CHAPTER XII.

"CUIDICH'N RHI!"

It was one morning in the November of this year, which was so eventful to Dove Gainswood, that a transport, H.M. steamship _Indus_, was slowly quitting the harbour of Suez, leaving astern the white houses of the town, (which is built upon a flat, with a ridgy eminence in its rear,) and running, partially under canvas, into the Red Sea, bound for Bombay, with troops, chiefly detachments of the 64th Regiment, 78th Highlanders, under Captain Roderick McAra, and the Royal Artillery, all of whom expected to see the beautiful shores of Western India in about fourteen days from that time.

They had already found, at Suez, a certain foretaste of the land towards which they were journeying (but which many of them were fated not to see), in the shape of Hindoo servants, Indian officers in pith helmets and kalkee uniforms returning homeward, and brown ayas clad in cotton and calico; and now, all the soldiers, or nearly so, on board the _Indus_ were young men, little more than recruits, and they crowded in the waist, as the officers did upon the poop and bridge, watching the coast on each side, as hour by hour the great ship sped onward.

To starboard lay the plains of Lower Egypt, with the mountain ridge that looks down upon the Valley of the Nile. On the port side rose Pharaoh's Hill, and then Mount Horeb, where the Law was delivered unto man, and ere long the granite peaks of Mount Sinai, fifteen hundred feet above the sea, excited the admiration even of the most dull by the wonderful combination they presented in outline and colouring, for when evening came and the sun was setting beyond the Egyptian shore, the peaks rose against the deep blue of the sky like petrified fire, and the soldiers, but more especially the Scottish Highlanders, though silent and religious men, gazed with much of wonder, but more of interest and respect, on the land and that sea whose history is coeval with that of mankind.

A little apart from all, in the bow of the steamer, watching alternately the white foam curling up beneath him and the shores of classical and holy antiquity on each hand, was one, in whom now--with his setting-up, closely shorn brown hair, thickened moustache, already embrowned face, and saddened or thoughtful eyes, and who was clad, moreover, in a canvas ship-frock, and the green tartan kilt and gartered hose of the Highland Buffs--it might have taxed even the penetration of Dove to have recognised at once Gillian Lamond--but he it was.

From that night on which we last saw him turning his back, as he believed, for ever upon his home, he had been a soldier; and now he was fully trained, drilled, and _en route_ for India, the land of his father's brilliant services, of his hard toil to acquire a competence, and where he had found a grave.

Like the ardent and imaginative youth he was, Gillian had, but for a little time only, his visions of realising a fortune as if by magic--of conquering fate and destiny, and of returning home to claim Dove Gainswood, _vis-et-armis_--again and again had he muttered, "I would do anything for riches--I would do anything for moderate wealth"; and now he was off to see the world, "with sixty rounds of ammunition at his back."

Love and sorrow remained with him; but all bitterness of heart had departed now, and alternately something of heedlessness as to what might happen, and of a dogged resolution to do his duty, to grapple with Fate, to excel and to win such honour and glory as might befall a poor private soldier, inspired him alone.

How home to his heart had come that rattling air, "The Girl I left behind me," when in the early dewy morning, and all the world of Southampton seemed abed, he had marched, amid the cheers of his comrades, to the place of embarkation, and felt himself in reality a soldier.

Many things had been sorely against "his grain" at first; the incessant saluting of his superiors, and starting to "attention" at their approach, the barrack "fatigue duties," the manners and language of those with whom he was now in daily contact, for more than once when on duty he had shared the same hard guard-bed with men who used coarse language, and were constantly quarrelling with their comrades, who bullied youngsters out of their money for beer, had been flogged for disgraceful conduct, tried for desertion, and whose names appeared scores of times in the "Defaulters' Book;" but he had borne the infliction of such presence patiently, and thanked Heaven that there were few or no such characters in the brave old Ross-shire Buffs; and he soon learned that the happiness or misery of a soldier depends upon himself, and that an honourable bearing, temperance, and strict obedience would ensure him the protection and regard of his superiors, though he felt that a mighty chasm, in some senses, yawned between himself and them now.

At the depôt, most of the officers and sergeants had noted Gillian; the former suspected that he was the victim of circumstance, though he strictly kept his own counsel as to his antecedents and who he was; and the latter often remarked that he was "a smart young fellow, didn't drink, didn't get into scrapes, and had never been 'up' since he enlisted."

He got used to his duties and position; he strove to fulfil the former, and to endure the latter without repining; but Dove was blotted out of the scheme of his future, yet he ever thought of her as he had last seen her on that night of mental anguish and farewell in the garden. Long ere that hour of calamity came, they had exchanged rings; but the one that she had given him from her beautiful little hand he could not show on his finger now; lest it should be said that thereby hung a tale ill suited to the atmosphere of a barrack-room or orlop deck, besides, apart from cleaning his rifle and accoutrements, he had often work to perform that ill befitted the diamond and pearl ring of Dove, so he wore it with a ribbon at his neck.

