Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

“‘It’s a puir beggar laddie,’ said a girl, whose face I could hardly see in the uncertain light.

“‘Beggar!’ I exclaimed. ‘Who d’ye call a beggar? I’ve a whole pocketful of money, only I’ve lost the road.’

“‘Come along, then,’ they all cried. ‘Come along with us.’

“And off we all went singing. We struck off the road down across the fields, and soon I heard the music of a fiddle and saw bright lights. A young man came out of a farmhouse to welcome us. He told us dolefully that only one fiddler had come, and plaintively asked what could be done.

“‘I’ve a flute,’ I cried.

“‘Hurrah!’ they answered. ‘Come in, my boy.’

“‘The laddie maun eat first,’ said the girl who had called me a beggar.

“I blessed her with all my heart, though not in words.

“What a supper they gave me! And didn’t I eat just! I could play now, and we spent such a joyful night, and dawn was breaking and the blackbirds up and fluting again long before the merry party broke up.

“I got a bed and slept far into the day; then, after a good dinner from these kind-hearted farm folks, I began my journey in search of fortune once more.

“By evening I saw great grey clouds lying in the hollows before me. It was smoke. I was nearing Glasgow, and in two hours more I was walking along the Broomielaw.

“I had never seen so many people before in my life, but hardly anybody looked at the shepherd lad in Highland garb. I determined they should, though. I put my flute together, and standing near the bridge, commenced to play ‘The Flowers of the Forest.’

“Was it the singular plaintiveness of this beautiful air, I wonder, or was it that my thoughts were away back again in the glen I had left, and with those I loved so dearly? I do not know, but I seemed to become oblivious to everything. My very soul was breathed into the music; I was speaking and appealing to the crowd through the instrument.

“The crowd! Yes, there was a crowd. I became aware of that as soon as I had finished, and money, piece after piece, was forced into my hand. I took the money. I felt ashamed of it next moment, but to have gone off then would have seemed ungrateful. I played still another air. Again I paused.

“‘No more money,’ I cried aloud as I fled away.

“They must have thought the Highland boy was mad.

“Some time afterwards I found myself standing at a book-seller’s window looking at a picture, a ship, a gallant ship in a gale of wind.

“How I longed to be at sea then! How I hated the bustle and stir and talking and noise all round me! That splendid ship – the sea was wild and rough all around her, the spray dashing over her bows; there would be the roar of the wind through rigging and shroud, and the wild scream of sea bird rising high over the dash of the waves. She bore it well; the sheets were taut; the sails were rounded out and full. How I longed to be at sea!

“A hand was laid on my shoulder. I started and looked up. No need to start.

“A kindly face looked down into mine.

“‘You are in grief of some kind, my boy,’ he said, this white-haired old gentleman. ‘Nay, don’t be too proud to admit it. Pride has been the downfall of the Highland race.’

“‘If you please, sir,’ I replied, boldly enough now, ‘the Highlanders are not a downfallen race.’

“‘I did not mean it in that way,’ he said, smiling at my vehemence. ‘But come with me, boy; I know we will be friendly.’

“Where he took me, or what he said to me, I need not tell you.

“Suffice it to say that next day we left Scotland and journeyed south by rail, and I wept – yes, I do not now think it shame to say so, though I struggled then to hide my tears – I wept to cross the border.

“‘It will be such a pleasant change for you, my dear boy,’ said good old Major Walton – for that was the gentleman’s name, and he had quite taken to me after hearing all my story – ‘a delightful change indeed after your own bleak, cold, wild hills. We have a very pretty home in Hampshire. You’ll soon forget you were ever anywhere else.’

“The Major’s home was indeed a very nice one; close to the borders of the New Forest it was, and not a great way from the sea.

“But ah! Archie, lad, everything was very foreign to me; the very trees looked strange and uncouth, especially the docked pollards, that stood by the banks of the sluggish streams. The style of the houses was strange to me, and the lingo and talk of the people, who, in my opinion, were terribly ignorant.

“The Major was kindness itself, and so were his wife, her sister, and two children. The major had but one hobby – music. He played the violin himself, and he told me honestly that his chief reason for ‘taking me’ – these are his very words – was because I played with such feeling.

