and the National Guards were for the
Revolution; but the army of Bouill on the eastern frontier, composed
largely of German mercenaries, would do its general's orders, and
Bouill was staunch for the crown.  Count Fersen had organized the
plan, and the young Duke de Choiseul, a nephew of the minister of Louis
XV., had come to Paris to settle the details.  A coach had been built
for the journey, a huge erection of leather and wood, of the type then
called a berline, painted yellow, upholstered in white velvet, and
drawn by no less than eleven horses.  It was even now standing outside
the eastern gate, and Fersen was waiting with his hackney carriage to
conduct the royal fugitives thither.  But where was the Queen?  Marie
Antoinette, dressed as a maid and wearing a broad gipsy hat, had
managed to pass the palace doors; but rumours had got abroad, and even
as she stood there leaning on a servant's arm the carriage of Lafayette
dashed up to the arch, for he had been summoned by the Commandant, who
represented the eyes of the National Assembly.  The sight flurried her,
and she and her servant took the wrong turning.  They hastened towards
the river, and then back, but found no waiting coach.

The chimes struck midnight, and at long last Fersen from the box in the
Rue de l'Echelle saw the figure which he knew so well, the lady in the
gipsy hat who was the Queen.  The party was now complete.  The door was
shut; the driver plied his whip, and the coach started northward
through the sleeping city.  Up the street where Mirabeau had lived they
went, till in the Rue de Clichy the coachman stopped to ask a question
at a house about the great berline.  He was told that it had left half
an hour ago.  The carriage then turned eastward and passed through the
eastern gate.  There stood the berline, with two yellow liveried
gentlemen of the Guard to act as postilions.

The King and Queen, the two children, Madame Elizabeth, and the
so-called Baroness de Korff, free now from the cramped hackney coach,
reclined at ease on the broad cushions.  The hackney coach was then
turned adrift citywards, and was found next morning upset in a ditch.
Again Count Fersen took the reins, and as the eastern sky was paling to
dawn they reached the end of the first stage, the post and relay
station of Bondy.

Fresh horses were waiting and fresh postilions, and one of the
gentlemen-in-waiting took Fersen's place on the box.  Fersen walked
round to the side where the Queen sat and took a brief farewell.  Marie
Antoinette's hand touched his and slipped upon his finger a broad ring
of very pale gold.  The young Swede turned and rode towards Bourget and
the highway to Brussels, so passing out of the history of France.


II

Daylight broadened and the great berline rumbled along the highroad,
being presently joined by a cabriolet carrying two of the Queen's maids
and a collection of baggage.  The royal family, no longer drowsy in the
fresh morning air, fell into good spirits.  A matter of an hour and a
half had been wasted at the start, but now the coach travelled briskly
at a speed of something like seven miles an hour.  They believed the
escape to have already succeeded, and talked happily of their plans.
Soon the suburbs and the market gardens were left behind, and long
before they reached the posting station of Meaux they were in a land of
deep meadows and cornfields.

Their plan was to go by way of Chlons, Ste. Menehould, and Clermont to
Varennes, where Bouill would await them.  But meantime cavalry patrols
from Bouill's army were to come west into Champagne and be ready at
each stage to form up behind and make a screen between them and their
enemies.  The weak points of the scheme are clear.  Had the royal
family divided itself and gone by different routes to the frontier in
humbler equipages there would have been little risk of capture.  But a
coach so vast as the new yellow berline was bound to excite inquiry as
soon as it left the main highways and entered the side roads of
Champagne and the Argonne.  Moreover, the cavalry patrols of Bouill,
most of them Germans, would certainly rouse comment and suspicion, for
the folk of the little towns as far as the Meuse were vehement for the
Revolution.  These clumsy contrivances were sops to the King, who had
as little ingenuity and imagination as he had resolution.  Had Marie
Antoinette and Fersen had a free hand they would have planned
differently.

At Meaux the travellers were in the rich Marne valley, and presently
they turned off the main road which runs by Epernay, and struck across
the tableland, made famous by the late war, where flow the streams of
the Grand and Petit Morin.  They had a picnic breakfast in the coach,
drinking from a single loving cup, and using their loaves as platters
on which to cut the meat.  All were very happy and at ease.  The
children walked up the long hill from the Marne valley.  At the
post-houses the King got out to stretch his legs and talk to the
bystanders.  It was a risky business, for the face of the man in the
round hat was on every Treasury note.  Louis was indeed recognized.  At
a place called Viels Maisons a postilion recognized him but said
nothing; it was not his business, he argued in true peasant fashion.

It grew scorchingly hot, and the wide grassy fields slumbered under a
haze of heat.  About two they reached a place called Chaintrix, where,
in the post-house, was one Vallet, who had been in Paris.  He saw and
recognized the king and told the news to his father-in-law, the
postmaster.  Both were enthusiastic royalists, but it is probable that
the news spread to some who were not, and news flies fast through a
countryside.  This Vallet was indeed a misfortune, for he insisted
himself on riding with the leaders, and twice let the horses down, so
that another hour at least was wasted.

About four o'clock in the afternoon the berline, accompanied by the
cabriolet, reached Chlons.  Here secrecy was obviously impossible, for
it was a big town filled with people who had seen both King and Queen.
But these townsfolk did not seek trouble for themselves; it was not
their business to stop their Majesties if they had a fancy for a jaunt
to the east.  It would seem that one man at least tried to force their
hand, and, finding he could do nothing with the municipal authorities,
galloped on ahead, passing the coach as it halted at the foot of a
hill, and carrying the news to more dangerous regions.  But at any rate
the berline was now free of Chlons, which had been considered the main
danger, and a straight lonely road led for twenty-five miles through
the Champagne Pouilleuse to Ste. Menehould at the foot of the Argonne.
In seven or eight miles they would be at the tiny bridge of
Somme-Vesle, where the infant trickle of the river Vesle ran in a
culvert below the road.  There stood a long farmhouse close up to the
kerb, and nothing else could be seen in the desolate grey-green
countryside.  On the Chlons side there was a slight rise, and beyond
that a hill, so that dwellers at the post-house had no long prospect of
the road to the west.  Had the configuration of the land been
otherwise, history might have been written differently.

Now at Somme-Vesle the first of Bouill's cavalry guards were to meet
and form up behind the King.  The posse was under the Duke de Choiseul,
and consisted chiefly of German mercenaries.  It professed to be an
escort for a convoy of treasure, but the excuse was lame.  What
treasure could be coming that way, and if it was a cavalry patrol from
Bouill's army, why was it flung out towards the base and not towards
the enemy?

According to the time-table drawn up by Fersen and Choiseul, the King
would arrive at Somme-Vesle at one o'clock.  Choiseul, with his
half-troop of German hussars, arrived in time and waited anxiously
through the grilling afternoon.  Long afterwards he told the story to
Alexandre Dumas, the novelist.  At first, apart from his fifty
mercenaries, there was no one there except the ostlers in the
post-house and a few peasants in the fields.  Presently suspicion grew.
The peasants began to leave their work and crowd round the hussars till
the soldiers were greatly outnumbered.  There was some trouble afoot
with the tenants of a neighbouring landowner, and it was believed that
Choiseul's men were there to exercise force.  Word came that the
neighbouring villages were rising, for the Revolution had made almost
every village a little military post.

The long dusty road remained baked and empty, and the barren downs
seemed to swim in the afternoon glare.  The road was silent, but not so
the neighbourhood of the post-house.  Peasants crowded round with
questions.  Why did not the foreigners unsaddle?  Why did they not ride
down the road to meet their treasure?  Presently the rumour spread,
Heaven knows how! that the King was expected to pass, and the crowd
became greater.  Choiseul sat on his horse through the sultry hours
till he looked at his watch and found that it was five o'clock.

Clearly the King had not started at all.  That seemed the only sane
conclusion.  He gave the order to wheel about and return.  He had fresh
horses put into his own travelling carriage and gave a note for the
officers in command at Ste. Menehould and Clermont, mentioning that he
doubted whether the treasure would come that day.  Then he took his
hussars back along the road they had come, and at the hamlet of Orbeval
turned to the left into the Argonne forest in case his appearance at
Ste. Menehould should arouse suspicion.  By a little after half-past
five the last hussar had gone, the peasants had moved off to supper,
and the white road was again deserted.

A quarter of an hour later the berline arrived.  The King, who was
following the road with a map and a guide-book, asked the name of the
place and was told Somme-Vesle.  Remembering that there Choiseul was to
have met them, doubt for the first time seems to have fallen upon the
little party.  That quarter of an hour, as it turned out, was to be the
difference between success and failure.


III

It was now early evening, and with fresh horses the berline rolled
through the pastures and lanes to where, with the setting sun upon
them, rose the woody ridges of the Argonne.  Just below the lift of the
hills lay Ste. Menehould.  At the hour of sunset its streets had the
pleasant stir which evening brings to a country town.  Men and women
were gossiping and drinking outside their doors.  There was a handful
of French dragoons under Captain Dandoins in the place, sent by
Bouill, and at the door of the post-house stood one Jean Baptiste
Drouet, who had once been a dragoon in the Cond regiment.  He was a
dark, loutish fellow, saturnine of face, still young, very strong,
active and resolute.  He was a fervent patriot, too, and that afternoon
he had heard strange rumours coming from the west.  As he saw the
cabriolet enter with its mountain of bonnet boxes, and then the huge
berline with its yellow-liveried guards, he realized that something out
of the common was happening.  The green blinds were up to let in the
evening air, and the faces of both King and Queen were plain to the
onlookers.  The berline did not halt, but rumbled over the bridge of
Aisne and up into the high woods.  But Drouet had seen enough to make
the thing clear to him.  The King and Queen were in flight; they were
going towards Metz!

The ex-dragoon was a man of strong resolution and quick action.  The
drums were beat; Dandoins and his troop were arrested and disarmed, and
with another old dragoon of Cond, one Guillaume, an inn-keeper, Drouet
set off hell-for-leather on the trail.

The great coach with its eleven horses and its yellow-liveried guards
on the rumble, climbed slowly up to the summit of the Argonne ridge.
There were about 400 feet to climb, and it was some four miles to the
crest.  After that came the little village of Islettes in a hollow, and
then a stretch of four miles to the town of Clermont in the valley of
the river Aire.  There the royal road must turn at right angles down
the Aire to Varennes, which lay nine miles off, a flat straight road in
the valley bottom.  Drouet and Guillaume had the last two horses left
in Ste. Menehould, and the berline had an hour's start of them.  They
believed that the King was going to Metz, and that what was before them
was a stern chase on the highroad.

The berline reached Clermont about twenty minutes to ten.  At Clermont
there were royal troops, and Drouet had no notion how to deal with
them; but he hoped somehow to raise the people in the town on his side.
The occupants of the berline had now lost all their high hopes of the
morning.  They realized that they were late and that somehow their
plans were miscarrying, and they were in a fever to get past Varennes
into the protection of Bouill's army.  It took a quarter of an hour to
change horses at Clermont, and then about ten o'clock the Metz road was
relinquished and the great vehicle lumbered off at its best pace down
the Aire valley.

About the same moment Drouet and Guillaume came within a mile of
Clermont.  The night had grown very dark and cloudy, though there was
somewhere a moon.  They heard voices and discovered it was the
postilions from Ste. Menehould turning homewards.  These postilions had
a story to tell.  The berline was not on the Metz road.  They had heard
the orders given to turn northward to Varennes.

Drouet was a man of action, and in a moment his mind was made up.  He
must somehow get ahead of the royal carriage which was on the road in
the valley below.  The only chance was to cut off the corner by taking
to the woody ridge of the Argonne, which stretched some 300 feet above
the open plain.  Now along that eastern scarp of the Argonne runs a
green ride which had once been a Roman road.  He and his companion
galloped through the brushwood till they struck the ride.

It was, as Carlyle has called it, "a night of spurs."  Three parties
were straining every nerve to reach Varennes: the anxious King and
Queen in the great berline, jolting along the highway; the Duke de
Choiseul, who had taken a short cut from Somme-Vesle, avoiding Ste.
Menehould, plunging with his hussars among the pathless woods; and
Drouet and Guillaume making better speed along the green ride, while
from the valley on their right the night wind brought them the far-off
sound of the King's wheels.  There seemed still a good chance of
escape, for at Varennes was Bouill's son with more hussars, waiting in
that part of the village which lay east of the Aire bridge.

Seven miles after he left the highway Drouet came to an ancient stone
set up in the forest which bears the name of the Dead Girl--a place
only too famous in the Argonne fighting in the Great War.  There he
took the green ride to the right, and coming out of the woods saw the
lights of Varennes a little before him.  The town seemed strangely
quiet.  He and Guillaume had done eleven miles of rough going within an
hour; now it was only eleven, and as they stopped to rest their panting
beasts they listened for the sound of wheels.  But there was no sound.
Had the berline with its fateful load beaten them and crossed the
bridge into the protection of Bouill's men?


IV

Drouet rushed into the taverns to ask if any late revellers had seen a
great coach go through.  The revellers shook their heads.  No coach
that night had passed through Varennes.  Suddenly came a cry, and he
looked behind him up the long hill of the Clermont road.  There, on the
top, were the headlights of the coach.  It halted, for it was expecting
Bouill's escort.  The Clermont postilions were giving trouble; they
declared that they were not bound to go down the hill, for the horses
were needed early next morning to carry in the hay.  At last the coach
started, and the creak of its brakes could be heard on the hill.
Drouet ran into the inn called "The Golden Arm," crying on every man
who was for France to come out and stop the berline, since inside it
was the King.

There was only one thing for him to do, to hold the bridge over the
Aire.  Now, at the bridgehead stood a great furniture van without
horses, waiting to start for somewhere in the morning.  Drouet and his
handful of assistants pulled it across the bridge and blocked the
approach.  Meantime one Sausse, a tallow chandler and the procurator of
the town, had appeared on the scene, and seen to the rousing of every
household on the west side of the river.

Half-way down the hill to the bridge the road goes through an archway
under an old church.  At that archway the only two men of the company
who had arms took up position, and when the berline arrived challenged
it and brought it to a stand.  Passports were demanded, and as the
Baroness de Korff fumbled for them the Queen looked out of the window.
She begged the gentlemen, whoever they might be, to get the business
over quickly, as "she was desirous of reaching the end of her journey
as soon as might be."  It was an ill-omened phrase which was long
remembered.

Meantime the two armed men had increased their numbers, and some of
Bouill's German hussars joined the crowd, more or less drunk.  The
cabriolet had also been stopped and the maids in it hustled into the
inn.  But it seemed that the passports were in order, and the Varennes
officials were prepared to let the coach continue on its way.  It was
the crisis of the French monarchy.  Escape seemed once more certain,
when Drouet intervened.  He knew that Bouill's son was waiting beyond
the river, and that Bouill himself would arrive soon after dawn with
ample forces.  What he sought to gain was time; on no account must the
King cross the Aire till morning.

The embarrassed officials yielded to his threats and fury.  "If there
is any doubt," said the procurator, "it will do no harm to wait for
daylight.  It is a dark night and the beasts are tired."  He would
endorse the passports in the morning.  He assisted the King and the
Queen to alight, and escorted them to his own house.  Hope was not yet
wholly gone, for there were still Choiseul and his hussars blundering
through the Argonne woods.  Meantime the fierce Drouet had had the
tocsin sounded and every soul in Varennes was in the streets, waiting
on some happening, they knew not what.

Just about dawn Choiseul arrived with his German troopers.  He saw what
was astir, and had he had Frenchmen in his command all might have been
saved.  He urged them to rescue the King, and ordered them to charge to
clear the streets, which they did, and formed up outside M. Sausse's
house, in which Marie Antoinette and her two children were lying
huddled on truckle beds.  Outside was the perpetual noise of drums and
men; every one who could find any kind of weapon trooped up to it and
thronged the square.  Meantime, young Bouill across the river had
heard the tocsin, and, being uncertain what to do, had returned to his
father.

When the morning light broadened the whole neighbourhood was gathered
outside the procurator's house.  M. Sausse, a devotee of official
decorum, felt compelled to endorse the passports and let the royal
family continue their journey.  But Drouet had other views, and these
views were shared by the crowds in the streets.  Choiseul, had his
mercenaries been of any value, had still the game in his hands.  For
the second time he ordered them to charge.  But the German hussars,
comprehending nothing except that there was a large number of
formidable citizens opposed to them, sat still on their horses.  The
King in his green coat appeared at the window of his lodging and was
greeted with cheers and with something else which meant the ruin of his
hopes, for the mob of ten thousand with one voice shouted "Back to
Paris!"

About six o'clock there arrived at Varennes two men from the Council in
Paris, Bayon and Romeuf.  They had ridden madly all day and night, and
had brought a demand from the Council for their Majesties' immediate
return.  The Queen was furious, and flung the message on the ground.
But the King had made up his mind.  He had had enough of this
undignified secrecy and uncomfortable jolting.  He would go back to
Paris to the people with whom he was so popular.

Indeed, he had no other choice.  The advance guards of Bouill's horse
were even then appearing on the heights behind the Aire, but there were
10,000 men in Varennes, and nothing but artillery could have cleared
the place.  Bouill, even had he been in time, could have done nothing.
When, about seven o'clock, the royalist general himself looked down on
the bridge, he saw a cloud of dust on the Clermont road which told him
that the berline had begun its return journey, accompanied by thousands
of marching citizens.  The adventure was over.  What had seemed so
certain had shipwrecked on a multitude of blunders and the strange
perversities of fortune.  The King and Queen were returning to a prison
from which there was to be no outlet but death.


V

What of the young Swede, Count Axel Fersen, whom we last saw at Bondy
receiving from Marie Antoinette the broad gold ring?  The lovers of
queens have for the most part been tragically fated, and his lot was no
exception to the rule.  It is hard for us to-day to judge of the charm
of Marie Antoinette; from her portraits her figure and features seem
too heavy, though her hair and colouring were beautiful; but she seems
to have had a share of that inexplicable compelling power which certain
women have possessed--Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Mary of Scots,
Elizabeth of Bohemia--which makes men willing to ride on their behalf
over the edge of the world.  Fersen, who had worshipped her at first
sight when a boy in his teens, was to spend the nineteen remaining
years of his life a slave of tragic and tender memories.  After her
death he became a "fey" man, silent, abstracted, grave beyond other
men, and utterly contemptuous of danger, one like Sir Palamede--

  "Who, riding ever through a lonely world,
  Whene'er on adverse shield or helm he came
  Against the danger desperately hurled,
  Crying her name."


He rose to be a famous soldier and marshal of the Swedish armies, and
at the age of fifty-five was confronted with a riot in Stockholm.
Inside the church of Riddenholm were the nobles of Sweden, barricaded
and safe; outside on the steps he stood alone, having been dragged from
his carriage, his sword in his right hand and on his left the ring of
the Queen of France, which the people of the North believed to be a
thing of witchcraft.

For a little he held the steps, for no man dared come within the sweep
of his terrible sword or the glow of his more terrible ring.  At last
some one thought of stones.  They were flung from a distance, and
presently he was maimed and crushed till he died.  Then, and not till
then, the mob came near his body, shielding their eyes from the gleam
of the ring.  One man, a fisherman, Zaffel by name, took his axe and
hacked the finger off while the crowd cheered.  Averting his head he
plucked at the thing, and, running to the river bank, flung it far into
the stream.

The rest of the story of the ring is as wild a legend as ever came out
of the North.  It is said that Zaffel, going fishing next morning after
the fury of the riots was over, came into a lonely reach of water and
found his boat standing still.  He looked up at the masthead, and
there, clasping it, saw a hand lacking one finger.  The mutilated hand
forced the boat forward against tide and wind, and when he tried the
tiller he found that the tiller had no effect upon the course.  All day
he sat in the boat shivering with terror, till in the cold twilight he
saw in front of him a white rock in the stream, and upon a ledge of it
Fersen's ring.  He took it and glanced up at the masthead.  The hand
had now recovered its lost finger and had disappeared, and his boat was
free once more to obey his direction.

In the early dawn of the next day he was back at Stockholm, babbling
nonsense and singing wild songs, beyond doubt a madman.  At that moment
in the Riddenholm church the nobles, who had left Fersen to die, were
gathered round his coffin in the act of burial.  Suddenly something
glimmered in the dark folds of the pall, and they saw with terror that
it was the Queen's ring.  When the coffin was lowered into the grave
the gravediggers dared not fling earth upon the jewel.  They feared
that the dead man's spirit would haunt them, so they gave the ring to
Fersen's family, with whom it remains to this day.



[Illustration: _Marie Antoinette._]




II

THE RAILWAY RAID IN GEORGIA

The time is the spring of 1862, the second year of the American Civil
War.  The scene is the State of Tennessee; the Confederates are
concentrating at Corinth, Mississippi, and the two Northern forces of
Grant and Buell are moving on that spot.  A month before Grant had won
the important action of Fort Donelson.  A month later he was to win the
battle of Shiloh.

In Buell's army was General O. M. Mitchel, commanding the Northern
forces in Middle Tennessee and protecting Nashville with a force of
some 17,000 men.  Now, President Lincoln especially desired that
Eastern Tennessee should be cleared of the enemy, since it was one of
the latter's chief supply grounds.  General Mitchel believed that
Corinth would soon fall, and that the next movement would be eastward
towards Chattanooga, that key-point on the Tennessee river which was
later the scene of one of Grant's most famous victories.  He thought,
rightly, that if he could press into the enemy's country and occupy
strategical points ahead, he would pave the way for Grant's march
eastward.

On the 8th of April the Northerners won the battle of Pittsburg
Landing.  Next day Mitchel marched south from Shelbyville into Alabama
and seized Huntsville.  From there he sent a detachment westward to
open up communication with the Northern troops at Pittsburg Landing.
On the same day he himself took another detachment seventy miles by
rail and arrived without difficulty within thirty miles of Chattanooga,
two hours from the key position in the West.  There, however, he stuck
fast, and the capture of Chattanooga was delayed for two years.  He
failed because another plan had failed, the plan which is the subject
of this story.

Chattanooga at the moment was practically without a garrison; but in
Georgia there were ample Confederate troops, and the Georgia State
Railway and the East Tennessee Railway could bring them up in great
force at short notice.  If Mitchel was to seize and hold Chattanooga,
these lines must be cut for long enough to enable him to consolidate
his position.  Now, in his army was a certain spy of the name of James
J. Andrews, one of these daring adventurers who, in the civil war of
volunteers, many of whom were as yet without regular uniforms, could
perform exploits impossible in a normal campaign.  Andrews conceived
the idea of a raid on the Confederate railways, and Mitchel approved.
Before he left Shelbyville he authorized Andrews to take twenty-four
men, enter the enemy's territory and burn the bridges on the vital
railways.

The men were selected from three Ohio regiments, and told only that
they were required for secret and dangerous service.  They exchanged
their uniforms for the ordinary dress worn by civilians in the South,
and carried no arms except revolvers.  On the 7th of April, by a
roadside a mile east of Shelbyville, in the late evening, they met
Andrews, who told them his plan.  In small detachments of three or four
they were to go east into the Cumberland Mountains and work southward,
and on the evening of the third day rendezvous with Andrews at Marietta
in Georgia, more than 200 miles distant.  If any one asked them
questions they were to declare that they were Kentuckians going to join
the Confederate army.

The weather was bad and the travellers were much delayed by swollen
streams.  This led Andrews to believe that Mitchel's column would also
be delayed, so he sent secret word to the different groups that the
attempt would be postponed one day, from Friday to Saturday, 12th
April.  Of the little party one lost his road and never arrived at the
destination; two reached Marietta, but missed the rendezvous; and two
were captured and forced into the Confederate army.  Twenty, however,
early on the morning of Saturday, 12th April, met in Andrews' room at
the Marietta Hotel.

They had travelled from Chattanooga as ordinary passengers on the
Georgia State Railway.  The sight of that railway impressed them with
the difficulties of their task, for it was crowded with trains and
soldiers.  In order to do their work they must capture an engine, but
the station where the capture was to be made--Big Shanty--had recently
been made a Confederate Camp.  Their job was, therefore, to seize an
engine in a camp with soldiers all round them, to run it from one to
two hundred miles through enemy country, and to dodge or overpower any
trains they might meet--no small undertaking for a score of men.  Some
were in favour of abandoning the enterprise, but Andrews stuck
stubbornly to his purpose.  He gave his final instructions, and the
twenty proceeded to the ticket office to purchase tickets for different
stations on the line to Chattanooga.

For eight miles they rode in comfort as passengers, till at Big Shanty
they saw the Confederate tents in the misty morning.  It had been a
drizzling April dawn, and a steady rain was now beginning.  The train
stopped at Big Shanty for breakfast, and this gave them their chance,
for the conductor, the engine-driver, and most of the passengers
descended for their meal, leaving the train unguarded.

Among the twenty were men who understood the stoking and driving of
railway engines, and it did not take long to uncouple three empty vans,
the locomotive, and the tender.  Brown and Knight, the two engineers,
and the fireman climbed into the cab, and the rest clambered into the
rear goods van--no easy job, for the cars stood on a high bank.  A
sentry with rifle in hand stood not a dozen feet from the engine,
watching the whole proceedings, but no move was made until it was too
late.  Andrews gave the signal, the wheels slipped at first on the
greasy metals, and then the train moved forward; and before the uproar
in the station behind began it had gathered speed.

The first and worst problem was the passing of trains coming from the
north.  There were two trains on the time-table which had to be passed
at certain stations, and there was also a local goods train not
scheduled, which might be anywhere.  Andrews hoped to avoid the danger
of collision by running according to the schedule of the train he had
captured, until the goods train was passed, and then to increase to
topmost speed till he reached the Oostenaula and Chickamauga bridges,
burn them and pass on through Chattanooga to Mitchel as he moved up
from Huntsville.  He hoped to reach his chief early in the afternoon.

It was a perfectly feasible plan, and it would almost certainly have
been carried out but for that fatal day's delay.  On Friday, the day
originally fixed, all the trains had been up to time, and the weather
had been good; but on that Saturday, as luck would have it, the whole
railway was in disorder, every train was late, and two "extras" had
been put on, of which the leader had no notion.  Had he known this,
even a man of his audacity would scarcely have started, and the world
would have been the poorer by the loss of a stirring tale.

The party had to make frequent stops, particularly between stations, to
tear up the track, cut the telegraph wires, and load on sleepers to be
used for bridge burning; and also at wayside stations to take on wood
and water.  At the latter Andrews bluffed the officials by telling them
that he was one of General Beauregard's officers, and was running a
powder train through to that General at Corinth.  Unfortunately he had
no proper instruments for pulling up the rails, and it was important to
keep to the schedule of the captured train, so they tore
light-heartedly past towns and villages, trusting to luck, and
exhilarated by the successful start of their wild adventure.

At a station called Etowah they found the "Yonah," an old engine owned
by an iron company, standing with steam up; but their mind was all on
the local goods train, so they left it untouched.  Thirty miles on from
Big Shanty they reached Kingston, where a branch line entered from the
town of Rome.  On the branch a train was waiting for the mail--that is
to say, their captured train--and Andrews learned that the local goods
was expected immediately; so he ran on to a side track, and waited for
it.

Presently it arrived, and to the consternation of the little party it
carried a red flag to show that another train was close behind it.
Andrews marched boldly across to its conductor and asked what was the
meaning of the railway being blocked in this fashion, when he had
orders to take the powder straight through to General Beauregard?  In
reply he was told that Mitchel had captured Huntsville and was said to
be marching on Chattanooga, and that everything was being cleared out
of that town.  Andrews ordered him to move his train down the line out
of the way, and he obeyed.

It seemed an eternity to the party before the "extra" arrived, and to
their dismay when it turned up they saw that it bore another red flag.
The reason given was that it was too heavy for one engine and had
therefore to be made up into two sections.  So began another anxious
wait.  The little band--Andrews with the engine-drivers and fireman in
the cab, and the rest taking the place of Beauregard's ammunition in
the goods vans--had to preserve composure as best they could, with
three trains clustered round them and every passenger in the three
extremely curious about the mysterious powder train into which the
morning mail had been transformed.  For one hour and five minutes they
waited at Kingston, the men in the goods vans being warned by Andrews
to be ready to fight in case of need.  He himself kept close to the
station in case some mischief-maker should send an inquiring telegram
down the line.  At long last came the second half of the local, and as
soon as it passed the end of their side track the adventurers moved on.
But the alarm had now been raised behind them.  From the midst of the
confusion at Big Shanty two men set out on foot along the track to make
some effort to capture the Northerners.  They were railwaymen--one the
conductor of the train, W. A. Fuller, and the other a foreman of the
Atlanta railway machine shops, called Anthony Murphy.  They found a
hand-car and pushed forward on it till they reached Etowah, where they
realized that the line had been cut by pitching headforemost down the
embankment into a ditch.  A little thing like this did not dismay them,
and at Etowah they found the "Yonah," the iron company's old
locomotive, which, as we know, was standing with steam up.  They got on
board, filled it up with soldiers who happened to be near, and started
off at full speed for Kingston, where they were convinced they would
catch the filibusters.  The "Yonah" actually entered Kingston station
four minutes after Andrews had started, and was of course immediately
confronted with the three long trains facing the wrong way.  It would
have taken too long to move them, so the "Yonah" was abandoned, and
Murphy uncoupled the engine and one coach of the Rome train, and
continued the chase.  It was now any one's race.  Andrews and his merry
men were only a few minutes ahead.

Four miles north from Kingston the little party again stopped and cut
the wires.  They started to take up a rail and were pulling at the
loosened end, when to their consternation they heard behind them the
whistle of an engine.  They managed to break the rail and then
clambered in and moved on.  At the next station, Adairsville, they
found a mixed goods and passenger train waiting, and learned that there
was an express on the road.  It was a crazy risk to take, but they
dared not delay, so they started at a terrific speed for the next
station, Calhoun, hoping to reach it before the express, which was
late, could arrive.

They did the nine miles to Calhoun in less than nine minutes, and saw
in front of them the express just starting.  Hearing their whistle it
backed, and enabled them to take a side track, but it stopped in such a
manner as to close the other end of the switch.  There stood the trains
side by side, almost touching each other.  Naturally questions were
asked, and Andrews was hard put to it to explain.  He told the powder
story, and demanded in the name of General Beauregard that the other
train should at once let him pass.  With some difficulty its conductor
was persuaded, and moved forward.

They were saved by the broken rail.  The pursuit saw it in time and
reversed their engine.  Leaving the soldiers behind, Fuller and Murphy
ran along the track till they met the train which Andrews had passed at
Adairsville.  They made it back in pursuit, and at Adairsville dropped
the coaches and continued with only the locomotive and tender, both
loaded with a further complement of armed soldiers.  They thought that
their quarry was safe at Calhoun, but they reached that place a minute
or two after Andrews had moved out.

Everything now depended on whether the band of twenty could make
another gap in the track in time, for if they could the road was clear
before them to Chattanooga.  A few minutes ahead of them was the
Oostenaula bridge, and if that could be burned they would soon be safe
in Mitchel's camp.

But the mischief was that they had no proper tools, and the taking up
of the rails was terribly slow.  Once again they heard the whistle of a
locomotive behind them and saw their pursuer with armed men aboard.
Another minute would have removed the rail, and their victory would
have been assured; but they could do nothing more than bend it, and
were compelled to hurry back to their engine.

Now began one of the most astounding hunts on record.  At all costs
Andrews must gain a little time so as to set fire to the Oostenaula
bridge; so he dropped first one car and then another.  The pursuing
engine, however, simply picked them up and pushed them ahead of it.
There was no time to do anything at the bridge.  Over its high trestles
they tore, with Fuller and his soldiers almost within rifle shot.

Soon it appeared that there was no difference in the pace of the two
engines.  The Confederates could not overtake the filibusters, and
Fuller's policy was therefore to keep close behind so as to prevent
Andrews damaging the track and taking on wood and water.  Both engines
were driven to their last decimal of power, and Andrews succeeded in
keeping his distance.  But he was constantly delayed, for he was
obliged to cut the telegraph wires after every station he passed, in
order that an alarm might not be sent ahead; and he could not stop long
enough to tear up rails.

All that man could do in the way of obstruction he did, for at all
costs he must gain enough ground to destroy the Chickamauga bridges.
He broke off the end of their last goods van and dropped it and various
sleepers behind him, and this sufficiently checked the pursuit to
enable him on two occasions to take in wood and water.  More than once
his party almost succeeded in lifting a rail, but each time Fuller got
within rifle range before the work was completed, Through it all it
rained, a steady even-down deluge.  The day before had been clear, with
a high wind, and a fire would have been quick to start, but on that
Saturday, to burn a bridge would take time and much fuel.

On went the chase, mile after mile, past little forgotten stations and
quiet villages, round perilous curves, and over culverts and
embankments which had never before known such speed.  Hope revived
whenever the enemy was lost sight of behind a curve, but whenever the
line straightened the smoke appeared again in the distance, and on
their ears fell the ominous scream of his whistle.  To the men, strung
to a desperate tension, every minute seemed an hour.  If the
Northerners' courage was superb, so also was the pursuit's.  Several
times Fuller only escaped wreck by a hairbreadth.  At one point a rail
placed across the track at a curve was not seen until the train was
upon it, when, said Fuller, "the engine seemed to bounce altogether off
the track, and to alight again on the rails by a miracle."  A few of
the soldiers lost their nerve and would have given up the chase, but
the stubborn resolution of their leader constrained them.

Some of Andrews' party now proposed that they should turn and ambush
the enemy, getting into close quarters so that their revolvers would be
a match for his guns.  This plan would probably have succeeded, but
Andrews still hoped to gain sufficient ground to achieve his main
purpose; and he feared, too, that the country ahead might have been
warned by a telegram sent round to Chattanooga by way of Richmond.  He
thought his only chance was to stake everything on speed.  Close to the
town of Dalton he stopped again to cut wires and confuse the track.  A
Confederate regiment was encamped a hundred yards away, but, assuming
that the train was part of the normal traffic, the men scarcely lifted
their eyes to look at it.  Fuller had written a telegram to Chattanooga
and dropped a man with orders to send it.  Part of the telegram got
through before the wires were cut and created a panic in that town.
Meantime, Andrews' supply of fuel was getting very low, and it was
clear that unless he could delay the pursuit long enough to take in
more, his journey would soon come to an end.

