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BY SIR THOMAS DICK LAUDER
THE flood, both in the
Spey and its tributary burn, was terrible at the village of Charlestown
of Aberlour. On the 3d of August, Charles Cruickshanks, the innkeeper,
had a party of friends in his house. There was no inebriety, but there
was a fiddle; and what Scotsman is he who does not know that the
well-jerked strains of a lively strathspey have a potent spell in them
that goes beyond even the witchery of the bowl? On one who daily inhales
the breezes from the musical stream that gives name to the measure, the
influence is powerful, and it was that day felt by Cruickshanks with a
more than ordinary degree of excitement. He was joyous to a pitch that
made his wife grave. Mrs Cruickshanks was deeply affected by her
husband’s jollity. "Surely my goodman is daft the day," said she
gravely; "I ne’er saw him dance at sic a rate. Lord grant that he binna
‘fey’!
[‘fey’ – a word which the common people express those violent spirits
which they think a presage of death.]
When the river began to rise rapidly in the evening, Cruickshanks, who
had a quantity of wood lying near the mouth of the burn, asked two of
his neighbours to go and assist him in dragging it out of the water.
They readily complied, and Cruickshanks getting on the loose raft of
wood, they followed him, and did what they could in pushing and hauling
the pieces of timber ashore, till the stream increased so much, that,
with one voice, they declared they would stay no longer, and, making a
desperate effort, they plunged over-head, and reached the land with the
greatest difficulty. They then tried all their eloquence to persuade
Cruickshanks to come away, but he was a bold and experienced floater,
and laughed at their fears; nay, so utterly reckless was he, that having
now diminished the crazy ill-put-together raft he stood on, till it
consisted of a few spars only, he employed himself in trying to catch at
and save some haycocks belonging to the clergyman, which were floating
past him. But while his attention was so engaged, the Hood was rapidly
increasing, till, at last, even his dauntless heart became appalled at
its magnitude and fury. "A horse! a horse!" he loudly and anxiously
exclaimed; "run for one of the minister’s horses, and ride in with a
rope, else I must go with the stream." He was quickly obeyed, but ere a
horse arrived, the flood had rendered it impossible to approach him.
Seeing that he must abandon all hope of help in that way, Cruickshanks
was now seen as if summoning up all his resolution and presence of mind
to make the perilous attempt of dashing through the raging current, with
his frail and imperfect raft. Grasping more firmly the iron-shod pole he
held in his hand - called in floater’s language ‘a sting’ – he pushed
resolutely into it; but he had hardly done so when the violence of the
water wrenched from his hold that which was all he had to depend on. A
shriek burst from his friends, as they beheld the wretched raft dart off
with him down the stream, like an arrow freed from the bowstring. But
the mind of Cruickshanks was no common one to quail before the first
approach of danger. He poised himself, and stood balanced, with
determination and self-command in his eye, and no sound of fear, or of
complaint, was heard to come from him.
At the point where the burn met the river, in the ordinary state of
both, there grew some trees, now surrounded by deep and strong currents,
and far from the land. The raft took a direction towards one of these,
and seeing the wide and tumultuous waters of the Spey before him, in
which there was no hope that his loosely connected logs could stick one
moment together, he coolly prepared himself, and, collecting all his
force into one well-timed and well-directed effort, he sprang, caught a
tree, and clung among its boughs, whilst the frail raft, hurried away
from under his foot, was dashed into fragments, land scattered on the
bosom of the waves. A shout of joy arose from his anxious friends, for
they now deemed him safe; but he uttered no shout in return. Every nerve
was strained to procure help. "A boat!" was the general cry, and some
ran this way, and some that, to endeavour to procure one. It was now
between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. A boat was speedily
obtained, and though no one was very expert in its use, it was quickly
manned by people eager to save Cruickshanks from his perilous situation.
The current was too terrible about the tree to admit of their nearing
it, so as to take him directly into the boat; but their object was to
row through the smoother water, to such a distance as might enable them
to throw a rope to him, by which means they hoped to drag him to the
boat. Frequently did they attempt this, and as frequently were they
foiled, even by that which was considered as the gentler part of the
stream, for it hurried them past the point whence they wished to make
the cast of their rope, and compelled them to row up again by the side,
to start on each fresh adventure.
Often were they carried so much in the direction of the tree as to be
compelled to exert all their strength to pull themselves away from him
they would have saved, that they might avoid the vortex that would have
caught and swept them to destruction. And often was poor Cruickshanks
tantalized with the approach of help, which came but to add to the other
miseries of his situation that of the bitterest disappointment. Yet he
bore all calmly. In the transient glimpses they had of him, as they were
driven past him, they saw no blenching on his dauntless countenance—they
heard no reproach, no complaint, no sound, but an occasional short
exclamation of encouragement to persevere in their friendly endeavours.
