Chapter Six. The Skirts of the Coolin

Mr. Standfast

by John Buchan

Obviously I must keep away from the railway. If the police were
after me in Morvern, that line would be warned, for it was a barrier
I must cross if I were to go farther north. I observed from the map
that it turned up the coast, and concluded that the place for me to
make for was the shore south of that turn, where Heaven might send me
some luck in the boat line. For I was pretty certain that every
porter and station-master on that tin-pot outfit was anxious to make
better acquaintance with my humble self.

I lunched off the sandwiches the Broadburys had given me, and in
the bright afternoon made my way down the hill, crossed at the foot
of a small fresh-water lochan, and pursued the issuing stream through
midge-infested woods of hazels to its junction with the sea. It was
rough going, but very pleasant, and I fell into the same mood of idle
contentment that I had enjoyed the previous morning. I never met a
soul. Sometimes a roe deer broke out of the covert, or an old
blackcock startled me with his scolding. The place was bright with
heather, still in its first bloom, and smelt better than the myrrh of
Arabia. It was a blessed glen, and I was as happy as a king, till I
began to feel the coming of hunger, and reflected that the Lord alone
knew when I might get a meal. I had still some chocolate and
biscuits, but I wanted something substantial.

The distance was greater than I thought, and it was already
twilight when I reached the coast. The shore was open and desolate -
great banks of pebbles to which straggled alders and hazels from the
hillside scrub. But as I marched northward and turned a little point
of land I saw before me in a crook of the bay a smoking cottage.
And, plodding along by the water's edge, was the bent figure of a
man, laden with nets and lobster pots. Also, beached on the shingle
was a boat.

I quickened my pace and overtook the fisherman. He was an old
man with a ragged grey beard, and his rig was seaman's boots and a
much-darned blue jersey. He was deaf, and did not hear me when I
hailed him. When he caught sight of me he never stopped, though he
very solemnly returned my good evening. I fell into step with him,
and in his silent company reached the cottage.

He halted before the door and unslung his burdens. The place
was a two-roomed building with a roof of thatch, and the walls all
grown over with a yellow-flowered creeper. When he had straightened
his back, he looked seaward and at the sky, as if to prospect the
weather. Then he turned on me his gentle, absorbed eyes. 'It will
haf been a fine day, sir. Wass you seeking the road to anywhere?'

'I was seeking a night's lodging,' I said. 'I've had a long
tramp on the hills, and I'd be glad of a chance of not going
farther.'

'We will haf no accommodation for a gentleman,' he said
gravely.

'I can sleep on the floor, if you can give me a blanket and a
bite of supper.'

'Indeed you will not,' and he smiled slowly. 'But I will ask
the wife. Mary, come here!'

An old woman appeared in answer to his call, a woman whose face
was so old that she seemed like his mother. In highland places one
sex ages quicker than the other.

'This gentleman would like to bide the night. I wass telling
him that we had a poor small house, but he says he will not be
minding it.'

She looked at me with the timid politeness that you find only in
outland places.

'We can do our best, indeed, sir. The gentleman can have
Colin's bed in the loft, but he will haf to be doing with plain food.
Supper is ready if you will come in now.'

I had a scrub with a piece of yellow soap at an adjacent pool in
the burn and then entered a kitchen blue with peat-reek. We had a
meal of boiled fish, oatcakes and skim-milk cheese, with cups of
strong tea to wash it down. The old folk had the manners of princes.
They pressed food on me, and asked me no questions, till for very
decency's sake I had to put up a story and give some account of
myself.

I found they had a son in the Argylls and a young boy in the
Navy. But they seemed disinclined to talk of them or of the war. By
a mere accident I hit on the old man's absorbing interest. He was
passionate about the land. He had taken part in long-forgotten
agitations, and had suffered eviction in some ancient landlords'
quarrel farther north. Presently he was pouring out to me all the
woes of the crofter - woes that seemed so antediluvian and forgotten
that I listened as one would listen to an old song. 'You who come
from a new country will not haf heard of these things,' he kept
telling me, but by that peat fire I made up for my defective
education. He told me of evictions in the year. One somewhere in
Sutherland, and of harsh doings in the Outer Isles. It was far more
than a political grievance. It was the lament of the conservative
for vanished days and manners. 'Over in Skye wass the fine land for
black cattle, and every man had his bit herd on the hillside. But
the lairds said it wass better for sheep, and then they said it wass
not good for sheep, so they put it under deer, and now there is no
black cattle anywhere in Skye.' I tell you it was like sad music on
the bagpipes hearing that old fellow. The war and all things modern
meant nothing to him; he lived among the tragedies of his youth and
his prime.

