Kings Pinnacle (4 page)

Robert nodded to Angus,
remounted his horse, and led off toward the wayward calves near the
small stream that ran into the ocean nearby.

“Robber, how’d ye get the
idea that we know anything about cattle?” Hugh said with a
grin.

“You’ve stolen enough of
them to know something about them, haven’t you?” replied
Robert.

Hugh and Alex laughed as
they rode out in search of the wayward cattle.

* * * *

Alex

“
Weel, I ken we didn’t
have t’ swim the Sheuch after all,” said Hugh as he, Robert, and
Alex sat on the gunwale of the cattle boat behind the cattle pens,
sailing on the empty ferry leaving Portpatrick and heading out into
the Sheuch.

As usual, Robert just
nodded.

The three brothers had
rounded up the strays and helped unload the Irish cattle from the
ferry as soon as it had arrived. As soon as the cattle ferry was
empty, they walked their horses up to the fenced funnel leading to
the gangplank and up to the ferry’s cattle pens. When they got up
on the ferry, they led their horses into the cattle pens, where
they tied them to the rails with the reins.

The cattle ferry was not
carrying cattle back to Ireland. Northern Ireland was very sparsely
populated in 1770. Its total population was much smaller than the
population of Scotland and England. The importation of cattle from
Ireland to Scotland was a staple of the Irish economy and an
important food source for Scotland and England.

The cattle ferry was
actually a packet vessel that had been modified specifically to
carry cattle. Cattle pens had been built along both sides of the
main deck, with high rails toward the sea and toward the interior
of the craft to keep the cattle in a confined space. A narrow
center aisle ran almost the entire length of the vessel and was
used for the seamen, drovers and a few passengers. Ventilation was
very important in moving cattle by sea. Toxic methane gasses
produced by the cattle could build up in the stagnant air as a ship
sailed along with the breeze. These concentrated gases could kill
the cattle. Cattle boats were usually designed to be open-air so
that cattle could get as much fresh air as possible during the
trip.

As the empty cattle boat
sailed out into the Sheuch, it started rolling heavily in the waves
that were kicked up by the wind in the strait. The ferry didn’t
have a load of cattle to act as ballast, making it somewhat
unstable in the water. The smell of cattle still lingered around
the cattle pens for the trip back to Ireland. The three brothers
were relaxing on the weather side of the boat behind the cattle
pens and getting some fresh air from the wind at their backs as the
boat moved out into the strait.

After two hours of sailing,
they had reached a little past midway across the Sheuch when the
wind began to strengthen out of the south. The seamen aboard the
cattle boat began to shorten the sail as the boat heeled over under
the increased wind pressure against the sails. Twenty minutes
later, the weather had turned nasty with a storm coming up from the
southwest on the horizon. Rain soon followed with wind gusts of
over forty miles per hour, and streaks of lightning lit up the sky.
The Irish Sea gale was in full strength a short time
later.

The sea got rougher and
rougher as the gale moved closer to the Sheuch and the ferry began
to wallow heavily in the waves and take on water as the waves came
crashing in over the prow. The lack of a load of cattle on the
boat, the wind, and the large waves increased the ferry’s
instability and made it difficult to handle in the heavy weather.
The wind slowly veered around so that it was coming out of the
west, so the boat’s progress toward Ireland was almost at a
standstill.

One of the sailors was
scurrying forward to tie down some rigging near where the three
brothers were hanging on to the rails to keep from being washed
overboard.

“What’re the captain’s
orders for the boat?” asked Robert who had stopped the
sailor.

“He’s going to turn the
ferry around and head back toward Portpatrick to see if we can
outrun the storm back to Scotland.”

“I suspect that we’re long
past half way already. By the time we make any progress back to
Portpatrick, the gale will be past and the wind will veer around to
come from the east again,” said Robert, but since he wasn’t the
captain, there was nothing he could do about it.

The sailor nodded in
agreement with Robert and returned to his duties. The captain
shouted, “Man the pumps!” to the seamen, who had finished
shortening the sails again and tying down all the
rigging.

The three horses in the
cattle pens had sensed the change in the weather as soon as the
wind had increased. They had become restless, moving around the
confined space of the pens and protesting loudly. Their eyes were
wide with fear, and they were rearing up on their hind legs kicking
at the cattle pen rails.

Robert told Hugh and Alex to
see after the horses and calm them down, if they could, while he
opened the gangway port on the prow of the ferry.

“If comes to it lads, we’ll
try to save the horses,” said Robert, motioning Hugh and Alex
toward the cattle pens where the horses were tied.

Soon the ferry was taking
even a harder pounding by even larger waves that the wind had
spawned. The water was pouring in over the entire length of the
ferry in addition to the prow each time it plowed into a trough.
The ferry was taking on more water than the pumps could shed. It
was foundering lower into the water as the boat began to fill with
sea water. It was beginning to look like they were going
down.

Suddenly, a loud crack
echoed throughout the ferry as the main mast broke off at the slot
where it passed through the main deck, just as the ferry was
turning to head back toward Portpatrick. The packet rats, as the
crew on board was called because of their somewhat dubious
background, knew they were in trouble and began to make
preparations to abandon ship prior to the captain’s order. Even
though they had been sailing for almost four hours, they had no
idea how close they were to the Irish coast, since the weather had
blocked visibility.

Robert yelled at Hugh and
Alex, “Bring the horses up to the prow so we can get them free of
the ferry if she goes down, lads.”

Alex and Hugh put blindfolds
on the three horses and led them up to the prow just as the ferry
started to drop even lower into the water. The added drag of all
the sea water in the boat and the broken mast, whose sails were
hanging over the side into the water, caused the ferry to slowly
turn into the waves. Robert knew that the ferry wouldn’t last much
longer, as he watched the waves crash into the side of boat. He
thought it might be better for them to get away from it now rather
than wait for the ferry to sink and possibly take them down with
it.

