Three Boys; Or, The Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai

by George Manville Fenn

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

  LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS.

  It was in a dull, half-stunned way that Max walked straight out throughthe castle gate, and away down the rocky slope toward the shores of thelittle bay.

  "Is it all true?" he asked himself. "Is it all true?" And thendrearily he kept on muttering, "I can't stay here now--I can't stay herenow."

  He had walked on for about a mile, when he turned to look back for afarewell glance at the castle, when he found Scoodrach close at hisheels, glaring at him in a peculiar way, which slightly startled Max,but he returned the gaze boldly, and then, with a confused idea ofwalking on till he could reach some inn, when there was nothing of thekind for forty or fifty miles, he asked the young gillie if that was theway for Glasgow.

  Scoodrach's face lit up with satisfaction as he said it was; and, whenMax went right on, the Highland lad stopped back watching him for atime, and then, laughing silently to himself, returned to stand in theshadow and glare at the bailiff and his men; while Max trudged on, withthe sense of being mentally stunned increasing, but not so rapidly asthe growing feeling of misery and shame within his breast.

  Rocky path, moist sheep-track, steep climb, sharp descent into boggyhollow; then up over a hill, with a glance at the sunny sea; and then onand on, in and out among the everlasting hills, which lapped fold uponfold, all grey crag and heather, and one valley so like another, and theins and outs and turns so many, that, but for the light in the west, itwould have been hard to tell the direction in which he tramped on andon, as near as he could divine straight away for Glasgow and the south.

  "I must get home," he muttered dreamily, as he tramped on. "Oh, theshame of it!" he burst out. "Father! father! how could you do such athing as this?"

  There was a wild cry close at hand, and a curlew rose, and then a flockof lapwings, to flit round and round, uttering their peevish calls; butMax saw nothing but the scene at the castle, heard nothing but TheMackhai's bitter words, and he tramped onward and onward into thewilderness of mountain and moss, onward into the night.

  There are people who would laugh at the idea of an active lad being lostin the mountains. To them it seems, as they travel comfortably along byrail or coach, impossible that any one could go perilously astray among"those little hills."

  Let them try it, and discover their ignorance, as they learn theimmensity of the wild spaces in Scotland and Wales, and how valleysucceeds valley, hill comes down to hill, with so great a resemblanceone to the other, that in a short time the brain is overwhelmed by amist of confusion, and that greatest of horrors,--one not known,fortunately, to many,--the horror of feeling lost, robs the sufferer ofpower to act calmly and consistently, and he goes farther and fartherastray, and often into perils which may end in death.

  Max Blande wandered on, looking inward nearly all the time, and backwardat the scenes of the past day, so that it was not long before he haddiverged from the beaten track and was trudging on over the short grassand among the heather. Then great corners of crags and loose stonesrose in his way, forcing him to turn to right or left to get by. Thenhe would come close up to some precipitous, unclimbable face of thehill, and strike away again, to find his course perhaps stopped by apatch of pale green moss dotted with cotton rushes, among which his feetsank, and the water splashed with suggestions of his sinking completelyin if he persevered.

  But he kept on, now in one direction, now in another, striving to keepstraight, with the one idea in his mind to get right away from Dunroe,and certainly increasing the distance, but in a weary, devious way, tillhe seemed to wake up all at once to the fact that it was growing dark,and that a thick mist was gradually creeping round him, and he wasgrowing wet, as well as so faint and weary that he could hardly plodalong.

  Max stopped short by a block of stone, against which he struck, and onlysaved himself from falling by stretching out his hands.

  The stone suggested resting for a few minutes, and he sat down andlistened, but the silence was awful. No cry of bird or bleat of sheepfell upon his ear, and the mist and darkness had in a few minutes soshut him in that he could distinguish nothing half a dozen yards away.

  The sensation of restfulness was, however, pleasant; and he sat therefor some time, trying to think of his plans, but in a confused way, forthe incidents that had taken place at Dunroe would intrude as soon as hebegan to make plans.

  "How stupid I am!" he cried, suddenly starting up with a shiver of cold,for the damp mist seemed to chill him, and for the first time he awoketo the fact that his feet and legs were saturated. "I must get on tosome hotel, and to-morrow make for the nearest station, and go home."

  Just then, for a moment, it occurred to him that he had left everythingat Dunroe; but his thoughts went off in another direction, and then inanother and another, finally resting upon the idea of the possibility ofgetting to the nearest station.

  But where was the nearest station? Stirling. The line to Oban had notbeen made in those days; and now Max began to grow confused, as herecalled the fact that there was only one railway line running throughthe Western Highlands, and whether that were to the north, south, east,or west, he could not tell.

  Neither at that hour could he tell which way these quarters lay. All heknew was that he was in a thick mist somewhere in the mountains, high upor low down in one of the hollows, and that if he stirred from where hestood, he must literally feel his way.

  For a moment the idea came upon him that he had better stop tilldaylight, but just then a peculiar muffled cry smote his ears, and athrill of terror ran through him as he felt that it would be impossibleto sit there all through the long hours of the night in the cold anddarkness. So he started at once, the cry he had heard influencing hisdirection, for he struck off the opposite way.

  He made very slow progress, but at the end of a few minutes he knew thathe was descending a rapid slope, and he went stumbling on through tallheather which was laden with moisture. Every now and then, too, hestruck against some stone, but he persevered, for he fancied that themist was rather less thick as he descended.

  Then he tripped, and went headlong into the drenched heather, andstruggled up with the feeling of confusion increasing as he stood tryingto pierce the gloom.

