Chapter XLV: The Knight of Malta

Rob Roy and his followers being now left to themselves by the sudden dispersion of the MacKenzies and MacRaes, while the Rosses, Munroes, and others were still in arms against them, and while General Wightman's troops, though retreating, covered the main roads that led to the Perthshire highlands, were thus compelled to linger near the shore of Loch Duich and in the castle of Eilan Donan for a few days ere they could set out on their return home.

In the historical account of Rob Roy and his clan, we are told briefly, that after Glensheil, "he and his party plundered a Spanish ship, after it had been in possession of the English, which so enriched him that he went to the braes of Balquhidder, and began farming."

The details of this affair are as follows:--

On the night after the battle, Rob, on learning that Duncan nan Creagh and other MacRaes were wandering over the field, dirking and plundering the wounded, went there to drive them off, and to save as many as possible of the poor fellows.

The early June morning dawned brightly in the dewy glen, which was dotted thickly with red and yellow coats, among whom lay nearly thirty Spaniards; and Rob saw with regret the body of Captain Dawnes; it presented a deplorable spectacle, for both his eyes were shot out, and his face was a mass of blood.

Near him was a Spanish officer, seated half upright against a large stone; his dark-olive face was pale, ghastly, and sorrowful. As Rob approached, he raised his head, and opened his black and now lack-lustre eyes with a vacant stare, as if the poor fellow sought to assure himself that blindness and death had not yet come upon him. His uniform was blue, richly laced with silver, and on his left breast was the gold and eight-pointed cross of Malta. He had received two bullet wounds in the body, and appeared to be sinking fast.

As Rob Roy, like most of the loyal Highlanders, was perhaps more a Catholic than a Protestant, the cross upon the breast of the dying Spaniard excited his interest, and stooping down, he asked in English if he could assist him.

"_Aqua--aqua!_" (water--water!) muttered the sufferer, hoarsely, and then added in good English, "Water, for the love of Heaven!"

"Run to the linn, Greumoch, and fill your quaich," said Rob, raising the sufferer against his knee; "our forefathers lie under the shadow of the old cross on Inchcailloch, and they died believing in it as the sign of redemption unto men, so it would ill become us to neglect the stranger, who, with the cross on his breast, dies here for King James VIII. Quick, Greumoch, dash in some whisky too--it comes not amiss to the Saxons, and won't to the Spaniards!"

As soon as it was brought, he applied the quaich of cool spring water and usquebaugh to the parched lips of the wounded officer, whose tongue seemed to have become baked and hard by loss of blood and a night of agony.

Rob now proposed to have his wounds looked to and the blood stanched; but there were no surgeons near, and the Spaniard shook his head sadly, as if to indicate that their efforts were useless, and his eyes dilated wildly when Greumoch approached him with a bunch of wild nettles, the old Highland panacea for all manner of cuts, stabs, and slashes.

Then the Spanish cavalier smiled sadly, for he knew that he was mortally wounded, and felt death in his heart.

"What is your name--your rank?" asked Rob, kindly.

"I am Don José de Santarem, a Knight of Malta."

"A relation of the Spanish colonel?"

"I am his brother; but Alonzo has left me to my fate."

"Upbraid him not," said Rob; "he has been sorely pressed by the men of Culcairn and Morar Chattu, and is far down the glen by this time."

Had Rob said that he was "sorely pressed by the Medes and Persians," it would have been quite as intelligible to the Spaniard, who said,--"Senor Escosse, could you get me a priest?"

"A priest!" reiterated Rob, with perplexity.

"That I may confess me before I die."

MacGregor shook his head. "The priests are all banished or in their graves," said he; "the faith of our forefathers is proscribed here now--even as the Clan Alpine are proscribed by the Parliament and paper courts of the Lowlanders."

"No priests?" sighed the Spaniard, with a start.

"Not one," said Rob, on which Greumoch, who knew a little English, whispered,--

"Maybe Paul Crubach might do--he was mighty near being a priest once."

"No--no," said Rob. "Yet there is the parish minister of Glensheil."

But the Spaniard shook his head with disdain, and the blood spirted anew from his wounds.

"My forefathers lie buried in the chapel of our old castle at Quebara, in Alava--each under marble, with helmet, sword, and gloves of steel above his tomb; but I, a brother of St. John of Malta, must lie here among heretics, and, it may be, in earth that is unconsecrated otherwise than by the blessed dew of heaven!"

"Nay," said Rob, earnestly; "this shall not be! You are dying, my brave man--I can see death in your face, for I have seen it in the faces of too many not to know it now; but I swear that you shall lie in consecrated earth."

