Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Author:Robert Louis Stevenson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction, Kidnapping -- Fiction, Scotland -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction, Historical fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2018-04-24T02:59:23+00:00

XVII

The Death of the Red Fox

The next day Mr. Hen­de­r­land found for me a man who had a boat of his own and was to cross the Lin­nhe Loch that af­ter­noon in­to Ap­pin, fish­ing. Him he pre­vailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way I saved a long day’s travel and the price of the two pub­lic fer­ries I must oth­er­wise have passed.

It was near noon be­fore we set out; a dark day with clouds, and the sun shin­ing upon little patches. The sea was here very deep and still, and had scarce a wave upon it; so that I must put the wa­ter to my lips be­fore I could be­lieve it to be truly salt. The moun­tains on either side were high, rough and bar­ren, very black and gloomy in the shad­ow of the clouds, but all sil­ver-laced with little wa­ter­courses where the sun shone upon them. It seemed a hard coun­try, this of Ap­pin, for people to care as much about as Alan did.

There was but one thing to men­tion. A little after we had star­ted, the sun shone upon a little mov­ing clump of scar­let close in along the wa­ter­side to the north. It was much of the same red as sol­diers’ coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and light­nings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel.

I asked my boat­man what it should be, and he answered he sup­posed it was some of the red sol­diers com­ing from Fort Wil­li­am in­to Ap­pin, against the poor ten­antry of the coun­try. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and wheth­er it was be­cause of my thoughts of Alan, or from some­thing proph­et­ic in my bos­om, al­though this was but the second time I had seen King George’s troops, I had no good will to them.

At last we came so near the point of land at the en­ter­ing in of Loch Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boat­man (who was an hon­est fel­low and mind­ful of his prom­ise to the cat­ech­ist) would fain have car­ried me on to Balachul­ish; but as this was to take me farther from my secret des­tin­a­tion, I in­sisted, and was set on shore at last un­der the wood of Let­ter­more (or Let­tervore, for I have heard it both ways) in Alan’s coun­try of Ap­pin.

This was a wood of birches, grow­ing on a steep, craggy side of a moun­tain that over­hung the loch. It had many open­ings and ferny howes; and a road or bridle track ran north and south through the midst of it, by the edge of which, where was a spring, I sat down to eat some oat-bread of Mr. Hen­de­r­land’s and think upon my situ­ation.

Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of sting­ing midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was go­ing to join my­self with an out­law and a would-be

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