  Mist and darkness everywhere, and he once more went on downward, butdiagonally, as it had grown now almost too steep to go straight down theslope; and so on for the next half-hour, when, as he leaned forward andtook a step, he went down suddenly, and before he could save himself hewas falling through space, his imagination suggesting an immense depth,but in two or three moments he touched bottom, and went rolling andscrambling among loose shingly stones for quite a hundred feet before hefinally stopped.

  He got up slowly and painfully, half stunned and sore, but he was notmuch hurt, for only the first few feet of his fall had beenperpendicular; and once more he stood thinking in the darkness, andfighting with the fear and confusion which like mental gloom and mistoppressed his brain.

  Only one idea dominated all others, and that one was that he must notstand still.

  Starting once more, it was with ground still rapidly descending, and nowhe went very slowly and cautiously, feeling his way step by step amongthe loose scree, lest he should come upon another perpendicular descent,though even here the place was so steep that the stones he dislodgedslid rattling down over one another for some distance before all wasagain still.

  He must have gone on like this for nearly an hour before he felt that hewas upon more level ground, but it was terribly broken up and encumberedwith great masses of stone, among which he had painfully to thread hisway.

  Once again he found himself walking into a patch of moss, and he feltthe soft growth giving way, till he was knee-deep, and it was only by asudden scramble backwards that he was able to get free.

  Then he went on and on again amidst the profound darkness, feeling hisway among stones and scrubby growth more and more wearily each minute,till he was brought sharp up by a curious, croaking cry.
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  The lately learned knowledge, however, came that this must be amoor-hen; but the fact of such a bird being near did not suggest that hemust be close to water, and in consequence he had not gone much fartherbefore he found himself splashing along the edge of some mountain lochor pool, whose bottom where he stood seemed to be smooth pebbles.

  He stooped down in a dull, despairing way, plunged his hand beneath thesurface, and drew out one of the biggest stones he could find, to hurlstraight before him, and, as he listened, it fell into water which gaveforth a dull, echoing splash, suggestive of depth and overhanging rocks.

  He tried again and again, after backing cautiously, as he thought, outof the deep direction, but only to find the water grow deeper, till, tohis horror, he found it nearly to his middle. The despairing plunge,however, that he took, led him into shallows once more; but every stonehe threw fell into deep water, till he jerked one to his left, and thisfell on stones.

  Taking that direction, he pursued his level way over a shingly beach,with the impression upon him that he must be journeying along a deepglen with high rocks on either side, and one of the little lochs whichhe had often seen in these narrow straths, filling up the principal partof the hollow.

  Once or twice he found his feet splashing in water, but by bearing tothe left he found himself again on the dry pebbles, and in this way,save for a few heavy masses in his path, he skirted what he rightlyconcluded was a mountain loch, though whereabouts he could not tell.

  Gaining a little courage as he realised all this, he ventured once upona shout, in the hope that it might be heard, but he did not repeat it,for he stopped awe-stricken as his cry was repeated away to his left,then on his right, and again and again, to go murmuring off as if a hostof the spirits of the air were mocking his peril.

  But a little thought taught him that his surmise was right, and that hewas slowly making his way along a narrow glen, whose towering walls hadthe property of reflecting back any sound; and, though he dared notraise his voice again, he picked up the first heavy stone against whichhe kicked, and hurled it from him with all his might.

  A terribly dull, hollow, sullen plunge was the result, telling of thegreat depth of the water, and this sound was taken up, to go echoing andwhispering away into the distance till it died out, and then seemed tobegin again in a low, dull roar, which puzzled him as he listened.

  Just then it seemed to him that a warm breath of air came upon hischeek, and this grew stronger, and the dull roar more plain. Then itdid not seem so dark, and he realised that a breeze was coming softly upthe glen, meeting him and wafting the wet mist away.

  There was no doubt of this, and, though it was intensely dark where hestood, it was a transparent darkness, through which he could see thestarry sky, forming as it were an arch of golden points starting oneither side from great walls of rock a thousand feet above the level ofthe loch. This loch, in spite of the darkness, he could plainly seenow, reflecting from its level surface, which stretched away into thedarkness, the bright points of the light above.

  Max stood thinking, and listened to the dull roar. He had been longenough in the Highlands now to know that this was not the continuationof the echoes he had raised, but the murmur of falling water, either ofsome mountain torrent pouring into the lake, or by a reverse process thelake emptying its superabundant water into the rocky bed of a stream,which would go bubbling and foaming down to the sea.

  The wafting away of the mist seemed to relieve him of a good deal of theconfusion, and, weary though he was, he found himself able todistinguish his way, and creep along the pebbly margin of the blackloch, which lay so still and solemn beneath the starry sky.

  All at once, after about an hour's laborious tramp down the weird glen,with its wild crags, black as ink, towering up to right and left, hesuddenly caught sight of a gleam of light, and it struck him that he hadcome near to the mouth of the glen, and that he could see a star lowdown on the horizon.

  The light was to his left, and the place was so horribly oppressive,with the deep black lake on his right and the roar of water rapidlygrowing louder, that he gladly struck off, as he felt, to where thegorge bore round, or, as he soon made out, divided.

  This led him away from the black lake, and he soon found that he wasscrambling along the bed of a little stream, which came, as it were,straight from the low down star.

  Then, as he walked on what grew to be a more and more painful track, itstruck him that it was strange that he could only see one star in thatopening.

  A few minutes later, he fancied he could make out towering crags aboveit, and that all was black darkness where he ought to be seeing morelight; and then he dropped suddenly upon his knees in the joy of hisheart, for there could be no mistake about the matter: it was not a starwhich he could see, but a light, and, rising once more, he forgotweariness, soreness, and pain, and began to tramp slowly on toward thelight.