Adam Ferris bowed gravely, as one who receives valuable information.
"I congratulate you," he said. "As for the young men, Fergus, Stair and Agnew Garland, they are fine lads and a credit to the neighbourhood. I cannot imagine that they have anything more to do with the traffic of which you speak than I myself. But if they have been reported to you as guilty, I am prepared to take cognizance of the evidence. I presume you did not come here without a warrant."
"We need no warrant," said the Lieutenant. "I am in command of His Majesty"s press."
The expression of Adam Ferris"s face changed suddenly.
"My tenants and my tenants" sons are not subject to the press-gang.
There are no sailors among them--no, nor yet any fishermen."
"Captain Laurence of the dragoons is with us, sir," interpolated Eben McClure; "he has a right to beat up for recruits for the land forces."
"Ah," said Adam, "at fairs and markets, with fife and drum--yes! But not all over my estate, nor yet to meddle with my tenantry."
"He has particular permission from Earl Raincy," said the spy.
"I am not Earl Raincy, nor are my lands his," quoth Adam Ferris; "but, by the way, where is this Captain Laurence of whom you speak?"
The question seemed to embarra.s.s the two men. "He was with us," said the Lieutenant at last, "but having discovered some fancied kinship with your brother"s family, he separated himself from us and went (as I believe) to his house of Abbey Burnfoot!"
"Then I hope he does not press Julian for the cavalry. His cousin, the Secretary, might have something to say to that!"
Altogether there was small change to be got out of Adam Ferris, and as they gathered their men and, marched them off, they fell foul one of the other, the officer with his exercised sea-tongue having much the better of the word-strife. But presently they were friends again, both cursing Captain Laurence of the dragoons for deserting them in their time of need.
"I believe," said Lieutenant Everard, "that Laurence simply turned in his tracks and went back to that bothy to carry more water for the black-headed girl!"
This, however, was of little moment to the Superintendent of Enlistments, who had a bounty upon every pressed man safe drafted to headquarters or delivered on board ship.
"At any rate," he said, "we have lost our men, and we are little likely to see them again!"
The Lieutenant turned angrily upon him.
"You are thinking of your dirty dollars," he said bitterly. "It is for the sake of such as you that His Majesty"s officers must be treated like huckstering excis.e.m.e.n by every dirty Scot who owns as much ground as a cow can turn round in! "My estate!" "My tenantry"--paugh, and the back of his hand to you because you are no better than an Englishman!"
"The Ferrises are an ill folk to come across!" insinuated the Superintendent of Enlistments.
Everard turned hotly upon his companion.
"And who brought us here to rub noses against rough stones climbing your accursed d.y.k.es, only to be insulted by country b.u.mpkins and outwitted by half-clad minxes? You are a spy, and no fit company for gentlemen. I tell you so much to your face. But when you are in your own country and doing your foul business, you might at least have your information correct before calling out the forces of His Majesty."
And ten minutes later the boat of the _Britomart_ was being rowed fast in the direction of that ship, because the men knew well that their officer was in no mood to be trifled with.
CHAPTER IV
BY FORCE OF ARMS
The press-gang and its ugly work, Castle Raincy and its feudal a.s.sociations, stern Cairn Ferris, the Abbey Burn and the bright new house of Julian Wemyss--Patsy going from one to the other, and the patriarchal simplicity of the farm of Glenanmays, with its girls and boys, its cave-riddled sh.o.r.e and its interests in the Free Traffic--these are what the district of the Back Sh.o.r.e meant in later Napoleonic times.
Most of this was on the surface, to be seen of all men, but the traffic and the "press" are only spoken of in whispers. As to them it is dangerous to appear too knowing.
Even great people were mysteriously tongue-tied. Silence was particularly golden in these days, and in the stillness of the night the little click of a sheep"s trotters descending a mountain pathway was often mistaken for the clank of a scabbard point, or the clink of a gun-b.u.t.t striking a loose stone.
Girls in moorland farms lay awake, half-fearing, half-hoping to hear the saddle-chains of the laden horses, each led by a lover or a brother.
King George might (and did) multiply officials and send what could be spared in the way of landing parties to support the executive, but the claims on the ministry were too many. They could only say, "Wait for a time of peace and then we will regulate the matter of the Solway free trade once for all."
But the most ignorant lad on the sh.o.r.e of Galloway from Loch Ryan to Annan Waterfoot knew that so long as the government waged war against Napoleon and America, it had no time to attend to them. The press-gang was all they had to avoid, and for that they trusted to their clear eyes and nimble feet.
They were also well informed. So soon as a patrol cleared the Irishman"s Port in Stranryan, or a boat"s crew was seen making for the beach of any of the Back Sh.o.r.e coves, messengers, ragged and brown, sped inland to warn the farms and villages engaged in the business, or even those merely acting as recipients and depots. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, all men under forty-five disappeared from the fields. The teams found their own way homewards or stood still till they were loosed by girls hurrying out from the steadings.
"Patriotism," said Stair Garland, bitterly, "that is a fine word. But the fine patriots tie the lads they catch to rings in the wall of the Stranryan gaol. They lash them till the blood runs just to learn them not to complain. Don"t tell me about glory. There was Rob Blair, who came back from Spain after his brother Maxwell had been flogged to death. He shot a general near Corunna--him they make a fuss about--he and half a dozen of his mates, and he told me the reason that Allingham keeps so far ahead of his own soldiers is that they are better shots than the French, who do not fire at him nearly so often."