Beyond Dalton the adventurers made their last efforts to take up a
rail, but, as they had no tools except an iron bar, the coming of the
enemy compelled them to desist.  Beyond that was a long tunnel, which
they made no attempt to damage.  Andrews saw that the situation was
getting desperate, and he played his last card.

He increased speed so that he gained some considerable distance.  Then
the side and end boards of the last goods van were broken up, fuel was
piled upon it, and fire brought from the engine.  A long covered bridge
lay a little ahead, and by the time they reached it the van was fairly
on fire.  It was uncoupled in the middle of the bridge, and they
awaited the issue.  If this device was successful there was sufficient
steam in their boiler to carry them to the next woodyard.

But the device did not succeed.  Before the bridge had caught fire
Fuller was upon them.  He dashed right through the smoke and drove the
burning car before him to the next side track.

Left with very little fuel and with no obstructions to drop on the
track, the position of the adventurers was now hopeless.  In a few
minutes their engine would come to a standstill.  Their only chance was
to leave it and escape.  The wisest plan would probably have been to
desert the train in a body, move northward through the mountains by
tracks which could not be followed by cavalry, and where there were no
telegraphs.  But Andrews thought that they should separate.  He ordered
the men to jump from the engine one by one and disperse in the woods.
So ended in failure a most gallant enterprise.

Melancholy is the conclusion of the tale.  Ignorant of the country and
far from their friends, the fugitives were easily hunted down.  Several
were captured the same day, and all but two within the week.  As the
adventurers had been in civil dress inside the enemy's lines they were
regarded as spies, court-martialed, and Andrews and seven others
condemned and executed.  The advance of the Northern forces prevented
the trial of the rest, and of the remainder, eight succeeded in making
their escape from Atlanta in broad daylight, and ultimately reaching
the North.  The others, who also made the attempt, were recaptured and
held captive till March 1863, when they were exchanged for Confederate
prisoners.

I know of few stories where the enterprise was at once so audacious and
so feasible, where success turned upon such an infinity of delicate
chances, and where it was missed by so slender a margin.




[Illustration: _Cromwell._]




III

THE ESCAPE OF KING CHARLES AFTER WORCESTER

I

On Wednesday, the third day of September 1651, the army which had
marched from Scotland to set King Charles upon the throne was utterly
defeated by Cromwell at Worcester.  The battle began at one o'clock and
lasted during the autumn afternoon, the main action being fought east
of the city.  Many of the chief Royalists, like the Duke of Hamilton,
fell on the field.  When the issue was clear, Charles, accompanied by
the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Derby, Lord Shrewsbury, Lord Wilmot, and
others, entered the city by Sidbury Gate.  There an ammunition wagon
had been overturned, and this gave check for a moment to the pursuit.
In Friars Street the King threw off his armour and was given a fresh
horse, and the whole party galloped through the streets and out at St.
Martin's Gate.  Charles was wearing the laced coat of the Cavalier, a
linen doublet, grey breeches, and buff gloves with blue silk bands and
silver lace.  The little party, dusty and begrimed with battle,
galloped to the Barbon Bridge, a mile north of the city, where they
halted for a moment to plan their journey.

The nearest and most obvious refuge was Wales, where the country people
were Royalist, and where, in the mountains, Cromwell's troopers might
well be defied.  But there was no chance of crossing the Severn in that
neighbourhood, so it was decided to ride north into Shropshire.
Colonel Careless offered to act as rearguard and stave off the pursuit,
and Mr. Charles Giffard, of the ancient family of the Giffards of
Chillington, who knew the forest country of the Staffordshire and
Shropshire borders, undertook the business of guide.  There was a place
called Boscobel, an old hunting lodge among the woods, where Lord Derby
had already been concealed a few weeks before, so Giffard and a servant
called Francis Yates (who was afterwards captured by the Cromwellians
and executed) led the little band through the twilight meadows.

They passed the town of Kidderminster on their left, where, at the
moment, Mr. Richard Baxter, the Presbyterian divine, was watching from
an upper window in the market-place the defeated Royalists galloping
through and a small party of Cromwellian soldiers firing wildly at the
fugitives.  The main road was no place for the King when the bulk of
the Scottish horse was fleeing northward by that way, so he turned
through Stourbridge and halted two miles farther on at a wayside inn to
drink a glass of ale and eat a crust of bread.  After that they passed
through the boundaries of the old Brewood Forest, and at about four
o'clock on the morning of Thursday, 4th September, arrived at the
ancient half-timbered manor of Whiteladies, belonging to the family of
Giffard.  A certain George Penderel was in charge as bailiff, and at
the sight of the party he stuck his head out of the window and asked
for news of the battle.  The door was flung open, and the King rode his
horse into the hall.  Charles was taken into the inner parlour, and
George's brothers, William and Richard Penderel, were sent for.
Richard was bidden fetch his best clothes, which were breeches of
coarse green cloth and a leathern doublet.  Charles changed into them,
his hair was shorn, and he was now no more the Cavalier, but a
countryman of the name of Will Jones, armed with a woodbill.

It would have been fatal for the party to have remained together, so
his companions galloped off in the direction of Newport, where most of
them were taken prisoner.  Lord Derby was captured and afterwards
beheaded; Giffard also was taken, but he managed to escape, as did
Talbot and Buckingham.  Charles was led by Richard Penderel into a wood
at the back of the house called Spring Coppice, where he had to make
himself as comfortable as might be under the trees.

All that day, Thursday, 4th September, it rained incessantly.  Richard
Penderel brought him food and blankets, and Charles, worn out with want
of sleep, dozed till the dusk of the evening.  Then Penderel aroused
him and bade him be going.  His proposal was to guide him south-west to
Madeley, where there seemed a chance of crossing the Severn into Wales.
Madeley lay only nine miles to the south-west, a pleasant walk among
woods and meadows; but on that autumn night, with the rain falling in
bucketfuls and every field a bog, it was a dismal journey for a young
man stiff from lying all day in the woods, and stayed by no better meal
than eggs and milk.  Charles was a hearty trencherman, and had not
trained his body to put up with short commons.  However, he was given
some bacon and eggs before he started.

The Penderels were Catholics, and men of that faith were accustomed in
those days to secret goings and desperate shifts, and, since all were
half-outlawed, there was a freemasonry between them.  Therefore Richard
proposed to take the King to a Catholic friend of his, Mr. Francis
Wolfe, on the Severn bank, who might conceal him and pass him across
the river into Wales.  That journey in the rain remained in the King's
mind as a time of peculiar hardships, though there seems no particular
difficulty in an active young man walking nine miles at leisure in the
darkness.  In after years Charles was a famous walker, and used to tire
out all his courtiers both by his pace and endurance.  But on this
occasion he appears to have been footsore and unnerved.  When they had
gone a mile they had to pass a water-mill and cross a little river by a
wooden bridge.  The miller came out and asked them their errand;
whereupon Penderel took alarm and splashed through the water, followed
by his King.  After that Charles almost gave up.  Lord Clarendon to
whom he told the story, says that "he many times cast himself upon the
ground with a desperate and obstinate resolution to rest there till the
morning that he might shift with less torment, what hazard so ever he
ran.  But his stout guide still prevailed with him to make a new
attempt, sometimes promising that the way should be better and
sometimes assuring him that he had but little farther to go."  Charles
was desperately footsore.  Perhaps the country shoes of "Will Jones"
did not fit him.

[Illustration: _Penderel took alarm and splashed through the water,
followed by his King._]

In the small hours they arrived at Mr. Wolfe's house.  Charles waited
"under a hedge by a great tree" while Richard Penderel went forward to
meet his friend.  He was greeted with bad news.  Every ford, every
bridge, and every ferry on the Severn was guarded by the Cromwellians,
who were perfectly aware that the King would make for Wales.  Wolfe had
"priests' holes" in his house, but he did not dare to hide the King
there, for they had already been discovered by the soldiers; so Charles
was concealed among the hay in the barn, where he lay during the day of
Friday the 5th.  There was nothing for it but to take refuge at
Boscobel, the hiding-place originally arranged that night, after
borrowing a few shillings from Wolfe the King and Richard set off
eastward again guided for the first part of the road by Mr. Wolfe's
maid.  At Whiteladies they heard that Colonel Careless, who was acting
as rearguard, had safely reached the Boscobel neighbourhood, and that
Lord Wilmot was at Moseley, in Staffordshire, nine or ten miles to the
east.  All the country was thick woodland interspersed with heaths, and
few safer hiding-places could be found in England.

Charles was now in better form.  The Penderels had stripped off his
stockings, washed his feet and anointed the blisters.  His disguise was
also perfected, for his face and hands had been dyed with juice, and he
made gallant efforts to imitate the clumsy gait of a yokel.  But his
disguise can never have been very perfect.  The harsh features, the
curious curl of the lips, the saturnine dark eyes, and above all the
figure and the speech, were not such as are commonly found among
mid-England peasantry.

Penderel did not dare take him into the house, so he took refuge in the
wood, where he was presently joined by Colonel Careless.  On the coast
being reported clear, the King spent the night in one of the priests'
holes in the old manor, an uncomfortable dormitory, which had, however,
a gallery adjoining it, where he took walking exercise and surveyed the
road from Tong to Brewood.  Saturday the 6th was a fine day, and the
King spent some time sitting in an arbour in the garden.  He was
presently induced by Colonel Careless to seek a safer retreat in an oak
tree in the wood.  A little platform was made in the upper branches,
pillows were brought from the house, and there Careless and the King
spent the day.  The Royal Oak is famous in Stuart history, and this
particular tree has long since been hacked to pieces to make keepsakes
for the faithful.  But it is by no means certain that Charles was in
particular danger during the day that he slept in it, or that any
Roundhead trooper rode below the branches and "hummed a surly hymn."
Careless had the worst part of the business, for the King rested his
head in his lap and the honest soldier's arm went to sleep.  "This," in
the words of the Miraculum Basilicon, "caused such a stupor or numbness
in the part, that he had scarcely strength left in it any longer to
support His Majesty from falling off the tree, neither durst he by
reason of the nearness of the enemy speak so loud as to awake him;
nevertheless, to avoid both the danger of the fall and surprise
together, he was (though unwillingly) constrained to practise so much
incivility as to pinch His Majesty, to the end he might awake him to
prevent his present danger."

When the dusk came the two descended and went into the manor-house.
There they were met by the news that the enemy cordon was closing
round, and that 1,000 reward had been put upon the King's head.
Charles, however, was in no way dismayed, and demanded a loin of
mutton.  William Penderel accordingly fetched one of his master's
sheep, which Careless stabbed and cut up with his dagger.  The King
made Scotch collops of a hind-quarter, which the Colonel fried in a
pan, and the two had a hearty meal.  The King slept that night in the
house in a "priest's hole," and next day resolved to join Lord Wilmot
at Moseley.  He found, however, that his feet were still so tender that
walking was impossible, so an old mill horse that had carried
provisions in the campaign was found for him.  Mounted on this beast,
attended by Careless and the Penderels, the King set out in the dusk of
the Sunday evening.  At Moseley he found Lord Wilmot, and since Moseley
was a safer place than Boscobel, the King spent a peaceful night in the
house.  There, too, was a priest, Father John Huddleston, and not far
off was Colonel Lane, both devoted Royalists.  There he said farewell
to his staunch friends, the Penderels.  The King, we are told, spent
the evening by the fire while Father Huddlestone attended to his
unfortunate feet.  Charles had stuffed his stockings with paper, but
the precaution had not saved him from further galls and sores.  He was
given new worsted stockings and clean linen and slippers, and was so
much cheered thereby that he declared he was now fit for a new march,
and that "if it should ever please God to bless him with ten or twelve
thousand loyal and resolute men, he doubted not to drive these traitors
out of his kingdom."

We have this description of Charles on his arrival at Moseley: "He had
on his head a long white steeple-crowned hat, without any other lining
than grease, both sides of the brim so doubled with handling that they
looked like two spouts; a leather doublet full of holes, and half black
with grease above the sleeves, collar, and waist; an old green
woodreve's coat, threadbare and patched in most places, with a pair of
breeches of the same cloth and in the same condition, the flaps hanging
down loose to the middle of his legs; hose and shoes of different
parishes; the hose were grey, much darned and clouted, especially about
the knees, under which he had a pair of flannel riding-stockings of his
own with the tops cut off.  His shoes had been cobbled with leather
patches both on the soles and the seams, and the upper-leathers so cut
and slashed, to adapt them to his feet, that they could no longer
defend him either from water or dirt.  This exotic and deformed dress,
added to his short hair by the ears, his face coloured brown with
walnut leaves, and a rough crooked thorn stick in his hand, had so
metamorphosed him, he became scarcely discernible who he was, even to
those that had been before acquainted with his person."

Next day, Monday, the 8th, it was given out that Father Huddleston had
a Cavalier friend lying privately in the house, and all the servants
were sent away on errands except the cook, who was a Catholic.  Watch
was kept at the different windows in case of any roving party of
soldiers.  The King spent the day largely in sleeping and discussing
the future, while messages were sent to loyal neighbouring squires to
find out the lie of the land.  He saw a sad sight from the
windows--many starving Royalist soldiers limping past the door,
munching cabbage stalks and corn plucked from the fields.  However, he
heard one piece of news of some importance.  Colonel Lane, who lived
five miles off at Bentley, had a sister, Miss Jane, who had procured a
pass from the Governor of Stafford for herself and her servant to go to
Bristol, and it was thought that if the King passed as her servant he
might thereby get clear of the country.  It was accordingly arranged
that on the Tuesday night Lord Wilmot's horses should fetch the King to
Bentley, as the first stage of his journey to the Bristol Channel.

On the Tuesday afternoon, however, the plan all but miscarried.  A
party of soldiers arrived to search Moseley, and the King was hurriedly
hustled into one of the "priest's holes."  The place is still pointed
out--a stuffy little nook behind the panelling, through which liquid
food used to be conveyed to the unfortunate occupant by means of a
quill through a chink in the beams.  The soldiers made a great row, and
questioned the owner, Mr. Whitgreave, with a musket cocked at his
breast, but in the end departed.  When dusk fell Colonel Lane's horses
arrived, and Charles set out and arrived safely at Bentley.  There
Colonel Lane gave him, in place of Will Jones's unspeakable clothes, a
good suit and cloak of country grey, like a farmer's son, and put 20
in his pocket for the expenses of the journey.


II

The King is now no longer an aimless wanderer among the Staffordshire
woods.  A plan of campaign had been evolved, and the fugitive in a
reasonable disguise is making for the sea.  He arrived at Bentley about
midnight on 9th September.  The party that set out on the 10th
consisted of Miss Jane Lane, her cousin, Mrs. Petre, Mr. Petre, that
cousin's husband, and a certain Cornet Henry Lassels, also a kinsman.
The Petres were bound for their house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire,
and proposed to go only as far as Stratford-on-Avon.  Charles rode in
front as Miss Jane's servant.  The route lay by Bromsgrove and
Stratford-on-Avon, then through Cotswold to Cirencester, and thence to
Bristol.

It was a bold enterprise, for the natural route of flight after
Worcester would be down the Severn valley to the sea.  Cromwell's
troopers were in every parish, and a large part of the population,
knowing of the King's escape and the reward for his capture, were on
the watch for any suspicious stranger.  The first stop was at the
village of Bromsgrove, where the King's horse cast a shoe.  In the
smithy Charles, in his character of servant, asked the smith the news.
"Precious little," was the answer, "except that Cromwell has routed the
Scots.  He has slain or captured most of them, but I hear the King has
made his escape."  "Perhaps," said Charles, "the King has gone by
by-ways back into Scotland."  "No," said the smith, "there is not much
luck for him that way.  He is lurking secretly somewhere in these
parts, and I wish I knew where he were, for then I would be the richer
by a thousand pounds."

Nothing more happened till they came near Stratford, riding as hard as
they could by secluded by-ways.  Their plan was to ford the Avon about
a mile below the town; but when they drew near the river they observed
soldiers' horses feeding in the meadows and many troopers lying upon
the ground.  This sight made them turn to their left so as to enter
Stratford another way.  But at the bridge there they ran full into the
same troop of soldiers.  The troop opened right and left to let them
pass, and returned the civil salute which the little party gave them.

They were now among the foothills of Cotswold, and before evening
reached the straggling village of Long Marston, a place famous for its
morrice dancing.  In the village there was a certain Mr. John Tomes,
and in his house the travellers found lodging.  The King, passing as a
servant, found his way to the kitchen, where, like an earlier monarch
of England, he was scolded by the cook because he had no notion how to
wind up a roasting-jack.  The said jack is still in existence, and is
to be seen in the village.  Meantime Lord Wilmot and Colonel Lane were
following behind, and the latter turned off towards London, in order to
arrange the final details of a pass for "Will Jackson," which was the
name the King had now adopted.

On Thursday morning, 11th September, the travellers began the ascent
into the Cotswold moors.  In that empty country of sheep-walks there
was less risk of detection, and accordingly good speed was made by
Stow-on-the-Wold and along the old Roman Fosse Way to Northleach and so
to Cirencester, where they arrived in the evening, after a ride of
thirty-six miles.  Near the market-place stood the "Crown Inn," an
inconspicuous hostelry, and the travellers, professing great fatigue,
went immediately to bed.  In one chamber a good bed was prepared for
Mr. Lassels and a truckle bed for Will Jackson; but as soon as the door
was closed the King went to sleep in the good bed and the Cornet on the
pallet.

Next day, Friday, 12th September, the party rode twenty-two miles
south-west to Chipping Sodbury, probably escorted for part of the way
by Captain Matthew Huntley, an old soldier of Prince Rupert's, who
lived in these parts.  They entered the city of Bristol by Lawford's
Gate, rode through the streets, crossed the Avon by a ferry, and kept
the left bank of the river to the village of Abbots Leigh, three miles
west of Bristol.  Abbots Leigh, which stands high up on the Downs, was
an old Elizabethan house belonging to the family of Norton.  There the
King was in safe quarters.  Miss Jane ordered a bed to be made for him
in a private room, and gave out that he was the son of one of her
father's tenants and was sick of an ague.  A neighbouring Royalist
country gentleman, Dr. Gorge, was called in to prescribe.  Seeing that
the party had come from the north, Gorge asked the King for news of
battle.  When Charles faltered in his answer the doctor accused him of
being a Roundhead.  The King denied the charge, and was there and then
compelled to prove his politics by drinking a glass of wine to his own
health.

For four days Charles pretended to be sick, and sat in the chimney
corner, while Miss Jane complained to heaven of the feebleness of her
servant.  "That wretched boy will never be good for anything again,"
she told all and sundry.  One day the King, while eating his bread and
cheese in the buttery, fell into talk with a man who had been at
Worcester, and asked him if he had ever seen the King.  "Twenty times,"
was the answer.  "What kind of a fellow is he?" The man looked at
Charles steadfastly.  "He is," he said, "four fingers' breadth taller
than you."  At that moment Mrs. Norton passed and Charles took off his
hat to her.  The butler, who had never seen him uncovered, saw
something in his face which he remembered.  He took occasion a little
later, when they were alone, to ask if he were not the King.  Charles
confessed that he was, and the butler--one John Pope, who had been once
a falconer of Sir Thomas Jermyn, and afterwards a Royalist
soldier--swore secrecy and fealty.  Another person was now in the plot,
and Pope was used as a messenger to Bristol to find out what ships were
sailing.  But the news was bad.  No vessel could be obtained there, and
since it was clear that the King could not stay on at Abbots Leigh, it
was resolved to seek the hospitality of Colonel Francis Wyndham, who
lived at Trent on the Dorsetshire borders.  The aim was to reach the
south coast, where a smack might be hired to carry him into France.

Lord Wilmot, who had arrived at Abbots Leigh soon after the King, was
sent off to Trent to inquire whether the Wyndhams would hide His
Majesty.  He brought back a reply that Wyndham "thought himself
extremely happy that amongst so many noble and loyal subjects he should
be reckoned chiefly worthy of that honour, and that he was ready not
only to venture his life, family, and estate, but even to sacrifice all
to His Majesty's service."  There was some difficulty about the
departure of Miss Jane.  The lady at Abbots Leigh had just had a child
and implored her friend not to leave her.  An imaginary letter was
accordingly fabricated, purporting to be from Miss Jane's father,
demanding her immediate return on the ground of his sudden and
dangerous illness.

On the 16th Miss Jane, Lassels, and Charles set out for Dorsetshire,
going first towards Bristol as if they were returning to Bentley.
Presently they turned the horses' heads south towards Castle Cary,
where they were to sleep that night.  The manor there was occupied by
Lord Hertford's steward, one Edward Kirton, who had been advised by
Lord Wilmot to look out for the travellers.  Next day a ride of ten
miles brought the party to Trent where Colonel Francis Wyndham and his
wife, Lady Anne, were waiting to receive them.  The Wyndhams, as if
taking an evening walk, met their guests before the house was reached.
Miss Jane and Lassels were publicly received as relations, but Charles
was brought secretly into the old house.

Next morning the King parted with Miss Jane, who had been the Flora
Macdonald of his Odyssey.  She lived thirty-eight years after that
eventful journey, marrying Sir Clement Fisher of Packington, a
Warwickshire squire.  She became a famous toast to Royalists, and the
many portraits extant reveal a lady of pleasing aspect, with a certain
resolution and vigour in her air.  The King gave her many gifts, the
House of Lords presented her with jewels, and she and all her relations
had royal pensions.  Her brother, Colonel Lane, was offered but
declined a peerage.  The family were granted an augmentation to their
coat of arms, and the motto "Garde le Roi" to commemorate their
achievement.

Trent was a good hiding-place and within reasonable distance of the
coast, so that negotiations could be entered upon for a vessel to carry
His Majesty to France.  There Charles stayed several days, living in a
set of four rooms, which are still unaltered.  One day the bells of the
neighbouring church rang out a peal, and the King sent to inquire the
reason for the rejoicing.  He was told that one of Cromwell's troopers
was in the village, who announced that he had killed Charles, and was
even then wearing his buff coat, and that the villagers, being mostly
Puritans, were celebrating the joyful news.

Meanwhile Colonel Wyndham was hunting high and low for a ship.  He
consulted his neighbour, Colonel Strangways of Melbury, the ancestor of
the Ilchester family; and a certain William Ellesdon, a merchant of
Lyme Regis, was named as a likely person to procure a vessel, since he
had already assisted Lord Berkeley to escape.  Ellesdon suggested a
tenant of his, one Stephen Limbry of Charmouth, the master of a
coasting vessel, and for 60 the latter agreed to carry Lord Wilmot and
his servant to France.  Limbry was to have his long boat ready at
Charmouth on the night of the 22nd.

The next thing was to get rooms at Charmouth for that night, and
Wyndham's servant was sent to an inn--"The Queen's Arms"--in that
place, with a tale of how he served a worthy nobleman who was deep in
love with an orphan maid and was resolved to steal her by night.  The
romantic hostess believed the story, and agreed to give them rooms and
keep her tongue quiet.  Accordingly Charles set out on the morning of
22nd September from Trent, riding pillion with a certain Miss Juliana
Coningsby, Colonel Wyndham's pretty cousin, who was to play the part of
the runaway heroine.  Colonel Wyndham went as a guide, and Lord Wilmot
and his servant followed behind.  On the way to Charmouth they met
Ellesdon, who learned for the first time that the King was the
fugitive.  Charles made the merchant a present of a gold coin in which
he had bored a hole to wile away the dreary hours of his hiding in
Trent In the afternoon the little party rode down the steep hill into
Charmouth, arriving at the inn of the romantic landlady, while Ellesdon
went to hunt up Limbry, the seaman.

It was an anxious moment, for, as luck would have it, it was market day
at Lyme and the inn was crowded.  Lord Wilmot and Miss Coningsby had to
live up to the part of runaway lovers--a part in which Charles would
probably have shown more zeal than discretion.

Midnight came, but there was no sign of Limbry.  Wyndham and his
servant were out all night on the quest, but at dawn they returned to
report failure.  The first idea was that the man must have got drunk at
the market; but later the true story came out.  Limbry had gone home to
get clean clothes for the voyage.  But that day a proclamation had been
made in the town declaring it death for any person to aid or conceal
the King, and promising 1,000 reward for his apprehension.  His wife,
knowing her husband's practices in the past, accordingly locked him in
his room, and when he would have broken out raised racket enough to
alarm the neighbourhood.  The prudent man made a virtue of necessity
and submitted.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish.  Charles could not stay at Charmouth,
and it was arranged that he and Miss Coningsby and Wyndham should ride
on to Bridport, while Lord Wilmot and his servant should remain behind
for an explanation with Ellesdon.  A rendezvous was to be made at the
"George Inn" at Bridport.  Off went the King, while Lord Wilmot's horse
went to the smithy to be shod.  The smith, who was a stout Cromwellian,
began to ask questions.  Whence came these nails if the gentlemen had
ridden from Exeter, for these nails were assuredly put in in the North?
The ostler in charge of the horse added that the saddles had not been
taken off in the night time, and that the gentlemen, though travellers,
sat up all night.  Clearly they were people of quality fleeing from the
Worcester fight, and probably the King was among them.  The ostler saw
a chance of making his fortune, and marched off to the parsonage to
consult the parson, one Wesley, the great grandfather of the famous
John.  It is interesting to note that just as Lord Macaulay's great
grandfather did his best to prevent Prince Charlie's escape, so John
Wesley's great-grandfather came athwart that of King Charles.

But Mr. Wesley was busy at his morning devotions and would not move
till they were ended.  On hearing the tale he accompanied the ostler to
the inn, where, being apparently a humorist, he thus accosted the
landlady: "Charles Stuart lay last night at your house and kissed you
at his departure, so that now you can't but be a maid of honour."  "If
I thought it was the King, as you say it was," was the answer, "I would
think the better of my lips all the days of my life.  Out of my house,
Mr. Parson."  So Mr. Parson went to the nearest commanding officer and
got a troop of horse together, who followed what they believed to be
the track of the fugitives along the London road.

Meantime Charles had arrived at Bridport.  The town was packed with
soldiers who had mustered there for an expedition against the Isle of
Jersey.  It was no easy matter to get lodgings at the "George"; but
there he must go, for it was the rendezvous appointed with Lord Wilmot.
A private room was found with some difficulty, while the King attended
to the horses in the yard.  There he met a drunken ostler who claimed
to have known him in Exeter; the King played up to this part and the
two made merry together.  A hurried dinner was eaten, for there was no
time to linger, and as soon as Lord Wilmot had joined them they pushed
on along the London road.  A quarter of an hour after they left the
"George" the local authorities arrived to search it (the news of the
Royalists' presence having come from Charmouth), and more soldiers
started in pursuit.  Luckily the King's party resolved to go back to
Trent, and had just turned off the high road when they saw the pursuit
dash past in the direction of Dorchester.

After that the travellers seemed to have lost their way, but in the
evening they found themselves in the village of Broad Windsor, close to
Trent.  In the inn there Colonel Wyndham recognized in the landlord a
former servant and a staunch Royalist, and there they slept the night.
It was a narrow lodging and much congested with forty soldiers, who
were marching to the south coast on the Jersey expedition.  No untoward
event, however, happened, and next morning the King got back to his old
quarters in Trent.  There he lay secure while his pursuers were laying
hands upon every handsome young lady for forty miles round, under the
belief that it was their monarch in disguise.  The honest folk of
Charmouth and Bridport seem to have seen the King in Miss Julia
Coningsby, and, indeed, this belief in Charles's female disguise was
almost universal.  There was another rumour in London that, wearing a
red periwig, he had actually got a post as servant to an officer of
Cromwell's army; and still another, published on 29th September, that
he was safe in Scotland with Lord Balcarres.


III

The problem of escape had now become exceedingly difficult.  It was
impossible to stay on the coast, which was strictly watched, and was,
moreover, all in a bustle with the Jersey expedition.  But the coast
was the only hope, and therefore it must be again visited.  The only
chance was to make a cast inland and try for the shore at another
point.  While at Trent, Colonel Wyndham's brother-in-law, Mr. Edward
Hyde, came to dine, and mentioned that on the previous day at Salisbury
he had seen Colonel Robert Phelips of Montacute, who could probably get
them a vessel in one of the southern ports.  Lord Wilmot was
accordingly sent off next morning to Salisbury to find Colonel Phelips
and devise a plan.

Phelips willingly undertook the service and went off to Southampton to
look for a ship.  He thought he had found one; but it turned out that
the bark was pressed to carry provisions to Admiral Blake's fleet, then
lying before Jersey.  He returned to Salisbury, and decided to get the
assistance of a certain Colonel Gounter who lived near Chichester.  It
was agreed that Charles should be brought to Heale House, near
Salisbury, the residence of a widow, a Mrs. Hyde, and there, on Monday,
6th October, accompanied by Miss Juliana Coningsby, the King duly
arrived from Trent.  At Heale Miss Juliana left him, having faithfully
played her romantic part.  To dinner came Dr. Hinchman, afterwards
Bishop of Salisbury, and next day the King behaved like an ordinary
tourist, riding out to see the sights, especially Stonehenge.
Meanwhile Lord Wilmot was scouring the country for a man who would hire
him a boat, and he and Colonel Gounter thought their likeliest chance
was with a certain Captain Nicholas Tattersal, the master of a small
coal brig, the _Surprise_, at Brighton.  Tattersal, however, had just
started for Chichester; but a message reached him at Shoreham, and on
Saturday, 11th October, there was a meeting, when, for 60, the captain
agreed to carry over to France Colonel Gounter's two friends, who were
said to be anxious to leave the country because of their part in a
fatal duel.

It was now necessary to get the King from Heale to the Sussex coast.
At two o'clock on the Monday morning Charles rode out of Heale by the
back way with Colonel Phelips, and took the road for Hampshire.  After
they had covered about fifteen miles they were joined by Colonel
Gounter and Lord Wilmot, who, by previous arrangement, had been
coursing hares on the Downs.  They spent the night in a house at
Hambledon among the pleasant hills of the Forest of Bere, where they
parted with Phelips.  Colonel Gounter was now in charge, and on
Tuesday, the 14th, their way lay through the county of Sussex.
Charles's disguise must have been fairly complete, for he seems usually
to have been taken for a Parliamentarian, since William Penderel's
scissors had left him with very little hair.  He took pains to keep up
the character, for when an innkeeper used an oath, he flung up his
hands and drawled, "Oh, dear brother, that is a 'scape.'  Swear not, I
beseech thee."  He was clad in a short coat and breeches of
sad-coloured cloth, with a black hat, and, according to one narrative,
cut a figure like "the minor sort of country gentleman."

This last day's ride was in many ways the most hazardous of all.  As
they neared Arundel Castle they suddenly encountered the Governor
setting out to hunt with some of his men.  Crossing the Arun at
Houghton Bridge, they had beer at a poor alehouse and lunched off two
neat's tongues, which Colonel Gounter had brought with him.  Then they
passed through the pretty village of Bramber, which, as it happened,
was full of Cromwellian soldiers who had stopped for refreshment.  When
they had left the village behind them they heard a clattering at their
back and saw the whole troop riding as if in pursuit.  The soldiers,
however, galloped past them without stopping, and at the next village,
Beeding, where Colonel Gounter had arranged a meal for the King, they
did not dare to halt for fear of the same soldiers.  Nine miles more
over the Downs and they reached the obscure little fishing village of
Brighthelmstone, which was all that then existed of Brighton, and
halted at the "George Inn," where they ordered supper.

The place was happily empty, and there Lord Wilmot joined them.  That
last meal was a merry one, and Charles was especially cheerful, for he
saw his long suspense approaching its end.  He had borne the strain
with admirable fortitude and good-humour, and whatever may be said of
his qualities as a king on the throne, he was certainly an excellent
king of adventure.  The landlord, one Smith, who had formerly been in
the Royal Guards, waited on the table at supper and apparently
recognized His Majesty, for he kissed his hand and said, "It shall not
be said that I have not kissed the best man's hand in England.  God
bless you!  I do not doubt but, before I die, to be a lord and my wife
a lady."  Tattersal, the shipmaster, also joined them, and they sat
drinking and smoking until 10 p.m., when it was time to start.

Horses were brought by the back way to the beach, and the party rode
along the coast to Shoreham Creek.  There lay the coal brig, the
_Surprise_, and Charles and Lord Wilmot got into her by way of her
ladder and lay down in the little cabin till the tide turned, after
bidding adieu to Colonel Gounter.  The honest Colonel waited upon the
shore with the horses for some hours, lest some accident should drive
the party ashore again.

It was between seven and eight o'clock in the morning of Wednesday,
15th October, before the boat sailed, making apparently for the Isle of
Wight, the captain having given out that he was bound for Poole with a
cargo of sea coal.  At five o'clock that evening they changed
direction, and with a favourable north wind set out for the French
coast.  The King amused himself on deck by directing the course, for he
knew something of navigation.  Next morning the coast of France was
sighted, but a change in the wind and the falling tide compelled them
to anchor two miles off Fecamp.  Charles and Wilmot rowed ashore in the
cock-boat.  Thereafter the wind turned again, and enabled Tattersal to
proceed to Poole without any one being aware that he had paid a visit
to France.

After the Restoration the little coal boat was ornamented and enlarged
and moored in the Thames at Whitehall as a show for Londoners.  She now
bore the name of the Royal Escape, and was entered as a fifth-rater in
the Royal Navy.

Wilmot, the loyal and resourceful companion, did not live to see the
Restoration, for he died in the autumn of 1657, after he had been
created Earl of Rochester.  Nine years after the events recorded in
this tale, on the 25th May, in bright weather, Charles landed at Dover
at the summons of his countrymen, as the restored King of England.  He
was met by the Mayor and presented with a Bible, which, he observed,
was the thing he most valued in the world.  So began a reign which was
scarcely worthy of its spirited prelude.  In one matter, indeed, the
King was beyond criticism.  No one of the people, gentle or simple, who
had assisted him in that wild flight from Worcester died unrewarded.
Until the end of his days Charles cherished tenderly the memory of the
weeks when he had been an outlaw with a price on his head, and king,
like Robin Hood, only of the greenwood.



