Salute to Adventurers | Page 5

cast
down. Are ye still in the courts of bondage, young man, or seek ye the
true light which the Holy One of Israel has vouchsafed to me, John Gib,
his unworthy prophet?"
Now I knew into what rabble I had strayed. It was the company who
called themselves the Sweet-Singers, led by one Muckle John Gib,
once a mariner of Borrowstoneness-on-Forth. He had long been a thorn
in the side of the preachers, holding certain strange heresies that
discomforted even the wildest of the hill-folk. They had clapped him
into prison; but the man, being three parts mad had been let go, and
ever since had been making strife in the westland parts of Clydesdale. I
had heard much of him, and never any good. It was his way to draw
after him a throng of demented women, so that the poor, draggle-tailed
creatures forgot husband and bairns and followed him among the
mosses. There were deeds of violence and blood to his name, and the
look of him was enough to spoil a man's sleep. He was about six and a
half feet high, with a long, lean head and staring cheek bones. His
brows grew like bushes, and beneath glowed his evil and sunken eyes. I
remember that he had monstrous long arms, which hung almost to his
knees, and a great hairy breast which showed through a rent in his
seaman's jerkin. In that strange place, with the dripping spell of night
about me, and the fire casting weird lights and shadows, he seemed like

some devil of the hills awakened by magic from his ancient grave.
But I saw it was time for me to be speaking up.
"I am neither gangrel, nor spy, nor Amalekite, nor yet am I Zebedee
Linklater. My name is Andrew Garvald, and I have to-day left my
home to make my way to Edinburgh College. I tried a short road in the
mist, and here I am."
"Nay, but what seek ye?" cried Muckle John. "The Lord has led ye to
our company by His own good way. What seek ye? I say again, and yea,
a third time."
"I go to finish my colleging," I said.
He laughed a harsh, croaking laugh. "Little ye ken, young man. We
travel to watch the surprising judgment which is about to overtake the
wicked city of Edinburgh. An angel hath revealed it to me in a dream.
Fire and brimstone will descend upon it as on Sodom and Gomorrah,
and it will be consumed and wither away, with its cruel Ahabs and its
painted Jezebels, its subtle Doegs and its lying Balaams, its priests and
its judges, and its proud men of blood, its Bible-idolaters and its false
prophets, its purple and damask, its gold and its fine linen, and it shall
be as Tyre and Sidon, so that none shall know the site thereof. But we
who follow the Lord and have cleansed His word from human
abominations, shall leap as he-goats upon the mountains, and enter
upon the heritage of the righteous from Beth-peor even unto the
crossings of Jordan."
In reply to this rigmarole I asked for food, since my head was
beginning to swim from my long fast. This, to my terror, put him into a
great rage.
"Ye are carnally minded, like the rest of them. Ye will get no fleshly
provender here; but if ye be not besotted in your sins ye shall drink of
the Water of Life that floweth freely and eat of the honey and manna of
forgiveness."

And then he appeared to forget my very existence. He fell into a sort of
trance, with his eyes fixed on vacancy. There was a dead hush in the
place, nothing but the crackle of the fire and the steady drip of the rain.
I endured it as well as I might, for though my legs were sorely cramped,
I did not dare to move an inch.
After nigh half an hour he seemed to awake. "Peace be with you," he
said to his followers. "It is the hour for sleep and prayer. I, John Gib,
will wrestle all night for your sake, as Jacob strove with the angel."
With that he entered the tent.
No one spoke to me, but the ragged company sought each their
sleeping-place. A woman with a kindly face jogged me on the elbow,
and from the neuk of her plaid gave me a bit of oatcake and a piece of
roasted moorfowl. This made my supper, with a long drink from a
neighbouring burn. None hindered my movements, so, liking little the
smell of wet, uncleanly garments which clung around the fire, I made
my bed in a heather bush in the lee of a boulder, and from utter
weariness