The transportQueen Charlotte, in which he sailed from St. Vincent, was wrecked in the Irish Channel; and of three hundred souls who were on board, the Captain Dhu—though but the ruins of what he had been in bodily strength—alone escaped, being cast ashore, lashed to a spar; and after many strange and perilous adventures among the Irish, who were then in arms against the government, in the winter of 1799, he found himself at home in his native place, the beautiful valley of the Spey: and now we have reached the last chapter in his mysterious history—an event which is still locally remembered by the Grants and others in Strathspey as the DARK DEED in the Forest of Gaich.
On the 11th of January, 1800, being the day preceding Yule, he summoned a party of gillies, and announced his intention of proceeding up the mountains to hunt the red deer in that place.
The Badenoch men looked at each other with perplexity and fear—as, from time immemorial, the Eve of Yule has been the epoch for all mischief, devilry, and witchcraft in the Highlands; and the scene of the proposed hunting was just the place that men might be supposed to avoid at such a time.
"To hunt on Yule Eve—and in the Forest of Gaich!"
Irresolute and unwilling alike to offend or obey, they gazed at each other in silence.
"Go not forth to hunt to-day," said old Hamish Grant, the sergeant, who, being discharged after long service, was an occasional visitor at the house of his old leader.
"And why not to-day?" thundered Black Evan, with a terrible oath.
"Can you ask?"
"What day is it in particular?"
"The Eve of Yule."
"Would you refuse to fight the enemy on Yule Eve?" asked the captain, scornfully.
"No, Ballychroan," replied the sergeant, proudly; "for on that day in the year '76 I fought with the Americans on the Delaware."
"And what is Yule to me?" exclaimed the captain, as he drank a deep draught "Ha! ha! what is that to me? Go I shall, though the fiend—the accursed fiend—came up from hell with all his legions to bar the way. Go I shall, Hamish; and go I must?"
"This is most strange!"
"Fatality compels me," said the captain, mournfully and wildly. "Oh, how few could comprehend the misery of a conviction like this! Fain would I give upexistenceif I could receive oblivion in exchange, but not life—thislife at least. Fain would I rest in my grave, Hamish; but in the grave, even of a saint—yea, under the altar-stone of Iona—I could not find repose."
"I do not understand all this," said the old sergeant, solemnly; "so let us consult the minister about it."
"The minister—bah!"
"You never feared death, Ballychroan?"
"Death—no! for he has everywhere eluded me. You have seen me rush into the breach amid a thousand dangers, and escape them all. I have flung myself upon the levelled bayonets, and among the uplifted swords of the enemy; but the bayonets became pointless, the swords blunted, the bullets harmless as snow-flakes! In the dark vault of the Vizie, the flames spared me; even the ocean itself repelled me, when three hundred brave men went down into its greedy gulf; and, like he who wanders for ever—he who mocked his Saviour on the ascent to Calvary—I seem to bear a charmed life; but yet, like that more happy wretch, I cannot live for ever. No, Hamish, no—my days are numbered!"
"Go not forth to-day," reiterated the old soldier, grasping the arm of the excited captain.
"Bah!" he responded, and drained another glass of whiskey.
"What did Kenneth Ower foretel two hundred years ago?"
"That when ablackYule overtook ablackLaird of Ballychroan, the race would cease."
"Well—you are the first of your family who have the name of EvanDhu—and you have no son."
"Thank Heaven, no! I care not for predictions, and Kenneth Ower Mackenzie, the Brahn prophet, was a fool."
"He foretold strange things though."
"Such as, that oats would replace the fairies on the hill of Tomnahourich, and that ships with sails unfurled would pass and repass it; but the green bracken and the purple heather wave yet on the Fairies' Hill, and we hare heard nothing of the ships."*
* The captain spoke in 1800. "Tomnahourich, the far-famed Fairies' Hill, has been sown with oats," states theInverness Advertiserof 1859; "according to tradition, the Brahn prophet, who lived 200 years ago, predicted that ships with unfurled sails would pass and repass Tomnahourich; and further, that it would yet be placed under lock and key. The first part of the prediction was verified by the opening of the Caledonian Canal, and we seem to be on the eve of seeing the realization of the rest by the final closing up of the Fairies' Hill." In what succeeds I have closely followed local and oral tradition; but the black officer wasnotthe last of his race, as he left a daughter, who, I believe, was married in England.