But the evening wore on, and still they were unsuccessful. It seemed to
them that something more than mere natural causes was operating against
them. "His hour is come!” said they, as they regarded one another with
looks of awe; "our struggles are vain." The courage and the hope which
had hitherto supported them began to fail, and the descending shades of
night extinguished the last feeble sparks of both, and put an end to
their endeavours.
Fancy alone can picture the horrors that must have crept on the
unfortunate man, as, amidst the impenetrable darkness which now
prevailed, he became aware of the continued increase of the flood that
roared around him, by its gradual advance towards his feet, whilst the
rain and the tempest continued to beat more and more dreadfully upon
him. That these were long ineffectual in shaking his collected mind, we
know from the fact, afterwards ascertained, that he actually wound up
his watch while in this dreadful situation. But, hearing no more the
occasional passing exclamations of those who had been hitherto trying to
succour him, he began to shout for help in a voice that became every
moment more long-drawn and piteous, as, between the gusts of the
tempest, and borne over the thunder of the waters, it fell from time to
time on the ears of his clustered friends, and rent the heart of his
distracted wife. Ever and anon it came, and hoarser than before, and
there was an occasional wildness in its note, and now and then a strange
and clamorous repetition for a time, as if despair had inspired him with
an unnatural energy; but the shouts became gradually shorter,—less
audible and less frequent,—till at last their eagerly listening ears
could catch them no longer. "Is he gone?" was the half-whispered
question they put to one another; and the smothered responses that were
muttered around but too plainly told how much the fears of all were in
unison.
"What was that?" cried his wife in a delirious scream; "that was his
whistle l heard!” She said truly. A shrill whistle, such as that which
is given with the fingers in the mouth, rose again over the loud din of
the deluge and the yelling of the storm. He was not yet gone. His voice
was but cracked by his frequent exertions to make it heard, and he had
now resorted to an easier mode of transmitting to his friends the
certainty of his safety. For some time his unhappy wife drew hope from
such considerations, but his whistles, as they came more loud and
prolonged, pierced the ears of his foreboding friends like the
ill-omened cry of some warning spirit; and it may be matter of question
whether all believed that the sounds they heard were really mortal.
Still they came louder and clearer for a brief space; but at last they
were heard no more, save in his frantic wife’s fancy, who continued to
start, as if she still heard them, and to wander about, and to listen,
when all but herself were satisfied that she could never hear them
again.
Wet and weary, and shivering with cold, was this miserable woman, when
the tardy dawn of morning beheld her straining her eye-balls through the
imperfect light, towards the trees where Cruickshanks had been last
seen. There was something there that looked like the figure of a man,
and on that her eyes fixed. But those around her saw, alas! too well,
that what she fondly supposed to be her husband was but a bunch of wreck
gathered by the flood into one of the trees,—for the one to which he
clung had been swept away.
The body of poor Cruickshanks was found in the afternoon of next day, on
the Haugh of Dandaleith, some four or five miles below. As it had ever
been his uniform practice to wind up his watch at night, and as it was
discovered to be nearly full wound when it was taken from his pocket,
the fact of his having had self -possession enough to obey his usual
custom, under circumstances so terrible, is as unquestionable as it is
wonderful. It had stopped at a quarter of an hour past eleven o'clock,
which would seem to fix that as the fatal moment when the tree was rent
away; for when that happened, his struggles amidst the raging waves of
the Spey must have been few and short.
When the men, who had so unsuccessfully attempted to save him, were
talking over the matter, and arguing that no human help could have
availed him,—
"I’m thinkin’ I could hae ta’en him out," said a voice in the circle.
All eyes were turned towards the speaker, and a general expression of
contempt followed ; for it was a boy of the name of Rainey, a reputed
idiot, from the foot of Benrinnes, who spoke.
"You!” cried a dozen voices at once; "what would you have done, you wise
man?"
"I wud hae tied an empty ankercask to the end o’ a lang, lang tow, an’ I
wud hae floated it aff frae near aboot whaur the raft was ta’en first
awa; an’ syne, ye see, as the stream teuk the raft till the tree, maybe
she wud hae ta’en the cask there too ; an’ if Charlie Cruickshanks had
ance gotten a haud o` this rope ——"
He would have finished, but his auditors were gone: they had silently
slunk away in different directions, one man alone having muttered, as he
went, something about "wisdom coming out of the mouth of fools." |
