Chapter Text
'Mac 'ic Ailein! Where have you been? Oh, we thought you were lost!'
'I am sorry, Duncan,' said Ewen, holding the low door of the fisherman's cottage for Duncan to come through. 'I had a task of great importance—I shall explain it later, for you are quite right; we must make haste! There is a redcoat patrol coming from Morar,' he went on, as Angus and the MacDonald fisherman emerged into the night air. 'We shall have time to reach the boat before they get to us, but we must hurry. Lead the way, Alastair,' he said to the fisherman.
The cottage stood in a sheltered spot not far from the beach, and they soon reached it—traversing, Ewen found, the route by which he had already come that night. The beach was deserted now; and here was Alastair's boat awaiting them. Its owner bent over it to examine the plug in the bottom—'for the redcoats took the one from Ranald Mor's boat two nights ago—the dogs, to try to drown their enemies by trickery!'—but found it still safely in position.
Ewen's heart was beating. He had a great many cares to trouble him—the grief of one going into exile, caught between dearly-remembered past and uncertain future; his injured leg, which he had certainly been overstraining, and which now hurt dully and constantly; his thoughts of that evening, of poor Lachlan and their strange farewell; and his other farewell to Keith Windham there upon the sand—oh, if they could meet again...! But now, though the thoughts of all these things remained with him, they were as though put away in a corner of his mind, and he felt keenly the thrill of a daring escape from powerful enemies. The redcoat patrol would surely be here soon, and all his strength and courage would be needed to escape. It was almost as good as a fight. If only Lochiel, and of course the Prince, might soon know this triumph too! While Alastair made the last preparations for getting the boat down to the sea, Ewen looked about across the sand. The moon was high and brighter than ever, and the air was getting colder with that prophetic chill which comes to the nights of late summer. Perhaps the sea-mist would gather again later on in the night, but for now they had a clear view out to the ship; their voyage would be easy.
But even as the little wavelets began to lap at the bow of the fishing-boat, there came the sound of marching feet from inland.
'The redcoats!' said young Angus. 'Quickly, Mac 'ic Ailein—' And he took up an oar, the fisherman taking the other.
Ewen glanced back up the beach, and saw with alarm how far the soldiers had already come. But Alastair himself was more stoic. 'Never fear,' he said. 'We shall outrun them.'
Angus and the fisherman had scarcely taken a pull at the oars when the first musket-shot whizzed past them. Duncan, sitting in the stern, motioned to Ewen to crouch down in front of him, that he might shield his chieftain from the fire.
But that shot was not repeated. Instead, a great noise of shouting broke out further up the beach—a sound of confusion and dismay. Something was happening. Ewen craned his neck, trying to look past Duncan without putting himself in the way of more danger than his loyal follower would allow.
In the shade of the trees that grew above the open sand, Keith Windham was cursing the luck of the last few minutes. He had known, of course, that it would be a matter of chance. His choice to let Ewen go earlier in the evening, he could reconcile with his honour; but he must take the patrol along the route they had planned, and he could not do anything to slow or hinder them. He had only hoped that Ewen, knowing of their presence, would be away earlier than this; but here he was, only now reaching the sea. If Keith had spared him, only to be forced to take him captive again after all!...
Keith was at the back of the assembled company, and now there was a sudden noise from the soldiers ahead of him: several shouts went up from amongst the men, followed by Lieutenant Carter's voice commanding order. What had happened? Keith went hastily forwards to see.
A Highlander was running towards them across the sand—running at an astonishingly rapid pace, so that he seemed to advance forty or fifty yards in a few moments; but that must be a trick of the light. He was shouting in Gaelic and brandishing something above his head; whoever he was, he was clearly furious with them. The soldiers seemed unwontedly alarmed at the sight of him; several had raised their muskets as though they meant to fire, although Carter was still trying to hold them back. They were paying no attention at all to the little boat just taking to the waves on the far side of the beach...
Keith added his own voice to the calls for order. There was no need for them to be perturbed by some madman—for surely it must be a madman, to attempt an attack on a whole patrol of redcoats. Or—Keith's heart sank as the possibility occurred to him—could it be one of Ewen's followers, ready to sacrifice himself that the others might escape?
Then the man came closer, and Keith saw who he was, and what had so alarmed the soldiers. There was no trick of the light...
One of the men fired his musket. His target was by now close enough that there could be no mistaking what happened: the ball entered his chest and went straight through him as if he had been made of water. He went on running, unharmed.
At this, chaos broke out. Some of the men turned and fled; Lieutenant Carter went after them, trying desperately to turn the flight into some sort of managed retreat. Keith ran in amongst the soldiers who remained on the beach. 'Keep your positions!' he said. 'There is no real danger.' He wondered with an uncomfortable shiver whether that was true. Ewen had persuaded his loyal foster-brother that there was no need for his intended revenge, so that this could not be a renewed attack; but he must be trying to protect Ewen from the soldiers, and what would he think necessary to achieve that end? In any case, the greatest danger to the men now was surely that of inadvertently firing their own muskets on each other in their confusion; so he must calm them at all costs.
The ghost was still running across the beach; but now, making towards the trees, he came level with Keith, and stopped for a moment and looked at him.