[Illustration: _Charles II._]




IV

FROM PRETORIA TO THE SEA

I

On November 15, 1899, Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer Haldane, who in the
Great War commanded the VI. Corps, was thirty-seven years of age and a
captain in the Gordon Highlanders.  Mr. Winston Churchill, who was
afterwards to hold most offices in the British Cabinet, was then
twenty-five, and was acting as correspondent for the _Morning Post_ on
the Natal front.  He had already seen service with his regiment, the
4th Hussars, on the Indian frontier, and in other capacities in Cuba
and on the Nile.  The South African War had just begun, and so far had
gone badly for Britain.  Sir George White was cut off in Ladysmith; but
Sir Redvers Buller had landed in Natal, and it was believed that he
would soon advance to an easy victory.  The South African War, as we
all know, was entered upon light-heartedly and with very scanty
fore-knowledge of the problems to be faced.  Much of the British
equipment was amateurish; but the palm for amateurishness must be given
to the armoured train which plied its trade in the neighbourhood of
Estcourt.  It was not much better than a death-trap.  It was made up of
an engine, five wagons, and an ancient 7-pounder muzzle-loading gun.
Its purpose was reconnaissance; but it was a very noisy and conspicuous
scout, as it wheezed up and down the line, belching clouds of smoke and
steam.

On the morning of 15th November it set out to reconnoitre towards
Chieveley, carrying on board 120 men, made up of a small civilian
break-down gang, part of a company of the Dublin Fusiliers, and a
company of the Durban Light Infantry Volunteers.  Captain Haldane was
in command, and Mr. Churchill, in his capacity as a war correspondent,
went with him.  When they reached Chieveley, Boer horsemen were
observed, and the train was ordered back to Frere.  But before it
reached Frere it was discovered that a hill commanding the whole line
at a distance of 600 yards was occupied by the enemy.

The driver put on full steam and tried to run the gauntlet; but a big
stone had been placed on the line at the foot of a steep gradient, and
into this the train crashed.  The engine, which was in the centre of
the train, was not derailed, and a gallant attempt was made to clear
the wreckage of the foremost trucks and push through.  For more than an
hour, under heavy shell-fire from the enemy's field guns, and a
constant hail of rifle bullets, the crew of the train laboured to clear
the obstruction.  But the couplings of the trucks broke, and though the
engine, laden with wounded, managed to continue its journey, the
position of the rest of the crew was hopeless, and they were compelled
to surrender.  The Boers behaved with conspicuous humanity, and the
little company of prisoners were soon jogging slowly northward towards
Pretoria.

The capital of the then South African Republic was a little town
planned in orderly parallelograms lying in a cup among rocky hills.
From it three railways radiated--one to Pietersburg and the north, one
to Johannesburg in the south-west, and one running eastward to
Portuguese territory and the sea at Delagoa Bay.  The British privates
and non-commissioned officers were sent to a camp at the racecourse on
the outskirts of the town, while the officers were taken to the Staats
Model School, a building almost in the centre of Pretoria.  At first
Mr. Churchill was sent with the men, but he was presently brought back
and added to the officers.  He bore a name which was better known than
liked in the Transvaal at the time, and his presence as a prisoner was
a considerable satisfaction to his captors.

The Staats Model School was a single-storied red brick building with a
slated veranda, and consisted of twelve class-rooms, a large
lecture-hall, and a gymnasium.  The playground in which it stood was
about 120 yards square, and in it there were tents for the guards, the
cookhouse, and a bathing-shed.  On two sides it was surrounded by an
iron grill, and on the other two by a corrugated iron fence some 10
feet high.  Before the prisoners from the armoured train arrived there
were already sixty British officers there, captured in the early Natal
fighting.  For guard there were twenty-seven men and three corporals of
the South African Republic Police (known locally as "Zarps").  These
furnished nine sentries in reliefs of four hours; they stood 50 yards
apart, well armed with revolvers and rifles.  In every street of
Pretoria, too, were posted special armed constables.

To be taken prisoner thus early, in what was believed to be a
triumphant war, was a bitter pill for British officers to swallow, and
it was not easier for the restless, energetic spirit of Mr. Churchill.
As soon as the captives arrived they began to make plans for escape.
None of them were on parole, and at first sight it looked a
comparatively easy task.  It would not be hard to scale the flimsy
outer defences of the Staats Model School, but the trouble lay in the
guards.  It was found impossible to bribe them, for, as Mr. Churchill
has observed in his book, the presence of so many millionaires in the
country had raised the tariff too high for any ordinary purse.  Another
difficulty was where to go to.  It was no good attempting to reach
Natal or Cape Colony, for that meant going through Boer armies.  The
best chance lay eastward in the direction of Portuguese territory, but
that involved a journey of 300 miles through an unknown country.  The
one hope was the Delagoa Bay line, for where there is a railway there
are always chances of transport for a bold man.

Captain Haldane's mind turned to tunnelling, and he discovered in an
old cupboard several screwdrivers and wire-cutters, which he managed to
secrete.  Mr. Churchill had a more audacious plan.  He had observed
that the sentries on the side of the quadrangle remote from the road
were at certain times, as they walked on their beats, unable to see the
top of a few yards of the boundary wall.  There were brilliant electric
lights in the middle of the quadrangle, but the sentries beyond them
could not see very well what lay behind.  If it were possible to pass
the two sentries on that side at the exact moment when both their backs
were turned together, the wall might be scaled and the garden of the
villa next door reached.  Beyond that it was impossible to plan.  Mr.
Churchill and a friend resolved to make the attempt and to trust to the
standing luck of the British Army to get safely out of the town and
cover the 280 miles to the Portuguese border.  They had a fair amount
of money, they would carry some chocolate with them, and they hoped to
buy mealies at the native kraals.  They knew no Kafir or Dutch, and
would have to lie hidden by day and move only in the darkness.


II

The enterprise was fixed for the night of 11th December, and was to be
attempted at seven o'clock when the bell rang for dinner.  The two
spent a nervous afternoon; but when the bell rang it was seen that the
thing was hopeless.  The sentries did not walk about, and one stood
opposite the one climbable part of the wall.  "With a most
unsatisfactory feeling of relief" the two went to bed.  The next
evening came and again the dinner-bell rang.  Mr. Churchill walked
across the quadrangle, and from a corner in one of the offices watched
the sentries.  After half an hour one suddenly turned and walked up to
his comrade and began to talk.  The chance had come.  Mr. Churchill ran
to the wall, pulled himself up, and lay flat on the top while the
sentries with their backs turned were talking 15 yards away.  Then he
dropped into the shrubs of the garden.

It was a night of full moonlight, but there was fair cover in the
bushes.  The villa to which the garden belonged was 20 yards off, and
the undrawn curtains revealed brightly lighted windows with figures
moving about.  Mr. Churchill had to wait for the arrival of his
comrade, and as he waited a man came out of the back door of the villa
and walked in his direction across the garden.  Ten yards away he
stopped and appeared to be watching, while the fugitive remained
absolutely still with a thumping heart.  Then another man joined the
first, lit a cigar, and the two walked off together.  Then a cat was
pursued by a dog, rushed into the bushes, and collided with the
fugitive.  The two men stopped, but, reflecting that it was only the
cat, passed out of the garden gate into the town.

[Illustration: _Then another man joined the first, lit a cigar, and the
two walked off together._]

Mr. Churchill had now been lying there an hour, when he heard a voice
from inside the quadrangle say quite loud, "All up."  He crawled back
to the wall and heard two officers walking up and down talking.  One of
them mentioned his name.  He coughed; one of the officers thereupon
began to chatter some kind of nonsense while the other said slowly, "He
cannot get out.  The sentry suspects.  It is all up.  Can you get back
again?"  But to go back was impossible, and though Mr. Churchill had
very little hope he determined to have a run for his money.  He said
loudly and clearly, so that the others heard him, "I shall go on alone."

The first thing was to get out of Pretoria.  He had managed during his
confinement to acquire a suit of dark clothes, different from the
ordinary garments issued to prisoners.  To reach the road he must pass
a sentry at short range, but he decided that the boldest course was the
safest.  He got up, walked past the windows of the villa, passed the
sentry at less than 50 yards, and, after walking too yards and hearing
no challenge, knew that he had surmounted the second obstacle.

It was a queer experience to be at large on a bright moonlight night in
the heart of the enemy's capital nearly 300 miles from friendly
territory, and with a certainty that in an hour or two there would be a
hue and cry out against him.  He strolled at a leisurely pace down the
middle of the streets, humming a tune, past crowds of burghers, till he
reached the environs.  There he sat down and reflected.  His escape
would probably not be known till dawn, and he must get some way off
before daybreak, for all the neighbouring country would be patrolled.
He had 75 in his pocket and four slabs of chocolate, but the compass,
map, opium tablets, and meat lozenges were left behind with his unlucky
friend.  His only chance was the Delagoa Bay Railway.  That line, of
course, was guarded, and every train would be searched; but among a
multitude of black alternatives it gave at least a ray of hope.

Half a mile later he struck the railroad, but he could not be sure
whether it was the Pietersburg or the Delagoa Bay line, for it appeared
to run north instead of east.  He followed it, and soon began to
realize the exhilaration of escape.  Walking in the cool night under
the stars his spirits rose.  There were pickets along the line and
watchers at every bridge, but he avoided them all by short detours.
And as he walked he reflected that if he trusted to his feet to cover
the 300 miles he would very soon be captured.  He must make better
speed, and the only chance for that was a train.  Yes, a train must be
boarded, and at the earliest opportunity.

When he had walked for two hours he perceived the lights of a station,
so he left the track and hid in a ditch 200 yards beyond the buildings.
He argued that any train would stop at the station and by the time it
reached him would not have got up much speed.  After another hour he
heard a train whistle and saw the yellow headlights of the engine.  It
waited five minutes in the station, and then, with a great rumbling,
started again.  Mr. Churchill flung himself on the trucks, got some
sort of handhold, and with a great struggle seated himself on the
couplings.  It was a goods train, and the trucks were full of empty
sacks covered with coal dust, among which he burrowed.  He had no
notion whether or not he was on the right line, and he was too tired to
worry, so he simply fell asleep.  He woke before daybreak and realized
that he must leave the train ere dawn.  So he sat himself again on the
couplings, and catching hold of the iron handle at the back of the
truck, sprang to the side.  The next moment he was sprawling in a
ditch, much shaken but not hurt.

He found himself in the middle of a valley surrounded by low hills.
Presently the dawn began to break, and to his relief he realized that
he had taken the right railway.  The line ran straight into the
sunrise.  He had a long drink from a pool, and resolved to select a
hiding-place to lie up for the day.  This he found in a patch of wood
on the side of a deep ravine, where, in the company of a cynical
vulture, he spent the daylight hours.  From his eyrie he could see a
little tin-roofed town in the west, through which he had passed in the
night, and in the immediate neighbourhood farmsteads with clumps of
trees.  There was a Kafir kraal at the bottom of the hill, and he
watched the natives drive the flocks of goats and cows to the pastures.
His only food was one slab of chocolate, which produced a violent
thirst; but as the water-pool was half a mile away in the open, and men
were constantly passing, he dare not risk going for a drink.

His prospects were pretty black when he started again at the first
darkness.  He had a drink from the pool, and then took to the railway
line in hope of getting a second train ride.  But no train came, and
for six hours in the bright moonlight he walked on, avoiding the
Kafirs' huts and the guarded bridges.  When he had to make a circuit he
fell into bogs, and, as he was in a poor condition from the previous
month's imprisonment, he was very soon tired out.

Mr. Churchill published the story of his escape during the war, when it
was important not to implicate any friends still in the Transvaal, and
so the next part of his journey has never been explicitly told.  It
appears that he fell in with a Mr. Burnham and a Mr. Howard, officials
of a colliery, who gave him valuable assistance, as they were
afterwards to assist Captain Haldane.  On the fifth day after leaving
Pretoria he reached Middelburg, where it was arranged that he should
try and board a Delagoa Bay train.

Meantime the hue and cry was out against him.  Telegrams describing him
at great length were sent along every railway; 3,000 photographs were
printed, and warrants were issued for his immediate arrest.  Officials
of the prison who knew him by sight hurried off to Komati Poort, the
frontier station, to examine travellers.  It was rumoured that he had
escaped disguised as a woman, and again disguised as a policeman; and
finally it was reported that he was still in hiding in Pretoria.  The
Dutch newspapers considered it a sinister fact that just before he
escaped he had become a subscriber to the State Library and had
borrowed Mill's _On Liberty_!

On the sixth day he found a train to Delagoa Bay standing in a siding,
which he boarded.  The journey should take not more than thirty-six
hours, so the provisions carried were not elaborate, and he had only
one bottle of water.  He managed to ensconce himself in a truck laden
with great sacks of some soft merchandise, and worm his way to the
bottom.  The heat was stifling, for it was midsummer in the Transvaal,
and the floor of the truck was littered with coal dust, which did not
add to its amenities.

These last days of the adventure were both anxious and uncomfortable.
He scarcely dared to sleep for fear of snoring, and he was in terror
that at Komati Poort, the frontier station of the Transvaal, the trucks
would be searched.  His anxiety there was prolonged, for the train was
shunted for eighteen hours on to a siding.  Indeed, his truck was
actually searched, and the upper tarpaulin was removed, but the police
were careless and did not search deep enough.

At length, two and a half days after he left Middelburg, and eight and
a half days from Pretoria, the train crawled into Delagoa Bay.  Mr.
Churchill emerged from his hole in the last stages of dirt, hunger, and
weariness.  But all troubles were now past.  He went first to the
British consul, who thought he was a fireman from one of the ships in
the harbour, and who welcomed him with enthusiasm when he learned his
real name.  Clothes were bought; he had a long wash, and at last a
civilized meal.  That very night, as it happened, a steamer was leaving
for Durban, and in case any of the Boer agents at Delagoa Bay should
attempt to recapture him, some dozen of the English residents, armed
with revolvers, escorted him on board.  A few days later Mr. Churchill
was back again in Natal with the British Army.


III

We return to Captain Haldane and his friends, who had been meditating
escape from the first day of their arrival at the Staats Model School.
The difficulty was, of course, the guards, and Mr. Churchill's exploit
made the Boer Government redouble its vigilance.  It was found
impossible to bribe the sentries; a plan for a rising of the prisoners
was soon given up; and the scheme of sinking a shaft and then
tunnelling to an adjacent kitchen garden proved impracticable, since
the diggers very soon struck water.  For three miserable months Captain
Haldane cogitated in vain, and the best he could do was to get hold of
a tourist map of South Africa and study the country east of Pretoria in
case some way of escape should present itself.  Meantime an incident
cheered the prisoners.  A man accompanied by a St. Bernard dog took to
walking outside the school and signalling by the Morse code with his
stick.  He was warned off by the guards, but he found another means of
communication and sent messages from an adjacent house giving the news
of the war.

In the middle of February 1900 there was a rumour that the officers
were to be moved to a new building from which escape would be
impossible.  This gave Captain Haldane an idea.  He resolved to go into
hiding beneath the floor, so that the Boers should think he had
escaped, and then, when the officers were moved and the building was
left empty, to emerge and get out of the town.  His companions in the
attempt were Lieutenant Neil Le Mesurier of the Dublin Fusiliers and
Sergeant-Major A. Brockie of the Imperial Light Horse.  They collected
a few necessary articles, opened the trap-door, and went to earth.  It
was a horrible place in which they found themselves.  The floor of the
building was about 2- feet above the ground, and the space below was
divided into five narrow compartments by four stone walls, on which the
cross beams rested.  Each of these compartments was about 18 feet long
and 3- feet wide, and there were manholes between them.  The air, what
there was of it, came through a small ventilator somewhere on the
veranda.  The place was pitch dark, and the atmosphere was stuffy to
the last degree.

The three thought that their imprisonment there would only last for
twenty-four hours.  They went to earth on 26th February, and next day
there was a great to-do about their disappearance.  Descriptions of
them were circulated over the whole country.  One of their friends
above, Lieutenant Frankland of the Dublin Fusiliers, arranged a small
daily supply of provisions.  Alas! the twenty-four hours passed and
there was no move above.  For nineteen days the three men remained in
that horrible dungeon.  Their only exercise was crawling about, in
which they broke their heads constantly against beams and walls.  They
were covered with dirt, for very little water could be passed through
the trap-door.  Still they managed to endure.  By the light of a dip
they played games of patience and talked, and their chief anxiety was
lest by snoring or talking in their sleep they should give their
hiding-place away.  Their friends above who were in the secret tried to
persuade them to come up occasionally to get some fresh air, but they
were determined to play the game according to its rigour, and refused.

But the situation was getting serious, for all three were falling ill.
Captain Haldane wrote to a fellow-prisoner in the school above, a Dutch
pastor called Adrian Hofmeyer, begging him to try and get the move
expedited.  Hofmeyer did his best with the authorities, telling them
the story of a bogus rising of the prisoners; but still nothing
happened.  At last came the good news that the move was fixed for
Friday, 16th March.  The prisoners underground heard the commandant
going his rounds for the last time.  Then their friends gave the agreed
signal, and Frankland's voice said, "Good-bye."  At a quarter-past ten
the prisoners were heard leaving the school, and by midday the servants
and baggage had left.  The three stayed below till nightfall and then
walked out of the empty building.  Walking is, indeed, a misnomer, for
they seemed to have lost the use of their legs.  They fell repeatedly
and reeled like drunken men.  It was not till they had got out of the
town that they recovered the use of their limbs.

They had 300 miles of a difficult journey to make to safety, and surely
never in the history of escapes have three men started out on a wilder
enterprise in worse physical condition.  Mr. Churchill had been out of
training, but his physique at the time was that of an athlete's
compared to Captain Haldane and his companions.  Brockie, who had lived
in the country and knew the language, got himself up like a wounded
Boer, with his left arm in a sling and the Boer colours round his head.
The trio presented the appearance of the worst kind of Irish
moonlighters.

In the suburbs a special constable looked at them suspiciously, but was
reassured by the sight of Brockie's wounded arm.  They struck the
Delagoa Bay Railway and stumbled along it, Le Mesurier having the bad
luck to sprain his ankle.  Their one advantage was that, having been
supposed to escape three weeks before, the immediate hue and cry after
them had died down.

Their first halting-place was near a station on the line, 13 miles east
of Pretoria.  There they lay up, suffering much from mosquitoes, and
when darkness came made for the highroad running east.  The Transvaal
highways at that time were not like those of to-day, but simply raw red
scars running across the veld, by no means easy to follow in the
darkness.  On this second night of their travels they were hunted by
dogs, and Haldane and Le Mesurier took refuge in a stream, cowering up
to their necks.  Here they lost Brockie, but fortunately he was the one
of the three best able to fend for himself, as he knew the country and
could speak both Dutch and Kaffir.  The two, soaked to the skin, spent
the rest of the night in a clump of bracken, after taking a dose of
quinine and opium.  At daybreak they found themselves stiff with
rheumatism.  They had finished their whisky, and the provisions,
matches, and tobacco were soaked.

At dawn, in a tremendous thunderstorm, they made for the railway again,
and there Haldane, to his consternation, discovered that he had left
his money and belt in the last hiding-place.  He dared not return for
them, even if he had had any hope of finding the place again.  So there
were the two men, without food or money, weary, cramped, and sick, with
the better part of 300 miles before them in an enemy country.

Food must be found, and that night they came on a Kafir kraal with a
field of water melons.  They made a meal off the melons and stumbled on
again.  The next night their physical condition began to be really
serious.  In four nights they had only covered 36 miles, and their food
was reduced to one tin of pemmican, one tin of cocoa, and a scrap of
biltong.  They had hoped for mealies from the fields, but the mealie
harvest had just been gathered and not a cob remained.  Another
misfortune was the condition of the veld grass.  They had expected it
to be long enough to hide in, but it was far too short for shelter, and
they were therefore compelled to lie up by day in wet swamps.

That night, having finished every scrap of food, they blundered into a
Kafir hut beside a coal-siding, where some natives were eating
mealie-meal porridge.  Their only course was to reveal themselves, for
the Kafirs were in the main on the British side.  They learned that the
natives' master, the manager of the coalmine, was a Dane, and to him
they disclosed their identity.  The manager was friendly.  He said his
own mine was sending no coals to the coast for the moment, but that at
a colliery next door three trucks were being loaded up for Delagoa Bay
next morning.  He handed his visitors over to the storekeeper of the
mine, Mr. Moore, who gave them a dry bed and a good meal.

Next morning they heard that the mine doctor, a Scotsman called
Gillespie, was coming to see them, and in him they found a stout ally,
for he knew all about their escape, and had been looking for their
arrival in order to help them.  He was one of the people who had
already assisted Mr. Churchill.  That evening he undertook to drive
them to another mine, where a plan of escape could be matured.

In the early darkness they drove 14 miles over the veld to the colliery
of the Transvaal Delagoa Bay Company.  There they were handed over to
Mr. J. E. Howard, who had been the chief agent in Mr. Churchill's
escape.  There, too, they were introduced to Mr. Addams, the secretary
of the mine, who turned out to be no other than the Englishman with the
St. Bernard dog who had been accustomed to walk past the Staats Model
School.  He and the manager of the mine store, Mr. Burnham, at once set
about planning their escape.  It was arranged that Mr. Howard should
feign illness for a few days and remain indoors, and that Haldane and
Le Mesurier should take up their quarters with him.  To their relief
they also got news of Brockie, for he had turned up a little earlier at
the same place, and had been given a passport to the border.

The plan arranged was as follows: Wool was still being sent down from
the high veld to Delagoa Bay, and the trucks for it were usually
detached at Middelburg.  It was arranged that Burnham should buy a
truck-load of wool and wire to a firm at Delagoa Bay offering the
consignment.  This was done, wires were exchanged, and sixteen bales of
wool were duly collected and consigned to the coast.  The truck for the
wool was brought up the line and carefully loaded.  The bales, each of
which weighed 400 lb., were so arranged that there was a kind of tunnel
at the bottom down the centre, in which the fugitives could hide.  From
behind the blinds in the sickroom of Mr. Howard, Haldane and Le
Mesurier watched with acute interest the last stages of these
preparations.

At 5 a.m. one morning they climbed into the tunnel below the wool,
where their friends had provided them with ample provisions for a week
in the shape of roast duck and chicken, beef and bread, butter and jam,
nine bottles of cold tea, two of water, and one of whisky.  The
tarpaulin was made fast over the top, and for five hours the two
waited.  At ten o'clock that morning Mr. Howard came along and took a
final farewell.  A certain Field-Cornet Pretorius had arrived that
morning and had shown himself very suspicious about the tablecloth in
Mr. Howard's dining-room, but the manager had explained it with the
story of a dinner and card party.  By midday the truck was taken by a
colliery engine to Whitbank station.  Mr. Addams and Mr. Burnham were
on the look-out there, and to their horror saw the Dutch driver and
stoker stroll up and lean against the truck.  They endeavoured to draw
them away by offers of drinks; but the driver would not move, and
taking a paper from his pocket began to conduct his correspondence
against the side of the truck.  A sneeze or a word from inside would
have given away the whole plan.  Even when the man left the danger was
not over, for while the truck was being shunted, one of the station
officials actually undid the tarpaulin and looked in, but saw nothing.

At 2.30 p.m. they were attached to a passenger train, and for the rest
of the day jogged across the high veld, till at Waterval Boven, where
the descent to the low veld begins, the train drew up for the night.
They started again next morning, and presently they reached the last
Transvaal station, Komati Poort, where a bridge spans the Komati river.
This was the place where a search was likely, and to the intense
disappointment of the fugitives they found the truck detached and
pushed into a siding.  Discovery seemed now certain, and Haldane
decided to try and bribe the first comer.  He got a bag of a hundred
sovereigns ready, and destroyed any compromising matter in his diary.

As it happened, the Pretoria Government had wired to Komati Poort to
order the strictest search of all goods trucks.  The stowaways heard
the unloosening of the ropes of their tarpaulin, and down in their
tunnel realized it had been lifted up and thrown back.  They saw
daylight flood in at the tunnel end, and believed that at any moment
the face of a station official would look down on them.  Then to their
amazement the tarpaulin was returned to its place.  They may not have
been seen; or a Kafir may have caught a glimpse of them, and, having no
desire to aid the law, said nothing.

But though the tarpaulin was drawn again, their suspense was not over.
All that day and all the following night they lay there, anxious, half
stifled, and now very hungry, for they had thrown away most of their
provisions, believing that they would not be needed.  Saturday morning
came, and they realized that they had hoped the day before to be inside
the Portuguese border.  At last, at 9 a.m., the train steamed off, and
while crossing the Komati bridge the two men shook hands.  They saw the
white pillar which marked the boundary, and realized that they had won
freedom.

The train stopped at the first Portuguese station; but the two
stowaways did not dare to alight.  They waited till the evening and
then crept out in the dusk.  At a Kafir kraal close by they learned
that the hotel there was kept by two Englishmen, and thither they
stumbled.  In five minutes they were in a back room being regaled with
champagne by their excited compatriots.

Brockie had also escaped, but all three paid for some time the penalty
of their wild adventure with malaria, and in the case of Le Mesurier
with enteric.  In a few weeks, however, they were back on duty at the
front.  Captain Haldane, as we have seen, was to rise to be one of the
most successful British generals in the Great War.  Brockie was killed
by a mining accident a few years later after the escape.  Le Mesurier
fell at the Second Battle of Ypres, and Frankland, who had assisted
them to escape, died in a reconnaissance at the Dardanelles.




[Illustration: _Kafir kraals._]




V

THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD

When, on April 16, 1746, the clans were broken on Culloden Moor, the
first thought of loyal hearts was for the safety of the Prince's
person.  The Rising had terrified the Government of George II., for it
had won a glamour and a success which no one had believed to be within
the bounds of possibility, and the glamour was created by the
personality of Charles Edward.  From a boy he had dreamed one dream and
hoped one hope, and he had never ceased to see in solemn vision the
crown placed upon his father's head by his own hands, and his father's
subjects delivered by his own sword from a usurper's tyranny.  When he
was about twenty, a young Scottish poet, a member of a great Whig
family which had been the enemy of his house, was visiting Rome.  The
Prince, who made it his business to know all about British travellers
in Italy, found the young Scotsman in the Capitol, and laying his hand
on his shoulder, addressed him by name.  "Mr. Hamilton, do you like
this prospect, or the one from North Berwick Law best?"  North Berwick
Law was near the home of Hamilton's Whig relatives, but early
prejudices vanished before the charm of the Prince's manner and
conversation, and Charles Edward had gained a recruit for his future
army.

This personal fascination had been the real strength of the Jacobite
cause from the moment of the Prince's landing in Scotland.  There had
been great expectations of French help, and when these seemed likely to
fail, Prince Charlie had said in 1744, "I will be in Scotland next
summer, though it is with a single footman."  Next summer, he had
landed on the little island of Eriskay with seven men.  His small
following alarmed the few friends who met him.  The task seemed
hopeless, and they advised him to return home.  "I am come home," he
replied, and gave orders to sail to the mainland.

His personal appeal led men to join him in defiance of every dictate of
interest and common-sense.  "I will erect the royal standard," he said
to Cameron of Lochiel, "and proclaim to the people of Britain that
Charles Stuart is come over to claim the crown of his ancestors, to win
it, or perish in the attempt.  Lochiel, who, my father has often told
me, was our firmest friend, may stay at home and learn from the
newspapers the fate of his Prince."  The words changed Lochiel's mind.
"I will share the fate of my Prince," he replied.  "Will not you assist
me?" Charles asked another young Highlander, and drew the expected
answer, "I will, though no other man in the Highlands should draw his
sword."  Throughout the whole campaign, it was the Prince who
maintained the Jacobite army; hope and inspiration came from him, and
his were the fleeting triumphs that brightened the early months of an
effort foredoomed to failure.  "I leave for England in eight days," he
said in Edinburgh, "England will be ours in two months;" and in the
Council of War at Derby his voice alone was given for the march to
London: "to put it to the test and win or lose it all."  After the
retreat and the victory at Falkirk, Charles wished to remain in the
Lowlands and meet Cumberland there.  He hoped to the end, and refused
to seek safety in flight while he had still an army to fight for him.

On his arrival the Government had offered a reward of 30,000 for his
head, and tradition tells that the Prince wished to retort by offering
30 as an adequate sum for the head of the Elector of Hanover.  Even in
the hour of defeat at Culloden, his followers felt that the ministers
of King George would still be eager to secure the person of an enemy,
whose charm and fascination had wrought one miracle and might be
employed to work another.  While the Prince was still a free man, could
the House of Hanover be safe?  The savage Duke of Cumberland would
certainly wish to add to his tarnished laurels the glory of the capture
of the fugitive.  There was little time for consideration; the battle
was fought and lost in less than half an hour, and Cumberland's fresh
troops might be trusted to be active in the pursuit.  The Prince would
not believe that all was lost, and he tried to induce the stragglers to
return to the charge.  Those nearest to him begged him not to expose
his person needlessly, for the broken clans would not rally.  He
hesitated, and one of them seized his bridle and turned his horse's
head to the rear, just as, a hundred years before, his
great-grandfather, Charles I., had been led off the field of Naseby
with the words, "Will you go upon your death?"


I

IN BADENOCH AND LOCHABER

For a few minutes it seemed as if the Prince were still "going upon"
his death.  The fire of Cumberland's artillery did not slacken as the
Jacobite army wavered, and the retreating Prince had his horse shot
under him.  A groom brought him a fresh horse, and, as he mounted, the
man fell dead by his side.  Whither was he to flee?  No plan had been
made for the event of a defeat, and no rendezvous had been appointed
for the beaten army.  Accompanied by a few friends, and a body-guard of
some fifty horse, he rode off towards the river Nairn.  His direction
was southwards, and Cumberland was pushing the pursuit westwards to
Inverness, but had detached a body of horse to ride down the
stragglers.  Charles left the field blinded with tears that fell for
his lost hopes, and he very narrowly escaped falling in with this force
as he pursued his uncertain way.

His bonnet fell from his head, and a private in his Life Guards brought
him another.  It was Edward Burke, whom the Prince recognized as a
servant of one of his aides-de-camp.  Burke belonged to an Irish family
which, for some generations, had been settled in the Hebrides, and he
was a native of North Uist.  When he joined the army he was a
"chairman" (the carrier of a sedan chair) in Edinburgh, but he had been
a gentleman's servant, and had travelled much with his master, and he
knew the country.  "Ned," said the Prince, "if you be a true friend,
lead us safe off."  Ned, greatly honoured, did his best, and was the
wanderer's first guide.  Ned Burke was described by those who knew him
as true as steel but a rough man, and he addressed the Prince with the
wonted familiarity of the Scottish peasantry.  Charles humoured him and
chaffed him, and they had a standing joke about "Deil speed the leears
(liars)," a wish obviously appropriate to a disguised prince and his
companions.

When Ned took command of the party, the Prince dismissed his
body-guard, and with Ned's master and five others he crossed the Nairn
and rode for some distance up the right bank.  It was growing late and
they sought refuge at Tordarroch, but in vain, and pushing on, they
recrossed the river near Aberarder, where they were again refused
entrance.  Both of these places were too near Inverness for safety.  It
was fortunate that they did not halt until they reached the hamlet of
Gortuleg, where, in a house still in existence, they found the aged
Lord Lovat, the Fox of the Highlands, who had played false to both
sides, and was attempting to escape from the fate that was to overtake
him on Tower Hill.  The Prince drank three glasses of wine with Lovat,
who reminded him that Robert the Bruce had lost eleven battles and won
Scotland by the twelfth.  Doubtful history, and a moral which could not
be acted upon, were poor consolation, and Charles speedily left his
host and rode on through the night.

There was some moonlight--the moon was in her first quarter--and the
tired little company reached Invergarry Castle just as the moon was
setting.  The house was empty and there was no food; but the Prince had
some rest, and Ned Burke noticed a fishing net which had been set, and
found two salmon, which he cooked for their breakfast.  In the
afternoon they took to their horses again and rode along Loch Arkaig to
Glenpean, where they spent the night.  Next day the Prince expected a
communication from his friends or a hint of the doings of his pursuers,
but none came.  Cumberland, in fact, was on the wrong track.  He
thought that the fugitive had made his way to Lovat's country near
Beauly, and the real route was unknown to the enemy.  Making for the
sea, the Prince walked from Glenpean over the hills to the beautiful
region of Morar, had some sleep in a lonely shieling, and through the
night of the 20th April tramped to Borrodale, in Arisaig, where he had
landed nine months before.

Less than a fortnight later, two French vessels, carrying gold, reached
Borrodale, but the Prince was no longer there.  He had stayed for five
days, but he could not know where his safety lay, and his friends had
sent him a fresh guide in the person of a Skye farmer named Donald
MacLeod.  The Prince went out to meet Donald and they had their first
conversation alone in a wood.  His new friend was horror-struck at the
Prince's first suggestion.  Like his ancestress Queen Mary, Charles was
seized with a mad desire to throw himself on the mercy of his enemies.
He did not, indeed, propose to surrender to Cumberland's troops, but he
asked Donald to carry letters for him to his own chief, MacLeod, and to
Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat.  These men were on the Government
side, but he believed that they would do everything in their power for
his safety.  Donald replied that his life was at the Prince's command,
but that nothing would induce him thus to reveal his whereabouts.
"Does not your Excellency know that these men have played the rogue to
you altogether, and will you trust them for a' that?  Na, you maunna
do't."  Then Donald told him that the Laird of MacLeod and Sir
Alexander MacDonald were searching for him about twelve miles away by
sea, and urged that the sooner he left Borrodale the better.  Donald
was a skilful seaman, and he undertook to conduct the Prince to the
Hebrides, in the hope of finding a ship to take him to France.

It was not good advice, for a British fleet commanded the seas, and the
islands were easily watched.  The best hiding-place was in the wild
district of Morar, whence, as we have seen, he could have escaped
within a fortnight.  But he could not tell that his refuge might not be
discovered.  It was quite well known among the people, for Donald's son
Murdoch, an Inverness schoolboy, who had run away from school to fight
at Culloden, astonished his father by appearing at Borrodale; he had
traced and followed the Prince, and less friendly inquirers might do
the same.  Charles thought of the 30,000 reward, and as yet he did not
realize that the Highlanders were not thinking about it.  He spent five
more unhappy and restless days at Borrodale, while Donald MacLeod
obtained a boat and a crew.  At last an eight-oared boat was ready,
with eight boatmen, among whom were Ned Burke and the boy, Murdoch
MacLeod.  The Prince's companions were Captain O'Sullivan, Captain
O'Neil, Captain Allan MacDonald, and a Roman priest.  Donald MacLeod
was skipper, and he is known to history as the Prince's Pilot.