She had refused the son of a peer, with all that such an alliance led to--wealth, luxury, rank, London with its society and its drawing-rooms--refused it all, and for his sake!

"How long--how long would all this endure?" he would ask of himself, and was muttering even now, as the great ship sped onward, onward, onward, cleaving the blue waves that roll round the low promontory of Ras Mohammed.

"How would it all end?" Ambition, properly so-called and considered, he had none, and no Marshal's baton had yet been found in the knapsacks of the Ross-shire Buffs. He had shouldered a rifle as much for food as to flee from his own thoughts, and he resolved to do his duty, and die in doing so, if God willed it, but ever and anon came the aching thoughts of Dove!

On one hand, he saw rank and wealth offered her, backed up by assiduity, perseverance, and an undoubtedly prepossessing exterior in Lord Campsie; on the other, were his own absence, obscurity, and hopelessness. When he drew mentally this double picture, he became so desperate and heartless, that all desire to wrestle with hard fortune died within him; while Dove seemed as one who was dead--dead to him certainly. As a bitter sigh escaped him, he felt a hand clap his shoulder, and turning met the bright, cheerful face of his comrade, Colin MacKenzie.

"In the doldrums again, Lamond!" said the latter, half-reproachfully; "I have just got some fresh baccy from the steward--fill your pipe, and we'll blow a little cloud together."

"Thanks, Colin," replied Gillian, proceeding to fill his pipe, which, being a handsome meerschaum, was an object of some interest to his new friends; "I was thinking deeply, and it is not jolly work."

"No--life is a mistake, I have sometimes thought; but still I have contrived to rub on somehow."

"I have often wondered what star I was born under!" sighed Gillian.

"I never did--never had any doubt about mine."

"How?"

"I know deuced well--it was a falling one," replied MacKenzie, laughing heartily.

Colin, of whom we shall have more mention to make, was his chosen comrade and senior in years, as he was about five or six and twenty. His face was ruddy and fresh, he had a thick dark moustache, good regular features, dark grey eyes that, like those of many Scottish mountaineers, were keen as those of the hawk or eagle; he was handsome and stalwart in figure, with a cheerful aspect of perpetual content and jollity, and a frank and fearless bearing.

He was a Highlander from the original cradle of the regiment--Kintail, the land of black cattle, and these he had herded many a day and oft, by the great stones that cover Diarmid's grave, by the shores of Loch Alsh, and on the slopes of Tullochard, which is alike the war-cry and crest of his name, and of the Marquises of Seaforth, the lords of Kintail.

In his boyhood Colin had seen better days, ere misfortune had come upon his father, who was, what the Highlanders call, a "gentleman-drover," or cattle merchant; and so he became a soldier. As such, his companionship and advice had proved of vast service to Gillian in his new and humble phase of life, and each liked, respected, and clung to the other.

Though not exactly told off two and two, every soldier has a comrade, and these men rarely fail each other; each attends to the other's food and wants when on duty, and may clean his arms; accoutrements, or horse, when he comes off that duty. Tom keeps an eye on Dick when he is in hospital, and Dick will be sure to share his baccy, beer, and clearings with Tom at other times; and many a tale told round the guard-room fire turns on regimental traditions of generous, high-spirited, and humane _camaraderie_, combined with faith and truth; and of this, two are well known. One is of a soldier who, when his comrade, after Culloden, was sentenced to die for desertion, unless a substitute could be procured, according to the then practice, risked a throw of the dice with him on the drumhead and _lost!_ another, of a soldier of the 13th, or 1st Somersetshire regiment, who, in 1800, took five hundred lashes at the triangles to save a comrade who was innocent, of a crime which he had himself committed.

MacKenzie's cheerful manner--for, when not whistling interminable pibrochs, he was always singing "The Woodland Laddie," and Highland boat songs, or telling droll stories--drove Gillian from his sorrows in spite of himself for a time; and something of hope--a hope, he knew not of what--would then dawn in his heart, for he was too young to be always desponding; and by the time the bugles blew "retreat," as the last red ray of sunset paled out on the peak of Mount Sinai, he found himself laughing at some of Colin's remarks; but after the bagpipers struck up "tattoo," and marched round the ship, and all were ordered below save the deck watch, of whom Gillian made one, and he was left as it were to himself, his thoughts fell into the old groove again.

"Am I myself or some one else?" he would mutter; "or am I acting over an incident I have read in a novel or seen in a play--a painful waking dream. Can it be that poor Colin is right, and that life is, after all, a mistake?"

Thus would Gillian ponder for hours, while his comrades of the watch trod to and fro in the waist of the ship, or nestled together to leeward, in their grey greatcoats and Glengarrys, while the sound of voices and laughter, and occasionally the notes of a piano, came from the lighted saloon, from that circle of society from which he was now excluded; and when the officers lingered after mess, and while the bright stars that came out overhead, like the sharp crescent moon then just rising above the isle of Jubal, were reflected in the silent waters of the Red Sea.