I'm a Tory myself and a bit of a land-reformer, so we agreed
well enough. So well, that I got what I wanted without asking for
it. I told him I was going to Skye, and he offered to take me over
in his boat in the morning. 'It will be no trouble. Indeed no. I
will be going that way myself to the fishing.'

I told him that after the war, every acre of British soil would
have to be used for the men that had earned the right to it. But
that did not comfort him. He was not thinking about the land itself,
but about the men who had been driven from it fifty years before.
His desire was not for reform, but for restitution, and that was past
the power of any Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad,
reflective mood, considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we
must break down a multitude of molehills and how desirable and
unreplaceable was the life of the moles.

In brisk, shining weather, with a wind from the south-east, we
put off next morning. In front was a brown line of low hills, and
behind them, a little to the north, that black toothcomb of mountain
range which I had seen the day before from the Arisaig ridge.

'That is the Coolin,' said the fisherman. 'It is a bad place
where even the deer cannot go. But all the rest of Skye wass the
fine land for black cattle.'

As we neared the coast, he pointed out many places. 'Look
there, Sir, in that glen. I haf seen six cot houses smoking there,
and now there is not any left. There were three men of my own name
had crofts on the machars beyond the point, and if you go there you
will only find the marks of their bit gardens. You will know the
place by the gean trees.' When he put me ashore in a sandy bay
between green ridges of bracken, he was still harping upon the past.
I got him to take a pound - for the boat and not for the night's
hospitality, for he would have beaten me with an oar if I had
suggested that. The last I saw of him, as I turned round at the top
of the hill, he had still his sail down, and was gazing at the lands
which had once been full of human dwellings and now were desolate.

I kept for a while along the ridge, with the Sound of Sleat on
my right, and beyond it the high hills of Knoydart and Kintail. I
was watching for the Tobermory, but saw no sign of her. A steamer
put out from Mallaig, and there were several drifters crawling up the
channel and once I saw the white ensign and a destroyer bustled
northward, leaving a cloud of black smoke in her wake. Then, after
consulting the map, I struck across country, still keeping the higher
ground, but, except at odd minutes, being out of sight of the sea. I
concluded that my business was to get to the latitude of Ranna
without wasting time.

So soon as I changed my course I had the Coolin for company.
Mountains have always been a craze of mine, and the blackness and
mystery of those grim peaks went to my head. I forgot all about
Fosse Manor and the Cotswolds. I forgot, too, what had been my chief
feeling since I left Glasgow, a sense of the absurdity of my mission.
It had all seemed too far-fetched and whimsical. I was running
apparently no great personal risk, and I had always the unpleasing
fear that Blenkiron might have been too clever and that the whole
thing might be a mare's nest. But that dark mountain mass changed my
outlook. I began to have a queer instinct that that was the place,
that something might be concealed there, something pretty damnable.
I remember I sat on a top for half an hour raking the hills with my
glasses. I made out ugly precipices, and glens which lost themselves
in primeval blackness. When the sun caught them - for it was a
gleamy day - it brought out no colours, only degrees of shade. No
mountains I had ever seen - not the Drakensberg or the red kopjes of
Damaraland or the cold, white peaks around Erzerum - ever looked so
unearthly and uncanny.

Oddly enough, too, the sight of them set me thinking about
Ivery. There seemed no link between a smooth, sedentary being,
dwelling in villas and lecture-rooms, and that shaggy tangle of
precipices. But I felt there was, for I had begun to realize the
bigness of my opponent. Blenkiron had said that he spun his web
wide. That was intelligible enough among the half-baked youth of
Biggleswick, and the pacifist societies, or even the toughs on the
Clyde. I could fit him in all right to that picture. But that he
should be playing his game among those mysterious black crags seemed
to make him bigger and more desperate, altogether a different kind of
proposition. I didn't exactly dislike the idea, for my objection to
my past weeks had been that I was out of my proper job, and this was
more my line of country. I always felt that I was a better bandit
than a detective. But a sort of awe mingled with my satisfaction. I
began to feel about Ivery as I had felt about the three devils of the
Black Stone who had hunted me before the war, and as I never felt
about any other Hun. The men we fought at the Front and the men I
had run across in the Greenmantle business, even old Stumm himself,
had been human miscreants. They were formidable enough, but you
could gauge and calculate their capacities. But this Ivery was like
a poison gas that hung in the air and got into unexpected crannies
and that you couldn't fight in an upstanding way. Till then, in
spite of Blenkiron's solemnity, I had regarded him simply as a
problem. But now he seemed an intimate and omnipresent enemy,
intangible, too, as the horror of a haunted house. Up on that sunny
hillside, with the sea winds round me and the whaups calling, I got a
chill in my spine when I thought of him.