"Swear this to me!" gasped the Spaniard, writhing his body towards the speaker, whose hand he grasped convulsively.

"I swear it!" said Rob, pressing his dirk to his lips.

"You vow on your steel, as we do in my country," said the Spaniard, while his eyes sparkled with an unwonted light; "listen to me--I will reward you, if I can."

"I seek no reward," said Rob Roy; "you are a Spaniard who came hither to fight for our king, and against those lumbering louts, the Dutch, who came from King William's country--bodachs, who know not a stag's horn from a steer's stump, as the saying is."

"Alas! (_ay de mi!_) how little I thought to die in this wild land," said the Spaniard, closing his eyes, while his voice became more and more husky; "but draw nearer; keep your oath, and I shall reward you. I had charge of our treasure chest; it contains three thousand pistoles of Madrid and Malaga."

"And where is this chest?" whispered Rob, very naturally becoming more interested.

"It is on board a small galley or launch--which--which lies wedged----"

"Where--where?" asked MacGregor; for the Spaniard's voice and powers were failing fast.

"Wedged among the rocks, near where we formed a battery--"

"At the mouth of Loch Duich?"

"I know not how you name it--but 'tis there--there!"

"Good; speak on."

"Three British ships of war are hovering off the coast, and that treasure will become their prize, if you do not anticipate them. The pistoles are--are--are in a coffer marked with the cross of Malta." After this, the poor Spaniard relinquished his English, which was very broken, and began to talk and pray incoherently in Spanish and Latin, till gradually he became insensible, and in less than an hour had ceased to exist.

Rob Roy kept his word, and as soon as Don José was dead, he wrapped him up in a plaid, and conveyed him, with Alpine playing a lament in front, to Killduich, and there buried him at the east end of that ancient church, in a grave over which he placed a rough wooden cross, and above which all his followers fired thrice their muskets and pistols in the air.

That the Colonel Don Alonzo de Santarem did not endeavour to secure the military chest before surrendering to General Wightman, was probably because he was menaced by the Clans of Ross and Munro, who hovered between him and the sea, and by threatening his little camp, ultimately enforced his capitulation.

Rob now instantly seized boats, and with half his followers departed in search of what he termed, "the Spaniard's legacy;" while Greumoch, with the rest, occupied the castle of Eilan Donan, to await his return. It was evening now. After a long and careful search--a search which a dense fog impeded--in a sequestered creek of Loch Duich, the MacGregors found the craft they sought, partly jammed upon a reef. She appeared to be the large, half-decked launch of one of the Spanish frigates, both of which had now put to sea and disappeared. She lay in a deep chasm of the wild rocks, at the base of a steep mountain, the sides of which had been bared and rent by the _scriddans_ of a thousand years--for so the natives term those water-torrents which at times hurl down gravel and massive stones, in vast heaps, to desolate the fields, the shore, or whatever may lie at the foot of these rugged hills in Kintail and Glensheil.

Here dense green ivy covered the brows of the chasm that beetled over the sea, and under it the hawks, the wild pigeons, and the sea-birds built their nests. Lower down were holes and fissures, in which the crabs and lobsters lurked, till the countrywomen came in boats to drag them out with old corn sickles, or other iron instruments, and by their songs and voices to scare the sea-dogs from the ledges, where they lay basking in the sunshine.

The launch was mounted with pateraroes, but how she came to be in such a situation we have no means of knowing; her crew, which consisted of some thirty Spanish seamen, though all well armed, jumped out of her, and fled up the rocks on the appearance of the MacGregors, as they knew not whether they were friends or foes, and were scared by their singular costume and bare limbs.

This craft, which was undoubtedly the launch of one of the frigates (that is, a boat of the largest size, for carrying great weight), had a kind of half-deck forward; and under the hatch of this, which was well secured by locks, bars, and iron bands, Rob had no doubt the money lay. Just as he and a number of his followers sprang on board, a shout from some of them who were higher up on the rocks drew his attention to seaward.

The fog had risen now, like the lower end of a thick grey curtain, showing the offing of Loch Alsh sparkling in silver ripples under the rising moon, and there, creeping along the shore, were three British frigates--doubtless the three of which the dying Spaniard had spoken--under easy sail, with their topsails, white as snow, glittering in the silvery sheen, though darkness yet obscured their lower sails and hulls.

Right before the wind they had been standing up Loch Alsh, and slightly altering their course, were now penetrating that branch of it which is named Loch Duich.