The Collected Works of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

of coast, already familiar to him, he must soon approach the snare laid for him there.

      And the presence of that unknown ship last night seemed to indicate that the actual moment of that approach was very near. Ah! now at last he would be able to look for her, for the moon had pushed up over the craggy eastern summits at his back into a cloudless sky.

      Keith gave his horse to his orderly, and going along a low spur of rock gazed steadily out to sea. The fantastic peaks of Rum were even more unreal in the moonlight than in the day, and the isle of Eigg of an even odder shape. At first he thought that the stranger was gone, and then all at once he saw her, a ghostly bark on the rippling silver. She seemed to be off Morar, and, since some of her square-sails appeared to be set, he doubted if she were at anchor; but she was certainly not sailing away.

      Keith had to make a rapid decision. At Morar he had an officer and thirty men stationed. That, surely, was enough. He could, if he wished, send back to Arisaig and bring up some more from there; yet should Arisaig and not Morar prove after all the destined spot, and he had denuded Arisaig of watchers, he would be undone. Loch nan Uamh, the original landing-place, was also provided with a quota, but the distance did not admit of bringing any soldiers thence to-night.

      He returned to his orderly and mounted his horse. “I shall ride on to Morar. Go back to Arisaig and tell the Captain so; desire him to keep a close watch on the shore, for the Frenchman is lying off the coast again and nearer in than last night.”

      The man saluted and rode off along the rough sandy road, and Keith was left alone with the ship, the moonlight and his own excited thoughts. Not that he stayed to contemplate any of these; he pushed on at a smart trot for Morar, turning over the question of a boat, without which no fugitive could, naturally, reach the ship. He had temporarily confiscated every boat on this stretch of coast except such as were genuinely needed for fishing, to which he had granted a permit. Even of the owners of these he was not sure, for they were all MacDonald of Clanranald’s dependents. It would no doubt have been better to have burnt every one of their craft. Yet even then a vessel could easily despatch one of her own, at the risk of being fired on.

      Keith took a last look at the burnished and gently moving expanse of which he must now lose sight, for here the track turned sharply to the right to run round the deep little inlet of Morar. But there was no visible speck upon the sea which might be a boat.

      And before long he was approaching the shoreward end of the inlet on the rough sandy track of a road, bordered by dense undergrowth, which ran round, a little higher than the level shore, under trees of no great stature. The tide was coming in fast over the dazzling white sands of Morar, snow under the moon, and drowning the little river which tumbled from the wild, deep freshwater loch behind, where Lord Lovat had sought his last refuge. It was so intensely quiet, and the tide was slipping in so noiselessly, that the roar of the double falls was carried very clearly over the water. Reining up, Major Windham listened for some sign of the patrol which should be going its rounds from the quarters on the other side of the bay, across the river; and, to his displeasure, could detect none. This on a night when a French ship was off the coast! The men must be got out at once.

      He touched his horse with the spur and then pulled up again. What was that dark shape down there on the sand? A small boat, and so near the incoming tide that in another quarter of an hour or so it would be afloat. No fisherman could have been so careless as to leave it there, unless it were secured in some way. Brimful of suspicion as Keith was to-night, he had jumped off his horse in an instant, and thrown the bridle over a convenient branch. He knew better than to take the animal plunging into the soft, dry sand of the slope; he was almost up to his ankles himself before he was down.

      Yes, he was right; the boat was there for no purpose authorised by him. It had only recently been brought there, for it was not made fast to anything. There were oars in it, but no nets or fishing-lines. It needed no more evidence to convince him that the little craft had been placed there in readiness to take off some person or persons to-night to the strange vessel.

      The most lively anger seized Major Windham. What was that damned patrol about not to have discovered this? He must certainly gallop round to their quarters without a moment’s delay and turn out the lazy brutes. His pulses leaping, he plunged up the yielding sand to the tree-shadowed road, turned to throw himself into the saddle—and stood staring like a man bewitched. His horse was gone . . . gone as if swallowed up!

      “It is not possible!” said Keith to himself. “I have not been down there two minutes!”

      But, evidently, it was possible. Black though the shadows were under the trees, he could tell that they held nothing so solid as a horse. He looked up and down the empty white track, streaked and dappled with those hard shadows; he examined the branch. It was not broken, and the beast could certainly not have twitched his bridle off it. Someone had been watching him, then, and human hands had conveyed the animal away—whither?

      Furious, he began to run back along the road; its sandy surface was already too much churned up to show any hoof-marks. He did not remember passing any crofts as he came. Though a man could hide in the thick bushes on the seaward side, a horse could not be concealed in them. He turned abruptly and went back again, remembering that there was a dwelling or two farther along, between him and the river. If some of these MacDonalds had stolen his horse and hidden it there, by Heaven it should be the worse for them!

      What, however, was of paramount importance now was not the finding of his horse, but the beating up of the patrol with the least possible delay. Yet by the time that he, on foot, could get round to their quarters, or at least by the time that the soldiers arrived on the spot, the boat would probably have put out with her freight. That was why his horse had been spirited away by the ambushed spy in league with to-night’s fugitives.

      Keith set his jaw and cursed himself most fervently for having come alone. The extraordinarily skilful way in which his horse had been made to vanish, joined to the inexplicable lateness of the patrol, only confirmed his conviction that it was the Pretender’s son for whom that boat was waiting. Then, at all costs, he must delay its putting out. . . . Could he disable it in some way? Not easily, without tools, but he would do his best.

      Once more he plunged down the sandy slope. But the boat, though old, was solid. A knife, a sword, could make no impression on those timbers. Keith had a moment of angry despair; then he remembered having seen in one of these craft the other day a plugged hole, designed to allow water to drain out if necessary. Suppose this boat had one!

      Getting in he peered and felt over the bottom, and at last, to his joy, his fingers encountered, toward the after end, a rough peg of wood sticking up like a cork. After some tugging he succeeded in wrenching it out, and slipped it into his pocket. He could get his thumb through the hole he had thus unplugged. He leapt out and ran towards the slope again in triumph. One of two things would happen now: either the Pretender’s son and his companions would discover what had been done, and a new plug would have to be fashioned to fit the hole, which would delay them not a little, or—what seemed to Keith more probable—they would launch the boat and pull off without examining it, on which it would almost immediately fill and sink, and its occupants be forced to struggle back at a disadvantage to a shore by that time, it was to be hoped, straitly guarded.

      Keith was half-way up the slope again when he stopped abruptly, for in the stillness he had distinctly heard voices—low voices at no very great distance. The patrol at last, perhaps? He did not think so. The speakers seemed to be coming along the tree-shadowed road between him and the end of the inlet, the very road along which he was preparing to hasten. A party of Jacobite fugitives would most certainly not allow a soldier in uniform to run past them if they could help it. Was the prize going to slip through his fingers after all?

      No, hardly, in that unseaworthy boat! But he must perforce let the owners of these cautious voices pass him and get on to the beach before he started for the quarters of the patrol. Had the tide not already been so high he could have cut across the sands and swum or waded the river, but that was out of the question now; he could only go by the road. He looked round for shelter, and slipped cautiously into a high bush of hazel which itself stood in a patch of shadow so deep that he felt sure of being invisible.

      Not