On the evening of 26th April the Pilot warned the Prince that a great
storm was coming, and begged him not to sail; but Charles was anxious
about the parties which were searching for him on the mainland, and he
insisted.  They were unobserved by any of the Government vessels;
indeed, the fleet had gone off to the remote island of St. Kilda,
misled by some rumour that the Prince was there.  But the Pilot's
prophecy was fulfilled; he said afterwards that the tempest was more
violent than any "he had ever been trysted with before, though all his
life a seafaring man."  Thunder and lightning and torrential rain, a
hurricane, and a heavy sea, were a new experience for a Prince in an
open boat.  "I had rather face cannons and muskets than be in such a
storm as this," he said, and told Donald to make again for the shore.
To obey the command would have been certain death.  "Since we are
here," said the Pilot, "we have nothing for it but, under God, to set
out to sea.  Is it not as good for us to be drowned in clean water as
to be dashed in pieces upon a rock and to be drowned too?"  So they
made for the open sea; it was pitch dark, they had neither lantern nor
compass nor even a pump.  Through the whole night scarcely a man spoke
one word; the thought of all was that it would be better to be drowned
in clean water than to be driven on the coast of Skye, where bodies of
militiamen were on the outlook for the wanderer.


II

IN THE OUTER ISLES

Morning broke, and the storm was still raging, but they were far beyond
the shores of Skye.  They succeeded in landing at Rossinish in
Benbecula, and found an uninhabited hut in which they lit a fire and
dried their clothes.  In this desolate region they remained two days,
and on the night of 29th April set sail for the island of Scalpa, the
tenant of which, Donald Campbell, was a friend of the Pilot.  They
agreed to represent themselves as the captain and crew of a ship which
had been wrecked on the island of Tiree.  O'Sullivan took the name of
Captain Sinclair, and the Prince passed as young Sinclair, his son.
They were hospitably received at Scalpa, and their host, Donald
Campbell, was in the secret of the shipwrecked crew.  They were eager,
they said, to return to their home in the Orkneys, and sent the Pilot
to Stornoway to hire a vessel.

Meanwhile, mischief was brewing.  John Macaulay, minister of South Uist
(grandfather of Lord Macaulay), had heard of the Prince's coming, and
he informed his father, Aulay Macaulay, minister of Harris.  The
Macaulays were strong Whigs, and there is a tradition that, while
Prince Charlie was in Scalpa, Aulay Macaulay and a neighbouring laird
landed in the island with a boatful of armed men and announced their
intention of earning the blood-money which the Government had offered.
But Donald Campbell warned the Prince and his followers, and told the
invaders that he would himself fall in the Prince's cause rather than
give up a man who had entrusted him with his life, and Macaulay and his
friends "sneaked off the island."  At all events, the information sent
by John Macaulay (who long afterwards was snubbed at Inveraray by Dr.
Johnson) spoiled the plan of the shipwrecked mariners.  When Donald
MacLeod reached Stornoway, he found difficulty in securing a ship and
suspected that the truth was known; but at last he succeeded in buying
one and sent the good news to Scalpa.

On 4th May the Prince, with O'Sullivan, O'Neil, and Ned Burke, crossed
to Harris.  The journey was unfortunate, for they were misled by a
guide whom they had engaged, and they tramped all night through wind
and rain.  The Pilot met them and told them that he had arranged for
their reception at Kildun House, two miles from Stornoway, and he
himself returned to the town to make final preparations.  To his
surprise, he found the road barred by two or three hundred men in arms,
who explained that they knew the Prince was coming with a force of five
hundred men to seize a vessel in Stornoway, and that they feared the
vengeance of the Government.  He told them the truth, and they disowned
any intention of doing the Prince an injury, but insisted on his taking
his departure.  It was in vain that Donald asked for a guide who knew
these stormy seas, and he had to return and tell the news.  The boat
had followed them, though two of the boatmen had deserted, and on the
morning of 6th May they set sail for Scalpa.

As they approached the island they had the "comfort and mortification"
of seeing, without being observed, three Government vessels on the
outlook, and they changed their course for the desert island of Euirn
or Iubhard, where they found some fishermen who had erected little
huts, like pigsties, for a temporary shelter.  The fishermen mistook
the newcomers for a press-gang from the war-ships and fled, but they
left their fish behind them, and the fugitives had brought some
provisions.  They remained for four days on this desolate island,
occupying one of the "pigsties."  It rained hard and they had to cover
the hut with the boat-sail for shelter, but the Prince was in excellent
spirits.  He insisted on doing the cooking himself, and laughed at Ned
Burke for being too fine to eat butter which had got mixed up with
bread-crumbs.  A large stone served as a table for the Prince and the
gentlemen, and the boatmen ate by themselves.  Leaving this retreat on
10th May, they returned to Scalpa, but found that their kind host had
been compelled to flee, and that it was not safe for them to remain.

It was after leaving Scalpa that the Prince had his first narrow
escape.  They were sailing south along the coast of Harris, when, near
Finsbay, they found themselves within two musket shots of a man-of-war
under full sail.  Their little boat was itself under full sail and the
boatmen rowed for dear life.  "I will never be taken alive," said the
Prince as the race went on.  They were hotly pursued for three leagues,
until they reached shallow water near Rodil Point, where their enemy
could not follow them as they sailed among the creeks.  After an
ineffectual attempt, he turned his course out to sea, and they hugged
the coast until they reached Loch Maddy.  There they spied another
war-ship, but retreated from the loch without attracting observation,
and that night (11th May) they landed on an island in Loch Uskavagh in
Benbecula.  During their two days' sail they were short of food, and
the Prince, who had given his followers some lessons in cooking at
Euirn, was taught how to make drammock, that is, meal mixed with
water--salt water unfortunately.  He ate heartily of it, and his Pilot
loved to tell how "never any meat or drink came wrong to him, for he
could take a share of everything, be it good, bad, or indifferent, and
was always cheerful and contented in every condition."

There was need of cheerfulness, for though, as they were landing in the
rain, one of the boatmen captured a crab and waved it triumphantly at
the Prince, the hut, which was their only refuge, was so low that they
had to dig below the door and line the hole with heather for the Prince
to crawl through.  The hut, said the Prince, had been inhabited by the
devil, who had left it because he had not room enough in it.  After
three days in this island, they crossed to South Uist and walked to
Coradale, where Charles had more comfortable quarters in a cottage.  He
was delighted with his new abode and sat on a turf seat smoking a pipe
very happily until bedtime.  The three weeks spent at Coradale were the
least troubled period of his wanderings.  He was a good shot, and
brought down a deer one day "firing off-hand"; he also fished from a
small boat with a hand-line.  The weather was fine, and he often sat on
a stone by the door, basking in the sunshine and watching the ships
pass; he deluded himself with the hope that they were French, but his
friends knew that they were on the watch for him.  Occasionally he was
melancholy, but he would recover, and dance for a whole hour together
to the music of a Highland reel, which he whistled as he tripped along.

The happy days did not last long; the Government troops returned from
their vain journey to St. Kilda, and Barra and Uist began to be
dangerous.  Donald MacLeod, the Pilot, had been sent to the mainland
and returned with news and two ankers of brandy, in time to accompany
the Prince in the flight which was rendered necessary by the presence
of troops in the neighbourhood.  On 6th June they sailed to the island
of Ouia or Wiay, about twelve mites distant, but they were not yet
safe, and returned to Rossinish in Benbecula, fortunately not taking
the Pilot with them.  At Rossinish Charles was in grave danger, for he
was warned to make his escape, and the passage to Ouia was guarded by
Government vessels.  Taking advantage of the short midsummer hours of
darkness or twilight, Donald MacLeod brought a boat to the rescue, and
they made for their old retreat at Coradale; but a storm and a glimpse
of two war-ships forced them to land where they could, and the Prince
slept in a cleft of a rock, drawing his bonnet over his eyes for
shelter.  The storm continued to rage all next day, but the enemy were
within two miles of them, and at night they found another refuge.
Their hope was to reach the territory of MacDonald of Boisdale, who,
they believed, could help them, and on 15th June they sailed for
Boisdale in South Uist.

[Illustration: _A storm and a glimpse of two war-ships forced them to
land._]

It was a dangerous journey, for fifteen sail were visible at sea, and
they knew that the land was guarded.  They lay all day out of sight in
a narrow creek, and landed at night on the shores of Loch Boisdale,
where the Prince slept on a bed of heather in the shelter of a ruined
castle.  Next morning their spirits rose, for the Pilot saw two French
ships appearing, and they were ready to hail them when they made the
sad discovery that they were Government vessels.  A party of soldiers
under Captain Caroline Scott, one of Cumberland's best executioners,
landed within a mile of them, and the Prince took to the hills, while
the boatmen concealed the boat.  For three days the Prince was engaged
in dodging the Redcoats on one side or the other of Loch Boisdale.
Their journey was useless, for Boisdale had been made a prisoner and
his wife could do no more than warn them of Scott's neighbourhood.

The Prince decided on a bold and desperate plan.  When he was at
Coradale, a half-hearted friend, Ronald MacDonald, the chief of
Clanranald, had sent him as an attendant a gentleman of his clan named
Neil Macdonald-Maceachain, the future father of a distinguished son,
Napoleon's Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum.  Neil Maceachain had
been educated in France for the priesthood, and Clanranald knew that he
was fitted to be a companion for the Prince.  Soon after Neil joined
him, the Prince received a message from Hugh Macdonald of Armadale.
This man was in charge of a company under his cousin, Sir Alexander
Macdonald of Sleat, whose duty was to capture the Prince.  But Hugh
Macdonald had served in the French army and was himself a Jacobite, and
his loyalty to his own chief was modified by the circumstance that his
chief's wife, Lady Margaret MacDonald, was known to sympathize with the
Prince's cause.  Some years before he had abducted, or eloped with, the
young widow of Ranald MacDonald of Milton in South Uist, and his
stepdaughter, Flora MacDonald, was living with her brother at Milton.
The message which he sent to the Prince contained a warning that, since
the Government forces knew him to be concealed in the Outer Hebrides,
it was hopeless to try and elude them, and offered a suggestion of an
escape to Skye, where Lady Margaret would receive him in her husband's
absence.  The plan was that Hugh MacDonald should give his stepdaughter
a pass or safe-conduct to her mother's house in Skye, that the Prince
should be disguised as her maid, and that Neil Maceachain should
accompany them as a servant.

When Charles, with Captain O'Neil and Neil Maceachain, was in hiding on
the top of one of the mountains overlooking Loch Boisdale, this scheme
recurred to his mind, and, on 21st June, the three walked to within a
short distance of a shieling where Flora MacDonald and her brother were
tending their cattle.  That evening the Prince, who had just parted
with his faithful Pilot and with Ned Burke, had his first interview
with the brave girl whose name was to be so honourably linked with his
own.  He himself told her of her stepfather's proposal, and she
answered that she would gladly take the risk.  It had to be then or
never, and Flora set out at once for Benbecula to arrange matters with
her stepfather and to procure a disguise from Lady Clanranald, while
the Prince and his two followers found shelter in the hills near his
old quarters at Coradale.  Next day, the impatient Prince sent Neil
Maceachain to Benbecula to bring back a report; but when he came to the
fords between South Uist and Benbecula, he found that they were closely
guarded at low tide, when alone they are passable.  Flora MacDonald had
met with the same difficulty the preceding day, and each of them asked
to be taken to the captain of the company, who was Hugh MacDonald.
Neil found Flora breakfasting with her stepfather, and they arranged
that Neil and the Prince should meet her at Rossinish.  The difficulty
was to bring him there; they dared not risk an attempt to pass by the
fords.  But Neil was lucky enough to find some fishermen whom he knew,
and they ferried the Prince and Captain O'Neil and himself to the coast
of Benbecula, in the darkness, and left them on a tidal island, much to
the alarm of the Prince, who awoke from a sound sleep to find himself
upon a small rock surrounded by water.

At low tide they made their way to the shore, and after a cold wet
night in the heather, set out for Rossinish in a wild storm of wind and
rain.  Walking was very difficult, and the exhausted Prince was
constantly falling into holes concealed by the heather or losing his
shoes in the bogs.  At last they reached the rendezvous, and Neil went
on to reconnoitre.  He did not find Flora or Lady Clanranald, and he
was informed that twenty of the Skye militiamen were in a tent about a
quarter of a mile away.  There seemed nothing for it but another night
in the heather, but they found shelter at some little distance, in a
house belonging to a tenant of Clanranald.  At dawn their hostess
turned them out because she knew the militiamen were coming to buy
milk, and they hid themselves under a rock by the shore.  The rain
never ceased, and they thought that all the windows of heaven had been
broken open.  The rock was an insufficient protection, and a swarm of
midges settled upon the Prince's face and hands, inflicting such misery
that he cried out in his pain and despair.  At last, they were told
that the militia had gone; they returned to a warm room and a bright
fire; the Prince hung up his clothes to dry, sat at the fireside in his
shirt "as merry and hearty as if he was in the best room at Whitehall,"
and slept contentedly upon the door, which was taken down and covered
with a ragged sail to make a bed for him.

Two days later, on the evening of 27th June, Flora MacDonald arrived
with her brother and Lady Clanranald and Captain O'Neil, who had gone
in search of the ladies.  They sat down to a good supper, but had
scarcely begun when a herd rushed breathlessly into the room and told
them that General Campbell was landing his men three miles away.  In a
few minutes they were in the boat, and they spent the night crossing
Loch Uskavagh and finished their supper on the other side at five
o'clock in the morning.  Lady Clanranald then returned to Benbecula to
plead with General Campbell to spare her home.  Flora's brother went
with her, and Flora insisted that Captain O'Neil should accompany them.
She disliked the attentions he paid her, and she knew that his presence
would draw fresh suspicion upon her little company, which was to
consist of the Prince, Neil Maceachain, and herself.  Her stepfather's
passport was for herself and her servant, and for a woman named Betty
Burke, an expert with the spinning-wheel.  As an additional precaution,
Hugh MacDonald had furnished her with a letter to his wife, saying that
Betty's services should be secured for the spinning of a large quantity
of lint which was in the house at Armadale.

Before Lady Clanranald left, she, with Flora MacDonald's help, dressed
the Prince in the clothes they had prepared for him.  He laughed and
the lady wept as they clad him in the coarse garb of a gentlewoman's
servant--a light-coloured quilted petticoat, a flowered calico gown, a
white apron, and a long dark cloak made of the rough homespun known as
camlet.  The head-dress was large enough to cover his whole head and
face.  Charles was much amused by the apron, and kept telling them not
to forget it.

At eight o'clock on the evening of 28th June, Flora, with Betty Burke
and Neil Maceachain, set sail from Benbecula for Skye.  The sea was
rough, but the Prince was in great spirits, and he sang the Cavalier
songs which told of the Restoration of his great-uncle, Charles
II.--"The Twenty-ninth of May" and "The King shall Enjoy his Own
Again."  Flora MacDonald fell asleep, and he kept guard lest any of the
boatmen should stumble over her in the darkness.


III

IN SKYE

Next morning they were off the coast of Skye with a heavy gale in their
faces.  They were about to land at the point of Waternish, when they
saw two sentries, one of whom ordered them to stop.  They rowed out to
sea as fast as they could; he fired and missed them, and his companion
went off to give the alarm.  Fifteen men came up, and two boats were
lying ready.  Pursuit and capture seemed inevitable, for the Prince had
no arms, but the soldiers were content with walking along the shore and
watching the direction taken by the little boat, and, after hiding in a
creek, Flora and her companions landed undisturbed at Kilbride, in
Troternish, near Monkstat, the house of Sir Alexander MacDonald of
Sleat.  The laird, as they knew, was with Cumberland at Fort Augustus,
but they were sure of help from Lady Margaret.

Flora Macdonald took Neil with her to Monkstat, and left the Prince in
the boat.  The boatmen were instructed, if any inquiry should be made
about the person in the boat, to answer that it was a maid of Miss
MacDonald's, a lazy jade who would not follow her mistress.  At
Monkstat Flora obtained a private interview with Lady Margaret, and
found that there were two guests in the house--MacDonald of Kingsburgh,
Sir Alexander's factor or land agent, and Lieutenant Alexander MacLeod,
who was in command of the party which had so nearly caught the Prince.
Lady Margaret sent for Kingsburgh and told him the story.  It was
impossible to risk a meeting between Betty Burke and Lieutenant
MacLeod, and he promised to take the Prince to his own house at
Kingsburgh.  Neil was sent to convoy the Prince from the boat to a hill
a mile from Monkstat, and a bundle of clothes was prepared in order
that Betty Burke might be seen to carry her mistress's baggage.  They
reached the trysting-place in safety, and the Prince sent Neil back to
the boat for a case of knives which would have aroused suspicion if it
had been found by the enemy.  Neil reluctantly left him within a
gun-shot of the highroad, and returned to find that Kingsburgh had
brought him wine and biscuits.  He had tracked him through noticing a
number of sheep running away as if alarmed by a stranger, a hint which,
fortunately, was not taken by any of the soldiers who were moving about.

Lady Margaret's problem was to lull any suspicions of her other guest,
and for this purpose Flora MacDonald dined at Monkstat, and had a
conversation with Lieutenant MacLeod, who was anxious to know if, in
her journey from Benbecula, she had heard anything about the movements
of Charles Edward.  She gave discreet answers to his inquiries, and, in
his presence, Lady Margaret strongly opposed the suggestion that Flora
should go home that night.  She had often promised them a visit, and
she must not leave them after a few hours.  Flora begged to be excused;
she was anxious to see her mother, and to be at home in these troublous
times.  Lady Margaret reluctantly yielded, but insisted on sending her
own maid with her.  Flora set out on horseback, and soon overtook
Kingsburgh, Betty Burke, and Neil.  Some of the neighbours followed her
and were much interested in Betty.  They remarked on the impudence with
which she walked and talked with Kingsburgh, and were indignant that he
should make a serving-woman his companion and pay no attention to her
mistress.  They observed her masculine walk, and were much shocked by
the carelessness with which she raised her skirts when fording a
stream.  Neil pacified them by saying that she was an Irish girl, whom
Miss Flora had picked up in Uist and had brought home because of her
marvellous skill in spinning.  At last they shook off their inquisitive
companions, and the little party reached Kingsburgh House about
midnight.

The mistress of the house had gone to bed, and was roused by the visit
of an excited daughter, "O mother, my father has brought in such a very
odd, muckle, ill-shaken-up wife as ever I saw!"  Mrs. MacDonald went
down and found Betty Burke traversing the hall with "wide, lang steps."
Her husband asked her to get some supper, and Betty Burke saluted her
with a kiss from unshaven lips.  Kingsburgh followed her and told her
that they had the Prince as a guest.  They agreed that it was a hanging
matter, but resolved to die in a good cause, and the lady's anxiety was
diverted from the gallows by the difficulty of providing a supper fit
for a prince.  She brought him roasted eggs and bread and butter, and
he drank two bottles of small beer and a bumper of brandy.  Then he
produced a cracked pipe which he had tied up with thread, and asked for
tobacco, which Kingsburgh gave him--along with a new pipe.

In the morning the Prince slept late, and Flora and Kingsburgh took
counsel together.  They knew the amiable methods of the soldiery, and
were sure that the boatmen, threatened with torture, would tell the
story of Betty Burke.  Though they were reluctant to disturb the
Prince's rest, it was necessary to get him away at once.  They roused
him and dressed him in his female attire, for it was obviously
desirable that he should leave the house in his disguise, so that any
information which leaked out through the servants might lead his
pursuers to watch for a man in woman's clothes.  Before he left, Flora
cut a lock from his hair, and his hostess gave him a silver snuff-box
engraved with two clasped hands and the motto "Rob Gib."  Some days
later the Prince noticed the motto, asked a companion what it meant,
and was told that Rob Gib's contract was stark love and kindness.  "I
will keep it all my life," he said.

Kingsburgh accompanied him on his way, and, in a wood, Betty Burke
changed into Highland dress, and "with a claymore in his hand he was a
soger-like man indeed."  Bidding farewell to Kingsburgh with the words,
"I am afraid I shall not meet another MacDonald in my difficulties," he
and Neil Maceachain walked to Portree under the guidance of a little
boy.  He left Kingsburgh just in time, for Monkstat and Kingsburgh
House were soon searched by the fierce General Ferguson, who insulted
Mrs. MacDonald and met her denials of the Prince's presence with the
remark that she had put the maid in a better room than her mistress.
Cumberland was furious at the Prince's escape, and ordered the arrest
of Kingsburgh, who, he said, had neglected the greatest service which
could have been done to King George.  The Prince's host spent twelve
months in prison as the reward of one night's hospitality.

At Kingsburgh Charles had again proposed to throw himself on the mercy
of MacLeod, but had been persuaded to fall in with an arrangement made
by Lady Margaret and Kingsburgh.  One of Sir Alexander MacDonald's
clan, Donald Roy MacDonald, had been prevented by his chief from going
to the Prince when he raised his standard, but had joined after the
battle of Prestonpans, had been wounded in the foot at Culloden, and
was hiding in a surgeon's house in Troternish.  It was agreed at
Monkstat that Donald Roy MacDonald should meet the Prince at Portree,
and arrange for his crossing to the island of Raasay under the
protection of the Laird of Raasay.

While Charles was at Kingsburgh, Donald Roy succeeded in finding a son
of the Laird of Raasay, known by the name of his father's property of
Rona, a neighbouring island.  All the boats in Skye had been
commandeered, and Rona had to take a crazy old boat which he found
abandoned in a fresh-water loch, and to convey it to the sea, in order
to obtain one of his father's boats from Raasay.  Before the Prince
reached Portree on 30th June, Rona had returned accompanied by his
brother, Murdoch MacLeod, and by a cousin, Captain Malcolm MacLeod.
Flora MacDonald performed her last service to the Prince by riding to
Portree to make sure of his reception, and the whole party--the Prince,
Flora MacDonald, Neil Maceachain, Donald Roy MacDonald, and the three
MacLeods--met at an inn.  Charles purchased a quarter of a pound of
tobacco, and Donald Roy had to insist upon his taking three halfpence
brought him by the landlord as change for sixpence; but in spite of
this warning of the danger of arousing suspicion by unheard-of
liberality, he proposed later to be satisfied with eleven shillings as
change for a guinea, the landlord not being able to produce more
silver.  Donald Roy checked him and got the guinea changed elsewhere.

They were to sail about midnight, and the Prince made his farewells.
He had always treated Flora MacDonald with the greatest deference, and
invariably rose when she entered the room, and he used to speak of her
as "our Lady."  He kissed her--the usual salutation of the time.  "For
all that has happened," he said, "I hope, madam, we shall meet in St.
James's yet."  Nine days had elapsed since they first met in the
shieling in South Uist; for three days they had been fellow-wanderers.
He was not destined to receive her at St. James's, nor ever to see her
again after their parting in the village inn, but a gracious
recollection of "our Lady" can never have been obliterated by the sins
and the sorrows of later years.  She was again to meet a Prince of
Wales, for, when she was a prisoner in London, the heir of George II.
paid his respects to her and gave to history one of the few pleasant
stories that are recorded of "Fred who was alive and is dead."  Four
years later she married Kingsburgh's son; she became the mother of many
children; she entertained Dr. Johnson in the house to which she had
brought Prince Charlie.  Her adventures were not yet over, for, in the
year after Johnson's visit, she and her husband emigrated to North
Carolina, and she saw the fighting in the early campaigns of the
American War.  She returned to Skye and died at Kingsburgh in 1790, two
years after "King Charles III." had breathed his last at Rome.  Those
three June days when she was the Prince's preserver have consecrated
her name and her memory while courage and loyalty are deemed worthy of
the reverence of mankind.

The Prince had still before him many weary wanderings.  He bade
good-bye that evening not only to Flora MacDonald, but also to Neil
Maceachain, whom he sent to attend the Lady to her home.  Donald Roy
was lame and could not accompany him, and he was conducted by the two
MacLeods, Murdoch and Malcolm; he went off with a bottle of whisky
strapped to his belt at one side, and a bottle of brandy, some shirts,
and a cold fowl on the other side.  They reached Raasay safely; but the
Prince thought the island too small for concealment, and during the
short time they were there they were alarmed by a man whom the
islanders suspected to be a spy.  He came near their hut, and Malcolm
MacLeod proposed to shoot him, but Charles forbade him, and the
stranger passed on without looking in.  The Prince insisted upon
returning to Skye; he was not quite happy among the MacLeods and wished
to be with Donald Roy again.

Late on the evening of and July they left Raasay in a storm, the Prince
singing a Highland song to cheer the boatmen; he had learned Gaelic in
the course of his expedition.  They landed at Scorrybreck, close to
Portree, and the Prince spent an uneasy night in a cow-byre, often
wakening up and looking round him with a startled air.  "O poor
England," he was heard to murmur in his sleep.  Donald Roy had been
sent for, but was unable to come, and Malcolm MacLeod warned the Prince
that parties of soldiers were on the outlook, and that they must set
out without a moment's delay.  They walked to Mackinnon's country, the
part of Skye known as Strath, and the Prince passed as MacLeod's
servant and took the name of Lewie Caw, a fugitive from Culloden who
was known to be hiding in Skye.  Lewie Caw carried the baggage and was
careful to walk behind his master and to show no curiosity when MacLeod
met an acquaintance.  They redoubled their precautions when they
entered Mackinnon's country, because Mackinnon had been "out" and the
district was specially watched.  Charles exchanged his waistcoat with
MacLeod because it looked too fine for a servant, and promised some day
to give him a better waistcoat still when he himself should walk in
London streets dressed in the kilt which Kingsburgh had given him.  He
removed his periwig and covered his head with a dirty napkin, but
MacLeod insisted that any one who had ever seen him would know him
again.  "This is an odd remarkable face I have got that nothing can
disguise it," he said, and MacLeod, as he looked at him, felt that no
disguise could conceal his possession of "something that was not
ordinary, something of the grand and stately."

In this way they reached Elgol and met the old Laird of Mackinnon, who
arranged to accompany the Prince to the mainland.  Malcolm MacLeod,
himself a person for whom search was being made, thought that the
Prince would be safer without him, and Charles reluctantly let him go,
sending with him a note of thanks to Donald Roy.  "Sir," it read, "I
thank God I am in good health and have got off as designed.  Remember
me to all friends, and thank them for the trouble they have been at.--I
am, Sir, your humble servant, JAMES THOMSON."


IV

IN LOCHABER

The Prince, with the old laird and his son, John Mackinnon, landed on
the shore of Loch Nevis at four o'clock in the morning of 5th July, and
spent three nights in the heather.  On the morning of 8th July the old
laird went to seek a cave as a shelter, and the Prince and John
Mackinnon rowed up the loch.  Suddenly, as they came round a point,
their oars struck some wood, and they saw a boat tied to a rock and
five men standing near it on the shore.  They were at once challenged,
and, when the boatmen answered that they came from Sleat, they were
ordered to come ashore.  They disobeyed, and the militiamen jumped into
their own boat and pursued.  John Mackinnon himself took an oar, for
the Prince's life depended upon the race that summer morning.  Charles
was sitting in the bottom of the boat with his head between Mackinnon's
legs.  He wanted to make for the shore and trust to his powers of
running; but Mackinnon spread a plaid over his head that he might not
be seen, and told him firmly that he had no chance on a bare hillside,
that their only hope of escape lay in their oars, and that if the
pursuers came up he could rely on them all to fight to the last.  Each
boatman sat with a loaded musket beside him.  From time to time the
Prince inquired how the race was going, and Mackinnon was always able
to answer that they were holding their own.  It was not enough, but a
desperate effort carried them round a point and out of sight of the
enemy.  The coast was wooded, and the Prince, Mackinnon, and one of the
boatmen jumped ashore and plunged into the trees.  The boat went on,
but the pursuers, coming again within view, saw that their prey had
escaped, and Charles, from the top of a hill, watched them return,
while Mackinnon was apologizing for having disobeyed his commands.  "I
only wanted," he replied, "to fight for my life rather than be taken
prisoner."

Later in the day they recrossed the loch and walked through the night
to Morar, and MacDonald of Morar gave them his son as a guide to
Borrodale.  They made for the house of the Laird of Borrodale, Angus
MacDonald, but it had been burned down by the troops, and they found
him in a neighbouring hut.  When John Mackinnon announced the Prince's
presence, the old man said, "I shall lodge him so secure that all the
forces in Britain shall not find him out."  After his narrow escape two
days before, Charles had received a cold message from Clanranald and a
refusal of help from Morar, and Borrodale's welcome gave him fresh
heart and hope.

The two Mackinnons left him at Borrodale, and both of them fell at once
into the hands of the soldiers, who could not fail to suspect the
Prince's presence in the neighbourhood.  The news of their capture made
old Borrodale doubly cautious, and on 13th July he hid the Prince in a
cleft between two precipitous rocks where he had constructed a little
hut and had covered it with green turf, so that it looked like a
natural grass-covered brae.  Here the Prince was joined by a nephew of
his host, Alexander MacDonald of Glenaladale, who was his companion in
most of what remained of his wanderings.  Glenaladale had been wounded
three times at Culloden, but he responded at once to the Prince's call.
They did not remain long at Borrodale, for they learned that the
Prince's presence in that region was known to the enemy, and they could
see the ships on the coast.  On 17th July they set out for a new place
of concealment in Morar, where they learned that General Campbell, with
six ships, had anchored in Loch Nevis, and that a party of soldiers was
near them.  It was clear that they were surrounded, and that they must
break through the enemy's line of posts, and make for the north in the
hope of finding a French ship at Poolewe, near Loch Maree.

Every day brought fresh perils and new adventures.  At their first
setting out they saw from the top of a hill some cattle being moved,
and discovered that Glenaladale's tenants were saving their property
from the troops, who were taking the very route by which the Prince had
intended to go.  This led them to send for a fresh guide, Donald
Cameron of Glenpean, to conduct them out of the dangerous region of
Morar.  While they waited for him they learned that a hundred
Argyllshire militiamen were at the foot of the very hill on the top of
which they were resting.  They could not stay for their guide, and, as
the sun was setting, they moved on.  A solitary figure was seen
approaching them, and they could not tell whether the man was friend or
foe, but, to their relief, it proved to be Donald Cameron, and he
promised to lead them safely through the enemy's outposts.

From the head of Loch Eil to the head of Loch Hourn there was a long
series of small camps about half a mile from each other; the sentries
were each within call of his neighbour, and patrols were constantly
moving to keep the sentries alert.  Cameron led them to a hill which
had just been searched, and might, therefore, be regarded as safe, but
they had no provisions except a little oatmeal and some butter, and,
after some wanderings, they found a hiding-place for the Prince on a
hill at the head of Loch Quoich, while some of the party went to get
provisions.  They brought back the news that a hundred redcoats were
marching up the other side of the hill, and the whole party set out
again towards nightfall.  As they trudged along they saw in front of
them a camp-fire, but they decided that they must take the risk of
passing through the enemy.  To remain in the region of Moidart meant
certain capture.  They crept along, going so near the camp that they
could hear the soldiers talking, but they were unobserved.  As they
were climbing the next hill they came across a rivulet which, emerging
from a spring, fell straight down a precipice.  The Prince missed his
footing and was about to fall, but was supported by Donald Cameron and
Glenaladale, and they reached the top in safety, only to see another
camp-fire at the foot.  This they were able to avoid, but, although
they had broken through the cordon, their route still lay along the
line of the camps.

At the head of Loch Hourn they hid in a hollow which was covered with
long heather and birch trees.  They were faint with hunger, and one of
them, a son of old Borrodale, produced from his pocket a small quantity
of meal.  He used to tell afterwards of the change produced on the
faces of his companions by the sight of it.  Their guide, Donald
Cameron, was not sure of the way from this point, and in the evening he
and Glenaladale went to find a new guide.  When the two emerged from
the hollow they found that they had spent the day quite close to one of
the enemy's camps; they returned, and the whole party at once set out
for Glenshiel.  The night was very dark, and they had nothing to eat,
but in the morning they got butter and cheese in a village in
Glenshiel, where they were fortunate enough to find a guide, named
Donald MacDonald, who had fought in the Prince's army and was fleeing
from the troops.  They also learned the unpleasant news that a French
ship had just left Poolewe, and that it would be useless to go there.
That day, 22nd July, was very hot, and they lay on a mountain side
parched with thirst; a stream was near, and they could hear the sound
of the water, but they dared not move.  At sunset Donald Cameron bade
them good-bye, and a small boy, the son of the man from whom they
bought their provisions, arrived with some goats' milk as a present to
Glenaladale.

Thus refreshed, they turned their course southwards for Glenmoriston,
under their new guide; but they had scarcely gone a mile when
Glenaladale missed his purse, which contained the Prince's gold.  The
Prince found a hiding-place, and Glenaladale and young Borrodale
proceeded to search for the purse.  They soon found it--empty.  There
could be no doubt about the thief, for Glenaladale remembered taking it
out to give four shillings to the boy who had brought the milk.  They
walked back to his father's house, and made their complaint.  The
father seized a rope and threatened to hang the boy to the nearest
tree, and the money was returned.  The boy's crime saved the Prince.
As he lay waiting, with the guide and another attendant, an officer
with a small armed party passed close to him, having come by the track
along which the fugitives were going.  Charles dared not send to warn
Glenaladale and his companion, and he lay in grave anxiety until they
arrived.  The officer had passed them on the other side of a stream,
and neither of the two parties had seen the other.  If Glenaladale had
not missed his purse, and they had all pursued their original route,
they must have met the soldiers, and, though they would have
outnumbered them, the noise of the conflict could not have failed to
bring larger numbers of the enemy.

They went on towards Glenmoriston, walking by night and hiding by day,
the Prince made miserable by swarms of midges.  On 24th July they
reached the Braes of Glenmoriston and found some friendly MacDonalds,
Highland robbers by profession, one of whom recognized the Prince.  "I
hope," he said, "to see you yet in a better condition, as I have seen
you before at the head of your army on Glasgow Green."  For a week the
Prince remained concealed in Glenmoriston.  His host told him of a cave
which could shelter forty men, the best water in the Highlands running
through it, and a heather bed ready for his reception.  After three
days of these comforts, they moved to another grotto, equally
picturesque, but a party of militia was reported to be within four
miles of them, and the Prince was again in hopes of finding a French
ship at Poolewe.