“My evenings were happy enough in this English home of mine; my days I spent in the garden, where I was allowed to work, or in the great forest. You must not imagine, Archie, the New Forest is anything like a deer forest in our own land. There are in it no wild mountains, no deep dark dells, no beetling crags and cliffs, no cataracts, no foaming torrents; the red deer does not toss his wide antlers here and fly proudly away at your approach, nor far above you in the sky do you see the bird of Jove circling upwards round the sun.

“Wilson would never have said about the New Forest, —

“‘What lovely magnificence stretches around!Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound;All hushed and serene, like a region of dreams,The mountains repose ’mid the roar of the streams.’

“But many a long day I spent roaming about in this forest, nevertheless.

“I was charmed with the solitary grandeur of the place. I had no idea it was so extensive either, or so varied in its beauties. Why, here one might wander about for weeks and never weary, for he would always be coming to something new. Is this the reason, I wonder, that it is called the New Forest? New in point of time it certainly cannot be termed, for everything in it and about it is old, extremely old. The oaks are gnarled and wrinkled, and grey with age; its elms and its ash trees, its limes and its alders, are bent and distorted by the touch of time, and the lichens that cling to their stems only add to their general appearance a look of hoariness that is far from unpleasing to the eye.

“Then the heather which covers the large sweeps of moorland that you see here and there is very sturdy and strong, while from the furze or whins boats’ masts could be made.

“The creatures, too, that one sees while walking through this forest, seem birds and beasts of some bygone time, and look as if they hardly, if ever, saw a human being from one year’s end to the other.

“The hares or rabbits, instead of scurrying away at your approach, sit leisurely on one end while they wash their faces and study you. The blackbirds and the mavises hardly trouble themselves to cease their song even when you walk close by the trees on which they are perched. The great beetles and other members of the coleoptera tribe are far too busy to take the slightest notice of your presence, and the great velvety bees go on working and humming just as if there were no such creature as you within a thousand miles of them.

“Then the voles or water rats that live in the depths of this truly English forest are not the least curious specimens of animal life to be found therein. If you happen to be reclining anywhere near a pool that by long-established custom belongs to them alone, before many minutes one, if not two of them, will come out to stare and wonder at you; they, like the hares, sit up on one end to conduct their scrutiny; and they gaze and gaze and gaze again, digging their finger joints or knuckles into their eyes, in a half-human kind of a way, to squeeze out the water, and clear their sight for one more wondering look.”

(My country readers, who love nature, must have noticed the voles at this queer performance.)

“What is he at all? Where did he come from? What is he going to do? These are the questions those voles seem trying in vain to solve.

“Here in this New Forest is a silence seldom broken save by the song of bird or cry of some wild creature in pain, while all around you is a wealth of floral beauty and verdure that is charming in the extreme.

“Yes, Archie, I came ere autumn was over to love that forest well. I was not selfish enough, though, to keep all the pleasures of it quite to myself, and the Major’s children often accompanied me in my rambles. I used to read Burns and Ossian to them. They liked that, but they liked the flute far better. It appealed straight to their senses.

“But when autumn passed away, when the leaves fell, and the fields were bleak and bare, at night, when the wind moaned around the house which I now called home, then, Archie, I used to dream I heard the surf beating in on the rugged shores of my native land. I would start and listen, and long to be once more in Scotland.

“I went, one day, to the forest all alone; I went to think.

“‘What are you staying here for?’ perhaps said one little thought. ‘Major Walton may leave you money when he dies.’

“I smothered that thought at its birth, and crushed many more like it.

“Kind good old Major Walton! I must tear myself away; I must be independent; I must push my own way in the world.

“‘Heaven help me to do so,’ I prayed. Then I took out the little old Bible Nancy had given me, Archie, and I found some comfort there.

“I was putting it back again in my bosom when a little card dropped out; I picked it up. On it were pressed these, Archie.”

Kenneth took the Book from his breast as he spoke, and opening it, handed the card to Archie.

“I know,” said the latter: “the primrose and the bit of heather.”

“Yes, dear boy, foolish of me, I know; but I have never parted with them, and if I go to Davy Jones’s locker – as we sailors say – if I am drowned, Archie, these flowers will sink with me.

