Page:Once a Week NS Volume 7.djvu/443

Rh "Sure! Who can be sure of anything? He may be dead."

I winced.

"All I know is, that he was my son's first lieutenant, when I last heard of him. But, bless my soul!" continued Sic Upton, suddenly facing me, "what are you driving at? What on earth, or on sea, have you to do with Knox or Erebus either?"

"I wish to Heaven I knew," cried I; "but the fact is, my dear Sir Upton, I have been worried almost out of my senses by the man, these last few days. He makes his way into my room at night, dogs me by day, and bothers me about some message I am to give{[bar|2}}"

Raising my eyes as I spoke, whom should I see, over Sir Upton Ker's shoulder, but my tormentor himself, with those haggard eyes fixed upon me.

"Tell the Admiral!" said he, in his muffled, ghostly voice.

"Confound it all!" cried I, driven out of all patience, "here is the Admiral. Tell him yourself, and be dd to you!"

Striking the ground sharply three times with his cane, Sir Upton turned full upon Knox.

A blaze of light suddenly enveloped the mysterious stranger; who, to my utter amazement, vanished away in its glare, with a tremendous explosion and a rushing sound; while—gracious Heaven! am I going mad too?—the Admiral, wheeling quickly round, displayed to my bewildered sight, not his own jovial, ruddy countenance, beaming from beneath the gold-laced cap he wore so jauntily on his gray curls, but—a policeman's bull's-eye! which flashed its blinding rays full into my eyes.

Involuntarily I uttered a cry, and hid my face in my hands.

"Only the carpenter to open the port!" said a gruff voice.

The glad rush of sunshine and air into the close cabin, driving before it the mingled fumes of last night's supper, brandy, grog, oilcloth, bilge water, hot grease, and all the villainous compound of odours which nauseate a steamboat passenger, dispelled gradually the distempered visions of my sleep. Springing from my lair, I thrust my head out of the opened porthole—the bull's-eye of my dream—and bathed my hot eyes and brow in the vivifying breeze. We had just entered the Quarantine Harbour, and were blowing off our steam with an explosive roar. The dark blue water sparkled in the level rays of the rising sun. The gaily painted boats, with large eyes in their prows, danced towards us on the swell created by our paddles. The white houses of Sliema and the six-armed windmills of Malta rose before me.

Rejoicing in my liberation, I quickly prepared to land, and was soon triumphantly treading the flags of Strada Reale, unmolested by any grumbling nautical ghost. So vivid, however, had been my sea-sick dream, that I could not entirely shake off the impression that I had some responsibility resting on me, some unknown duty to perform, until I had seen the Admiral in the flesh, and heard his roar of laughter at my story of his metamorphosis into a policeman's lantern, and the consequent conjuring away of the pertinacious Knox of the Fox.

E recently made a note on the bagpipe as not being originally a Scottish instrument at all, but introduced from this country. Some envious Sassenach now writes to us, claiming the same origin for that proudest symbol of a Scot—the kilt, or philibeg. But this is really too bad. Sir John Sinclair, in a letter to John Pinkerton—the well-known antiquarian writer—in 1796, says that "it is well known that the philibeg was invented by an Englishman, in Lochabar, about sixty years ago, who naturally thought his workmen would be more active in that light petticoat than in the belted plaid, and that it was more decent to wear it than to have no clothing at all—which was the case with some of those employed by him in cutting down the woods in Lochabar." Some even go so far as to question the antiquity of the plaid itself; but this, we think, it will be found difficult to prove. The plaid, as a distinctive symbol of clanship, undoubtedly used only to be worn in the Highlands by people of rank. In a book of costume, printed in Paris in 1562, the Highland chief is represented in the Irish dress, wearing a mantle; and, even as late as 1715, the remote Highlanders were only clothed in a long coat, buttoned down to the mid-leg—a costume much affected by the Irish peasant, even at the present day. It is a curious fact, also, that the Highlanders who joined the first Pretender, from the