All these were discharged
upon the crag. Andie, myself, and my three Highlanders (I call
them mine, although it was the other way about), landed along with
them. The sun was not yet up when the boat moved away again, the
noise of the oars on the thole-pins echoing from the cliffs, and
left us in our singular reclusion:
Andie Dale was the Prefect (as I would jocularly call him) of the
Bass, being at once the shepherd and the gamekeeper of that small
and rich estate. He had to mind the dozen or so of sheep that fed
and fattened on the grass of the sloping part of it, like beasts
grazing the roof of a cathedral. He had charge besides of the
solan geese that roosted in the crags; and from these an
extraordinary income is derived. The young are dainty eating, as
much as two shillings a-piece being a common price, and paid
willingly by epicures; even the grown birds are valuable for their
oil and feathers; and a part of the minister's stipend of North
Berwick is paid to this day in solan geese, which makes it (in some
folks' eyes) a parish to be coveted. To perform these several
businesses, as well as to protect the geese from poachers, Andie
had frequent occasion to sleep and pass days together on the crag;
and we found the man at home there like a farmer in his steading.
Bidding us all shoulder some of the packages, a matter in which I
made haste to bear a hand, he led us in by a looked gate, which was
the only admission to the island, and through the ruins of the
fortress, to the governor's house. There we saw by the ashes in
the chimney and a standing bed-place in one corner, that he made
his usual occupation.
This bed he now offered me to use, saying he supposed I would set
up to be gentry.
"My gentrice has nothing to do with where I lie," said I. "I bless
God I have lain hard ere now, and can do the same again with
thankfulness. While I am here, Mr. Andie, if that be your name, I
will do my part and take my place beside the rest of you; and I ask
you on the other hand to spare me your mockery, which I own I like
ill."
He grumbled a little at this speech, but seemed upon reflection to
approve it. Indeed, he was a long-headed, sensible man, and a good
Whig and Presbyterian; read daily in a pocket Bible, and was both
able and eager to converse seriously on religion, leaning more than
a little towards the Cameronian extremes. His morals were of a
more doubtful colour. I found he was deep in the free trade, and
used the rains of Tantallon for a magazine of smuggled merchandise.
As for a gauger, I do not believe he valued the life of one at
half-a-farthing. But that part of the coast of Lothian is to this
day as wild a place, and the commons there as rough a crew, as any
in Scotland.
One incident of my imprisonment is made memorable by a consequence
it had long after. There was a warship at this time stationed in
the Firth, the Seahorse, Captain Palliser. It chanced she was
cruising in the month of September, plying between Fife and
Lothian, and sounding for sunk dangers. Early one fine morning she
was seen about two miles to east of us, where she lowered a boat,
and seemed to examine the Wildfire Rocks and Satan's Bush, famous
dangers of that coast. And presently after having got her boat
again, she came before the wind and was headed directly for the
Base. This was very troublesome to Andie and the Highlanders; the
whole business of my sequestration was designed for privacy, and
here, with a navy captain perhaps blundering ashore, it looked to
become public enough, if it were nothing worse. I was in a
minority of one, I am no Alan to fall upon so many, and I was far
from sure that a warship was the least likely to improve my
condition. All which considered, I gave Andie my parole of good
behaviour and obedience, and was had briskly to the summit of the
rock, where we all lay down, at the cliff's edge, in different
places of observation and concealment.