“But on that winter’s day in the forest, Archie, these flowers seemed to speak to me, or rather the golden-haired child spoke to me through these flowers. I was back again on the hills above Glen Alva walking by her side; the sky above us was blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among the pinky heath.

“I started up, and the vision fled, and around me were only the bare bleak forest trees and the fading heather. The vision fled, but it left in my breast the desire stronger now than ever to make my own way in the world, by the blessing of Providence; and Providence has never deserted me yet, Archie, lad.

“I went straight home. I saw Major Walton, and talked to him, and told him all.

“He seemed sorry. The last words he said to me when I went away – and there was moisture in the old man’s eyes as he spoke – were these: —

“‘Mind, I’m not tired of you, and I hope to live to meet you once again.’

“I went to Southampton next day. I thought I had nothing to do but march on board some outward-bound ship, that they would be glad to have me.

“Alas! I was disappointed.”

(The author hopes some boy who meditates running away to sea may read these lines.)

“I was rudely jostled and laughed at, I was called a Scot, a Sawnie, a Johnny-raw, but work was never once offered me.

“I wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do. The few coins I had in my possession did not last many days.

“I felt sad and unhappy. I felt almost sorry I had left the good people who had done so much for me. The ‘bairnies’ had been in tears when I went away; even the black-and-tan terrier had followed me a long way down the road, and looked very ‘wae and wistfu’’ at me with his brown beseeching eyes when I said he must go back.

“For two whole days I had hardly anything to eat. My flute, that I was fain to fall back upon, failed to support me, for the English, Archie, have not so much music and romance in their souls as the Scotch have. But one thing the English have is this, Archie, sound common-sense and a love of derring-do.

“I was standing one day on the pier at Plymouth. I had played my way with my flute all this distance in the hopes of getting a ship. I was no more successful than before.

“On this particular day, Archie, the drum was up (the storm signal), the wind blew cold and high, and the seas tossed their white manes as they rushed each other up the bay. I was feeling very sad and disconsolate, when all at once I heard a voice say to a man beside me, —

“‘I’ll give a guinea to be taken out to yonder ship.’

“‘I don’t care to win no guinea,’ said the fellow addressed, a hulking boatman in a rough blue jersey. ‘I don’t care to win no guinea on a day like this. ’Sides, sir, I hain’t got no mate.’

“‘I’ll go,’ I cried.

“‘You!’ said the gentleman; ‘why, you’re but a child.’

“‘I’m a Scotch boy,’ I replied, ‘and I know boating well.’

“‘All right, my lad; jump in.’

“It took us nearly an hour, but we did it.

“I was very wet, and the gentleman kindly took me below, and gave me warm coffee.

“‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to give you half a guinea, and the man half, for if he has to change the gold, he will cheat you.’

“‘Are you captain of this ship, sir?’ I asked.

“‘I am, lad; I’m all that is for the captain.’

“‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘give the man all the guinea, and take me with you as a boy.’

“I then told him all my story.

“‘We don’t sail for a week,’ he said, ‘and if in that time you get your mother’s consent, I’ll be glad to have so plucky a youngster on board my craft.’

“My dear mother gave her consent, as you know, Archie; and so I became a sailor and a wanderer.”

I have but epitomised Kenneth’s story. He took much longer time to tell it than I, the author of this little book, am doing, and besides, there was much conversation interspersed with it betwixt him and his old friend Archie.

The moon was high up above the forest trees before he finished, shedding a flood of golden light over mountain and sea, so, promising to resume his narrative next evening, Kenneth arose, and soon after all was silent and dark inside this peaceful cottage.

Chapter Thirteen

Kenneth’s Story (continued) – At the Cave

“On, on the vessel flies; the land is gone,And winds are rude in Biscay’s sleepless bay;Four days are sped, but with the fifth anon,New shores descried make every bosom gay.”Byron.

Scene: The Spanish Señor and his two guests, Kenneth and Archie, once more together, not in the mountain cottage to-night, but in a cave, close down by the edge of the sea. It was the sea that was lisping on the sands not far from where they sat on the rocks, but the view beyond was one of moonlight, trees, rocks, and water combined, altogether very beautiful, and in some respects almost English-like.