On the night of 1st August they set out northwards and spent next day
in Strathglass, where the Prince rested in a tent made of fir-branches.
They continued on this route until 7th August, when, on a hill called
Beinn Acharain, they heard again that only one French ship had reached
Poolewe, and that it had sailed, leaving behind two French officers who
hoped to meet the Prince in the region of Loch Eil.  This information
led them to retrace their steps, which they did without any adventure
until they found themselves again in the Braes of Glenmoriston on 12th
August.  There they were delayed by a party of soldiers in Glengarry,
but the road was soon clear, and they went on without difficulty except
for heavy rain and want of provisions.  No food could be obtained, for
the troops had wasted the country and driven the inhabitants into the
hills.  But in their utmost need, near Loch Arkaig, one of the party
shot a hart, on which they "most deliciously feasted."

On 21st August, on the shores of Loch Arkaig, Archibald Cameron, a
brother of Lochiel, who had been a physician in the Prince's army, and
was afterwards to give his life for the cause in London, brought to the
Prince two French officers who had landed at Poolewe in June, and had
been looking for him ever since, but they could give him no information
of any value.  Two days later, as the Prince lay sleeping, he was told
that a party of two hundred men were close to him; a friendly guard was
believed to have been placed, and, as they had received no warning,
they concluded that there was treachery and that they were surrounded.
The Prince asked for his gun, and the small party, eight in number, at
once took up a position on the hillside, determined to sell their lives
dear.  "I was bred a fowler," said Charles.  "I can charge quick and am
a tolerable marksman, and I can be sure of one at least."  But the
soldiers, after searching the hut which the Prince had just left, went
off in another direction, and Charles lay down and slept peacefully in
the rain.

This was his last adventure, for the authorities were giving up the
search in despair.  Cumberland had left Fort Augustus on 18th July, and
his successor as commander-in-chief, the Earl of Albemarle, wrote from
Fort Augustus to the Secretary of State on 12th August that he was to
leave for Edinburgh next day.  "The last party I sent out," he
explained "(upon a report that the Pretender's son was in Glen
Dessary), returned last night without any tidings of him, and I can
make no conjecture of the place he lies concealed in, therefore cannot
help suspecting he is gone off, either in some of the small French
vessels that have been hovering along the coast, or in a boat to the
Long Island.  I shall march with the troops, and not leave them till I
see them quartered at Perth, Stirling, and other places."  On the day
the letter was written, the Prince was in Glenmoriston; three days
later, at Loch Arkaig, he was not far from Glen Dessary.  He had
crossed the head of Glen Dessary on 19th July, and a report to this
effect had reached Albemarle much too late.  The recall of the troops
for their southward march explains the comparative security of the
fugitives, and about the same time the militia regiments were disbanded
after their fruitless search.

On 27th August MacDonnell of Lochgarry and Dr. Archibald Cameron guided
the Prince into the friendly country of Cluny Macpherson, where he was
to remain until the arrival of a French ship could be definitely
ascertained.  Lochiel had a touching meeting with him on 30th August.
He knelt to greet his Prince.  "No, my dear Lochiel," said Charles,
"you don't know who may be looking from the tops of yonder hills."
They were entertained in Lochiel's hiding-place, where the fugitive ate
minced collops out of a saucepan with a silver spoon and exclaimed that
at last he was living like a prince.  Cluny himself joined them on 1st
September; he had been originally on the side of the Government, but
had been captured by the Jacobite army in August 1745, had joined the
Prince with his clan after Prestonpans, had marched into England and
fought at Falkirk, but had been too late for Culloden.  He took the
Prince to a cunningly devised refuge which he had provided to avoid the
dampness of a cave.  Cluny's "cage" was situated in some holly bushes
on a rough hillside overlooking Loch Ericht.  The floor consisted of
rows of felled trees, made level with earth and gravel.  Young trees
growing between the planks of the floor formed a series of stakes,
which served for the construction of a thatched roof bound with ropes
made of heather and birch twigs.  A large tree which rested on a rock
lay across the top of the hut and gave it the appearance of a cage
hanging from a tree.  A crevice between two stones formed a chimney,
and the smoke of the peat fire was so near in colour to the stones that
it was invisible.  The hut was divided into two chambers, of which the
upper was the living room and the lower served as a kitchen.

In this cage, with sentinels posted round, the Prince, with Cluny,
Lochiel, Dr. Cameron, and six others, lived pleasantly enough for a
week.  They had plenty of provisions and found amusement in a pack of
cards.  At one o'clock in the morning of 13th September, they were
roused by a messenger who reported the presence of two French ships in
Loch Nan Uamh.  No time was to be lost, and they set out at once for
the coast of South Morar, but they did not forget to send the news to
other fugitives who were in hiding--among them Neil Maceachain, who met
them on the coast and escaped with them.

It was still necessary to walk by night and hide by day; but one day
the Prince, who had just received three mounted firelocks which he had
left in the course of his wanderings, felt himself safe enough to
challenge his companions to a test of skill in marksmanship.  They
threw their bonnets into the air and shot at them, "in which diversion
His Royal Highness far exceeded."  He played a poor practical joke on
one of his followers, wrapping himself in a plaid and lying on the
floor of a hut at the entrance to which was a large puddle.  As his
victim approached, the Prince peeped out of the plaid; and with a cry
of "O Lord! my Master!" the unfortunate man fell into the puddle.  When
they reached the river Lochy, he was greatly delighted by being given
some brandy which had been brought from the enemy's garrison at Fort
Augustus.  On 16th September they reached the ruins of Lochiel's house
at Achnacarry, which had been burned by Cumberland, and on the 19th
they were once more at Borrodale.  Cluny knew that he was safe in his
own wild country; and, shortly after midnight, he watched the Prince,
with Lochiel and Dr. Archibald Cameron, sail in the frigate _Prince de
Conti_, whence they were transferred to her slightly larger consort,
_L'Heureux_.  The two French vessels had arrived in Loch Boisdale on
5th September; they had been searching for the Prince for a fortnight,
and their commanders were beginning to despair of finding him.


All of Prince Charlie's companions who left records of his wanderings
testify to his courage and endurance.  "The Prince submitted with
patience to his adverse fortune, was cheerful, and frequently desired
those that were with him to be so.  He was cautious when in the
greatest danger, never at a loss in resolving what to do.  He regretted
more the distress of those who suffered for adhering to his interest
than the dangers and hardships he was exposed to."  If the record of
Prince Charlie's escape is honourable to himself, it is not less
honourable to the people who, at their gravest peril, sheltered and
protected him, and the unforgettable story which clings to Highland
glens and island shores speaks not of the Prince alone, but also of the
men and women who saved him.  Among the things that abide is the memory
of such as be faithful in love.



[Illustration: _Prince Charlie._]



[Illustration: _African warrior_]




VI

TWO AFRICAN JOURNEYS

In an ancient and closely settled land fateful journeys are for the
most part short ones.  The key-points of danger and safety are not far
apart, and a mile or two may be the margin between success and failure.
But in a country of infinite spaces the case is otherwise, and such a
country is Africa.  Hence African journeys against time have covered
wide areas from the days when Moses led the Children of Israel across
the Red Sea.  They have naturally, too, been associated with seasons of
war.  In this chapter I propose to tell of two: one taken from the
early history of Natal; and the other from the Mashonaland Rebellion,
the last of those native wars which seriously threatened the white
settlements in the south of the continent.


I

In the thirties of last century South Africa was disturbed by two great
movements.  One was the rise of the military power of the Zulus, which
began when the exiled Dingiswayo, having seen British soldiers in
shakos drilling in Cape Town, returned to introduce something of their
discipline and drill among his countrymen.  His successor, Tchaka,
became a kind of black Napoleon, eating up the neighbouring tribes and
acquiring their land and cattle, and driving the broken remnants north
of the Drakensberg.  One of the principal of these refugees,
Mosilikatse, fled with his clan north of the Vaal, and became the
founder of that Matabele nation which we shall hear of again.  After
Tchaka came Dingaan, an inferior general, but formidable because he
commanded a vigorous nation in arms.

The other movement was caused by the restlessness of the Dutch settlers
in Cape Colony under British rule.  They disliked the British law which
made the black man and the white man equal in legal rights; they
objected to taxation; they were offended by many novelties which
threatened their old traditions.  So some of them took the bold step of
moving with their families north into the wilderness, in search of a
land where they could live as in the old days.

The story of the Great Trek, a fine story on the whole with many
splendid tales in it of heroism against odds, does not concern us here.
It suffices to say that, after desperate battles with Mosilikatse, the
Boers drove him north of the Limpopo and began the settlement of the
countries which we know to-day as the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State.  Our concern is with the little country of Natal lying to the
east of that no-man's-land of Kaffraria, where native wars had been
grumbling for thirty years.

Natal is a land of rich valleys lying between the Drakensberg range and
the sea.  Just after it had been devastated by Tchaka's armies, a small
group of British traders arrived at Durban Bay and founded a tiny
settlement, which managed to keep on good terms with the Zulu king.  In
1834 they petitioned the British Government that the country should be
occupied as a British colony, but on financial grounds the British
Government declined.  Next year appeared a certain Captain Allen
Gardiner, an ex-officer of the Royal Navy, who had devoted his life to
missionary work.  He visited Dingaan's court, but found the soil there
unfruitful; so he settled on the coast and was one of the founders of
the port of Durban, named in honour of Sir Benjamin D'Urban, the
Governor of Cape Colony.  Money was raised for clearing the bush and
improving the town, and those who had no money to subscribe gave one
week's work.  Among the latter was a young Englishman, by name Dick
King, who acted as Captain Gardiner's wagon driver.  Of him we shall
presently hear.

When the Great Trek began a party of Boers, under the famous Pieter
Uys, trekked through Kaffraria and reached Durban.  There they were
warmly welcomed by the few British settlers, and on their return to
Cape Colony they gave a glowing account of the Promised Land they had
discovered.  But the main Boer emigration did not take that direction.
When the Boers entered Natal in force, they came from the north through
the Drakensberg passes under the leadership of Pieter Retief.  Retief
also received a hearty welcome at Durban, and paid a visit to Dingaan's
court in order to arrange for the occupation by his countrymen of some
of the land along the Tugela River.  The Zulus were purely a nation of
soldiers and cattle-owners, and most of the best land in the country
was untilled.

The story of the Boers in Natal is one long tragedy.  Retief and his
company of 200 Boers visited Dingaan's kraal on the 3rd February 1838,
and were incontinently massacred.  The women and children and the rest
of the party were scattered at various points in the Tugela valley, and
thither the Zulu regiments of the Black Shields and the White Shields
hastened to complete the slaughter.  Whole families were butchered, and
few indeed were the survivors.  The district is still known as Weenen,
the "place of weeping," so called by the Boers in memory of a hideous
tragedy.

But Dingaan had found an enemy far tougher in fibre than the Kafir
chieftains he had subdued.  There were other Boer leaders, who would
not rest till they had avenged their countrymen.  Two of these, Hendrik
Potgeiter and Pieter Uys, who had just defeated Mosilikatse, at once
crossed the Drakensberg.  The first affair was disastrous, for they
were badly beaten.  Then the English from Durban attempted a diversion,
but they too were defeated by Panda, half-brother to Dingaan, on the
Tugela.  It looked as if the British settlement was at the mercy of the
conqueror, and presently the Zulus were in Durban, looting and
destroying, while the settlers had retired to a brig in the bay.  They
were safe there, however, for every Zulu has a horror of water.

But an avenger was on his way.  This was Andries Pretorius, a man of a
grim and patient valour, like some Old Testament hero.  He raised a new
Boer commando, and in November 1838, with 400 men, crossed the Tugela.
The Boers held a solemn religious service, and vowed that if the Lord
gave them victory they would keep the day of it sacred as a Sabbath in
each year.  On the 15th December--celebrated ever since by the South
African Dutch as Dingaan's Day--Pretorius met the Zulu impis on the
banks of the Blood River.  The 400 disciplined men, all first-class
shots, utterly defeated the black army of many thousands; and when
victory was won they showed little mercy to an enemy whom they regarded
as accursed of heaven.  Among the Boers only three were wounded, while
the victors counted over 3,000 Zulu dead.  Dingaan fled into the
eastern hills, and Pretorius, marching upon the royal kraal, buried the
remains of Retief and his companions, which he found bleaching in the
sun.

Natal, except for the British settlement on the coast, was now
effectively occupied by the Boer emigrants.  This raised an awkward
problem for Britain and the Cape Government.  Under English law a
subject of the Crown cannot, by adventuring in the waste places of the
earth, acquire sovereignty for himself, but only for his king.  The
British Government, therefore, could not acknowledge the independent
republic which Pretorius and his friends had set up in Natal, and they
could not admit that the Boer emigrants, by leaving British territory,
had thereby thrown off British allegiance.  They therefore resolved to
send a small expedition to take possession of Durban and restore order
in the country.

In December 1838, Major Charters, with a company of the 72nd
Highlanders and three guns, landed there and erected a fort on the
Point.  While, therefore, Pretorius was breaking Dingaan on the Blood
River, the British flag was being hoisted at Durban.  Presently Major
Charters withdrew, leaving only a small body of troops behind him,
under Captain Jervis.  Jervis was an honest man, who earnestly desired
to arrange a peace between the Zulus and the Boers.  This, however, was
soon seen to be impossible.  The Boer regarded the Zulu as the
Israelite regarded the Canaanite, an enemy whom it was his religious
duty to extirpate.  The British Government withdrew the handful of
troops; and no sooner had they gone than the Boers hoisted their own
flag on the British flagstaff and proclaimed the Republic of Natalia.

After that the doings of Pretorius and his men became less creditable.
Dingaan was unquestionably a brutal and treacherous scoundrel; but the
Boers used his own methods against him when they drove him out of the
country to exile and death and set up his half-brother Panda in his
stead.  The truth is that, while many of the leaders of the Great Trek
were men of the highest character, a number of common brigands and
adventurers made up the tail of the expeditions.  The new republic
marched from confidence to confidence, and in its relations with
Britain showed an arrogance not unnatural perhaps in those who had
fought so stubborn a battle.

Presently came a crisis.  Some of the Kafir tribes whom Tchaka and
Dingaan had expelled began to drift back to Natal, and the Boers,
denying all right in the land to its former masters, resolved to settle
them in a district south of the Natal border, in what is now the
province of Pondoland.  There lived a chief called Faku, who, to his
surprise, was suddenly attacked by a Boer commando and lost 150 of his
men and 3,000 of his cattle.  He complained to the Wesleyan
missionaries who had settled under his protection, and they forwarded a
complaint to the Government of Cape Colony.  The situation had become
serious, for it looked as if the Boers in Natal were about to set a
spark to the powder magazine of Kaffraria, the dangers of which Cape
Colony knew only too well.  Accordingly a small British force of 250
men, under Captain Smith, was ordered to march to Durban.  He arrived
in Natal in March 1842, and without interference took possession of the
fort on the Point and pitched his camp outside the town about half a
mile from the sea.

Pretorius and his men instantly challenged his authority, and presently
the little force was besieged.  Captain Smith resolved to make a night
attack on the Boer headquarters; but the English regulars proved less
adroit than the Boer sharpshooters and were driven back with
considerable losses.  A short truce was arranged to bury the dead; and
it became very clear that unless relief came at once the British would
soon be driven into the sea.

The difficulty was to get news of the situation to the British
authorities.  It was impossible to send by water, and 600 miles of
savage country lay between Durban and the first Cape Colony settlement
of Grahamstown.  That country was Kaffraria, full of angry native
tribes, bitterly hostile to the Boers, and for the most part scarcely
less hostile to the British.  Moreover, the Boer lines lay around the
town, and it might be no easy task to pass them.  But Grahamstown was
the only hope, and volunteers were asked for to make the perilous
journey.  Dick King, the man whom we have seen as Captain Gardiner's
wagoner, responded.  He was a man of wiry physique, sound veldcraft,
and above all he had mixed much with the Kafirs and knew most of their
tongues.  Two of the best troop horses in Captain Smith's force were
selected, and in the evening were rowed across Durban Bay.

Such is the sequence of events which led to Dick King's great ride.
When he was ferried over the twilit waters of the bay he was engaged on
an errand even more fateful than he thought.  He believed that he was
only doing a brave man's part in getting help for sorely tried
comrades; but in truth he was settling the fate of the colony of Natal.
The British Government at home were averse to any expansion of
territory, and above all averse to becoming involved in a war.  Had the
stockade at Durban fallen, in all likelihood they would have done
nothing further, but made terms with Pretorius and recognized his
republic.  That would have meant that Natal would have developed as a
Dutch state instead of being the most purely English colony in South
Africa.  The fate of the little country was involved in one man's ride.

King's task seemed in the last degree impossible.  There was no chance
of getting fresh mounts, so he must ride each horse in turn and lead
the other, and somehow nurse the two beasts over 600 miles.  The
country was for the most part grassy down-land, broken by rocky ridges
and furrowed by deep rivers descending from the Drakensberg.  Over
these rivers there were no bridges and few fords.  There were no roads,
only native tracks.  All the tribes were suspicious and most of them
hostile.  Above all there was desperate need for haste, and a man in a
hurry must go blindly.  He has no time to make wide circuits and take
proper precautions for secrecy.

Before daybreak King had crossed the Umkomangi River and was well
started.  For food he had to trust to mealie-pap at Kafir kraals, and
that meant he must keep on the good side of the different tribes he
met.  Two advantages he had--his complete knowledge of their speech,
and the fact that scattered among them were various Wesleyan
missionaries who might be trusted to befriend him.  He was also on the
side which, on the whole, they favoured, for memories of Pretorius's
raid on Faku were still bitter in the countryside.  Probably no living
man but he could have made the journey, and as it fell out he had
little trouble with the Kafirs.  The Amabaka tribe did, indeed, take
him prisoner under the belief that he was a Boer; but when they found
that he was British they at once released him.

His main difficulties were the pathless country and the great distance.
Wild animals, which have now been driven into the far north, were then
as thick in the countryside as they are to-day in a game preserve.
Elephants roamed in the patches of forest; there were lions in every
thicket; and the African buffalo, almost the most dangerous of African
beasts, filled the river marshes.  To an old hunter, however, wild
beasts are the least of perils in the bush, for they will rarely attack
one who appears to have no hostile purpose.  But the rivers were full
with the rains from the hills, and he had to swim them from bank to
bank.  Also it was no light task, even for an old hunter, to find his
way in a pathless land, where a false turn might lead him into
impenetrable marshes or jungles where every yard had to be fought for.

Poor food and excessive fatigue soon began to tell upon his strength.
In a ride against time a man's nerves are highly strung, and this adds
greatly to the physical burden.  About the third day he began to suffer
from chill and fever, and the wait-a-bit thorns and prickly-pear scrub
began to dance before his eyes.  Every one who has ridden through the
African bush with fever on him knows the misery of the experience--the
blinding headache, the unbearable thirst, the shivering fits which make
it difficult to keep in the saddle.  King forced his body to its utmost
limits; but he was compelled every now and then to lie down and rest.
One or two missionaries whom he encountered doctored him as best they
could; but altogether the better part of two days was wasted in bouts
of illness.

Nevertheless the iron spirit of the man prevailed.  Allowing for the
delays caused by illness, he and his two horses did an average of not
less than eighty miles a day.  On the ninth day after leaving Durban he
stumbled into the little settlement of Grahamstown, half blinded with
fatigue and fever, but able to give the message which was to save his
comrades.

[Illustration: _He and his two horses did an average of not less than
eighty miles a day._]

Colonel Hare, Lieutenant-Governor of the Eastern Province, was not a
man to waste time.  He at once ordered the Grenadier company of the
27th Regiment to proceed from Port Elizabeth to Durban, and Sir George
Napier immediately afterwards sent the 25th Regiment from the Cape.
Exactly one month from King's start, a British ship carrying
reinforcements sailed into Durban Bay and found the British flag still
flying.  Dick King's wild ride had not been in vain.


II

In March 1896 a grave native rebellion broke out in Matabeleland, the
south-western portion of the then new colony of Rhodesia.  A rebellion
of some sort was almost inevitable.  Though their chief, Lobengula, had
been defeated, the Matabele people had never been really conquered; and
as white civilization and white settlement began to spread throughout
the country it was certain that a warlike race would not accept the
overthrow of their old life without a further struggle.  Three months
later the rebellion spread to the north-western province of
Mashonaland, and there the number of independent and isolated tribes
made the task of suppression more difficult.  The chief town of
Mashonaland is Salisbury, but scattered in the country round were a
number of embryo townships connected by precarious roads.  Everywhere
there was a large native population, and the white residents were
separated by many miles of difficult country from their fellows.

The first threat of trouble in Mashonaland began in the Hartley Hill
district to the south-west of Salisbury.  As always happens with native
risings, it spread rapidly to districts hundreds of miles distant.
About 14th June Salisbury was thoroughly alarmed, and provision was
made for its defence.  It was an extremely scattered town, and the
outlying houses had to be relinquished and the whole population brought
into a central laager.  On the night of the 18th the homestead of the
Vicomtesse de la Panouse, two miles from the town, was visited by a
party of rebels.  The Vicomtesse only escaped by hiding in the grass
and creeping into Salisbury under cover of night.

Our story begins a week later, on the highroad which ran from Salisbury
to Umtali on the Portuguese border.  Along this road were various
stores and settlements, the chief being at a place called Marandellas,
some forty or fifty miles down the road.  On the morning of 16th June
Miss Carter, a Salisbury lady, left Salisbury for Umtali in a passenger
wagon, accompanied by Mr. Lamb, three other white men, two natives, and
a Cape driver.  On the 18th the down coach for Umtali passed them, but
the driver had no news to give them of the troubles which were then
beginning on the other side of Salisbury.

When they reached Marandellas they found the Vicomte de la Panouse with
a party and a large wagon laden with stores.  They also received a note
from the station of Headlands, some twenty miles on, urging them to
return to Salisbury, as the Mashonas were everywhere rising.  At first
they were inclined to disregard the warning.  But they returned to
Marandellas, where they received another message begging them to waste
no time in getting back.  Again they hesitated, for Marandellas seemed
a very safe retreat, since it held a large supply of ammunition.
Discretion, however, prevailed, and they moved out on the Salisbury
road, where they overtook the Vicomte de la Panouse and his party.  It
was resolved that they would travel back together, for the Vicomte had
with him three white men, and there was also an ox-wagon with several
attendants anxious to join in the convoy.

The Vicomte's wagon, which was drawn by donkeys and was very heavily
laden, moved slowly, and it was not till the afternoon of the following
day that it reached the store of Messrs. Graham and White.  Here they
realized for the first time their imminent danger.  All the native boys
had gone, and one who had crawled through to warn Mr. Graham had had a
hard fight and was badly wounded.  The party made a laager round the
store, and the night passed peacefully.  Next morning they begged Mr.
Graham to accompany them to Salisbury.  He refused, however, believing
that he was quite able to hold the place.  The following day he was
attacked and murdered as he was escaping into the veld.

That Monday morning, after leaving Mr. Graham's store, the sentry whom
they had placed on the top of Mr. Lamb's wagon pointed out several
black forms in the distance.  The wagons moved peacefully along for
some six miles, and then outspanned for the mid-day rest.  By this time
their field-glasses showed the party large numbers of natives massing,
all of whom seemed to be armed.  After that the wagons kept close
together.  When they had gone another mile they came upon a horrible
sight.  Lying in the road were three mutilated bodies, which proved to
be those of a store-keeper, Mr. Weyer, his wife, and his child; a
little farther on lay the body of another child hideously maltreated.
As the twilight was approaching there was no time to bury the dead, and
all that could be done was to place the poor remains together and to
cover them with sand and some branches of trees.  The bodies were all
in sleeping garments, so it seemed that they had been murdered during
the past night when trying to escape.

This grim sight, seen in the bright South African twilight, brought awe
into the hearts of the little band.  Darkness was falling; all round
them was the thick bushveld.  The Vicomte's wagon was heavily laden and
could only move slowly, and all the animals were tired.  The Vicomte
lightened his load by flinging away some of his goods, and they had
barely resumed their journey when, looking back, they saw a large body
of natives carrying off the abandoned flour.  Mr. Lamb climbed to the
top of his wagon, and had the satisfaction of seeing one fall to his
rifle.  The enemy returned the fire, wounding one of the donkeys.

It was now fairly clear that unless they could move faster the whole
convoy was doomed, so it became necessary to jettison the whole wagon
load.  The Vicomte did this unwillingly, but there was no other course.
His donkeys were unharnessed and driven on in front; the other wagon
was also left derelict, and the oxen from it inspanned in front of Mr.
Lamb's donkeys.  Behind them they could hear loud shouts as the rebels
looted the discarded wagons.

Suddenly fire was opened upon them from the bushes on the right hand,
and a brisk exchange of shots took place.  It was now very dark, and as
they crawled along the road a perpetual fusillade was kept up.  Happily
they had several good dogs with them, who were sent into the roadside
bush and so gave early notice of an ambuscade.  Presently the enemy
fire died away; the moon came out, and at a better pace the convoy
reached Law's Store.

It was now about 11 p.m.  They found the place deserted and looted; but
it was possible to make of it some kind of protection for the night.  A
few outer huts were burnt in order to give a field of fire; the animals
were secured in a laager, and the party took refuge in one of the
rooms.  Pickets were posted, three at a time in two watches.  The Cape
boys lit fires before and behind the house, which were a comfort to the
pickets, for the night had the bitter cold of a Rhodesian winter.

At 2 a.m. next morning a Cape boy, badly wounded, crawled up.  He had
escaped from a neighbouring farm, and had been fighting since 6 a.m.
the previous morning.  At 4 a.m. all the men of the party went on guard
till daybreak.  As soon as the first light appeared the convoy started,
and they had not gone a mile when, looking back, they saw a huge cloud
of smoke ascending from Law's Store.  The rebels had closed in behind
them and burned the place.

AH morning they crept along the road, being fired at from every patch
of bush.  One shot passed between the Vicomte and Mr. Lamb, killing a
dog as it walked between them; another passed through the side of the
passenger wagon in front of Miss Carter, and then below the armpit of
one of the Cape boys.  These Cape boys, let it be said, showed
throughout this adventure, and throughout the whole rebellion, the
utmost courage and fidelity.

No one of the party believed at this time that they would ever arrive
at Salisbury.  The next station on the road was a place called
Ballyhooley, and just before reaching it they had a serious fight,
where one of the Cape boys managed to shoot the rebel leader.
Ballyhooley they found deserted and looted.  There they had hoped to
meet relief parties from Salisbury; but none were there, and the
passenger wagon, drawn by its donkeys and oxen, crawled on again, the
men tramping alongside in the dust.  At every turn of the road, and in
every patch of scrub, they feared to meet their fate.

They were now only three miles from the town, when to their horror they
saw a large number of rebels massed together.  For a little they had a
terrible fear that Salisbury might have fallen.  But fatigue and
anxiety had by now dulled their senses, and they had mercifully ceased
to realize their peril.  They stopped for a little to allow the Cape
boys to detach the oxen from the wagon, so that they might be turned
loose, and while they did so a crowd of natives swarmed on the kopjes
above them.  Then they moved on, and as they emerged from the hills
they came in sight of Salisbury, which seemed to be a town of the dead.

But suddenly in the middle distance they observed three or four mounted
men galloping towards them.  They saw that they were friends, and
presently they realized that the defences of Salisbury were still
intact, and that at last they had found sanctuary.

The little party had come out of the very jaws of death.  Behind and
around them for three days had been the enemy, flushed with success,
confident that the days of the white man in the land were numbered;
every little storehouse and farmstead was in ruins, every inn was a
heap of charred timbers and burned stores and broken bottles.  They had
to move at the slow pace set by tired oxen and donkeys.  The odds were
all against them when they left Marandellas, and they won through only
by virtue of that tenacity of spirit which obstinately refuses to
despair.



[Illustration: _Charles I._]




VII

THE GREAT MONTROSE

The story of the paladin of Scottish history, the man whom Cardinal de
Retz thought equal to any of the heroes of antiquity, is scarcely to be
equalled for swift drama in the records of any land.  James Graham, the
first Marquis of Montrose, began his marvellous career at the age of
thirty-two, and crowded into two years the campaigns which made him
master of Scotland.  He died on the scaffold when he was only
thirty-eight, leaving behind him the reputation of perhaps the greatest
soldier ever born north of the Tweed, and certainly one of the purest
and most chivalrous figures in his country's annals.  Few men have ever
covered country with his lightning speed, and the whole tale of his
exploits is a tale of escapes and hurried journeys.  I propose to tell
of two episodes in his short career, but I would add that they are no
more stirring than a dozen others.


I

In 1642 the English Civil War began.  Sir John Hotham shut the gates of
Hull in the King's face.  On the 22nd of August Charles raised the
Royal Standard at Nottingham, and on 22nd October was fought the Battle
of Edgehill.  Montrose had originally been a Covenanter--that is, he
had signed the National Covenant which protested against the imposition
of a foreign church system on Scotland.  He commanded an army in the
first Covenant War, but as time went on he began to see that more was
involved in the struggle than the question of liturgies.  He realized
that the Church in Scotland was beginning to make claims which meant
the complete abolition of civil government.  He therefore drew towards
the King's side, and there began that antagonism with the Marquis of
Argyll which was inevitable between two men with such different
temperaments and creeds.

In the early winter of 1643 he joined the King's court at Oxford, and
proposed to Charles "to raise Scotland" on his behalf.  It looked a
crazy proposal, for even then the Scottish army was over the Border in
arms against the King, and the Covenant held every city north of the
Tweed.  The few loyalists who still stood out were mostly vain nobles
who had some personal quarrel with the other side.  But such was the
ardour of the young Montrose that he impressed the King and his graver
councillors like Hyde and Endymion Porter.  He asked for little help.
Lord Antrim was to raise troops in Ireland and land in the west of
Scotland to keep Argyll occupied in his own country.  Montrose himself
hoped to borrow a body of horse from Newcastle's army in the north to
help him to cut his way through the Lowlands to the Highland line.
Charles consented, and Antrim was sent to Ulster, with instructions to
land 2,000 troops in Argyll by April 1, 1644.  Montrose was made
lieutenant-general of the King's forces in Scotland, and on a March
morning in 1644 he left Oxford by the north road to win a kingdom for
his master.

When St. Theresa, as a child, set out to convert the Moors, she was
engaged in an adventure scarcely less hopeful than that which Montrose
had now set himself.  Where was he to find troops?  The best of the old
professional soldiers were with Leven.  He could get nothing in the
Scottish Lowlands, for on them the Kirk had laid an iron hand.  The
nobles and the gentry were jealous and self-centred.  Antrim's
Ulstermen would do more harm than good; for though most of them were
Scots and Macdonalds, they were Catholics and would drive every
Presbyterian to the other side.  There was no solid hope anywhere save
in the soul of the adventurer.  He flung himself into a hostile country
without a base, without troops, without munitions, in the hope that his
fiery spirit would create armies out of nothing.

He reached Newcastle's camp safely and found that things there were
going badly.  Newcastle could only offer him 100 ill-mounted troopers
and two brass cannon--a poor outfit for the conquest of Scotland.  He
managed to raise some of the northern militia and a band of local
gentlemen, and with 1,300 men he crossed the Border in April and took
Dumfries.  There, however, he could not stay.  The gentry of Nithsdale
and Annandale would not stir, and he was compelled to return to
England, where he found that Newcastle had flung himself into York and
was closely beset by Leven, Fairfax, and Manchester.  With a handful of
men he captured Morpeth, and presently he received a summons from
Prince Rupert, who was then marching through Lancashire to the relief
of York.  He set off to join him, but before they met the King's cause
had suffered its first disaster.  Rupert indeed relieved York; but on
the 2nd July, about five in the afternoon, he met the Parliamentary
forces on Marston Moor and discovered that new thing in England--the
shock of Cromwell's horse.  His army was scattered; Newcastle fled
overseas; and he himself, with some 6,000 troops, rode westward into
Wales.  Two days after the battle Montrose found him in an inn at
Richmond, in Yorkshire; but Rupert had nothing to give.  On the
contrary, he stood much in need of Montrose's scanty recruits.  So with
a sad heart Montrose rode by Brough and Appleby to Carlisle, to write
his report of failure to the King.

Four months had passed and nothing had been achieved.  The news from
Scotland was the worst conceivable.  The land lay quiet under the
Covenant, and Antrim's levies seemed to have vanished into the air.
The nobles were tumbling over each other in their anxiety to swear
fealty to Argyll.  There seemed nothing to be done except to surrender
the royal commission and go abroad to wait for happier times.  So his
friends advised, and Montrose made a pretence of acquiescing.  He set
out for the south with his friends, but a mile out of Carlisle he
slipped behind, and, as his servants and baggage went on, it was
presumed that he was following.  It was as well that he stopped, for
the rest of the party were captured by Fairfax at Ribble Bridge.

He had resolved on the craziest of adventures.  He would break through
the Covenanting cordon in the Lowlands and win to his own country of
Perthshire, where lived his kinsmen.  There, at any rate, were loyal
hearts, and something might be devised to turn the tide.  He chose as
his companions Sir William Rollo, who was lame, and Colonel Sibbald,
who had served under him before.  These two wore the dress of Leven's
troopers, while Montrose followed behind as their groom, riding one
ill-conditioned horse and leading another.

It was a dangerous road to travel.  The country was strewn with broken
men and patrolled by Covenanting dragoons, and a gentleman in those
days was not so easily disguised.  At first all went smoothly.  The
disreputable clan of the Grahams held the lower Esk, and as the three
rode through the woods of Netherby they learned that its chief, Sir
Richard Graham, had joined the Covenant and appointed himself Warden of
the Marches.  This they had from one of his servants, who spoke freely
to them as to Leven's troopers.  A little farther on they fell in with
a Scot, one of Newcastle's soldiers, who, to their consternation,
disregarded Rollo and Sibbald, but paid great attention to the groom
and hailed him by his proper title.  Montrose tried to deny it; but the
man exclaimed, "What! do I not know my Lord Marquis of Montrose well
enough?  Go your way and God be with you."  A gold piece rewarded the
untimely well-wisher.