I am ashamed to confess it, but I was also horribly hungry.
There was something about the war that made me ravenous, and the less
chance of food the worse I felt. If I had been in London with twenty
restaurants open to me, I should as likely as not have gone off my
feed. That was the cussedness of my stomach. I had still a little
chocolate left, and I ate the fisherman's buttered scones for
luncheon, but long before the evening my thoughts were dwelling on my
empty interior.

I put up that night in a shepherd's cottage miles from anywhere.
The man was called Macmorran, and he had come from Galloway when
sheep were booming. He was a very good imitation of a savage, a
little fellow with red hair and red eyes, who might have been a Pict.
He lived with a daughter who had once been in service in Glasgow, a
fat young woman with a face entirely covered with freckles and a pout
of habitual discontent. No wonder, for that cottage was a pretty
mean place. It was so thick with peat-reek that throat and eyes were
always smarting. It was badly built, and must have leaked like a
sieve in a storm. The father was a surly fellow, whose conversation
was one long growl at the world, the high prices, the difficulty of
moving his sheep, the meanness of his master, and the godforsaken
character of Skye. 'Here's me no seen baker's bread for a month, and
no company but a wheen ignorant Hielanders that yatter Gawlic. I
wish I was back in the Glenkens. And I'd gang the morn if I could get
paid what I'm awed.'

However, he gave me supper - a braxy ham and oatcake, and I
bought the remnants off him for use next day. I did not trust his
blankets, so I slept the night by the fire in the ruins of an arm-
chair, and woke at dawn with a foul taste in my mouth. A dip in the
burn refreshed me, and after a bowl of porridge I took the road
again. For I was anxious to get to some hill-top that looked over to
Ranna.

Before midday I was close under the eastern side of the Coolin,
on a road which was more a rockery than a path. Presently I saw a
big house ahead of me that looked like an inn, so I gave it a miss
and struck the highway that led to it a little farther north. Then I
bore off to the east, and was just beginning to climb a hill which I
judged stood between me and the sea, when I heard wheels on the road
and looked back.

It was a farmer's gig carrying one man. I was about half a mile
off, and something in the cut of his jib seemed familiar. I got my
glasses on him and made out a short, stout figure clad in a
mackintosh, with a woollen comforter round its throat. As I watched,
it made a movement as if to rub its nose on its sleeve. That was the
pet trick of one man I knew. Inconspicuously I slipped through the
long heather so as to reach the road ahead of the gig. When I rose
like a wraith from the wayside the horse started, but not the
driver.

'So ye're there,' said Amos's voice. 'I've news for ye. The
Tobermory will be in Ranna by now. She passed Broadford two hours
syne. When I saw her I yoked this beast and came up on the chance of
foregathering with ye.'

'How on earth did you know I would be here?' I asked in some
surprise.

'Oh, I saw the way your mind was workin' from your telegram. And
says I to mysel' - that man Brand, says I, is not the chiel to be
easy stoppit. But I was feared ye might be a day late, so I came up
the road to hold the fort. Man, I'm glad to see ye. Ye're younger
and soopler than me, and yon Gresson's a stirrin' lad.'

'There's one thing you've got to do for me,' I said. 'I can't
go into inns and shops, but I can't do without food. I see from the
map there's a town about six miles on. Go there and buy me anything
that's tinned - biscuits and tongue and sardines, and a couple of
bottles of whisky if you can get them. This may be a long job, so
buy plenty.'

'Whaur'll I put them?' was his only question.

We fixed on a cache, a hundred yards from the highway in a place
where two ridges of hill enclosed the view so that only a short bit
of road was visible.

'I'll get back to the Kyle,' he told me, 'and a'body there kens
Andra Amos, if ye should find a way of sendin' a message or comin'
yourself. Oh, and I've got a word to ye from a lady that we ken of.
She says, the sooner ye're back in Vawnity Fair the better she'll be
pleased, always provided ye've got over the Hill Difficulty.'