True or not, this was the Galloway idea of soldiering during the later Napoleonic wars, and it was only after a bout of drunkenness at some fair that recruits could be looked for. Suicide was not uncommon after a few weeks of discipline, and many were drowned from the transport ships which took them to Vigo or the Tagus mouth.
Galloway has always been cut off from the rest of Scotland. In spite of the invasion of its fertile valleys by Ayrshire dairy farmers it has remained the old Free Province, a little anti-Scottish, a good deal anti-Irish, excessively anti-English, self-centred, self-satisfied, quarrel-some and _frondeur_, yet in the main politically conservative.
In 1811 the Ayrshire invasion had not yet begun, and there was nothing to mitigate the determination of the people not to send a single man to fight in a war about which they cared nothing. No regiment in the service bore its name. It was looked upon as the haunt of an evil breed who would smuggle and fight, but against, and not among, the soldiers of the King.
A landing party had been attacked and cut up on the Corse of Slakes.
Soldiers had to take and hold the old camp of the Levellers in the Duchrae wood, near the Black Water. Bitter hatred prevailed between the Lord Lieutenant"s party, formed to aid the government in obtaining recruits, and the commonalty, which was equally determined that no one of theirs should be carried off to endure the shame of the cat-o"-nine-tails.
Earl Raincy made a tour of his estates, and the farmers promised wonderful things, but carefully and immediately sent their lads to the heather and the hill-caves for change of air. The girls took to the plough and threshed the grain on the beaten earth of the barn floor--emerging tired, but bright-eyed and happy. This, at least, they could do to keep Alec or John from the dread triangle and the lacerating whip. The Frenchman"s bullet they were willing to risk, but not these.
Galloway furnished its full tale of officers to both services, but as a recruiting-ground, even in milder times, it has given poor results.
In 1812 there was a good deal of writing about patriotism in struggling local journals. The big farmers were often loud-voiced, and the publicans hung out colours when the recruiting-officers made temporary headquarters of their houses, but the ma.s.s of the people stood silent, sullen and determined. They would not be taken, and if any were seized they would put up such a fight that the "press" would pay three or four lives for one. The chiefs would stay their hand, they argued, if they had to pay the price of three or four formed and disciplined men for a single unwilling recruit who would certainly desert at the first opportunity.
In the old outlaws" cave on Isle Ryan, towards the Mull out beyond Orraland, thirty or forty young men were gathered. They were not afraid of any attack by land or water. The stony bulk of the isle did not even fear cannon, and the pa.s.sage, open only at low water, was exceedingly easily defended. Provisions they had in plenty, and for more they had only to cross to the mainland, where every farmer would willingly supply them.
Lads from all Galloway were there, shock-headed Vikings, with far-looking blue eyes, from Kirkmaiden to Leswalt, black, hook-nosed Blairs and McCallums from Garlieston sat beside Rerrick and Colvend men with deep-set eyes, the fine flower of the Free Trade, men whose forefathers had run cargoes for a hundred and thirty years into the same ports, and refused King"s service for many thousand, though perfectly obedient to their own lords and war committees. There were always a plenty of fighting men along Solway sh.o.r.e, as the published rolls of 1638 attest.[1] Willing were they to fight, only they would fight when and against whom they chose, under such and such officers, appointed by themselves, and under no others. Kings, whether Highland Stuarts or German Guelphs, they would not obey--no, not though military parties made examples of them at every d.y.k.e back. The iron of the Killing Time was branded deep into the folk of Galloway. They would not go soldiering, and they would smuggle. In the last resort, if matters got too hot, the young men would silently betake themselves to Canada, where they rose to be factors and chief traders under the Hudson Bay Company, or, like Paul Jones, took service under another flag, and fought with the l.u.s.t of battle ever in their heart, against all that was English or smelt of the service of King George.
[Footnote 1: _The Galloway War Committee of 1638_ (Nicholson, Kirkcudbright).]
"Are we to stay here for ever?" demanded Stair Garland, lying on the sand of the upper cavern and looking out at the blue curtain of sky, which was all he could see. Outside was a kind of balcony on which they stretched their legs at night, but, as there were preventive officers on the cliffs with telescopes under their arms, it was forbidden to go out there in daylight.
"We must stay here till the ships of war have gone out of the channel.
You can see the top-sails of the _Britomart_ at this moment, hanging about the Mull, and a sloop-of-war lies off Logan House, waiting for Captain Laurence"s orders."
It was a Stewartry man who spoke, keen of eye and crisply black-haired, his voice soft and easy, not hectoring and overbearing like that of most of his fellows--his name, G.o.dfrey McCulloch, the younger son of a younger son, but of the best and oldest blood in Scotland, which is to say of the Ardwalls.
G.o.dfrey and Stair were in a manner rivals for leadership. The Stewartry man was the elder by many years, and among his own enjoyed an unrivalled reputation, but three-fourths of the Isle Ryan refugees were Wigtonshire men and faithful to Stair Garland.
But Stair Garland was often reckless and headstrong, so brave himself that he hardly thought of danger to those whom he led. G.o.dfrey McCulloch, on the other hand, was cautious and long-sighted. He argued out every possibility, and arranged what was to be done if things fell out so and so. Sometimes he even hesitated too long, balancing between two wise courses, while Stair, leading his men with a rush, would thresh his way through to victory. On the whole, G.o.dfrey was the safer, Stair far the more popular leader.
"We cannot lie up in this hole much longer," said Stair, digging his heels into the sand.