Yes, now by moonlight it looked thoroughly English, but if by day you had rowed round these rocks, you would soon have been undeceived, for sharks in dozens visited the deep water, and in the cracks beyond were alligators, active and strong, and very hideous-looking crabs often crawled up the wet black cliffs; and among the trees themselves were great snakes, deadly and venomous; but it all looked very quiet and lovely now.

Kenneth was fond of caves, and there were plenty of them about here. He kept his boat in one. That very day, together the two friends had launched it, and spent all the long hours of sunlight in sailing or rowing about among the lovely islands of this sparkling sea, that look on a calm day as if they were actually afloat not in the water, but in the sky itself.

“My life,” said Kenneth, resuming his narrative of the day before, “my life, I thought, was going to be all rose-tinted now.

“Alas! Archie, lad, I soon found it quite the reverse, and it does really seem to me that those writers of books who paint a sailor’s existence as one long picnic do grievous wrong to the young folks who read them.

“A sailor’s life is like the billowy ocean on which he resides, all ups and downs, Archie.”

“I can easily believe that,” said his friend.

“But Captain Pendrey was very good to me, and there was an old boatswain on board who became my friend from the very first. He taught me to reef, to splice, and to steer, ay, and a deal more; in fact, during the two years I sailed in the old Miranda, he made a man of me.

“You see, Archie, I was already so far a seaman that I was not afraid of the ocean; and I was good at an oar.

“I was downright seasick when I first went out of Plymouth Sound. We had a head wind, and being only a sailing craft, had to beat and beat for days. I didn’t care much then what became of me. But the rough old bo’sun came and shook me up – I was lying nearly dead on a sea-chest – ‘Pull yourself together, youngster. Go on deck,’ he said, ‘and look at the waves. Ain’t they mountains, just! It won’t do to give in.’

“I did go on deck and look at the waves, just for a moment. A green sea came thundering over the bows, took me off my legs, and washed me away down into the lee-scuppers, where I would have been drowned if the bo’sun hadn’t caught me up.

“‘I’m not going below again, though,’ I said to myself.

“Nor did I.

“The boats were all on board; I got into one of these as night fell, lashed myself to a thwart, and wet though I was, I slept with my head on a coil of ropes all through that stormy night. Stiff in the morning? Yes, a little, but I was better. I got my clothes off, and a man dashed buckets of sea water over me, and this revived me so much that I went below.

“The men in my mess were at breakfast; they were sitting on deck, jammed into corners anyhow, with their sou’wester hats between their legs to steady their coffee mugs.

“‘Salt pork, my lad,’ said the bo’sun. ‘You’re just at that stage that salt pork will turn the scale.’

“I took the hunk of pork he gave me and devoured it.

“Well, the bo’sun was right. It did turn the scale with a vengeance: I went on deck and hove the lead apparently. The steward passed me and said, —

“‘You’re not sick, are you, Sandie?’

“‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m only shamming. Ugh!’

“But by the time we were over the bay I was as sea-fast as any one on board. I got my sea legs, too.

“How blue the sea was now! How white the birds that skimmed over its surface! And the sails of ships that appeared in the distance were like snow when the sun shone over them.

“It wasn’t all sunshine even then, for a smart breeze was blowing, and cloud shadows chasing each other over the sea, just as I had often seen them do over fields of ripening grain in Glen Alva.

“I settled down to sea-life very easily now and very naturally. I soon knew every rope and spar and bolt in her, and was as happy as the sea-gulls. I cannot say more.

“We touched at Madeira, and here the captain took me on shore, and all over the place. What an isle of romance and beauty it is!

“We called in both at Saint Helena and Ascension, the former not the lonely sea-girt rock that old books describe, but a charming island of mountain, strath, and glen. Nor did I find Ascension to be a cinder with a few turtles on its beach. It has been cultivated to a wonderful extent, and I never did see a bluer, brighter ocean than that which laves its shores. The Cape of Good Hope hove in sight at last. I watched its bold and rugged coast as we came nearer and still more near to it.

“It was but like a long irregular cloud lying along the horizon at first. Then this cloud grew higher and darker and more defined. Then it grew bluer in parts, and lines stood boldly out towards us, then it turned blue and purple, oh! so lovely, and last of all it was a cloud no longer, but mountains stern and wild, and braelands covered half-way up with purple heath and wild flowers – geraniums I found afterwards these were – with rocks on the shore and a long white line of surf and sand.