A smile screwed up his old face and he waved his whip in
farewell. I interpreted Mary's message as an incitement to speed,
but I could not make the pace. That was Gresson's business. I think
I was a little nettled, till I cheered myself by another
interpretation. She might be anxious for my safety, she might want to
see me again, anyhow the mere sending of the message showed I was not
forgotten. I was in a pleasant muse as I breasted the hill, keeping
discreetly in the cover of the many gullies. At the top I looked
down on Ranna and the sea.

There lay the Tobermory busy unloading. It would be some time,
no doubt, before Gresson could leave. There was no row-boat in the
channel yet, and I might have to wait hours. I settled myself snugly
between two rocks, where I could not be seen, and where I had a clear
view of the sea and shore. But presently I found that I wanted some
long heather to make a couch, and I emerged to get some. I had not
raised my head for a second when I flopped down again. For I had a
neighbour on the hill-top.

He was about two hundred yards off, just reaching the crest,
and, unlike me, walking quite openly. His eyes were on Ranna, so he
did not notice me, but from my cover I scanned every line of him. He
looked an ordinary countryman, wearing badly cut, baggy
knickerbockers of the kind that gillies affect. He had a face like a
Portuguese Jew, but I had seen that type before among people with
Highland names; they might be Jews or not, but they could speak
Gaelic. Presently he disappeared. He had followed my example and
selected a hiding-place.

It was a clear, hot day, but very pleasant in that airy place.
Good scents came up from the sea, the heather was warm and fragrant,
bees droned about, and stray seagulls swept the ridge with their
wings. I took a look now and then towards my neighbour, but he was
deep in his hidey-hole. Most of the time I kept my glasses on Ranna,
and watched the doings of the Tobermory. She was tied up at the
jetty, but seemed in no hurry to unload. I watched the captain
disembark and walk up to a house on the hillside. Then some idlers
sauntered down towards her and stood talking and smoking close to her
side. The captain returned and left again. A man with papers in his
hand appeared, and a woman with what looked like a telegram. The mate
went ashore in his best clothes. Then at last, after midday, Gresson
appeared. He joined the captain at the piermaster's office, and
presently emerged on the other side of the jetty where some small
boats were beached. A man from the Tobermory came in answer to his
call, a boat was launched, and began to make its way into the
channel. Gresson sat in the stern, placidly eating his luncheon.

I watched every detail of that crossing with some satisfaction
that my forecast was turning out right. About half-way across,
Gresson took the oars, but soon surrendered them to the Tobermory
man, and lit a pipe. He got out a pair of binoculars and raked my
hillside. I tried to see if my neighbour was making any signal, but
all was quiet. Presently the boat was hid from me by the bulge of
the hill, and I caught the sound of her scraping on the beach.

Gresson was not a hill-walker like my neighbour. It took him
the best part of an hour to get to the top, and he reached it at a
point not two yards from my hiding-place. I could hear by his
labouring breath that he was very blown. He walked straight over the
crest till he was out of sight of Ranna, and flung himself on the
ground. He was now about fifty yards from me, and I made shift to
lessen the distance. There was a grassy trench skirting the north
side of the hill, deep and thickly overgrown with heather. I wound
my way along it till I was about twelve yards from him, where I
stuck, owing to the trench dying away. When I peered out of the
cover I saw that the other man had joined him and that the idiots
were engaged in embracing each other.

I dared not move an inch nearer, and as they talked in a low
voice I could hear nothing of what they said. Nothing except one
phrase, which the strange man repeated twice, very emphatically.
'Tomorrow night,' he said, and I noticed that his voice had not the
Highland inflection which I looked for. Gresson nodded and glanced
at his watch, and then the two began to move downhill towards the
road I had travelled that morning.

I followed as best I could, using a shallow dry watercourse of
which sheep had made a track, and which kept me well below the level
of the moor. It took me down the hill, but some distance from the
line the pair were taking, and I had to reconnoitre frequently to
watch their movements. They were still a quarter of a mile or so
from the road, when they stopped and stared, and I stared with them.
On that lonely highway travellers were about as rare as roadmenders,
and what caught their eye was a farmer's gig driven by a thick-set
elderly man with a woollen comforter round his neck.