The three brothers pulled
off their boots, stuffed them into their saddle bags and mounted
their horses. They jumped the horses into the water through the
gangway port in the prow as the ferry plowed into a deep trough.
The smell of land got the horses swimming toward Ireland. The three
brothers slipped out of their saddles and moved back so that they
were swimming behind their horses, holding onto their horses’
tails. Most of the packet rats could not swim; they had never been
taught to. Seamen were always the worst swimmers. Almost none of
them could swim or had even tried to learn. They figured that if a
ship went down at sea, there was probably nowhere to swim to
anyway, so why bother. The packet rats were all scurrying around
looking for something that would float that they could hang onto
when the ferry plowed into a large wave and stayed down.

“
Abandon ship!” yelled the
captain as everyone made their way into the water.

John Mackenzie had made sure
that his sons knew how to swim. When each one was about five years
old, he would take him down to the river and throw him off a bank
into the water. “Sink or swim!” he yelled, watching carefully in
case he had to dive in to make a rescue. But, the lads all took to
the water like ducks. Many summer family outings involved swimming
in a loch or a river. All three brothers were very strong swimmers.
They were also fair fish noodlers, especially Hugh, who seemed to
have a knack for it.

Alex turned his head to look
at the ferry just as the stern sank under the waves. The seamen who
could swim were either swimming along behind the brothers, trying
to follow them toward the Irish coast, or hanging on to anything
that would float. There was nothing the brothers could do for the
seamen in the heavy seas other than to lead them to land. At least
there had been no cattle on board to get in the way of abandoning
the ship.

The wind had moved around to
blow from the north as the gale moved across the sea and was past
them. The wind and waves were no longer hindering their progress
toward the Irish shore.

It seemed like they had been
swimming a long time when they heard the sound of the surf. The
three brothers swam the last few yards and crawled out of the water
to the beach. They collapsed in the sand, totally exhausted from
the shipwreck ordeal. It appeared that they may have been the only
survivors of the wreck, since none of the seamen had washed up on
the shore with them.

“I told ye when we were back
in Scotland that Ireland was close enough for us to swim it,” Hugh
panted as he looked at Alex and Robert.

* * * *

Kings Pinnacle Part 2

Robert and Hugh

The three Mackenzie
brothers had settled into a fairly comfortable life over the past
two years in Ireland on Angus MacDonald’s cattle station. The
brothers’ days consisted of mending fences, herding cattle, and
protecting them from predators, both animal and human. The Irish
wood kernes rustled cattle at every opportunity, so the drovers
were constantly watching for them and fighting them off. The
brothers were normally up at the crack of dawn and rounding up the
strays that had wandered away from the main herd during the night.
They took shifts watching the cattle at night while the rest of the
drovers slept back at the cattle station bunkhouse. The cattle
herds were moved from pasture to pasture as the grass was grazed to
give each pasture time to recover for the next grazing
cycle.

The herd was thinned
occasionally by Angus MacDonald so that the excess cattle could be
rounded up and herded to the new cattle ferry and shipped to
Scotland for sale. The occasional trip to Donaghadee or Belfast to
buy goods and services and have a pint of ale was about the only
distraction that the brothers allowed themselves. It was after one
such trip and a pint or two apiece that Hugh brought up an issue
that had been much on his and Robert’s minds lately. It was an
issue that he and Robert had already discussed and agreed
on.

“Weel, Alex, laddie, ye
can’t stay here in Ireland. Robber has booked passage for ye to
America on a brigantine ship called the Ocean Monarch, sailing out
of Larne to Philadelphia. As ye know, the British Army has moved
several new units to Derry, not far from here, to help us put down
an insurrection of the wood kernes. Word has it that the British
authorities are all still looking for ye, Alex. With the British
Army moving in so close in force, it’s highly likely that they’ll
catch ye. We’ve been in Ireland for over two years, and there’s
been nae let up in the search for ye. Ye must get away to America,”
said Hugh as he, Alex, and Robert were talking in the cattle
station’s bunkhouse.

Alex looked at Robert, and
Robert just nodded that he agreed with Hugh. They had obviously
already discussed it and considered all the other
options.

The Plantation of Ulster was
an organized settlement in Northern Ireland by British and Scottish
farmers that had started in the early 1600s. All the lands in
Northern Ireland that were formerly held by Celtic Irish chieftains
were confiscated by King James and used to settle colonists from
England and Scotland. In the late 1600s, the plan was to move
outlaws and Reivers from Scotland to the Plantation. This was done
in order to ease tensions along the Scottish English border and to
help stabilize the Plantation, which covered almost all of Northern
Ireland. The Mackenzie brothers had planned on finding work at the
Plantation but decided it would be easier and more profitable to
maintain their jobs at the cattle station.

From time to time, a group
of Irish soldiers and former Irish landholders would attack the
settlements to try to drive out the British and Scottish colonists.
These bandits were known as wood kernes, and the military was often
called on to supplement the colonists in fighting off their
attacks. A large military garrison had been established at Derry
for this purpose.

“Alex, there’s nothing left
for ye back in Scotland. Elizabeth Murray has one bairn on the
ground and another on the way since she wed Sir George Hastings,”
Hugh went on.

They had gotten a letter a
few weeks ago from their father that described the situation; it
had also contained the information about Elizabeth Murray. Alex had
always thought that he would eventually be able to go back to
Scotland and rescue Elizabeth when they finally gave up the search
for him. But now it looked like events in his life were taking a
different course.