“We did our business at the Cape and bore up for Australia.

“What a stretch of sea we had to cross, and what a length of time it was ere we reached Sydney!

“But I was not idle all these months. It was so good of Captain Pendrey, but he seemed to take a delight in teaching me navigation. He flattered me, too, I fear.

“‘You’re far too good and bright a boy,’ he said, ‘to stick before the mast.’

“So I worked and worked not only to please him, but because there was a prospect of my one day walking on the snowy quarter-deck of some beautiful barque, her proud commander.

“Every one on board loved our captain, although they called him the old man behind his back. From Australia we went to Hong Kong, then to Ceylon, from there to Calcutta, and then back again to Ceylon, and returned to India, lying up for repairs at the city of Bombay. And my kind captain never once went on shore without taking me with him, so that I saw so much that was strange in life, lad, that I could sit and talk in this cave for a month if my good friend here would bring us prog, and then I wouldn’t have half told you all my strange experiences.

“I had been now nearly two years at sea, and had passed one examination, so things were looking up.

“I dearly loved the sea and sea-life now. I would not have changed places with a land-lubber for all the world.

“We had many narrow escapes, of course, for our ship was a clipper, and the captain ‘cracked on.’ He did not mind risk so long as he made good voyages. But somehow I never dreamt of danger, not even while in the centre of a tornado in the Indian Ocean at night, and if there be a more fearful experience than that in the life of a mariner, I have yet to encounter it.

“Nor did I dream of danger even when seated of a night under the bright stars at the fo’c’stle head, while the men spun yarn after yarn of the awful dangers they had come through.

“‘I’ve been wrecked often and often,’ said our old ‘bo’sun’ one night. ‘I was in the Bombay when she was burned; I was a man-o’-war’s man then. Ah! Kennie, lad, it is a fearful thing, a fire at sea. I hope you’ll never see a burning ship. Over seventy of my shipmates were doomed that night, and some of them met worse deaths than drowning.

“‘Another time,’ he went on, ‘I was the only one saved out of a gunboat. I was taken off a bit of wreckage and rigging by the lifeboat after drifting about for twelve wet, cold, weary hours. Strange thing was this. I had been made captain of the foretop only a week before we were wrecked. ’Tis funny, mate, but it was on that same foretop I floated about so long. He! he! I was captain of the foretop then, and no mistake, and monarch of all I surveyed.’

“Just three weeks after this particular evening, Archie, I was away aloft one beautiful day. We were well down over the line, and bearing about South-South-East.

“There was a kind of haze over the ocean that day which made seeing distinctly difficult at any great distance, but I noticed what at first sight I thought was a bird or a shark’s fin. I hailed the deck as soon as I made out it was something afloat with men on it.

“‘Where away?’ came the reply.

“On pointing in the direction, the yards were trimmed, and we soon got nearer.

“The sight that met my eyes I will not forget till my dying day. The survivors of a ship that had foundered they were, half-naked, half-dead, sun-blistered, sinking wretches, five in all.

“They had been afloat on a raft for nine days without food to eat, and with hardly a drop of water to quench their awful thirst.

“From that day, Archie, I began to think that a sailor’s life had its dark as well as its rosy side.

“A year after this grief came. We were homeward bound. We got nearly to the Cape, and there our ship was dashed on a lee-shore, and I lost two of the best friends ever I had at sea, our poor captain and the dear old bo’sun.

“I was landed at Symon’s Town at last, and there, Archie, I got your letter, and found I was an orphan. And all this great grief came to me within a fortnight.

“I had been bound for English shores; my hopes beat high; in a few months longer, at most, I would once again clasp my dear mother in my arms, once more visit my home. Changed I knew the glen would be, but old friends would give me a warm greeting.

“Heigho! the blow fell; I determined not to return, and, Archie, from that day to this I have been a wanderer.

“But bless Providence for all His mercies! Archie, lad, I’m not badly off, and I have you.

“Shake hands, old boy. Now I’ve been doing all the talking, I shall take it out of you next, for I dearly love to hear your voice.