I had a bad moment, for I reckoned that if Gresson recognized
Amos he might take fright. Perhaps the driver of the gig thought the
same, for he appeared to be very drunk. He waved his whip, he
jiggoted the reins, and he made an effort to sing. He looked towards
the figures on the hillside, and cried out something. The gig
narrowly missed the ditch, and then to my relief the horse bolted.
Swaying like a ship in a gale, the whole outfit lurched out of sight
round the corner of hill where lay my cache. If Amos could stop the
beast and deliver the goods there, he had put up a masterly bit of
buffoonery.

The two men laughed at the performance, and then they parted.
Gresson retraced his steps up the hill. The other man - I called him
in my mind the Portuguese Jew - started off at a great pace due west,
across the road, and over a big patch of bog towards the northern
butt of the Coolin. He had some errand, which Gresson knew about,
and he was in a hurry to perform it. It was clearly my job to get
after him.

I had a rotten afternoon. The fellow covered the moorland miles
like a deer, and under the hot August sun I toiled on his trail. I
had to keep well behind, and as much as possible in cover, in case he
looked back; and that meant that when he had passed over a ridge I
had to double not to let him get too far ahead, and when we were in
an open place I had to make wide circuits to keep hidden. We struck
a road which crossed a low pass and skirted the flank of the
mountains, and this we followed till we were on the western side and
within sight of the sea. It was gorgeous weather, and out on the
blue water I saw cool sails moving and little breezes ruffling the
calm, while I was glowing like a furnace. Happily I was in fair
training, and I needed it. The Portuguese Jew must have done a
steady six miles an hour over abominable country.

About five o'clock we came to a point where I dared not follow.
The road ran flat by the edge of the sea, so that several miles of it
were visible. Moreover, the man had begun to look round every few
minutes. He was getting near something and wanted to be sure that no
one was in his neighbourhood. I left the road accordingly, and took
to the hillside, which to my undoing was one long cascade of screes
and tumbled rocks. I saw him drop over a rise which seemed to mark
the rim of a little bay into which descended one of the big corries
of the mountains. It must have been a good half-hour later before I,
at my greater altitude and with far worse going, reached the same
rim. I looked into the glen and my man had disappeared.

He could not have crossed it, for the place was wider than I had
thought. A ring of black precipices came down to within half a mile
of the shore, and between them was a big stream - long, shallow pools
at the sea end and a chain of waterfalls above. He had gone to earth
like a badger somewhere, and I dared not move in case he might be
watching me from behind a boulder.

But even as I hesitated he appeared again, fording the stream,
his face set on the road we had come. Whatever his errand was he had
finished it, and was posting back to his master. For a moment I
thought I should follow him, but another instinct prevailed. He had
not come to this wild place for the scenery. Somewhere down in the
glen there was something or somebody that held the key of the
mystery. It was my business to stay there till I had unlocked it.
Besides, in two hours it would be dark, and I had had enough walking
for one day.

I made my way to the stream side and had a long drink. The
corrie behind me was lit up with the westering sun, and the bald
cliffs were flushed with pink and gold. On each side of the stream
was turf like a lawn, perhaps a hundred yards wide, and then a tangle
of long heather and boulders right up to the edge of the great rocks.
I had never seen a more delectable evening, but I could not enjoy
its peace because of my anxiety about the Portuguese Jew. He had not
been there more than half an hour, just about long enough for a man
to travel to the first ridge across the burn and back. Yet he had
found time to do his business. He might have left a letter in some
prearranged place - in which case I would stay there till the man it
was meant for turned up. Or he might have met someone, though I
didn't think that possible. As I scanned the acres of rough moor and
then looked at the sea lapping delicately on the grey sand I had the
feeling that a knotty problem was before me. It was too dark to try
to track his steps. That must be left for the morning, and I prayed
that there would be no rain in the night.

I ate for supper most of the braxy ham and oatcake I had brought
from Macmorran's cottage. It took some self-denial, for I was
ferociously hungry, to save a little for breakfast next morning. Then
I pulled heather and bracken and made myself a bed in the shelter of
a rock which stood on a knoll above the stream. My bed- chamber was
well hidden, but at the same time, if anything should appear in the
early dawn, it gave me a prospect. With my waterproof I was
perfectly warm, and, after smoking two pipes, I fell asleep.