The journey grew daily more anxious till the Forth was passed.  "It may
be thought," says Patrick Gordon, a Royalist historian, "that God
Almighty sent His good angel to lead the way, for he went, as if a
cloud had environed him, through all his enemies."  We do not know the
exact route they travelled, whether by Annandale and then by Tweed or
Clyde, or up Eskdale and thence over the Tweedside range to the
Lothians.  Probably they went by the former, and followed the belt of
moorland which runs north by Carnwath almost to the Highland hills.
From Carlisle to Perth is a hundred miles, and the party rode by day
and night, keeping, we may suppose, away from towns and villages and
frequented parts of the highway.

On the fourth day they came to the Montrose lands in Stirling and
Strathearn, but they did not draw rein till they reached the house of
Tullibelton between Perth and Dunkeld.  Here lived Patrick Graham of
Inchbrakie, one of the best loved of all Montrose's kin, and here at
any rate was safe shelter for the traveller while he spied out the land
and looked about for an army.

So the curtain rises, and the first act of the great drama reveals a
forlorn little party late on an August evening knocking at the door of
a woodland tower about the shining reaches of Tay.  The King's
lieutenant-general makes a very modest entry on the scene.  Two
followers, four sorry screws, little money, and no baggage, seem a
slender outfit for the conquest of a kingdom; but in six months he was
to see Scotland at his feet.


For six days the royal lieutenant lay in close hiding, spending most of
his time in the woods and hollows, sleeping at night in hunters'
bothies.  The scouts he had sent out returned with a melancholy tale.
Huntly in the north had made a mess of it, and the Gordons were
leaderless and divided.  Even some of the Graham and Drummond kinsmen
were in arms against the King.  There were rumours of a Covenant army
in Aberdeenshire, and Argyll in the west had his clan in arms.
Montrose wondered at this strange activity.  The battleground now was
England, and, with Scotland in so iron a grip, these elaborate military
precautions seemed needless.

He was soon to learn the reason.  As he was one day in the wood of
Methven, sleeping the night there, he fell into a great despondency of
spirit.  While he reflected upon the hopelessness of his case, he
suddenly saw a man carrying a fiery cross and making for the town of
Perth.  He stopped him and inquired what the matter was.  The messenger
told him that Alastair MacDonald of Ulster, commonly called Colkitto (a
corruption of the Gaelic word meaning "Coll who can fight with either
hand"), had come into Atholl with a great army of Irish.  At last
Antrim's levies had come out of the mist.  Presently Montrose had a
letter from Alastair MacDonald himself, directed to him at Carlisle,
announcing his arrival and asking for instructions.

If Montrose needed help, no less did the Irish commander.  He had
landed in July in Ardnamurchan, on the west coast, and proceeded to
ravage the Campbell lands.  His ships were all destroyed, so he
resolved, being in a desperate situation, to march across Scotland and
join the Gordons.  But in Lochaber he heard that the Gordons had made
their peace with the Covenant, and the other northern clans, like the
Mackenzies, had no love for Alastair's tartan and would have nothing to
do with him.  Headed back on all sides, Alastair decided that the
boldest course was the safest.  He marched to the head-waters of the
Spey and issued a summons calling on the clans to rise in the names of
the King and Huntly.  This brought him 500 recruits, most of them
Gordons; but the other clans refused and blocked the road down the Spey.

He now seemed in a fair way to be exterminated.  The Campbells
intercepted his retreat to the sea, and Argyll was hot-foot on his
track.  The Mackenzies cut him off from the north and east, his new
levies were mutinous and distrustful, and south lay the unfriendly
Lowlands and clans like the Stewarts of Atholl, who would never serve
under any leader of an alien name.  He had proved that, whoever might
band the Highlands into an army, it would not be a man of Highland
blood.  Hence his despairing letter to the lieutenant-general asking
for instructions and help.  He can scarcely have hoped for much from
his appeal, for Carlisle was a long way from Badenoch and he had the
enemy on every side.

Montrose sent an answer, bidding Alastair be of good heart and await
him at Blair.  The latter obeyed and marched into Atholl, but the local
clans resented his appearance.  The fiery cross was sent round, and
there seemed every chance of a desperate conflict between two forces
who alike detested the Covenant and followed the King.

The situation was saved by a hairbreadth.  Montrose, accompanied by
Patrick Graham the younger of Inchbrakie--Black Pate, as the
countryside called him--set off on foot over the hills to keep the
tryst.  He had acquired from Inchbrakie a Highland dress--the trews, a
short coat, and a plaid round his shoulders.  He wore, we are told, a
blue bonnet with a bunch of oats as a badge, and he carried a
broadsword and a Highland buckler.  Thus accoutred he entered upon the
scene in the true manner of romance, unlooked-for and invincible.

Alastair and his ragged troops were waiting hourly on battle, when
across the moor they saw two figures advancing.  Black Pate was known
to every Atholl man, and there were many who had seen Montrose.  Loud
shouts of welcome apprised the Ulsterman that here was no bonnet laird,
but when he heard that it was indeed the King's lieutenant he could
scarcely believe his ears.  He had looked for cavalry, an imposing
bodyguard, and a figure more like his own swashbuckling self than this
slim young man with the quiet face and searching grey eyes.

[Illustration: _Across the moor they saw two figures advancing._]

In a moment all quarrels were forgotten.  Montrose produced his
commission and Alastair promptly took service under him, thankful to be
out of a plight which for weeks had looked hopeless.  The Atholl
Highlanders were carried off their feet by the grace and fire of their
new leader, and 800 of them brought to his side those broadswords which
that morning had been dedicated to cutting Ulster throats.  Next
morning the Royal Standard was unfurled on a green knoll above the
river Tilt.  The King's lieutenant had got him an army.


II

I pass over the next two months.  On the 1st September, with his
ill-assorted forces, he met the Covenant army under Lord Elcho at
Tippermuir, near Perth, and scattered it to the winds.  Then he marched
to Aberdeen, and on the 13th of that month soundly defeated another
army under Lord Balfour of Burleigh.  Thereafter his difficulties
increased.  He found that his Lowland gentlemen began to slip away, for
they had no love for a mid-winter campaign conducted at Montrose's
incredible pace.  Moreover, Alastair went off on an expedition of his
own to the west, and the rest of the Highlanders had private
grievances, the avenging of which they thought of far greater moment
than any royal necessities.

The end of November came; the heavy rains in the glens told of the
beginning of winter, and the hills were whitened with snow.  Argyll was
at Dunkeld, and for a moment the campaign languished.  Then one morning
at Blair, Alastair's pipes announced his return, bringing with him the
rest of his Ulstermen and a considerable levy of the western
clans--MacDonalds of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Clanranald, Macleans from
Morvern and Mull, Stewarts from Appin, and Camerons from Lochaber.  The
clans had only one object, to take order with Argyll, for they hated
the house of Diarmaid far more than the Covenant.  Now was the time to
avenge ancient wrongs and to break the pride of a chief who had boasted
that no mortal enemy could enter his country.  The hour had come when
the fray must be carried to Lorn.

Montrose had that supreme virtue in a commander which recognizes facts.
He could not maintain his army without war, and Lowland war they would
not as yet listen to.  If he looked to their help in the future he must
whet their valour and rivet their loyalty by fresh successes.  In
return for their assistance in the King's quarrel they must have the
help of the King's lieutenant in their own.  Besides, the plan could be
justified on other grounds of strategy and politics.  A blow at the
Campbells in their own country would shatter Argyll's not too robust
nerve, and put fear into the heart of the Covenant.

But it was the wildest of wild adventures.  Clan Campbell was the
largest, most prosperous, and most civilized of all the Highland
peoples.  Indeed, they formed almost a separate state, and it was not
without reason that Argyll had boasted that his land was impregnable.
Strategically it had every advantage.  On the eastern side, where it
looked to the Lowlands, there were the castles of Roseneath and Dunoon
to keep watch, and deep sea lochs to hinder the invader.  South and
west lay the sea, and the Campbells had what little navy existed in
Scotland at the time.  North lay a land of high mountains and difficult
passes, where no man could travel save by permission of the sovereign
lord.  Moreover, the Campbells of Lochow and Glenorchy had flung their
tentacles over Breadalbane and held the glens around the head-waters of
Tay.  There might be a raid of Macgregors or Maclarens on the east, or
a foray from Appin on Loch Etive side, but it seemed that not even the
King and his army could get much beyond the gates.  "It is a far cry to
Lochow," so ran the Campbell watchword, and it was a farther cry to
Inveraray.

When Montrose assented to Alastair's wishes he resolved to strike
straight at the enemy's heart.  He would wage war not on the outskirts
but in the citadel.  Through Breadalbane ran a possible route among
wild glens and trackless bogs, which at this winter season would be
deep in snow.  This was the old raiding road out of Lorn, and Argyll
flattered himself that his clan alone had the keys of it.  But with
Montrose were men who had made many a midnight foray into the Campbell
country, and who knew every corrie and scaur as well as any son of
Diarmaid.  A Glencoe man, Angus MacAlain Dubh, is named by tradition as
the chief guide, and he promised Montrose that his army could live well
on the country, "if tight houses, fat cattle, and clear water will
suffice."

From Blair, past the shores of Loch Tay swept the advance till the
confines of Breadalbane were reached and a country that owned Campbell
sway.  Up Glen Dochart they went, following much the same road as the
present railway line to Oban, past Crianlarich and Tyndrum, and into
the glens of Orchy.  It was a raid of vengeance, and behind them rose
the flames of burning roof-trees.  Presently Loch Awe lay before them
under a leaden winter sky, and soon the little peels of the lochside
lairds smoked to heaven.  It was a cruel business, save that the women
and children were spared.  All fighting men were slain or driven to the
high hills, every cot and clachan was set alight, and rows of maddened
cattle attested the richness of the land and the profit of the
invaders.  It was Highland warfare of the old barbarous type, no worse
and no better than that which Argyll had already carried to Lochaber
and Badenoch and the Braes of Angus.

Argyll was well served by his scouts, and to him at Edinburgh word was
soon brought of Montrose's march to Breadalbane.  He must have thought
it a crazy venture; now at last was his enemy delivered into his hands.
No human army could cross the winter passes even if it had the key; and
the men of Glenorchy would wipe out the starving remnants at their
leisure.  Full of confidence he posted across Scotland to Inveraray.
There he found that all was quiet.  Rumours of a foray in Lorn were
indeed rife, but the burghers of Inveraray, strong in their generations
of peace, had no fear for themselves.  Argyll saw to the defences of
the castle, and called a great gathering of the neighbouring clansmen
to provide reinforcements, if such should be needed, for the Glenorchy
and Breadalbane men, who by this time had assuredly made an end of
Montrose.

Suddenly came a thunderbolt.  Wild-eyed shepherds rushed into the
streets with the cry that the MacDonalds were upon them.  Quickly the
tale flew.  Montrose was not in Breadalbane or on the fringes of Lorn.
He was at Loch Awe--nay, he was in the heart of Argyll itself.  The
chief waited no longer.  He found a fishing boat, and, the wind being
right, fled down Loch Fyne to the shelter of his castle at Roseneath.
The same breeze that filled his sails brought the sound of Alastair's
pipes, and he was scarcely under weigh ere the van of the invaders came
down Glen Shira.

Then began the harrying of Clan Campbell.  Leaderless and unprepared,
they made no resistance to Montrose's army of flushed and battle-worn
warriors.  Macleans and MacDonalds, Stewarts and Camerons, satiated
their ancient grudges with the plunder of Inveraray.  The kerns thawed
their half-frozen limbs at the warmth of blazing steadings, and
appeased their ravenous hunger at the expense of the bakers and
vintners and fleshers of the burgh.  Never had the broken men of
Lochaber and the Isles fared so nobly.  For some happy weeks they ran
riot in what for them was a land of milk and honey, while the townsmen,
crouching in cellars and thickets, or safe behind the castle gates,
wondered how long it would be before their chief returned to avenge
them.  There seems to have been no special barbarity about the
business.  Here and there a refractory Campbell was dirked, but
Alastair's men preferred victual and cattle to human blood.

Meantime word had gone from the exile at Roseneath to the Government in
Edinburgh.  It was for Argyll to avenge the shame of his clan, and he
presently received 1,100 of the flower of the Scottish militia.  His
kinsman, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, was summoned back from
Ireland.  Seaforth was waiting with a northern army at Inverness, and
the Scottish commander-in-chief, William Baillie of Letham, was at
Perth.  It looked as if Montrose had walked into a certain trap.  He
would be caught between Argyll and Seaforth, and if he tried to escape
to the right Baillie would await him.  It seemed the certainty on which
Argyll loved to gamble.

Mid-winter that year was open and mild.  Had it been otherwise Clan
Campbell must have been annihilated and Montrose could never have led
his men safely out of Argyll.  About the middle of January 1645 he gave
orders for the march.  He had as yet no news of Argyll's preparations,
but he must have realized that the avenger would not be slow on his
track.  His immediate intention was to come to an account with
Seaforth, who not only barred him from the Gordon country but was
responsible for the opposition of the powerful clan of Mackenzie.  He
had guides who promised to show him an easy way out of Lorn into
Lochaber.  After that his road ran straight up the Great Glen to
Inverness.

Laden with miscellaneous plunder and cumbered no doubt with _spreaghs_
of cattle, the Highlanders crossed from Loch Awe to the shore of Loch
Etive.  Since they had nothing to fear in front of them, they continued
up the steep brink of that loch to the site of the present house of
Glen Etive.  Crossing the _beallach_ by the old drove-road, they
marched through Appin and up Glencoe to the neighbourhood of Corrour,
for the shorter road by Kingshouse and the Moor of Rannoch was no place
for a heavily laden force in mid-winter.  From Corrour the road was
that now taken by the West Highland Railway.  Passing Loch Treig they
descended the valley of the Spean to the shores of Loch Lochy and the
opening of the Great Glen.  By the evening of Thursday, the 30th
January, Montrose was at Kilcumin at the head of Loch Ness.  Most of
the Atholl men and the bulk of Clanranald had left him, after their
custom, to deposit their booty.  No more than 1,500
remained--Alastair's Irish, a handful of Stewarts, Macleans, and
Camerons, and sufficient cavalry to mount the Lowland gentry and
provide an escort for the Standard.

At Kilcumin Montrose had definite news of Seaforth.  He was thirty
miles off at Inverness with 5,000 men--Frasers, Mackenzies, and
regulars from the Inverness garrison.  Montrose was preparing to make
short work of Seaforth when he received graver tidings.  Ian Lorn
MacDonald, the bard of Keppoch, arrived to tell of Argyll at his heels.
The Campbells were only thirty miles behind at Inverlochy, 3,000
men-at-arms eager to avenge the wrongs of Lorn.  They were burning and
harrying Glen Spean and Glen Roy and the Lochaber braes, and their
object was to take Montrose in the rear what time Seaforth should hold
him in the front.

The plight of the little army seemed hopeless; 1,500 very weary men
were caught between two forces of 3,000 and 5,000.  There was no way of
escape to west or east, for the one would lead them to a bare sea-coast
and the other into the arms of Baillie's foot.  Of the two hostile
forces the Campbells were the more formidable.  Montrose knew very well
that the fighting spirit of Clan Diarmaid was equal to any in the
Highlands, and now that they were commanded by a skilled soldier and
infuriated by the burning of their homes, he could scarcely hope to
fight them at long odds.  But it is the duty of a good general when he
is confronted by two immediate perils to meet the greater first.
Montrose resolved to fight the Campbells, but to fight them in his own
way.

Early on the morning of Friday, 31st January, began that flank march
which remains one of the great exploits in the history of British arms.
The little river Tarff flows from the Monadliadh Mountains to Loch
Ness.  Up its rocky course went Montrose, and the royal army
disappeared into the hills.  Scouts of Argyll or Seaforth who traversed
the Great Glen on that day must have reported no enemy.  From Tarff
Montrose crossed the pass to Glen Turritt, and, following it downwards,
reached Glen Roy.  Pushing on through the night, he came to the Bridge
of Roy, where that stream enters the Spean, on the morning of Saturday,
1st February.  The weather had been bitterly cold, the upper glens were
choked with snowdrifts, and the army had neither food nor fire.  The
road led through places where great avalanches yawned above the
adventurers, and over passes so steep and narrow that a hundred men
could have held an army at bay.  As they struggled along at the pace of
a deerstalker, Montrose walked by his men, shaming them to endurance by
the spectacle of his own courage.  If the reader wishes for a picture
of that miraculous march he will find it in the words of young
Elrigmore in Mr. Neil Munro's _John Splendid_:--


"It was like some hyperborean hell, and we the doomed wretches
sentenced to our eternity of toil.  We had to climb up the shoulder of
the hill, now among tremendous rocks, now through water unfrozen, now
upon wind-swept ice, but the snow--the snow--the heartless snow--was
our constant companion.  It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts
round us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain.  Unlucky were they
who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze,
while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose
among the pelt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joint was
unmarred....  At the head of Glen Roy the MacDonalds, who had lost
their bauchles of brogues in the pass, started to a trot, and as the
necessity was we had to take up the pace too.  Long lank hounds, they
took the road like deer, their limbs purple with the cold, their faces
pinched to the aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering
about them.  'There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat,' the
major-general had said; and it would have given the most spiritless
followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and
pebble.  They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn
and bleeding feet, but put mile after mile below them."


From Roy bridge to Inverlochy is some thirteen miles, but to take
Argyll in the flank a circuit was necessary, and Montrose followed the
northern slopes of the wild tangle of mountains, the highest in
Britain, that surround Ben Nevis.  In the ruddy gloaming of the
February day the vanguard saw beneath and before them the towers of
Inverlochy, "like a scowl on the fringe of the wave," and not a mile
off the men of Clan Diarmaid making ready their evening meal.  Shots
were exchanged with the pickets, but no effort was made to advance.
Montrose waited quietly in the gathering dusk till by eight o'clock the
rest of his famished column had arrived.  There, supperless and cold,
they passed the night, keeping up a desultory skirmishing with the
Campbell outposts, for Montrose was in dread lest Argyll should try to
escape.  It was a full moon, and the dark masses of both armies were
visible to each other.  Argyll thought the forces he saw were only a
contingent of Highland raiders under Keppoch or some petty chief.  But
after his fashion he ran no personal risks; so, with his favourite
minister and one or two Edinburgh bailies, he withdrew to a boat on
Loch Eil.

At dawn on Candlemas day his ears were greeted by an unwelcome note.
It was no bagpipe such as Keppoch might use, but trumpets of war, and
the salute they sounded was that reserved for the Royal Standard.  The
King's lieutenant, who two days ago was for certain at Loch Ness, had
by some craft of darkness taken wings and flown his army over the
winter hills.  There was no alternative but to fight.  Till Montrose
was beaten the Campbells could neither march forward to join Seaforth
nor backward to their own land.

Auchinbreck drew up his forces with the fighting men of Clan Campbell
in the centre and the Lowland regiments borrowed from Baillie on each
wing.  Montrose himself led the Royalist centre, with Alastair on the
left and Alastair's lieutenant, O'Kean, on the right.  Sir Thomas
Ogilvy commanded the little troop of horse which had managed to make
its way with the infantry over the terrible hills.  This was the one
advantage Montrose possessed.  Otherwise his men were on the point of
starvation, having had scarcely a mouthful for forty-eight hours.  He
himself and Lord Airlie breakfasted on a little raw meal mixed with
cold water, which they ate with their dirks.

The battle began with a movement by Ogilvy's horse, which gravely
disquieted the Lowland wings.  Then the Campbell centre fired a volley,
and immediately the whole Royalist front responded and charged.  We may
well believe that the firing of famished men was wild, but it mattered
little, for soon they were come, as Montrose wrote, "to push of pike
and dint of sword."  Alastair and O'Kean had little difficulty with the
Lowland levies.  In spite of the experience of many of them with Leven,
a Highland charge was a new and awful thing to them, and they speedily
broke and fled.  Inverlochy was won by strategy, for of tactics there
was little, and that little was elementary.

The gallant Campbell centre, indeed, made a determined stand.  They
knew that they could hope for no mercy from their ancestral foes, and
they were not forgetful of the honourable traditions of their race.
But in time they also broke.  Some rushed into the loch and tried in
vain to reach the galley of their chief, now fleeing to safety; some
fled to the tower of Inverlochy.  Most scattered along the shore, and
on that blue February noon there was a fierce slaughter from the mouth
of Nevis down to the mouth of Loch Leven.  The Lowlanders were given
quarter, but, in spite of all his efforts, Montrose could win no mercy
for the luckless Campbells.  The green Diarmaid tartan was a badge of
death that day.  On the Royalist side only four perished; on the
Covenant side the slain outnumbered the whole of Montrose's army.  At
least 1,500 fell in the battle and pursuit, and among them were
Auchinbreck himself and forty of the Campbell barons.  Well might
Keppoch's bard exult fiercely over the issue:--

  "Through the land of my fathers the Campbells have come,
  The flames of their foray enveloped my home;
  Broad Keppoch in ruin is left to deplore,
  And my country is waste from the hill to the shore--
  Be it so! by St. Mary, there's comfort in store.

  "Through the braes of Lochaber a desert he made,
  And Glen Roy may be lost to the plough and the spade;
  Though the bones of my kindred, unhonoured, unurned.
  Mark the desolate path where the Campbells have burned--
  Be it so!  _From that foray they never returned._"


So ended one of the sternest and swiftest marches in the history of
war.  Inverlochy was in one respect a decisive victory, for it
destroyed the clan power of Argyll, and from its terrible toll the
Campbells as a fighting force never recovered.  Alastair's policy was
justified, and the MacDonalds were amply avenged; the heather, as the
phrase went, was above the gale at last.[1]  To Montrose at the moment
it seemed even more.  He thought that with the galley of Lorn fell also
the blue flag of the Covenant.  He wrote straightway to the King:--


"Give me leave, in all humility, to assure Your Majesty that, through
God's blessing, I am in the fairest hopes of reducing this kingdom to
Your Majesty's obedience.  And, if the measures I have concerted with
your other loyal subjects fail me not, which they hardly can, I doubt
not before the end of this summer I shall be able to come to Your
Majesty's assistance with a brave army, which, backed with the justice
of Your Majesty's cause, will make the rebels in England, as well as in
Scotland, feel the just rewards of rebellion.  Only give me leave,
after I have reduced this country to Your Majesty's obedience, and
conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to Your Majesty then, as
David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this
country be called by my name.'"


It was not to be.  He was to win other astonishing victories, but
before the year closed Philiphaugh was to be fought and the great
adventure was to end in exile.  Five years later, on a May day in the
High Street of Edinburgh, there closed on the gallows the career of the
bravest of Scottish hearts.



[1] The heather is the MacDonald badge, and the gale, or bog myrtle,
the Campbell.



[Illustration: _General Leslie._]




VIII

THE FLIGHT OF LIEUTENANTS PARER AND M'INTOSH ACROSS THE WORLD

During the Great War there were thousands of hurried journeys made by
airmen in the course of their military duties, and since November 1918
there have been many adventurous flights against time, in competition
for this or that prize.  But the story I propose to tell is, to my
mind, wilder and more inconceivable than any episode in the history of
aircraft in the War.  It was not strictly a journey against time, for
though the two airmen began by intending to compete in the Australian
Flight competition, they were not able to leave Britain till Sir Ross
Smith had reached Port Darwin.  But the element of haste was not
wanting, for all they possessed was a condemned comic-opera machine,
which was rapidly going to pieces on their hands.  Mr. Kipling has told
the story of the tramp _Bolivar_, and of how that unseaworthy hulk was
brought across the Bay in a state of impending dissolution.  But if the
_Bolivar_ "bluffed the eternal sea," D.H.9 for seven months bluffed the
powers of the air and flew, a derelict 'bus, 15,000 miles over land and
water.  It seems to me the craziest adventure that ever, by habitually
taking the one chance in ten thousand, managed to succeed.

Lieutenant Raymond John Paul Parer was the son of a shopkeeper in
Melbourne, a small, slight, dark man with a considerable turn for
mechanics.  During the War he was employed at training aerodromes in
Britain, and was accustomed to fly new machines across to France.
Lieutenant John Cowe M'Intosh was a large, raw-boned Scot from
Banffshire, with a rugged masterful face, who had served through the
War with the Australian forces.  To begin with he knew nothing about
air mechanics, and picked up the science as he went along.  The two,
being in England after the Armistice, made up their mind to fly back to
Australia.  They had no money, and it occurred to them that they might
earn the 10,000 prize by entering for the Australia Flight
competition.  They received very little encouragement from the Air
Ministry, for both men were wholly unpractised in long-distance
flights, and had no previous knowledge of the route or of any language
but their own.  They managed, however, to raise from a friend a little
money, and with this they purchased from the Disposals Board a
single-engined two-seater D.H.9 bombing machine, their intention being
to carry extra petrol in place of bombs.  The engine was a
Siddeley-Puma of 240 h.p.  Complete ignorance in their case was the
parent of courage.  They were roughly aware of the possible stages by
which they might take their route, and resolved to nose their way from
one to another and trust to luck.  It was like a man in an ill-found
and leaky boat starting to cross the stormy Atlantic.  Almost every
part of their machine had some bad fault or other of which they were
vaguely aware and expected further news.

They were not long in getting it.  On January 8, 1920, they left
Hounslow, intending to make the first landing at Paris.  But a contrary
wind and a thick fog forced them to land at Conteville, and when they
reached Paris their petrol pump failed and compelled them to wait three
days.  After that they flew to Lyons, where the pump gave trouble again
and delayed them another two days.

Then came the Gulf of Genoa.  But they had hardly started when their
oil ran out and they were compelled to return and fly 100 miles along
the Italian coast without oil pressure, looking for a landing-place.
Italy presented a series of mischances.  The weather was abominable,
and they crossed the Apennines at a height of 14,000 feet.  There they
were almost frozen, and for two and a half hours could see nothing of
the ground.  Later, at an altitude of 3,000 feet, their machine caught
fire, and they were compelled to cut off the petrol and side-slip to
land.

Brindisi was at length reached, and they had to face the crossing of
the Adriatic.  Somehow or other they reached Athens, where they had
more engine trouble, and then staggered on to Crete.  From Crete they
flew the 220 miles of the Mediterranean to Mersa Matruh in Western
Egypt, and eventually, on 21st February, reached Cairo.

The scheduled flying time from England to Cairo is under forty hours;
but the trip had taken them forty-four days.  They had now established
the routine of their journey, which was to break down every day or two,
and then patch up the machine with oddments sufficient to carry it to
the next landing-place, where it fell to pieces again.

For four days at the Helouan aerodrome the two laboured at their crazy
'bus.  Their propeller was defective; there were endless carburation
troubles; the bolts--propeller, bearer, and cylinder--were always
working loose; magnetos, oil filters, everything, were imperfect; the
instruments were always failing, especially the air-speed indicator.
And they had flown all the way to Egypt without cleaning their plugs!

On 26th February they set off again, making a bee-line for Bagdad--a
direct flight which no airman had ever before accomplished.  For the
enterprise, and still more for the continuation of the journey to
Australia, they had no assets whatever, except a letter of authority
from the General Officer Commanding R.A.F. Depots, which entitled them
to draw for petrol on any depot along the route between Cairo and
Delhi.  It did not seem on the remote edge of possibility that much use
would be made of that letter.

Nevertheless that day they crossed the desert of Sinai and landed
safely at Ramleh.  Thence they shaped their course across Arabia, an
adventure in which, as we have seen, they were in the strictest sense
pioneers.  The weather changed to their disadvantage, and they drove on
into head winds and heavy sheets of rain.  A breakdown in the midst of
the desert meant either starvation or robbery, and probably murder, by
Arab tribes, and sure enough the breakdown came.  They were compelled
to make a forced landing in the evening, and had to spend the night on
the ground by their machine.  In the early morning they observed a
crowd of Arabs approaching with obviously hostile intent.  But the two
airmen, having dared so much, were not to be awed by casual Bedouin.
They happened to have some Mills bombs aboard, and with these and their
revolvers they routed the enemy and kept him at bay until such time as
they could start again.

[Illustration: _A crowd of Arabs approaching with obviously hostile
intent._]

Bagdad was reached eventually, entirely by luck and not at all by good
guiding.  There they were welcomed by the British air posts, and
speeded on their way across Baluchistan and the Gulf of Kutch to
Karachi, which they reached without mishap on 8th March.  In India they
fell in with Captain G. C. Matthews of the Australian Flying Corps, and
in his Sopwith machine "Wallaby" he accompanied them across the
peninsula to Delhi, where they had a busy time patching up D.H.9.  The
old relic was suffering from almost every ailment to which an aeroplane
is subject.  For one thing the central section was beginning to rise
above the level of the wings, and they could only remedy the defect by
packing with iron washers.  The fabric, through constant exposure, was
rotten, and the coats of ordinary motor-car paint with which it had
been treated were peeling off in great patches.  It was breaking away,
too, all along the ribs, and they had to renew it there as best they
could.  Their first propeller had been damaged by taking off from the
desert sands and had been renewed at Bagdad.  Every assistance was
given them by the R.A.F. officers in India, but it was not easy to
patch up the unpatchable.

From Delhi they flew safely across the Bay of Bengal to Rangoon, but
were compelled to make a forced landing in thick forest on the bank of
the Irawaddy River, which did not improve the condition of D.H.9.

On 4th April they reached Rangoon and flew on another hundred miles to
Moulmein.  There, however, D.H.9 struck work.  It crashed, and was so
seriously damaged that they had to sit down quietly for no less than
six weeks before they could resume their journey.  Everything all at
once seemed to dissolve into its parent elements.  Their compasses were
crocked; their radiator was in pieces; the under-carriage had at last
collapsed completely, and the new propeller acquired at Bagdad was
destroyed.  Happily they managed to get a propeller of the Caproni type
from a depot established there by the organizers of the Rome-Tokio
flight.  But the propeller had been designed for a 300 h.p. Fiat, and
the result of fitting it to a 240 h.p. Siddeley-Puma meant a serious
over-running of the engine.  It was found, too, that the diameter of
the Caproni "boss" was much larger than that of the D.H.9 shaft, so the
gap was blocked with a Burmese wood which is so heavy that it will not
float and so hard that it blunts the sharpest tool.  A new
under-carriage was constructed out of a tough, close-grained native
timber, which they bought from a local Chinaman.  The wood was seasoned
in an oven, and the new under-carriage was modelled from the assembled
debris of the old one.  They improvised a new radiator by taking a
couple of ordinary "Overland" motor-car radiators and bolting them
together!

Thus equipped, after six weeks' delay they started again, but presently
they had another crash--a nose-dive in Batavia.  This meant another
delay, and a fourth propeller was got through the efforts of the
British consul and the Dutch authorities.  But before they left Dutch
territory they had still another mishap, and a fifth propeller had to
be found.  Here the Dutch Air Force came to the rescue.  They sent to
their depot 400 miles away for spares, and provided a new
under-carriage.  Moreover, they lent the travellers two air mechanics,
who worked under their supervision and managed to bring D.H.9 into some
semblance of working order.

Meantime, through these weeks of sojourn in tropical lands, the machine
had been converted into a sort of menagerie, and various strange
animals made the fuselage their home, and only showed themselves in mid
air.  Among the beasts which thus added themselves to the party were
bear cubs, a selection of lizards, several snakes, a whole congregation
of rats and mice, and a baby alligator!

The next stage of the journey--the flight to Australia over 400 miles
of sea--was the most anxious of all.  It began unpromisingly, for D.H.9
had great difficulty in getting over the mountains of the island of
Timor.  When the ocean was reached the travellers discovered that they
had lost their bearings; but the intrepid pair pushed on boldly into
the unknown.  For eight hours they journeyed in the void, and when
their oil was almost run out they were at last greeted by the sight of
land.  On the last day of July, with one pint of petrol left, they
landed at Fanny Bay in the Northern Territory.  Next morning, the 1st
of August, they reached Port Darwin.

They had achieved the journey to Australia, but their troubles were not
over.  They struggled on to Sydney, where, at the Mascot aerodrome on
22nd August, they were welcomed by an immense crowd of nearly 20,000
people.  But Melbourne was their goal, and on the journey to Melbourne
D.H.9 met its doom.  At Culcairn it nose-dived into the earth at a
speed of 70 miles an hour, and only the amazing luck of the travellers
saved their necks.  Another machine was provided for them, and on 31st
August they finished their journey of 15,000 miles by reaching
Flemington Racecourse at Melbourne.  Accompanied by the battered
remnants of D.H.9 they were officially welcomed by Mr. Hughes, the
Commonwealth Prime Minister, to whom they presented a bottle of whisky,
which they had brought with them intact from London.  A day or two
later they were formally received in Parliament Buildings and each
presented with 500.

"The world is richer and better for what you have done," Mr. Hughes
told them, and he spoke the truth.  Their achievement was like the
attempts to ascend Mount Everest--utterly useless in any prosaic sense,
but a vindication of the vigour and daring of the human spirit.  The
history of aircraft is only beginning, but it is not likely that it
will show any feat more wildly temerarious than that of these two
amateurs, who drove a crazy machine through every type of weather and
over every type of country from the snowy Apennines to the Malayan
forests--always in difficulties, always resourceful and undaunted, till
by sheer resolution they forced reluctant Fortune to yield to their
importunity.

It seems to be the fate of great airmen, after daring the apparently
impossible, to meet disaster in humdrum flights.  Lieutenant M'Intosh
was to go the way of Sir John Alcock and Sir Ross Smith, for on 29th
March of the following year he was killed through his machine crashing
in a small town in Western Australia.



[Illustration: _Pastoral scene_]



[Illustration: _Castle_]




IX

LORD NITHSDALE'S ESCAPE

The first of the great Jacobite rebellions, that of 1715, was grossly
mismanaged from the start.  The invasion of England by the Scottish
Catholic lords and the Northumbrian Jacobites came to a dismal close at
Preston, and the Tower of London was soon full of exalted
personages--the English Earl of Derwentwater, who was a grandson of
Charles II., and the Scottish Earls of Wintoun, Nithsdale, and
Carnwath, and Lord Kenmure, who was head of the Galloway Gordons.  The
trial of the Jacobite lords was not a masterpiece of English justice.
The method followed was impeachment, and it was clear from the start
that, with a Protestant House of Commons, Catholic rebels had no kind
of chance.  Without proper proof they were condemned--a political,
rather than a legal verdict.  They were advised to plead guilty, which
as it turned out was an unwise course, for thereby they trusted their
lives to the Crown and not to the English law, and King George's
Government were determined to make an example of them as a matter of
policy.  Wintoun alone refused to plead.