At such moments, he strove to forget his harsh, rough, and sometimes repellant surroundings, and some of the unpleasant duties he had to perform; yet when deck-washing in the keen breeze of the British Channel, and anon amid the burning winds of the Red Sea, he would smile bitterly, and think, "Could Dove but see me now!"

By day and night, as the _Indus_ sped on, he had some compensation for his troubles in the wonderful effects of sunshine or moonlight in all parts of the Red Sea, when the wild mountains of its rugged coasts--the abode of the Arab and Bedouin, or when its many isles became visible; holy places of which he had so often heard his Uncle Gainswood cant and snivel; but at times the heat was something dreadful to endure, when the _Indus_ was steaming with the breeze and not head to wind, when even the native stokers fainted in the stoke-hole, and when near the arid rocks that seemed to quiver in the sun, the Highlanders, gasping for breath, thought regretfully of the green mountains of their native home, of the deep and dark blue lochs that wash their bases, of the waving cornfields, of the shady woods, the vast wastes of purple heather, and the pure, balmy air, where the eagle and hawk were whirling aloft.

The poor privates--God help them!--had not much money among them, and Gillian was as yet ignorant or careless of how to spend judiciously his pittance of pay; hence in the days and nights when the air was like a furnace, he often got "a bottle of bitter," that greatest luxury in the East, from the "clearings" of poor Colin, who had been early trained in the "uses of adversity," and in such an atmosphere as that of the Red Sea, at that season, "bitter" was as the nectar of the gods.

At times Colin MacKenzie succeeded in inspiring him with that genuine _esprit-du-corps_, which exists in all regiments, but in none more than the Scottish, which, from their costume and names, have a double character to maintain, with regard to the historic honour of their country and their _prestige_ as British soldiers; thus Colin was a genuine enthusiast in all that pertained to his clan, and to the regiment, which was raised out of it, and while still wearing its tartan has upon its appointments the _caberfiedh_ of Seaforth, the same stag's head, which was given as a crest to Colin MacKenzie, high chief of Kintail, who shouted "_Cuidich'n Rhi_" (or Help the King!) and slew by an arrow a stag which was rushing at King Alexander III.* And as Scott sings,

"Who in the land of the Saxon or Gael, Might match with MacKenzie, High Chief of Kintail?"

Alexander gave him other lands in Kintail, with "_Cuidich'n Rhi_" as a motto, and deergrass as a clan-badge.

* Regimental tradition has it, that MacKenzie slew the stag with his lance, and not with an arrow, as Douglas states in his Peerage, and also that the King had been unhorsed.

He was never wearied of telling Gillian how, after the Ross-shire Buffs were mustered in 1793 by Seaforth himself, at Fort George, the winter of the following year saw them in Holland with the Cameron and Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch--all young soldiers, who wore the kilt when the cold was so intense that strong brandy froze in the bottles, yet never a Gael dropped by the wayside, while the track of other regiments was marked by the dead and the dying among the snow, as the Duke of York advanced towards Westphalia; of how bravely they fought on the plains of Assaye, brigaded with the MacLeods, and added the elephant to their other trophies; how they conquered at Maida and Java; and how at Argaum, they charged to the sound of their pipes and the war-cry of _Cuidich'n Rhi!_ striking terror to the soul of Scindia, and winning the warmest praises of the future Duke of Wellington.

When Colin spoke of these stirring memories, his dark grey eyes would sparkle and his cheek flush, while his voice became almost tremulous, for his spirit was brave and ardent; but when he spoke of the pipes, and how the "gathering of the MacKenzies" had risen high among the ranks of the routed Albanian Horse and Foot, on the banks of the Nile, he could little foresee how, in the year subsequent to that in which our story opens, the same warlike air from the same wild instrument would strike joy to the hearts of our garrison in beleaguered Lucknow, when he had gone to a lowly grave, and could hear their notes no more.

In due time the _Indus_ was off the sun-baked rocks of Aden--a bleak bare place of ashes and cinders, fabled as once the Rose Garden of Irene, where the wild Abdallees have long since ceased to regard a steamer passing their shore, which is simply a congeries of dark and sombre rocks; but where the little boy divers, for the amusement of the officers and ladies clustered on the poop, ply their trade for sixpences, with as much zest as the mudlarks do at Gravesend.

The steamer had barely dropped her anchor for the purpose of coaling, when a boat, containing a staff-officer, came off to her speedily, pulled by sepoys, with instructions for the officers commanding the troops and ship. These were, that instead of pursuing her voyage to Bombay, she was to proceed towards Bushire, and there join the expedition destined, under Generals Outram and Havelock, for the invasion of Persia, with the Shah of which we had suddenly come to blows. The regiments to which the detachments with the _Indus_ belonged, all formed part of that expedition; and so, three hearty British cheers arose from her deck, when after passing through the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears, so named by early navigators to mark their sense of the perils attendant on its navigation, the courses of the stately steam transport were let fall, her snow-white topsails hoisted and sheeted home, as she hauled up for the Gulf of Persia.