'Keith Windham,' he said, in his weird ghostly voice. He was some paces away from Keith, but he might have been standing next to him, the sound was so clear. 'I saw what you did earlier. You are his friend; you helped him. I will help him too. I will help you.'
Keith stared at him for a long moment, while astonishment gave way gradually in his mind to dawning understanding and, with it, admiration—and then he smiled. 'Yes,' he said, in a low voice, that his men might not hear. 'Yes, I see. Thank you, Lachlan.'
For a moment the wraith returned his smile. Keith cast his mind briefly back over the strange and eventful history of his acquaintance with Lachlan MacMartin, and it occurred to him that this was the first time he had seen him really smile; the ghostly, ravaged face seemed transformed almost to that of a different man. Then Lachlan let out a suitably blood-curdling yell and chased after a group of fleeing redcoats; this occasioned a fresh outbreak of panic amongst the rest, and several more men fired their muskets. Keith at once renewed his efforts to calm them down; but even while he did so, he saw out of the corner of his eye the little fishing-boat, far out on the waves, well on its way to the French ship. Yes, they were out of reach now...
And, throughout the chaos and unpleasantness of the next few hours, as he and Carter rounded up the men and upbraided them thoroughly—for, whatever he might privately feel about the fact of their failure, he was really displeased at the soldiers' cowardice, forgetfulness of their duty and dangerous recklessness, which were disgraceful purely in themselves—there was the blessed warmth of the thought of Ewen, going to safety at last.
*
This chase was different indeed to his earlier pursuits of Major Windham. How much lighter of heart he was—for he meant these foolish redcoats no real harm—and how much freer from fear and from that terrible, all-consuming need for revenge which had been with him all through these last months like a weight hung upon his wandering soul. Yet he had a purpose now too, and a far better one than his late misguided quest for vengeance. He had committed one last disobedience against his chieftain this night—or at least had allowed Ewen to believe that he was doing otherwise than he had really done—in staying near him just a little while longer, for the greatest of all reasons: to help him escape!
And it was this purpose which he saw answered in the eyes of the Major as they met his own, and heard in the kind words he spoke to him. Then he really knew that Keith Windham was Ewen's friend, and wished for Ewen's good just as Lachlan himself did.
It was not with unmixed gladness that he recognised it. The grounds for real enmity towards Major Windham had been revealed as a mistake, but the grounds for jealousy of him remained. He was Ewen's friend, in a way that Lachlan himself never had been; he had met Ewen in a world which Lachlan could not enter, even in life; in true friendship had Ewen invited him into his house, and now Lachlan had not even the comfort of thinking the Major's acceptance of that friendship and hospitality a false deception. So that bitterness remained. And yet—Lachlan knew that we are called upon to forgive our enemies, however grievously they have injured us, and to do so when we depart this world more than at any other time. Ewen would be grieved if Lachlan did not try his utmost to do his Christian duty, in this last hour. Another motive added its strength to this religious conviction: the knowledge that he and Keith Windham, the dead man and the man still living, wanted the same thing, and might both be happy in its achievement. It seemed to Lachlan rather strange that Windham should go on acting the redcoat Major, leading out the patrol as though in sincere pursuit, when really he desired nothing more than the escape of those he pursued; but it did not seem strange that, although an Englishman and a redcoat, he should desire this. Nothing was so natural to Lachlan's mind as loyalty and love for Ewen.
Thus did Lachlan MacMartin forgive his enemy at last; and it is possible that those unfortunate fellow-Jacobites who publicly forgave the Elector and his followers even as they stood upon the scaffold had not to make a greater effort of charity than this poor ghost. But it was right to let go of the bitterness and jealousy which had been his in life, before he went on to the next world.
There was a slight rise in the ground above the sand, where some of the fleeing soldiers had run. Lachlan stood there for a moment and looked back towards the sea, where silver glittered upon the black water. The little boat was moving rapidly across the water, and while Lachlan watched it came level with the side of the great ship. As the figures in the boat began to move and gesture towards the other figures leaning over the ship's side to see them, one of them turned his head and glanced towards the land; and—for distances on earth mean very little to one whose soul is not wholly in this world—the dear, well-remembered blue eyes met Lachlan's for the last time on earth.
Lachlan MacMartin's soul had lingered in the world through the single-minded strength of his will, all bent on one purpose; but that purpose had proved a mirage, founded upon an error and not doing the good to Ewen which had been his one all-consuming wish. Now, however, he had achieved his real, true purpose, for which his heart had wished more than anything; and he saw that in this fulfilment was the real end for which he had remained on earth. All things were ordered for the best, in the end. Ewen was alive and going to safety.
And so he turned away from the distant ship, and from the shouts of the redcoats, and from the moon. Already it seemed to him that the pale, silvery light, so fitting for a world of griefs and errors and ghosts, was fading from round him, and dissolving into the brilliance of another light. Lachlan walked towards it, and stepped no longer upon the sandy earth of Morar. Someone was calling him—surely the voice was his brother's!
Yes, he would go. He was going from Ewen, his heart's dearest love in life, and the parting was a grief even now; but he would see him again one day, just as Ewen himself had said. And for now, his work on earth was done, and he would rest and be at peace.