But the people of England were more merciful than their Government, and
the popular feeling in favour of leniency was so strong that Walpole
was unable to send all the lords to the scaffold.  For Derwentwater
there could be no mercy; he was too near in blood to the royal house.
Nithsdale and Kenmure were also marked for death, partly because they
were devouter Catholics than the others, and partly because of their
great power in the Lowlands.  On Thursday, February 23, 1716, the Lord
Chancellor signed the warrants for their execution on the Saturday.

Derwentwater and Kenmure duly lost their heads, and two famous houses
were brought to ruin.  But when the guards arrived to summon Nithsdale
to the scaffold they found that he was gone.  This is the story of his
escape.


The Countess of Nithsdale had been Lady Winifred Herbert, the youngest
daughter of the first Marquis of Powis.  At the time she was twenty-six
years of age, a slim young woman with reddish hair and pale blue eyes.
Her family had always been Catholic and Royalist, and she had shown
herself one of the most ardent of Jacobite ladies.

When the news came of the rout at Preston she was at Terregles, the
home of the Maxwells in Nithsdale.  She realized at once that her
husband could expect no mercy, and that his death must follow his
imprisonment as certainly as night follows day.  It was a bitter
January, with snowdrifts on every road.  Without wasting an hour she
set off for the south after burning incriminating papers.  Her only
attendant was a Welsh girl called Evans, from the Powis estates, who
had been her maid since childhood.

The two women and a groom rode through the wintry country to Newcastle,
where they took the coach for York.  Presently the coach stuck in the
snow, and word came that all the roads were blocked.  But by offering a
large sum Lady Nithsdale managed to hire horses, and pushed on into the
Midlands.  The little company suffered every kind of disaster, but the
lady's resolute spirit overcame them all, and after some days of weary
travel they reached London.

Lady Nithsdale went straight to some of the Scottish great ladies, such
as the Duchess of Buccleuch and the Duchess of Montrose, and heard from
them that the worst might be expected.  She realized that no appeal
could save the prisoner, and that, unless he could break bar and bolt,
in a week she would be a widow.  The first step was to get admission to
the Tower.  Walpole refused to let her see her husband unless she was
prepared to share his captivity to the end.  She declined the
condition, for she understood that if she was to do anything she must
be free.  At last she succeeded in bribing the keepers, and found
herself in her husband's chamber.  As she looked round she saw that
there was no chance of an ordinary escape.  One high barred window gave
on the ramparts and Water Lane, and a sentry was on guard in front.  If
Lord Nithsdale were to leave the Tower he must leave it by the door.
That in turn was strongly guarded.  A halberdier stood outside and two
sentries with fixed bayonets, and the stairs and the outer door were
equally well held.  Force was out of the question.  The only hope lay
in ingenuity.

The weak part of any prison is to be found in the human warders, more
especially in a place so strong as the Tower, where the ordinary
avenues of escape are few and difficult.  The Lieutenant, trusting in
his walls, was inclined to be negligent.  The prison rules were often
disregarded, and the wives and children of the officials wandered about
the passages at will.  This gave Lady Nithsdale her plan.  She proposed
to her husband to dress him up in cap and skirt and false curls and
pass him as a woman through the soldiers.  Very soon she had worked out
the details.  She had women friends who would assist: a Miss Hilton,
and the landlady, Mrs. Mills, at her lodging in Drury Lane.  The latter
was tall and inclined to be stout, and a riding-hood that fitted her
would fit Lord Nithsdale, while a red wig would counterfeit Mrs. Mill's
hair.  The prisoner's black eyebrows could be painted out, his chin
shaved and his skin rouged.

Lord Nithsdale stubbornly refused.  The scheme seemed to him crazy.
How could a stalwart soldier with a rugged face and a martial stride
imitate any woman?  He might do something with a sword in his hand,
but, raddled and painted, he would only be a laughing-stock.  Far
better let his wife get a petition from him placed in the royal hands.
There might be some hope in that.

Lady Nithsdale pretended to agree, though she knew well that the King's
clemency was a broken reed.  For George had given strict orders that no
petition from Lord Nithsdale should be received, and she found her
friends very unwilling to disobey the King and act as intermediaries.
Her only hope was to see George himself; so she dressed herself in deep
black, and, accompanied by Miss Hilton, who knew the King by sight,
went to Court.  They reached the room between the King's apartment and
the main drawing-room, and when George appeared she flung herself
before him.  "I am the wretched Countess of Nithsdale," she cried.  The
King stepped back, refusing to take the petition; but she caught him by
the skirt of his coat and poured out her story in French.  George lost
his temper, but she would not let go, and suffered herself to be
dragged along the floor to the drawing-room door.  There the officials
unclasped her fingers and released his angry Majesty.

Lord Nithsdale now turned his hopes to the House of Lords.  The
Countess went from peer to peer; but once again she failed.  Lord
Pembroke, indeed, who was a kinsman, spoke in favour of the prisoner,
but the thing was hopeless from the start.  Nithsdale was utterly
intractable and impenitent, and would never beg for his life.

Her husband's counsels having failed, it remained to follow her own.
She drove to the Tower and told all the guards and keepers that Lord
Nithsdale's last petition to the House of Lords had been favourably
received, and that His Majesty was about to listen to their prayer.
The officials congratulated her, for she had made herself very popular
amongst them, and their friendliness was increased by her gifts.  But
to her husband she told the plain truth.  The last moment had come.
Next day was Friday, when the King would answer the petition.  If he
refused, as he was certain to do, on Saturday the prisoner would go to
the scaffold.

On that Friday morning she completed her plans with Mrs. Mills, and as
the January dusk drew in Miss Hilton joined them in Drury Lane and the
details were finally settled.  Miss Hilton was to be a friend, "Mrs.
Catherine," and Mrs. Mills another friend, "Mrs. Betty."  With the maid
Evans all three would drive to the Tower, where Evans would wait
inconspicuously near the Lieutenant's door, and the other three women
would go to the earl's chamber.  Miss Hilton, being slim, was to wear
two riding-hoods, her own and that of Mrs. Mills.  When she was in the
room she was to drop her extra clothes and leave at once.  Mrs. Mills
was then to go in as "Mrs. Betty," wearing a riding-hood to fit the
earl.  She was to be weeping bitterly and holding a handkerchief to her
face.  Everything depended upon Miss Hilton being able to slip away
quietly; then Mrs. Mills, having diminished in size, was to depart as
"Mrs. Catherine," while the earl was to go out as "Mrs. Betty."  The
vital point was to get the sentries thoroughly confused as to who had
gone in and out.

They drove in a coach to the Tower, and Lady Nithsdale, in order to
keep the others from doleful anticipations, chattered the whole way.
When they reached the Tower they found several women in the Council
Chamber who had come to see Lady Nithsdale pass, for they had a
suspicion, in spite of her cheerfulness, that this was the last
occasion on which she would see her husband alive.  The presence of
these women, who were all talking together, helped to confuse the
sentries.  Lady Nithsdale took in Miss Hilton first, naming her "Mrs.
Catherine."  Miss Hilton at once shed her extra clothing and then left,
Lady Nithsdale accompanying her to the staircase and crying, "Send my
maid to me at once.  I must be dressed without delay or I shall be too
late for my petition."  Then Mrs. Mills came up the stairs, a large fat
woman sobbing bitterly and apparently all confused with grief.  She was
greeted by the Countess as "Mrs. Betty," and taken into Lord
Nithsdale's room.  There she changed her clothes, dried her tears, and
went out with her head up and a light foot.  "Good-bye, my dear Mrs.
Catherine," Lady Nithsdale cried after her.  "Don't omit to send my
maid.  She cannot know how late it is.  She has forgotten that I am to
present the petition to-night."  The women in the Council Chamber
watched Mrs. Mills's departure with sympathy, and the sentry opened the
door for her to pass.

Now came the great moment.  If any single keeper in the outer room had
kept his wits about him the plot must be discovered.  Everything
depended upon their being confused among the women, and believing that
"Mrs. Betty" was still with the Countess in Lord Nithsdale's chamber.
It was nearly dark and in a few minutes lights would be brought in, and
a single candle would betray them.  The Countess took off all her
petticoats save one and tied them round her husband.  There was no time
to shave him, so she wrapped a muffler round his chin.  His cheeks were
rouged; false ringlets were tied around his brow; and a great
riding-hood was put on.  Then the Countess opened the door and led him
by the hand.  Her voice was now sharp with anxiety.  "For the love of
God," she cried, "my dear Mrs. Betty, run and bring her with you.  You
know my lodgings, and if ever you hurried in your life, hurry now.  I
am driven mad with this delay."

The sentries in the dim light were unsuspicious and let them pass;
indeed, one of them opened the chamber door.  The Countess slipped
behind her husband in the passage, so that no one looking after him
should see his walk, which was unlike that of any woman ever born.
"Make haste, make haste," she cried, and then, almost before she had
realized it, they had passed the last door and the sentries.

[Illustration: _The sentries in the dim light were unsuspicious and let
them pass._]

Evans, the maid, was waiting, and seizing Lord Nithsdale, alias "Mrs.
Betty," by the arm, hurried him off to a house near Drury Lane.  There
he was dressed in the livery of a servant of the Venetian Minister, and
started for the coast.

The Countess, dreading lest some keeper should enter her husband's room
and find him gone, rushed back there with a great appearance of
distress and slammed the door.  Then for a few minutes she strolled
about with the step of a heavy man, and carried on an imaginary
conversation, imitating his gruff replies.  Now came the last stage.
She raised the latch, and, standing in the doorway so that all the
crowd in the Council Chamber could hear, bade her husband good-night
with every phrase of affection.  She declared that something
extraordinary must have happened to Evans, and that there was nothing
for it but to go herself and see.  She added that if the Tower were
open she would come back that night.  Anyhow, she hoped to be with him
early in the morning, bringing him good news.  As she spoke she drew
the latch-string through the hole and banged the door.  "I pray you, do
not disturb my lord," she said in passing.  "Do not send him candles
till he calls for them.  He is now at his prayers."  The unsuspicious
sentries saluted her with sympathy.  Beyond the outer gate was a
waiting coach in which she drove at once to tell the Duchess of
Montrose what had been done.  Meantime Lord Nithsdale, dressed as an
Italian servant, was posting along the road to Dover, where, next
morning, he found a boat for Calais.  It was not long before his wife
rejoined him in Rome.

Lady Nithsdale's bold escapade was received by the people of England
with very general approval.  Even the Government, who were beginning to
have doubts about the wisdom of their policy, were not disposed to be
too severe on the heroic wife.  When the Duchess of Montrose went to
Court next day she found the King very angry.  But the royal anger was
short-lived.  Presently he began to laugh.  "Upon my soul," he said,
"for a man in my lord's situation it was the very best thing he could
have done."



[Illustration: _Earl of Mar._  (_Jacobite leader._)]



[Illustration: _Queen Elizabeth._]




X

SIR ROBERT CARY'S RIDE TO EDINBURGH

The history of these islands is strewn with tales of swift and fateful
rides, but as a rule the distances were short.  In old days it was
nobody's business to get in a hurry from Land's End to John o' Groats,
and long journeys, even the marches of the Edwards into Scotland, were
leisurely affairs.  But though roads were infamous, horses were as good
then as now, and if a man were called upon for an extended journey
against time he could make a record on horseback that was scarcely
surpassed till the days of steam.  Queen Mary, after the Battle of
Langside, rode the 92 miles through the western moorlands to the shores
of the Solway without, as she said, drawing rein, though I presume
there were changes of mount.  That, indeed, is the essence of the
business, for no horse ever foaled can keep its pace beyond a certain
limit.  The present writer once, in his youth, rode 75 miles in the
Northern Transvaal at a stretch on one horse; but, after the Boer
fashion, he off-saddled every two hours for twenty minutes--a thing
impossible in a really hustled journey.

This story tells of the ride of Sir Robert Cary from London to
Edinburgh with the news of the death of Elizabeth.  The distance by any
road was little less than 400 miles, but he probably took short cuts
after he crossed the Border.  He did the course in something under
sixty hours--a most remarkable achievement.  When William III. died at
8 a.m. on March 8, 1702, the news, though sent off at once, did not
reach Edinburgh till 10 p.m. on 11th March--85 hours.  Cary's record
was not indeed approached till the days of post-chaises and flying
mails.  In 1832 the Reform Bill passed the Lords at 6.35 a.m. on
Saturday, 14th April.  Sixty-five minutes later Mr. Young of _The Sun_
newspaper left the Strand in a post-chaise and four, with copies of the
paper containing a report of the debate and the division, and on
Sunday, at 7.30 p.m., he arrived at the house of his agent in Glasgow.
The distance was 403 miles, and it was covered in 35 hours 50
minutes.[1]

Five years later, when the completion of Telford's new Carlisle-Glasgow
road had reduced the distance to 397 miles, the mail which brought to
Glasgow news of the death of William IV. left the General Post Office
at 8 p.m. on 20th June and reached Glasgow at 2 p.m. on 22nd June--a
total of 42 hours.  But till 1832 Cary's record would seem to have held
the field.

Now for the story.  Sir Robert Cary, who afterwards became Earl of
Monmouth, was the youngest of the ten sons of Henry Lord Hunsdon, who
was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth.  He had a varied and adventurous
youth.  As a very young man he visited Scotland with Walsingham, and
thus formed his first acquaintance with King James.  The Scottish king
would have taken him into his service; but there were difficulties with
Elizabeth, and young Cary consequently went to the Low Countries with
the Earl of Essex.  When Mary of Scots was beheaded he was chosen to
carry Elizabeth's explanations to James in Scotland, and the following
year he was again at Dumfries with the Scottish king, who was busy
suppressing refractory Maxwells.  In 1589, being very hard up, he
wagered 2,000 with another courtier that he would walk the 300 miles
to Berwick in twelve days.  He won his bet, and thereafter, he tells
us, was enabled to live for some time at Court like a gentleman.  He
must have been no mean pedestrian, and that in an age when the gentry
rode too habitually to walk well.

After that he crossed the Channel again with Essex, and commanded a
regiment with some distinction, so that he was knighted on the field by
his general.  When the French war was ended he found himself without
employment and considerably in debt.  He was lucky enough, however, to
be appointed successor to old Lord Scroop, the Warden of the West
Marches.  The Scottish border was at that time divided into three
Wardenships--the East Marches, from the sea to the Great Cheviot; the
Middle Marches, from Cheviot to the Liddel; and the West Marches,
extending to the Solway shore.

He was now in his early thirties, and for some years he led a stirring
life, keeping order among the Armstrongs, Elliots, and Grahams in the
"Debateable Land."  Sir Robert was not the most elevated of characters;
he was a true courtier, steering the frail barque of his fortunes with
caution and skill in the difficult waters of the queen's favour.  Once
he was sent on a very confidential mission to James at Edinburgh, and
seeing that the King of Scots must sooner or later come to the English
throne, he laboured to stand well with him.  Presently he became
Deputy-Warden for his father in the East Marches, and was given the
Captainship of Norham Castle on Tweed.  There he had perpetual troubles
with Sir Robert Ker of Cessford, the ancestor of the Dukes of
Roxburghe, and on the whole got the better of that stalwart Borderer.
There seems to have been little ill-will in the Marches in those days.
Both sides laboured to outwit the other, but they bore no grudge for
failure, and one month would be harrying each other's lands and the
next hobnobbing at huntings and festivals.  By and by Sir Robert Ker
became his hostage and guest, and the two grew fast friends.

When Lord Hunsdon died Sir Robert was made Warden in his father's
place, and with the help of the Fosters, Ridleys, Musgraves, Fenwicks,
and Widdringtons, exercised a strong, if cautious, rule throughout the
bounds of Cheviot.  He led an expedition against the Armstrongs, who
sheltered themselves in the Bog of Tarras, and by a swift march got in
on their rear and made a large haul of prisoners.  Sir Walter Scott, in
his early journeyings in Liddesdale, found that the people there had
still a tradition of what they called "Cary's raid."  It was the most
creditable period of his life, and he seems to have enjoyed it, for
there was that in the man which delighted in alarums and excursions.

But once a courtier always a courtier.  Throughout these stirring years
Cary was perpetually haunted by anxiety as to how he stood in the
Queen's favour, and when he could spare the time would go South to show
himself at Court.  At the end of the year 1602 he was in London and
found Elizabeth very ill.  "She took me by the hand and wrung it hard,
and said, 'Young Robin, I am not well,' and then discoursed with me of
her indisposition and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or
twelve days; and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or
fifty great sighs.  I was grieved at first to see her in this plight,
for of all my life before I never knew her fetch a sigh but when the
Queen of Scots was beheaded."

The great Queen was now seventy years of age.  All spring and summer
she had been very well and had gone maying in the Lewisham woods.  The
Ambassador of Scotland had been kept waiting in corridors, as if to
announce to his master that the time was far distant when he could
transfer himself to Whitehall.  In the autumn the Court had been
especially gay; but Lord Worcester had noted that the Queen was
failing, and that in the winter "the tune of Lullaby" would be the one
wanted.  In the middle of January 1603, on the insistence of her
doctors, she moved to Richmond, where the Court and Council followed
her.  At first nothing would persuade her to go to bed; and when
Nottingham and Cecil insisted she replied that the word "must" was not
used to princes.  "Little man, little man," she cried to Cecil, "if
your father had lived you durst not have said so much; but you know I
must die and that makes you presumptuous."

On the 22nd of March she was obviously sinking.  She told Nottingham
that only a king must succeed her, and when pressed to be more
explicit, added, "Who should that be but our cousin of Scotland?"  On
Wednesday, 23rd March, she was speechless, and that afternoon called
her Council to her bedchamber.  When she was asked about her successor
she put her hand to her head at the mention of the King of Scots, which
the watchers interpreted to signify acquiescence.  The archbishop and
her chaplains remained with her praying during the night, and at about
three on the morning of the 24th she died.

Cary was in a fever of impatience.  He remembered his old acquaintance
with King James, and realized that whoever took him the first news of
the Queen's death would stand a good chance of rising high in his
favour.  But he was also aware that the Lords of the Council would do
their best to prevent any unauthorized messenger, and that they
certainly would not authorize him.  On the night of the 23rd he went
back to his lodging, leaving word with the servants of the Queen's
household to let him know if it were likely the Queen would die, and
giving the porter an angel to let him in at any time he called.
Between one and two on Thursday morning he received a message that the
Queen was at the point of death, and he hastened to the royal
apartments.  There at first he was forbidden entrance, the Lords of the
Council having ordered that none should go in or out except by their
warrant.  But a friend managed to get him in, and passing through the
waiting ladies in the ante-chamber he entered the privy chamber, where
the Council was assembled.  The Lords dealt with him brusquely, for
they had divined his intention and forbade him to go to Scotland till
they sent him.  He then went to his brother's room, roused him, and
made him accompany him to the gate.  The porter could not refuse, in
spite of the Council's orders, to let out Lord Hunsdon, and the zealous
Sir Robert managed to follow in his train.

Cary was a man of action and did not let the grass grow under his feet.
He rode straight to the Knight Marshal's lodging by Charing Cross,
where he slept till morning.  At nine o'clock he heard that the Lords
of the Council were in the old orchard at Whitehall, and he sent the
Marshal to tell them that he awaited their commands.  They were
determined that Cary should not move; but they told the Marshal to send
for him, as if they meant to dispatch him at once to King James.  One
of them, however, Lord Banbury, whispered in the Marshal's ear that if
Cary came he would be detained and another sent in his stead.  The
Marshal met Cary arriving at the gate, and told him the facts.  Cary's
mind was made up.  He turned, mounted his horse, and rode for the North.

The start was made between nine and ten o'clock.  The route was
probably the Great North Road to Doncaster, where he slept the night,
having covered 155 miles since the morning.  Next day he reached his
own house at Widdrington in Northumberland, the house of the March
Warden, having left some very weary cattle on the road behind him.
There he gave his deputies instructions to see to the peace of the
Borders, and next morning to proclaim James King of England at Morpeth
and Alnwick.  At dawn on Saturday, the 26th, he took the road again and
reached his Castle of Norham about noon, travelling probably by the
eastern end of the Cheviots and the town of Wooler.

It was a disastrous morning, for he had a bad fall and was kicked by
his horse on the head, so that he lost much blood.  But Cary was a true
moss-trooper, and though forty-three years of age was as tough in body
as any young Armstrong or Elliot.  He did not tarry at Norham, but set
off at once for Edinburgh, probably by the valley of the Leader and
Soutra Hill.  He complains that he was compelled to ride a "soft pace"
because of his wounds, or he would have been in Edinburgh early in the
evening in time for supper.

He finally arrived at Holyrood about nine or ten, and found that the
King had gone to bed.  Crying that he had great news for the royal ear,
he was at once taken to the King's chamber, where he knelt and saluted
James as Monarch of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France.  The King
gave him his hand to kiss and welcomed him kindly, listening eagerly to
the tale of the Queen's sickness and death.  He asked if there were any
letters from the Council.  But Cary explained the position and how
narrowly he had escaped from them.  But he gave the King "a blue ring
from a fair lady" (I presume Queen Elizabeth), on which His Majesty
said, "It is enough.  I know by this you are a true messenger."  Cary
was handed over to Lord Home, with strict instructions for his
entertainment, and the King's own surgeons were sent to look after him.
When he kissed hands on departure, James thus addressed him: "I know
you have lost a near kinswoman and a loving mistress; but take here my
hand.  I will be as good a master to you, and will requite this service
with honour and reward."

Sir Robert went to bed a happy man, and for a day or two his fortunes
looked roseate.  But presently came the bitter complaint by the Lords
of the Council of his unauthorized performance, and he realized that
James's gratitude was a brittle thing, and that he had too many
competitors for the royal favour.  For a year or two the poor
moss-trooper was under a cloud.  But his tough and wary spirit could
not be permanently eclipsed, and before long he had risen again to
favour.  He accompanied Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham on
their wild visit to Spain, and was given an earldom by King Charles I.

As I have said, his was no very elevated character, and his name lives
in English history only because of his mad three days' ride, which for
more than two hundred years was not equalled.



[1] Mitchell's _Old Glasgow Essays_, pp. 195-196.




[Illustration: _James VI. and I._]




XI

THE ESCAPE OF PRINCESS CLEMENTINA

In the year 1718 the Chevalier de St. George, or, as some called him,
the Old Pretender, after the defeat of his hopes in Scotland, had
retired to Rome.  At the age of thirty he was still a bachelor, but the
unhappiness of his condition was due not to his celibacy but to his
misfortunes.  The Jacobite campaign of 1715 had proved a disastrous
failure; and although he still retained the courtesy title of James
III., he was a king without a realm.  While the royal exile was
twiddling his thumbs in the Italian capital, waiting for a better turn
of luck, his friends, seeing that nothing further was to be gained by
the pursuit of Mars, sought the aid of Cupid.  They laid before the
Chevalier the flattering proposal of a marriage with a Princess of
beauty and race.  This move was inspired less by romance than by
politics, for a suitable marriage would not only encourage the waning
Jacobite hopes, but might raise up an heir to the Cause.

The Chevalier readily concurred in the scheme, and a certain Mr.
Charles Wogan was dispatched to the various European courts to report
on a suitable bride for the Chevalier.  Wogan's choice fell on the
little Polish Princess Clementina Sobiesky, daughter of James Sobiesky
of Poland and Edwige Elizabeth Amelia of the house of Newburgh, and
grand-daughter of the famous John Sobiesky, the "deliverer of
Christendom."

The chronicles of the time are loud in the praises of this lady, her
illustrious birth, her qualities of heart and mind, "her Goodness,
Sweetness of Temper, and other Beauties of a valuable character."  She
is said to have been "happy in all the Charms, both of Mind and Body,
her Sex can boast of"; "the Agreeableness of Seventeen and the Solidity
of Thirty."  Her accomplishments included Polish, High Dutch, French,
Italian, and English, all of which she spoke so well that it was
difficult to distinguish which of these languages was the most familiar
to her.  She was also a young woman of exemplary piety, and therefore a
suitable bride for a king in exile.  Princess Clementina was only
sixteen when the Chevalier and his friends laid siege to her affections.

It was no ordinary business, for there were many hazards and
difficulties in the way.  The Chevalier had given his consent to the
proposed alliance; it was for his friends to see it brought to a
successful issue, and the plan of campaign was left entirely in their
hands.  The bridegroom was a mere pawn--a willing pawn--in the game.
The real difficulty was the House of Hanover, the inveterate enemy of
the Stuart cause, which was by no means inclined to look with
indulgence on the proposed alliance.  Although the affair was kept a
profound secret, the matter gradually leaked out; and George I. of
England protested with such vigour to the Emperor on the folly and
danger of the impending marriage, threatening among other things to
break up the Quadruple Alliance, that Princess Clementina was arrested
at Innsbrck with her mother and kept there under strict surveillance.

The Chevalier and his friends were in a quandary.  Obviously a man
built in the heroic mould was necessary to extricate them from the
dilemma.  They bethought them of Wogan, who had been recalled from his
delicate mission on the pretext that it was impolitic to entrust the
matter further to an Irish Catholic.  Wogan was well adapted for this
sort of adventure.  He was, besides being something of a poet, a
cavalier and a courtier.  He had shared the hard fortunes of the
Chevalier in Scotland, and had suffered imprisonment for his devotion
to the Stuart cause.  Once more the soldier of fortune was called upon
to prove his devotion in a cause no less hazardous.

The Pope, who had been taken into the secret, had provided Wogan with a
passport in the name of the Comte de Cernes, and forth he fared like a
fairy-tale knight to rescue a distressed princess.  Never had
d'Artagnan and his Musketeers a more difficult task.  Wogan duly
arrived at Innsbrck in the disguise of a merchant, and obtained an
interview with the Princess and her mother, who heartily concurred in
the proposed plan of a secret "elopement."  We next find him at Ohlau
in quest of the Prince Sobiesky, the lady's father.  Here he met with a
rebuff.  Prince Sobiesky, a practical man of the world, viewed the
whole affair as midsummer madness, and absolutely refused to lend his
aid or consent to Wogan's scheme.

Wogan was in a quandary, but he did not lose heart.  He had nothing to
complain of during his stay with Prince Sobiesky, for he was well
lodged and treated with the most flattering attentions, but the real
business of the mission hung fire.  Still he waited--he had long
learned the game of patience--and, being a courtier, was used to
waiting.  At length a happy accident turned the scale in his favour.
On New Year's Day, Prince Sobiesky, as a mark of his esteem, presented
his guest with a magnificent snuff-box, formed of a single turquoise
set in gold, a family heirloom, and part of the treasure found by John
Sobiesky in the famous scarlet pavilion of Kara Mustapha.  Wogan, with
a charming gesture, declined the gift on the plea that, although he was
sensible of the high honour shown him by the Prince, he could not think
of returning to Italy with a present for himself and a refusal for his
master.  The Prince was so touched that he finally yielded, and
furnished Wogan with the necessary instructions to his wife and
daughter.  Wogan set out once more on his adventures in high spirits,
carrying not only the precious instructions, but the snuff-box, which
Prince Sobiesky had pressed on him as a parting gift.

The next thing was to establish secret communication with the Princess.
This was more easily said than done.  The garrulity of Prince Sobiesky,
who in his parental agitation had babbled the whole story to a certain
German baron, and the suspicions of the Countess de Berg, a noted
_intriguante_ and spy of the Austrian court, almost brought Wogan's
mission to an inglorious end.  The baron was bought over at
"considerable expenditure," but the Countess was a more difficult
matter.  While Wogan was the guest of honour of Prince Sobiesky she had
been puzzled at the attentions shown to him, which she argued could be
for no good end, and set her spies on his track.  Wogan escaped by the
skin of his teeth, and only evaded capture by ostentatiously announcing
his departure for Prague.  Then by a skilful detour he gave his
pursuers the slip and posted on to Vienna, where he vainly tried to
enlist the sympathy of the Papal Nuncio, Monseigneur Spinola.

Then came a thunderbolt, for suddenly Prince Sobiesky changed his mind.
He dispatched an urgent message to Wogan, saying that both the Princess
and her mother, alarmed at the dangers that encompassed them, had
resolved to proceed no further in the business, and that he forthwith
cancelled his previous instructions.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish!  Wogan was a stout-hearted fellow,
but this new blow almost unmanned him.  In his dilemma he wrote to the
Chevalier and told the whole story, asking him at the same time to send
a confidential servant to obtain fresh powers from Prince Sobiesky.
The Chevalier promptly dispatched one of his valets, a Florentine
called Michael Vezzosi, who, when attached to a Venetian Embassy in
London, had been instrumental in aiding the escape of Lord Nithsdale
from the Tower.  The Chevalier reminded Prince Sobiesky that by his
foolish behaviour he was not only needlessly endangering the lives of
Wogan and his friends, but adding to the difficulties of the captives
at Innsbrck.  He also gave the most explicit instructions to Wogan to
proceed with the enterprise.

Wogan accordingly set out for Schlettstadt, where he met his three
kinsmen, Major Gaydon and Captains Misset and O'Toole, who were to lend
their aid in the now difficult mission.  Mrs. Misset accompanied her
husband, together with her maid Jeanneton, but neither of the women was
told the real nature of the undertaking.  Jeanneton was to play a
conspicuous part in the escape of Clementina.  Wogan's plan was that
the maid should change places with the Princess, and generally
impersonate her till she had made good her escape.  The light-headed
girl was told a cock-and-bull story about O'Toole having fallen
violently in love with a beautiful heiress, and Wogan played to such a
tune on her sense of the romantic that she gleefully entered into the
plot of the "elopement."

Wogan, however, was not yet out of the wood.  So far he had succeeded,
but he had now to deal with the whims and caprice of the ladies who had

been pressed into the enterprise.  Jeanneton, whose importance to the
success of the venture was paramount, proved especially troublesome.
First of all she refused point-blank to wear the low-heeled shoes which
had been specially ordered for her, so as to reduce her height to
conformity with that of the Princess; and not only screamed and swore,
but went so far in her tantrums as to knock the shoemaker down.  She
had once been a camp-follower, and her manners were those of the tented
field.  It was not until Mrs. Misset, in an excess of despair, had
thrown herself imploringly at her feet, a ceremony in which the
gentlemen of the party were constrained to join, that the maid
relented, and the party set forth at last in a ramshackle berline for
Innsbrck.

So far so good.  At an inn between Nassereith and Innsbrck, while the
other members of the party regaled themselves with a banquet of wild
boar and sauerkraut, Wogan stole out in the rain to keep an important
appointment with a certain M. Chteaudoux, gentleman-usher to the
Princess Sobiesky.  This gentleman had not Wogan's spirit, and proposed
to defer the matter of the escape till the weather had cleared and the
roads were in better condition for travel.  Wogan firmly waved aside
his objections, and succeeded so well in convincing him that now or
never was the time, that at half-past eleven that same night he and the
precious Jeanneton made their way in the storm to the schloss where the
Princess was confined.  Fortune smiled on the enterprise, and even the
tempest was propitious, for the sentry, heedless of danger on such a
night, had sought refuge in the inn.

Meanwhile within the prison walls the Princess Clementina, in order to
assist the plan of escape, was playing the part of an invalid.
Jeanneton's role was simple.  The Princess having regained her freedom,
all that the maid had to do was to keep her bed on the plea that her
megrims were no better, refusing to see any one but her mother.  The
secret was well kept; not even the governess was told, lest her grief
at the sudden departure of the Princess might arouse suspicions.

At midnight, according to plan, Chteaudoux was in readiness, and
Jeanneton, clad in a shabby riding hood and female surtout, was
successfully smuggled into the sleeping chamber of the Princess.  Wogan
and O'Toole waited at the street corner ready to convoy the Princess to
the inn.  There was a lengthy farewell scene between the Princess and
her mother.  The two having wept and embraced each other, Clementina
excused herself for her hurried departure on the plea that nothing in
heaven or earth must stand in the way between her and her husband.
Then she hastily dressed herself in Jeanneton's clothes, and followed
Chteaudoux down the winding stairs and out into the night.

[Illustration: _She followed Chteaudoux down the winding stairs and
out into the night._]

The Princess was no longer a captive.  The tempest, which had
increased, favoured the escape.  Once more successfully evading the
sentry, they quickly gained the street corner where Wogan and O'Toole
were kicking their heels, consumed with fear and anxiety.  They reached
the inn, drenched to the skin, with but one slight misadventure.
Clementina, mistaking a floating wisp of hay for a solid log of wood,
slipped and plunged over the ankles into a channel of half-melted snow.
At the inn she eagerly swallowed a cup of hot spiced wine and changed
her soaking garments.  Konski, her mother's page, had followed
meanwhile with what the chronicles of the period call "inside apparel"
and a casket containing her jewels, said to be valued at about 150,000
pistoles.  The foolish Konski, no doubt scared out of his wits at his
share in the adventure, had thrown the precious packet behind the door
and taken ignominiously to his heels.

They were now ready for the road.  Captain Misset, who had gone out to
reconnoitre, having returned with a favourable report, off they
started.  The inn was silent and shuttered, everybody having retired
for the night including the landlady; so they stole off unobserved.  As
the ancient coach lumbered past the dismal _schloss_ where the Princess
had been so recently a prisoner, she could not restrain some natural
emotion at the thought of her mother; and then suddenly she discovered
the loss of the precious packet.  Here was a nice to-do!  There was
nothing for it but to return to the inn and fetch the packet.  O'Toole
was entrusted with this anxious mission.  By one more stroke of good
fortune he succeeded in retrieving it from behind the door where the
careless Konski had thrown it, but he had first to prise the door off
its crazy hinges.