My night's rest was broken. First it was a fox which came and
barked at my ear and woke me to a pitch-black night, with scarcely a
star showing. The next time it was nothing but a wandering hill-
wind, but as I sat up and listened I thought I saw a spark of light
near the edge of the sea. It was only for a second, but it
disquieted me. I got out and climbed on the top of the rock, but all
was still save for the gentle lap of the tide and the croak of some
night bird among the crags. The third time I was suddenly quite wide
awake, and without any reason, for I had not been dreaming. Now I
have slept hundreds of times alone beside my horse on the veld, and I
never knew any cause for such awakenings but the one, and that was
the presence near me of some human being. A man who is accustomed to
solitude gets this extra sense which announces like an alarm-clock
the approach of one of his kind.

But I could hear nothing. There was a scraping and rustling on
the moor, but that was only the wind and the little wild things of
the hills. A fox, perhaps, or a blue hare. I convinced my reason,
but not my senses, and for long I lay awake with my ears at full cock
and every nerve tense. Then I fell asleep, and woke to the first
flush of dawn.

The sun was behind the Coolin and the hills were black as ink,
but far out in the western seas was a broad band of gold. I got up
and went down to the shore. The mouth of the stream was shallow, but
as I moved south I came to a place where two small capes enclosed an
inlet. It must have been a fault in the volcanic rock, for its depth
was portentous. I stripped and dived far into its cold abysses, but
I did not reach the bottom. I came to the surface rather breathless,
and struck out to sea, where I floated on my back and looked at the
great rampart of crag. I saw that the place where I had spent the
night was only a little oasis of green at the base of one of the
grimmest corries the imagination could picture. It was as desert as
Damaraland. I noticed, too, how sharply the cliffs rose from the
level. There were chimneys and gullies by which a man might have
made his way to the summit, but no one of them could have been scaled
except by a mountaineer.

I was feeling better now, with all the frowsiness washed out of
me, and I dried myself by racing up and down the heather. Then I
noticed something. There were marks of human feet at the top of the
deep-water inlet - not mine, for they were on the other side. The
short sea-turf was bruised and trampled in several places, and there
were broken stems of bracken. I thought that some fisherman had
probably landed there to stretch his legs.

But that set me thinking of the Portuguese Jew. After
breakfasting on my last morsels of food - a knuckle of braxy and a
bit of oatcake - I set about tracking him from the place where he had
first entered the glen. To get my bearings, I went back over the
road I had come myself, and after a good deal of trouble I found his
spoor. It was pretty clear as far as the stream, for he had been
walking - or rather running - over ground with many patches of gravel
on it. After that it was difficult, and I lost it entirely in the
rough heather below the crags. All that I could make out for certain
was that he had crossed the stream, and that his business, whatever
it was, had been with the few acres of tumbled wilderness below the
precipices.

I spent a busy morning there, but found nothing except the
skeleton of a sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was a thankless
job, and I got very cross over it. I had an ugly feeling that I was
on a false scent and wasting my time. I wished to Heaven I had old
Peter with me. He could follow spoor like a Bushman, and would have
riddled the Portuguese jew's track out of any jungle on earth. That
was a game I had never learned, for in the old days I had always left
it to my natives. I chucked the attempt, and lay disconsolately on a
warm patch of grass and smoked and thought about Peter. But my chief
reflections were that I had breakfasted at five, that it was now
eleven, that I was intolerably hungry, that there was nothing here to
feed a grasshopper, and that I should starve unless I got
supplies.

It was a long road to my cache, but there were no two ways of
it. My only hope was to sit tight in the glen, and it might involve a
wait of days. To wait I must have food, and, though it meant
relinquishing guard for a matter of six hours, the risk had to be
taken. I set off at a brisk pace with a very depressed mind.

From the map it seemed that a short cut lay over a pass in the
range. I resolved to take it, and that short cut, like most of its
kind, was unblessed by Heaven. I will not dwell upon the discomforts
of the journey. I found myself slithering among screes, climbing
steep chimneys, and travelling precariously along razor-backs. The
shoes were nearly rent from my feet by the infernal rocks,which were
all pitted as if by some geological small-pox. When at last I
crossed the divide, I had a horrible business getting down from one
level to another in a gruesome corrie, where each step was composed
of smooth boiler-plates. But at last I was among the bogs on the
east side, and came to the place beside the road where I had fixed my
cache.