"Kenneth Ower never spoke in vain," said the white-haired sergeant.
"I am too old a soldier to be terrified by silly predictions," exclaimed the captain, wrathfully; "so enough of this. Set forward, men—away to the forest! Let us drink, dance, and hunt while we may!"
And quaffing off a huge jug of alcohol, with a party of gillies, whom he had made half tipsy, he departed towards the Forest of Qaich.
Of all that band of hunters, not a man ever came down from the Grampians again!
On that night, when the whole atmosphere seemed calm and still, a terrific tempest, sudden as the discharge of a cannon, swept over the mountains. For hours the forked lightning played and flashed over Benoch-Corri-Va and the Haunted Forest of Gaich, while the thunder-peals made the old women in every cottage and clachan totter down on their knees to mutter a prayer for deliverance from evil and danger, as the electric salvos hurtled over the great wooded valley, through which the swollen Spey, the most furious of the Scottish rivers, laden with the spoil of a hundred forests, swept with a ceaseless roar to the German Ocean.
Over Gaich, the sky seemed all on fire. It was an expanse of crimson flame streaked with forky green flashes; and against this steady flush the huge Grampians stood strongly forth in sombre outline.
With night this storm passed away.
Three days after, some shepherds who, in pursuit of their scattered flocks, ventured into the wilderness of Gaich, saw a sight, the memory of which causes many yet to shudder, as they tell to their grandchildren around the winter hearth the story of the Captain Dhu.
A lonely shieling, in which he and his twenty gillies took refuge, had been destroyed by a thunderbolt. Its rafters and stones were scattered over the forest, with the corpses of its inmates—every man of whom had beentorn limb from limb, and scattered far apart, as if by the hands of some mighty fiend!
Such was the startling end of the Black Captain and his companions.
His evil reputation, the weird locality of his hunting, and the equally weird character of this tempestuous night, have fixed the idea deeply in the minds of the peasantry that Evan Dhu, of Ballychroan, decoyed these twenty Badenoch men into Gaich Forest for the sole purpose of delivering them to the fiend, in conformity with some terrible compact; for the whole scene of the catastrophe bore evidence of their destruction by some infernal agency, rather than, as others averred, the levin brand of Heaven.
At times, on the returning Eve of Yule, those who have been belated in the forest suddenly find themselves in the midst of an invisible company of roisterers, whose laughter, shouts, imprecations, and impious songs, fill the poor loiterers with affright; for though the voices seem close to the ear, no one in visible: and these unearthly bacchanalians are supposed to be the spirits of the doomed captain and his companions.
On other occasions, screams, yells and entreaties for mercy—wild, and thrilling, and heartrending—with the hoarse, deep baying of infernal dogs, are swept over the waste on the wind. But since that terrible catastrophe on Yule Eve, 1800, none pass willingly through the Forest of Gaich alone!
ITHE LETTER OF SERVICE.
In the story of Farquhar Shaw, the formation of the Highland Watch has been fully detailed; but the following is the Letter of Service by which the Independent Companies of the Reicudan Dhu became the 43rd, and afterwards the 42nd Regiment of the Line:
"George R.—Whereas, we have thought fit that a Regiment of Foot be forthwith formed under your command, and to consist of ten companies, each to contain one captain, one lieutenant, one ensign, three sergeants, three corporals, two drummers, and one hundred effective private men; which said regiment shall be formed out of six Independent Companies of Foot in the Highlands of North Britain, three of which are now commanded by captains, and three by captain-lieutenants:
"Our will and pleasure therefore is, that one sergeant, one corporal, and fifty private men, be forthwith taken out of the three companies commanded by captains, and ten private men from the three commanded by captain-lieutenants, making one hundred and eighty men, who are to be equally distributed into the four companies hereby to be raised; and the three sergeants and three corporals draughted as aforesaid, to be placed to such of the four companies as you shall judge proper; and the remainder of the non-commissioned officers and private men, wanting to complete them to the above number, to be raised in the Highlands with all possible speed,the men to be natives of the country, and none other to be taken.
"This regiment shall commence and take place according to the establishment thereof. And of these our orders and commands, you and the said three captains and the three captain-lieutenants, commanding at present the six Independent Highland Companies, and all others concerned, are to take notice, and yield obedience thereunto accordingly.