At sunset the party reached the village of Brenner, where the Princess,
who had so far borne up nobly, had a slight attack of the vapours.  She
was speedily revived, however, by a dose of eau de Carmes, and, having
had a meal, soon regained her accustomed gaiety, and began to ply Wogan
with all sorts of innocent questions about the manners and customs of
the English and his adventures with the Chevalier in Scotland.  One by
one the party dropped off to sleep, all but Wogan, who as the Master of
the Ceremonies, managed to keep himself awake by the expedient of
taking prodigious pinches of snuff.  At last even he, overcome by the
ardours of the night, began to show signs of drowsiness.  While
dropping off to sleep, his snuff-box accidentally slipped from his lap
and fell on to the curls of the Princess, who with her head resting
against his knees was reposing at the bottom of the carriage.

Verona was still a journey of forty-six hours, and the party were much
inconvenienced by the lack of post-horses.  To their horror they
discovered that they were travelling in the wake of the Princess of
Baden and her son, one of the husbands who had been proposed for
Clementina, and whom she had been actually bribed to marry!  At another
stage of the journey the coachman was drunk, and they were only saved
by a miracle from being dashed to pieces at the foot of one of the
precipitous gorges of the Adige.

They were now approaching the most difficult part of the journey, and
it was arranged before they passed the frontier of the Venetian States
that O'Toole and Misset should remain behind to intercept any
messengers from Innsbrck and guard the retreat.  This prescience was
amply rewarded.  O'Toole had soon the satisfaction of waylaying a
courier who had been dispatched in hot pursuit of the fugitive.  The
fellow was not only put entirely off the scent, but at supper was plied
so generously with old brandy that he had to be carried drunk to bed.
Having relieved him of his documents the cavaliers rode on to rejoin
the party in the berline.

One or two trials had still to be overcome.  At Trent there was some
delay owing to the behaviour of a surly Governor who put every obstacle
in their way.  There was besides the continual fear of Clementina being
detected by her Highness of Baden, who had installed herself in state
at the inn.  The poor little Princess had perforce to remain hidden at
the bottom of the coach in the public square until such time as they
could obtain fresh relays.  The best they could find was a couple of
tired screws taken from a neighbouring field.  At Roveredo things were
even worse, as no horses were to be had at all; and to crown their
misfortunes they had not proceeded six miles with their weary beasts
when the axle of the ramshackle old berline broke!

But at length they reached the great white wall that denoted the
boundary between the Venetian States and the dominions of the Emperor.
At half-past three in the morning they stole across the frontier and
solemnly offered up a _Te Deum_ for their safe deliverance.  They
reached Pery with the bells merrily ringing for Mass, and narrowly
missed being recognized by the Princess of Baden, who with her son was
just entering the church when the berline drew up at the church door.

Verona was reached at dusk, and here for the first time during the
three days' journey the Princess had her hair dressed.  They came to
Bologna on 2nd May, where the Princess sent a message to the Cardinal
Origo announcing her arrival.  The Cardinal speedily repaired to pay
his respects, bringing the present of a "toyley, artificial flowers,
and other little things," and the offer of a box at the Opera.  More
welcome and important than the courtesies of the Cardinal was the
arrival of Mr. Murray, the Chevalier's agent, with messages from his
royal master.

The drama of the royal elopement draws to its close.  On 9th May
Clementina was married by proxy.  The little Princess, all agog with
excitement, rose at 5 a.m., and having attired herself in a white dress
and a pearl necklace went to Mass and received the Holy Communion.  The
marriage ceremony was performed by an English priest.  The Chevalier
was represented by Mr. Murray, with Wogan as witness, and Prince
Sobiesky by the Marquis of Monte-Boularois, a loyal friend of the
Stuart cause.  The "powers" of the Chevalier were read publicly on
conclusion of the Mass, setting forth his willingness to marry the
Princess Clementina Sobiesky, and the ceremony was forthwith performed
with the ring which he had sent expressly for the purpose.

The Princess entered Rome on 15th May, amid general rejoicings; and on
2nd September a public marriage was celebrated at Montefiascone.

The daring flight and escape of the Princess Clementina caused some
sensation at the time, and a medal was struck to commemorate the event.
The Chevalier created Wogan a baronet, as well as his three kinsmen,
and Wogan had the further distinction of being made a Roman Senator by
Pope Clement XI.  Jeanneton, who had played her part well, apart from
the regrettable incident of the low-heeled shoes, duly escaped from
Innsbrck and was sent to Rome as the maid of the Duchess of Parma.
Prince Sobiesky was exiled to Passau by the Emperor for his complicity
in the business, and was also deprived of a couple of valuable duchies.
Wogan, who had always been something of a poet, devoted the remainder
of his life to the cultivation of the Muse, his efforts drawing
encomiums from so severe a critic as Dean Swift, to whom he had sent a
copy of his verses in "a bag of green velvet embroidered in gold."  He
died in 1747.

As for the Princess, her wedded life did not fulfil the romantic
promise of its beginnings.  Married to a worthy but doleful husband,
she never sat on the throne which she had been promised.  She was the
mother of Prince Charles Edward, and seems to have fallen into delicate
health, for in one of his boyish letters the little Prince promises not
to jump or make a noise so as to "disturb mamma."



[Illustration: _Prince James._]




XII

ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

The land between the deserts of Turkestan and the plains of India and
between the Persian plateau and China still remains the least known and
the most difficult on the globe.  There are to be found the highest
mountains in the world--a confusion of mighty snow-clad ranges varied
by icy uplands and deep-cut, inaccessible valleys.  Old roads cross it
which have been caravan routes since the days of Alexander the Great,
but these roads are few and far between.  One, perhaps the most famous,
goes from Kashmir across the Indus and over the Karakoram Pass to
Khotan and Yarkand.  That pass is 18,500 feet, the highest in the world
which still serves the purpose of an avenue of trade.

This wild upland is not the place where one would look for hurried
journeys.  The country is too intricate, the inhabitants are too few,
and there man's life seems a trifling thing against the background of
eternal ice.  Yet I have heard of two long, stubborn chases in that
no-man's-land, the tale of which is worth telling.


I

The first concerns the Karakoram Pass.  Till the other day, on the
cairn which marked the summit, there lay a marble slab engraved with a
man's name.  It recorded a murder which took place in that outlandish
spot in the year 1880.

At that time there was in those parts a young Scotsman called
Dalgleish, who used to accompany travellers and hunters on their
expeditions.  He was also a trader, making long journeys across Central
Asia, and in his business had dealings with a certain Pathan called Dad
Mahomed Khan.  This Pathan had been a trader and a bit of a smuggler,
and was well known on the road between Yarkand and Ladakh.  The two
used to have ventures together, and were apparently good friends.

A year or two before Dalgleish had gone off on a long expedition into
Tibet, and in his absence things went badly with Dad Mahomed.  All his
ponies were destroyed in a storm in the passes, and this compelled him
to resort to Hindu money-lenders.  Luck continued obstinately against
him, and he found himself unable to repay his loans.  The result was
that his creditors brought the matter before the British Commissioner
at Leh, and he was forbidden to trade on the Yarkand-Leh road until he
had paid his debts.

The upshot was that the Pathan fell into evil ways, and Dalgleish, when
he returned from his expedition, found him living at Leh in idleness
and poverty.  Desiring to help his old colleague, Dalgleish invited him
to join him, and tried to get the Commissioner to withdraw the
injunction.  But the Commissioner refused, so Dalgleish set off alone
for the north with a small caravan.  On the way he halted and wrote
back to Dad Mahomed, asking him to follow him.  This the Pathan did,
and the two continued on the long road up the Karakoram Pass.
Dalgleish gave Dad Mahomed a tent and a riding horse, and instructed
his servants to treat him as they treated himself.

They camped north of the Karakoram Pass, and one afternoon were
observed to walk out together, the Pathan carrying Dalgleish's rifle.
Then came the sound of a shot, but the servants took no notice, as game
was plentiful around the camp.  Presently, however, Dad Mahomed
returned and informed them that he had shot the Sahib.  The servants
ran to their master, and Dad Mahomed followed, having provided himself
with a tulwar.  Dalgleish was only wounded in the shoulder, and the
Pathan then attacked him and brutally murdered him.  He drove back the
servants to their tent, warning them that if they left it he would kill
them.

Dad Mahomed took possession of Dalgleish's tent, and in the morning
ordered the horses to be loaded and the caravan to proceed.  At the end
of the next stage he told the servants that they could do what they
liked with the merchandise, and he himself rode off on Dalgleish's
horse.  What the motive for the murder was it is impossible to say; it
could not have been robbery, for Dalgleish had a large sum in notes
which was found untouched.  The servants took the caravan back to the
Karakoram Pass, picked up Dalgleish's body, and returned to Leh.

The British Raj now took up the case.  Dad Mahomed was found guilty of
murder, and a large reward was offered for his capture.  But to find a
Pathan who had had many days' start in Central Asia was like looking
for a needle in a haystack.  Nevertheless, it was essential for British
prestige that the murderer should be found.

Colonel Bower, the well-known traveller, was at that time at Kashgar,
where he received a letter from the Indian Government bidding him
arrest Dad Mahomed at all costs and bring him back to India for trial.
It appeared that Dad Mahomed had been recently in Kashgar boasting of
his deed.  The Chinese authorities did not molest him, and it was found
impossible to entice him inside the grounds of the Russian Consulate.

Colonel Bower's mission was kept a profound secret.  The Pathan
appeared to have left Kashgar, going east, some weeks before.  A Hindu
merchant was discovered who had a bitter hatred of the murderer, and
plans were concerted.  Emissaries were sent throughout Central Asia to
make inquiry.  They were furnished with letters explaining their
purpose, but these letters were only to be used when they found their
man; otherwise their inquiries must be made secretly, and they had to
pose as ordinary travellers.

Two of them went into Afghanistan, a troublesome country to journey in.
They were arrested in Balkh, and declared that they were doctors
looking for rare plants.  Fortunately the Amir, Abdur Rahman, happened
to be close at hand, and the two men asked to be taken before him.
They gave him Colonel Bower's letter to read, and the Amir smiled
grimly.  These men, he told his entourage, are honest and are what they
profess to be.  They will not, however, find the plant they seek in
Afghanistan; but, he added, he had heard that it grew in Bokhara.  The
two were released and given presents of money and clothes.

Colonel Bower himself had gone east from Kashgar, on the trail which
the Pathan was believed to have taken.  One day a man came to his camp
and asked his nationality.  Bower said he came from India, and his
visitor expressed his astonishment, for he thought that the people of
India were black.  He added that in the neighbourhood there was another
foreigner, and nobody knew where he came from--a tall man not unlike
the Sahib.  He lived in the jungle and earned money by wood-cutting.
This convinced Bower that he was on the track of the fugitive, but when
he reached the place mentioned his man was gone.  The news of the
arrival of an Englishman from India had been enough for Dad Mahomed.

Months passed and nothing happened, and Colonel Bower had begun to
think his task hopeless, when suddenly there came news from Samarkand
that the Pathan had been caught there and was now in a Russian prison.
Two of the emissaries who had gone in that direction had arrived in
Samarkand, and had found Dad Mahomed sitting on a box in the bazaar.
One of them stopped and engaged him in conversation, while the other
went off to the Governor, who happened to be the famous General
Kuropatkin.  Kuropatkin, on opening Bower's letter, at once sent a
party of Cossacks to the bazaar and had Dad Mahomed arrested.

It was arranged to send him to India, and preparations were made for an
armed escort to bring him back over the Russian border; but news
arrived that the criminal had cheated justice, for he had hung himself
in his cell.  Nevertheless the power of the British law was vindicated,
and the story of the unrelenting pursuit throughout Central Asia had an
immense moral effect in all that mountain country.  The tale of it was
repeated at camp-fires and bazaars everywhere between Persia and China,
till the Great War, with its far wilder romances, came to dim its
memory.


II

The break-up of Russia after the Bolsheviks seized the Government had
extraordinary results in every part of the old Russian Empire, but in
none more extraordinary than in the Central Asian Provinces.  It was
like some strange chemical dropped into an innocent compound and
altering every constituent.  The old cradle of the Aryan races was in
an uproar.  In the ancient khanates of Bokhara and Samarkand--names
sung in poetry for two thousand years--strange governments arose,
talking half-understood Western communism.  Everywhere the ferment was
felt; in Tashkend, in Yarkand, in Afghanistan, in the Pamirs, and along
the Indian border.  Austrian and German prisoners set free in Siberia
were trying to fight their way towards the Caspian; tribes of brigands
seized the occasion for guerilla warfare and general looting; and
Bolshevik propaganda penetrated by strange channels through the passes
into India.  The Armistice in Europe made very little difference to
this pandemonium.  Central Asia was in a confusion which it had
scarcely known since the days of Tamerlane.

In this witches' sabbath of disaster appeared one or two British
officers striving to keep the King's peace on and beyond the frontier.
One of these, Captain L. V. S. Blacker, had been badly wounded in the
Flying Corps in France.  Then he rejoined his old regiment, the Guides;
and in July 1918 was in Tashkend looking after British interests in the
face of a parody of Government which called itself a Soviet.  After
that he made his way south into the Pamirs and fetched up at
Tashkurghan, on one of the sources of the Yarkand River.  He had with
him seven men of the Guides.

There he heard from an Afghan merchant that about a hundred armed
men--Afghans, but probably led by Germans and Turks--had been seen in
the upper gorges of the Tashkurghan River.[1]  This matter required
looking into.  Having only seven men he went to the little Russian fort
adjoining and succeeded in borrowing twelve Cossacks.  The place was in
the Chinese Pamirs and the local Amban was troublesome about horses,
but Captain Blacker managed to raise sufficient from Hindu traders.
Mounted on their ponies, and with a single pack-horse carrying rations,
the expedition started by descending the river till a place was found
where it could be forded.  They reached the spot where the enemy band
had been last heard of, but found no tracks on the goat-path leading up
to the high passes.  But this was probably the direction of the enemy,
so they crossed the ridge which divided their valley from Taghdumbash.

It was late October and bitterly cold on the high hills.  At a village
called Wacha they still found no tracks of the band, so they halted
there and sent out patrols along the possible routes.  Next morning
they decided that the Cossacks should stop at Wacha, while Captain
Blacker and his Guides crossed the ridge back to Taghdumbash to try and
pick up the trail.  Their journey took them over a high pass, called
"The Thieves' Pass," and as the weather was fine their spirits rose.
Still there was no sign of the enemy, and they were compelled to go
back to Tashkurghan and spend the night there in a house.

Early next morning they started again for Dafdar, and covered the forty
miles thither in eight hours.  In these high latitudes even a Kirghiz
pony cannot manage more than five miles an hour.  At Dafdar they hunted
up the Beg and from him they had news.  Fifteen wild-looking strangers,
mounted on big horses and with rifles at their backs, had several
nights before ridden through the village, and a shepherd had recently
seen their tracks in a patch of snow.  Clearly it was the gang who had
come from the Russian Pamirs, for ordinary traders do not travel in
that guise, or, indeed, travel these roads at all in early winter.
They might be opium smugglers, or smugglers of Bolshevik propaganda, or
enemy agents commissioned to make trouble in North India.  Anyhow, it
was Captain Blacker's business to round them up and make certain.

That night he sent one of his N.C.O.s sixteen miles up the valley on
the road to India, where there was a post of the Gilgit Scouts, with
instructions to beg half a dozen rifles and a pony-load of barley meal.
The rendezvous was fixed on the Ili-Su upland.  Next morning,
accordingly, the expedition was joined by half a dozen men of the
Scouts--a wild lot with their Dard caps, and their long hair, and their
untanned leggings.  The Gilgit Scouts did not bother with transport,
but came with what they stood up in.  Ten screws from Dafdar were
commandeered and loads were made up; and, says Captain Blacker, "each
man strapped his sheepskin coat and a blanket to the strait saddle-tree
of the Pamir, filled his mess-tin and his oil bottle, thrust a length
of '4 by 2' in his haversack, and was ready for an eight-hundred mile
hunt through desolation."

The weather had changed and the leaden sky promised snow.  All around
were the snowy Mustagh peaks, rising to 25,000 feet and more, while
before lay a wind-swept icy tableland.  It was hard going in such
weather, and they took five hours to reach the banks of the Oprang
River.  There they found a Kirghiz encampment, and learned from them
that, seven nights before, fifteen well-mounted men had filed past the
tents in the darkness.  A night was spent in the encampment, and there
arrived the N.C.O. who had been sent to the post of the Gilgit Scouts,
bringing with him ponies and part of the barley meal.

It was snowing in the morning, and pushing up the Ili-Su valley they
found on the shale of the ravines clearly marked tracks of men.  It was
a severe climb, for the slopes were ice-coated, and the ponies had to
be dragged up to the crest of the pass.  On the top once more they came
on the prints of men and horses--prints which they were to know pretty
exactly during the next fourteen days.  The pass of Ili-Su was some
17,000 feet.  The farther valley proved very rough; but late in the
afternoon it opened out, and the night was spent in wet snow under a
cliff, where enough brushwood could be found to make a fire.  Every
night it was necessary to cook enough barley scones to serve for the
next day.

The following morning the snow was falling resolutely, but they pursued
the course down the steep banks of the stream.  The enemy tracks were
still clear, and it was plain that their mounts were the big horses of
Badakshan.  The band had a long start, and the only chance of catching
them up was to start very early and finish very late--no light task in
such weather and in such a country.  Farther down the valley they found
the ashes of a fire and a new china tea-cup lately broken in half,
with, on the bottom, the legend "Made in Japan."  It was certain now
that they were on the right road; for Kirghiz shepherds do not own
china cups.  Where was the band heading?  Not for India--probably for
Yarkand; possibly for some place still farther east.  It was therefore
necessary for Captain Blacker to turn south-east up the Raskam River,
and plunge into the wild tangle of the Karakoram mountains.

After eight hours' hard going they came to a place called Hot Springs,
where once more they found traces of their quarry, some horses'
droppings, a heap of pigeons' feathers, and some empty cartridge cases.
After that the cliff sides closed in and they struggled for hours in
the darkness through a narrow gorge, till they came to a place at a
lower altitude where there were brushwood for fire and grass to cut for
bedding.

Off again next morning; still up the Raskam valley with the great
buttresses of the Kuen-lun on the north bank, and far away on the right
the slopes of the Mustagh.  If the tracks led up the river bank the
enemy was bound for Khotan; if across the stream, for Yarkand.
Apparently they crossed, and it was no easy matter following them, for
the river was swollen with snow.  On the other side with some
difficulty they picked up the trail again, and found it moving towards
the slopes of the Kuen-lun.  Clearly the enemy was bound for Yarkand or
Karghalik.

They had a tough climb to the top of the pass, and once more the
trackers were at fault.  Some tracks led eastward to the edge of a
dizzy precipice, which was clearly not the way.  Others, however,
plunged down a slope into a gorge full of thorns, and there they
discovered traces of the enemy's bivouac.  This was at midday, which
showed that the pursuit was gaining.

In the afternoon they fought their way through a tangle of undergrowth
till they arrived at a Kirghiz encampment, where they managed to buy
barley.  In one tent they found a young Kirghiz lad whom they took
along with them as a guide.  As it turned out, his father was guiding
the enemy.

The expedition was now in better spirits, for they had food in their
saddle-bags and knew that they were not bound for the icy deserts of
the Karakoram.  Down a little north-running valley they went, and again
they came upon dung, which they judged to be five days old.  The tracks
led down the valley, and suddenly ceased abruptly.  Was it possible
that the gang were hiding in the neighbouring brushwood?  They beat the
place in vain, and were compelled to return the way they had come.
Then they discovered a narrow cleft in the rocks, which proved to be
the mouth of a side valley, and in it they again came on the trail.

The night was spent on a tiny patch of grass under the cliffs, while
their meal was of girdle cakes made with the newly bought barley, and
some of the last of their tea.  "A cheerful spot," says Captain
Blacker, "but better, at any rate, than the trenches before La Basse
in February 1915."

Next day they still climbed, and at midday found more relics of the
enemy, a copper kettle, a cauldron, and a goatskin full of butter,
which had apparently been too heavy to carry.  Then they crossed a very
lofty snow-pass, and before them saw the steep ranges of the Kuen-lun.
Down one ridge and up another they went, still following the track, and
at one stopping-place they found a dead quail and a straw cage.  This
proved that there was at least one Pathan in the gang, for it is the
Pathan's endearing habit to carry tame birds in the folds of his
raiment.

They were now in a perfectly desolate upland without grass or water or
fuel, and their food was rapidly failing.  They had one and a half
day's rations in hand, consisting only of barley flour and a very
little tea and sugar.  A lucky shot by Captain Blacker at a young
burhal the day before had given them some meat, but this was all they
had had for a week.  The country, too, was becoming desperately rocky.
If the Pamirs was the roof of the world, it seemed to Captain Blacker
that he was now climbing among the chimney-pots.  Sometimes on the
summit of a pass they had to dig a way for the ponies with hands and
bayonets.  The ponies, too, began to die.

At last, after several days' severe labour, they descended from the
heights to gentler elevations, and found Kirghiz encampments, where
they could get fresh barley and now and then a sheep.  They were on the
lower foot-hills of the Kuen-lun now, and were looking again at fields
and crops.  They were able also to acquire fresh horses.  Up a long
valley they went, still finding traces of the enemy's bivouacs.  They
had to stop sometimes to mend their footgear with yak's hide; and they
had now and then a piece of luck, as when they came to the house of a
certain Kirghiz Beg, who lent them guides.  Once again they had
mountains to cross, lower passes but rockier, and breaking down into
deep gorges.  Often they marched fifteen hours in a day.

At last they reached a village where they had intelligence of the
enemy.  They learned that the gang were only forty-eight hours ahead,
which meant that they had gained five or six days on them in the last
eight.  The destination was clearly Yarkand, and there was always a
risk of losing them in that city.  Here, too, the trail gave out, for
the sheep and goats of the villagers had smothered it, so they had to
hire a guide.

But the way he led them showed no tracks.  They could only push on and
hope to cut the trail again from the eastward.  After crossing a pass
of 15,000 feet they came to a narrow valley, which led them to the
river Pokhpu, running north and south.  No vestige of a trail, however,
could be found on its banks, so they forded the stream and ascended a
gorge upon the other side.  This took them over a 15,000 feet ridge and
down into another valley and then into another.  It ended in a gigantic
chasm, where in the moonlight a huge excrescence of rock showed exactly
like an ace of spades.  Captain Blacker took this for a good omen; but
there was still a fourth pass to cross, and at four in the morning the
expedition flung itself down, utterly exhausted, in a waterless valley
called after the Angel Gabriel.  In that single day's march they had
climbed up and down something like 30,000 feet, from seven o'clock of
one morning to four o'clock of the next.

The ace of spades had not misled them, for soon after they started they
met an old Kirghiz--a Hadji by his green turban.  He was rather taken
aback by the sight of them, but said he had been sent by a Chinese
mandarin to meet a certain guest.  This made Captain Blacker
suspicious, so he boldly answered that he was the guest in question.
The old Hadji was added to the party, and conducted them to the village
of Kokyar, where they had at last a reasonable meal.

At midnight again they were off, after five hours' sleep, marching
north-eastward by the compass, and hoping to get back on the trail they
had lost.  Presently they were among the sand-dunes of a desert, and
then among the irrigation channels of the lower Raskam River.  It was
midnight when they found themselves in the latter labyrinth; so Captain
Blacker ordered the Hadji to find some one without delay who would show
him the way out.  It was an unfortunate step, for it landed them in a
leper-house.  There was nothing for it but to march on through the
night, and in the small hours of the next morning they were within
sight of Yarkand.

There, early in the afternoon, the expedition, now lean,
weather-beaten, and tattered to the last degree, stood outside the
ancient walls of Yarkand.  One of the Guides entered the city,
disguised, to find an acquaintance, from whom he heard to his delight
that a party of wild-looking strangers had entered the streets eighteen
hours before.  Indeed, the man knew where they were.  They were now in
the Sarai Badakshan.  Captain Blacker had not ridden hard for a
fortnight among the wildest mountains on earth to stand on ceremony in
any town.  His sixteen men cantered down the alleys of Yarkand, and
presently flung open the gates of the Sarai.

There the quarry was found.  Every hand in the Sarai went up without
delay when its inmates heard the challenge, and saw behind the gleaming
bayonets the sixteen gaunt, wolfish faces of their pursuers.



[1] Captain Blacker has told this story in his excellent book _On
Secret Patrol in High Asia_ (John Murray), one of the best narratives
of adventure published in recent years.




EPILOGUE--ON RE-READING THE STORIES

(_For which the Author is not responsible._)




I. THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES

1. Recall the events in France between 1789 and 1791.

2. The episode of the Queen's wrong turning gave Thomas Carlyle
material for a stirring paragraph in his _French Revolution_.  Here it
is:--

Alas! and the false Chambermaid has warned Gouvion that she thinks the
Royal Family will fly this very night; and Gouvion, distrusting his own
glazed eyes, has sent express for Lafayette; and Lafayette's Carriage,
flaring with lights, rolls this moment through the inner Arch of the
Carrousel,--where a Lady shaded in broad gypsy-hat, and leaning on the
arm of a servant, also of the Runner or Courier sort, stands aside to
let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a spoke of it with her
_badine_,--light little magic rod which she calls _badine_, such as the
Beautiful then wore.  The flare of Lafayette's Carriage rolls past: all
is found quiet in the Court-of-Princes; sentries at their post;
Majesties' Apartments closed in smooth rest.  Your false Chambermaid
must have been mistaken?  Watch thou, Gouvion, with Argus' vigilance;
for, of a truth, treachery is within these walls.

But where is the Lady that stood aside in gypsy-hat and touched the
wheel-spoke with her _badine_?  O Reader, that Lady that touched the
wheel-spoke was the Queen of France!  She has issued safe through that
inner Arch, into the Carrousel itself; but not into the Rue de
l'Echelle.  Flurried by the rattle and rencounter, she took the right
hand, not the left; neither she nor her Courier knows Paris; he indeed
is no Courier, but a loyal stupid _ci-devant_ Bodyguard disguised as
one.  They are off, quite wrong, over the Pont Royal and River; roaming
disconsolate in the Rue du Bac; far from the Glass-coachman, who still
waits.

3. Make a sketch-map showing the places mentioned in this story.

4. Which do you consider the most dramatic moment of this story, and
which is the best pen-picture?

5. Justify (or criticize) the sentence on page 22: "It was the crisis
of the French monarchy."

6. What might have happened if the royal party had escaped?

7. Note the simplicity of the telling of this story.

8. Read "Drouet's Ride" and "Mr. Barr's Annoyance" in _The
Eye-Witness_, by Hilaire Belloc.




II. THE RAILWAY RAID IN GEORGIA

1. Note the following facts:--

The American Civil War began in 1861 and lasted until 1865, and it is
often spoken of as the War of Secession.  The two parties were the
Federals and the Confederates, the former being, generally speaking,
the people of the Northern States, and the latter those of the Southern
States.  In the Southern States negro slaves were still employed on the
cotton and sugar plantations, and the people of the Northern States
objected to slavery being permitted within the American territories.
The dispute went on for a long time before actual fighting commenced,
and the Southerners proposed that they should form a separate
Confederacy, in which the employment of negro slaves should be
permitted.  They wished to "secede" from the Union, and the Northerners
objected to this.

The chief figure in the war on the Federal side was Abraham Lincoln,
who became President.  He did all he could to prevent war, and pleaded
earnestly with the Southerners to "save the Union."  But the dispute
came to blows in April 1861, when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter
in the harbour of Charleston city in South Carolina.  Lincoln made an
appeal for fighting men, and some five million Northerners volunteered
for active service.

The Confederates were, however, better prepared for the coming fight,
and had better military leaders, and at the battle of Bull Run, near
Washington, the Federals were beaten, while Lincoln found it difficult
to prevent the occupation of the capital by the Southern troops.  It
was at the battle of Bull Run that Jackson, the Confederate leader,
gained his nickname of Stonewall.  His leader, General Lee, called out
to his men, "Look at Jackson's brigade standing like a stone wall!"

After a time the Northerners found a capable leader in General Ulysses
Grant, and the war went on with varying fortune.  There was a battle of
six days' duration at Chancellorsville, which ended in the repulse of
the Federals.  Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded in this fight.  A
few days later he died.  "Pass the infantry to the front," he called
out with his dying breath.  "Tell Major Hawks--"  He lay for a few
minutes and then added quietly, "Let us cross over the river and rest
under the shade of the trees."

At Gettysburg, in July 1863, Lee was derisively defeated by General
Mead, to the great joy of the Northerners.  The struggle dragged on for
two years longer, until Lee surrendered to General Grant in April 1865.

2. Trace the movement of this story on a map of the United States.

3. Which paragraph on page 28 gives the subject of this story?

4. Which names on page 32 are as important in the story as that of
Andrews?

5. Which do you consider the crisis of the tale?  Which are the most
anxious moments?

6. Why did Andrews' exploit fail?




III. THE ESCAPE OF KING CHARLES AFTER WORCESTER

1. Draw a sketch-map to include the places mentioned in this story.

2. Why does the writer change from the past to the present tense at the
foot of page 47?

3. What are the critical points in this story?

4. Would this story make a good play, or a film?

5. Dramatize two of the conversational portions.

6. Is it correct to describe the hero as "King"?




IV. FROM PRETORIA TO THE SEA

1. Prepare a sketch-map, inserting names, as you read the story for the
second time.

2. Write a paragraph comparing Churchill's escape with that of King
Charles.

3. Make a sketch showing Churchill's actual escape.

4. Which men named in the story would the fugitives be most delighted
to meet?

5. What are the tensest moments of this story?




V. THE ESCAPE OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD

1. Which sentence on page 81 gives the reason for the pursuit of Prince
Charles after the Jacobite rising had been utterly broken?

2. Are there any points of likeness or difference between the
adventures of King Charles and Prince Charlie?

3. Can you explain why we are nearly always glad when a hunted person
escapes?

4. Re-read the whole story and make a list of those incidents which
would make the best pictures for a film.  Give a good title to the film.

5. Who are the leading persons in this story?  Who are the chief
secondary persons?

6. How would you describe the background of the drama?

7. Dramatize two or three of the critical episodes.




VI. TWO AFRICAN JOURNEYS

1. Make a sketch-map to go with this story.

2. Give a good title to the first of these stories.

3. Select the sentence which shows the historic importance of King's
ride.

4. Debate the question of the white man's right to displace the native.




VII. THE GREAT MONTROSE

1. Study the following historical note:--

Early in 1638 it was decided to revive the National Covenant, which had
been originally drawn up in 1557, and had been renewed in the reign of
James VI.  The nobles met in Edinburgh and signed the Covenant in
Greyfriars' Church on the last day of February.  They pledged
themselves to maintain Protestantism, and claimed the right to settle
their own form of religion without interference from England.  The
National Covenant was signed in many parts of Scotland as well as in
Edinburgh; but it must not be thought that the whole nation was
unanimous.  There was always an Episcopalian party, strongest in the
western Highlands and in the north-east of Scotland.  In Aberdeen, for
example, men were compelled to sign the Covenant against their will,
for the young Earl of Montrose, at the head of an army, insisted on
their doing so.

In Edinburgh and the south the Covenanters were very strong, and
Charles I. had to agree to permit the meeting of a General Assembly.
It met at Glasgow in November 1638, and when the King's commissioner,
the Marquis of Hamilton, found out how determined it was, he dissolved
it in the name of the King.  The members refused to admit that the King
had the right to dissolve a court of the church, and declared that
Presbyterianism was to be the established religion of Scotland.

2. Draw a sketch-map to show the flank march described on page 143 and
following pages.

3. Why is a figure of General Leslie placed at the end of this story?

4. Why does Montrose gain the reader's sympathy irrespective of the
issues at stake?

5. Which do you consider the least creditable part of Montrose's
exploits?




VIII. THE FLIGHT OF LIEUTENANTS PARER AND McINTOSH ACROSS THE WORLD

1. Draw a sketch-map of the world and mark in the routes mentioned in
this story.

2. Think of a good motto for these two airmen.

3. Was their flight really "of no use to any one"?




IX. LORD NITHSDALE'S ESCAPE

1. Study the following historical note:--

Queen Anne died in 1714.  The Jacobites, or followers of King James,
had hoped that she would recognize her half-brother as James III. of
England and VIII. of Scotland.  But she died without doing so, and the
Elector of Hanover, a great-grandson of James VI. and I., succeeded to
the throne without opposition.  In the following year the followers of
Prince James made their first great effort to put him on the throne.
The Earl of Mar raised the standard at Braemar in August 1715, and soon
a Jacobite army occupied Perth, and was preparing to march on Stirling
and Edinburgh.  The Duke of Argyll was sent to meet him, and an
indecisive battle was fought at Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane, on November
13th.

Sheriffmuir was really a Hanoverian victory, for Argyll prevented Mar
from marching southwards, and compelled him to return to Perth.  The
Jacobites in the north of England had been easily crushed at Preston
about the same time as their Scottish allies were fighting at
Sheriffmuir, and when James landed at Peterhead, in December, his cause
was already hopeless.  He was a brave man, of good private character,
and he would have made a better and perhaps a wiser king than his
obstinate and cruel father.  But he was not the man to give life and
enthusiasm to crestfallen and despairing troops, and he fled to France
in the beginning of February.  Mar escaped with him, but three of the
other leaders--Lords Kenmure, Derwentwater, and Nithsdale--were
sentenced to death.

2. Which do you consider the most critical moment of this escape?




X. SIR ROBERT CARY'S RIDE TO EDINBURGH

1. Draw a map of the Border to illustrate Cary's record of service in
that region.

2. What was the motive of Cary's ride?  How does it differ from that
which prompted other "hurried journeys"?




XI. THE ESCAPE OF PRINCESS CLEMENTINA

1. This story is the basis of A. E. W. Mason's novel, _Clementina_.

2. John Sobiesky was elected king of Poland in 1674.  In 1683 the Turks
attacked Vienna, but were routed by Sobiesky and the Duke of Lorraine
at the head of a Polish and German force.

3. Draw a sketch-map to accompany this story.  Mark the most critical
point of the journey.




XII. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD

1. Make a sketch-map to accompany this story.

2. Why are the reader's sympathies with the hunters in these two
stories?

Rearrange the stories of this book in chronological order.  Which do
you consider the finest story?




THE END




  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
  THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS




[End of A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys, by John Buchan]