The faithful Amos had not failed me. There were the provisions
- a couple of small loaves, a dozen tins, and a bottle of whisky. I
made the best pack I could of them in my waterproof, swung it on my
stick, and started back, thinking that I must be very like the
picture of Christian on the title-page of Pilgrim's Progress.

I was liker Christian before I reached my destination -
Christian after he had got up the Hill Difficulty. The morning's
walk had been bad, but the afternoon's was worse, for I was in a
fever to get back, and, having had enough of the hills, chose the
longer route I had followed the previous day. I was mortally afraid
of being seen, for I cut a queer figure, so I avoided every stretch
of road where I had not a clear view ahead. Many weary detours I
made among moss-hags and screes and the stony channels of burns. But
I got there at last, and it was almost with a sense of comfort that I
flung my pack down beside the stream where I had passed the night.

I ate a good meal, lit my pipe, and fell into the equable mood
which follows upon fatigue ended and hunger satisfied. The sun was
westering, and its light fell upon the rock-wall above the place
where I had abandoned my search for the spoor.

As I gazed at it idly I saw a curious thing.

It seemed to be split in two and a shaft of sunlight came
through between. There could be no doubt about it. I saw the end of
the shaft on the moor beneath, while all the rest lay in shadow. I
rubbed my eyes, and got out my glasses. Then I guessed the
explanation. There was a rock tower close against the face of the
main precipice and indistinguishable from it to anyone looking direct
at the face. Only when the sun fell on it obliquely could it be
discovered. And between the tower and the cliff there must be a
substantial hollow.

The discovery brought me to my feet, and set me running towards
the end of the shaft of sunlight. I left the heather, scrambled up
some yards of screes, and had a difficult time on some very smooth
slabs, where only the friction of tweed and rough rock gave me a
hold. Slowly I worked my way towards the speck of sunlight, till I
found a handhold, and swung myself into the crack. On one side was
the main wall of the hill, on the other a tower some ninety feet
high, and between them a long crevice varying in width from three to
six feet. Beyond it there showed a small bright patch of sea.

There was more, for at the point where I entered it there was an
overhang which made a fine cavern, low at the entrance but a dozen
feet high inside, and as dry as tinder. Here, thought I, is the
perfect hiding-place. Before going farther I resolved to return for
food. It was not very easy descending, and I slipped the last twenty
feet, landing on my head in a soft patch of screes. At the burnside
I filled my flask from the whisky bottle, and put half a loaf, a tin
of sardines, a tin of tongue, and a packet of chocolate in my
waterproof pockets. Laden as I was, it took me some time to get up
again, but I managed it, and stored my belongings in a corner of the
cave. Then I set out to explore the rest of the crack.

It slanted down and then rose again to a small platform. After
that it dropped in easy steps to the moor beyond the tower. If the
Portuguese Jew had come here, that was the way by which he had
reached it, for he would not have had the time to make my ascent. I
went very cautiously, for I felt I was on the eve of a big discovery.
The platform was partly hidden from my end by a bend in the crack,
and it was more or less screened by an outlying bastion of the tower
from the other side. Its surface was covered with fine powdery dust,
as were the steps beyond it. In some excitement I knelt down and
examined it.

Beyond doubt there was spoor here. I knew the Portuguese jew's
footmarks by this time, and I made them out clearly, especially in
one corner. But there were other footsteps, quite different. The
one showed the rackets of rough country boots, the others were from
un-nailed soles. Again I longed for Peter to make certain, though I
was pretty sure of my conclusions. The man I had followed had come
here, and he had not stayed long. Someone else had been here,
probably later, for the un-nailed shoes overlaid the rackets. The
first man might have left a message for the second. Perhaps the
second was that human presence of which I had been dimly conscious in
the night-time.

I carefully removed all traces of my own footmarks, and went
back to my cave. My head was humming with my discovery. I
remembered Gresson's word to his friend: 'Tomorrow night.' As I read
it, the Portuguese Jew had taken a message from Gresson to someone,
and that someone had come from somewhere and picked it up. The
message contained an assignation for this very night. I had found a
point of observation, for no one was likely to come near my cave,
which was reached from the moor by such a toilsome climb. There I
should bivouac and see what the darkness brought forth. I remember
reflecting on the amazing luck which had so far attended me. As I
looked from my refuge at the blue haze of twilight creeping over the
waters, I felt my pulses quicken with a wild anticipation.

Then I heard a sound below me, and craned my neck round the edge
of the tower. A man was climbing up the rock by the way I had
come.