"Given at our Court of St. James's this 7th day of November, 1739, and in the 13th year of our reign. By His Majesty's command.
(Signed) "WM. YONGE.
"To our right-trusty and well-beloved cousin John Earl of Craufurd and Lindsay."
Letters of service usually contain thespecial conditionsunder which troops are levied. It is worthy of remark that such are carefullyomittedin the foregoing.
II.HIGHLAND SOLDIERS.
In the war between 1755 and 1762, sixty-five thousand Scotsmen were enlisted, according to the "Scots Magazine" for 1763, and of these a great proportion were Highlanders, whose services were extremely ill-requited.
"Were not the Highlanders put upon every hazardous enterprise where nothing was to be got but broken bones, and are not all these regimentsdiscardednow, but the 42nd?" says a writer in theEdinburgh Advertiserof 6th July, 1764. "The Scots colonel who entered the Moro Castle* is now reduced to half-pay; while an English general, whose avarice was the occasion of the death of many thousands of brave men, is not only on full pay, but in possession of one-fifth of the whole money gained at the Havannah—what proportion does the service of this general, who received £86,000, bear to a private soldier who got about fifty shillings, or an officer who received about £80?**
* Lieutenant-Colonel James Stuart, who afterwards commanded at Cuddalore, in 1789.
** Lieut.-General the Earl of Albemarle received £112,697 10s. The writer is in error.
"The 42nd regiment consisted of two battalions and three companies, in all 2800 men, and now (in 1764) there remain only about ninety privates alive of the whole."
A passion for military glory and adventure, with the old patriarchal love of the chiefs and gentlemen who officered the Highland regiments, drew our mountain peasantry in great numbers into their ranks. "Thus we find," according to General Stewart, whose work has been quoted in the text, "that the whole corps embodied in the Highlands amounted to twenty-six battalions of fencible infantry, which, in addition to thefifty battalions of the line, three of reserve and seven of militia, formed altogether a force of EIGHTY-SIX HIGHLAND REGIMENTS embodied in the course of the four wars in which Britain had been engaged since the Black Watch was regimented in 1740. From a first glance, allowing 1000 men to each of these eighty-six regiments, would appear to come near the truth; but on a closer view it will be found to be far short of the actual number—several of the regiments had in the course of their service treble or quadruple their original number in their ranks. Thus the 71st, the 72nd and the 73rd, during the thirty-one years they were Highland (i.e.kilted), had at least 3000 Highlanders each, and other regiments had numbers in proportion to the length and nature of their service, both in tropical and temperate climate.
"From the commencement of the late war," according to another and equally careful writer, "the Island of Skye alone had furnished no fewer than 21 Lieutenant-Generals and Major-Generals; 48 Lieutenant-Colonels; 600 other commissioned officers and 10,000 foot soldiers; 4 Governors of British colonies; 1 Governor-General; 1 Adjutant-General; 1 Chief Baron of England; and 1 Judge of the Supreme Court of Scotland."
The game laws and expatriation of the people have now reduced the Highlands and Isles to a wilderness, or nearly so; the clans, whose memory is so inseparably connected with the military history of Scotland in modern times, and with the memory of days gone by, are swept to Australia, or the wilds of that Far West which is now the new home of the Celtic race.
According to Wilson—
Time and tideHave washed away like weeds upon the sands,Crowds of the olden life's memorials;And mid the mountains you might as well seekFor the lone site of fancy's filmy dream.
III.THE LETTRE DE CACHET.
Of Major White's companion in misfortune, referred to in the legend bearing the above title, theEdinburgh Magazinefor 1789 supplies the following information:—
"The Earl of Mazarine is an Irish peer; he was nearly stopped at Calais, on Friday, on his way here. He was with two other gentlemen, his companions in misfortune, and being all extremely mean and shabbily dressed, were suspected of being bad persons, and no one seemed desirous of embarking in the packet with them. He was at length obliged to declare himself. The people in the packet thought him mad. On landing at Dover, his lordship was the first to jump out of the boat, and in gratitude to Heaven for his deliverance, immediately fell on his knees, and kissing the ground thrice, exclaimed—
"God bless this land of liberty!"
This was one of the last episodes in the history of the terrible Bastille.
THE END.