The Price of the King's Peace

beyond a mile or so.

Bruce had few doubts as to where to look for John MacDougall.

Just a few miles ahead, beyond the islet of Cara, the coast of Islay, to the west, became much littered with a host of outlying reefs, rocks and skerries, south of Ardmore Point; and thereafter swung away westwards towards the Oa, vastly widening the mouth of the funnel-shaped inland sea. The line for MacDougall’s fleet to hold was obviously one stretched between these Islay skerries and Glencardoch Point on Kintyre. Patrolling a ten-mile belt, his vessels could act as an almost impassable barrier, giving each other mutual cover and support. Angus Og was bold, and probably had slightly the larger fleet; but he would be rash indeed to try to break through such a barrier head-on. He might succeed, but hardly without heavy losses; and even so would be apt to find not a few of his craft trapped thereafter in the Sounds of Gigha and Jura, facing unknown odds. Hence Bruce’s manoeuvre.

Sure enough, look-outs from two or three leading vessels shouted almost simultaneously their sighting of ships ahead. The long low craft did not stand out very clearly against an uncertain horizon, and they were probably not more than two miles off.

“Many of them, Sir King,” the MacDonald shipmaster of Bruce’s galley reported, from some way up the mast-stay.

“A great host of ships. Sails furled, mostly. Beating to and fro.

But, if we can see them, they can see us better. The light is behind us.”

That was true. Sunset in these latitudes is almost due north at midsummer, and it is the northern sky which remains lightest until sunrise. Bruce’s squadron would probably have been visible to MacDougall for some time, and would inevitably be causing major astonishment and speculation.

“Aye. Then let us give them something to fret over. Trumpets to sound the signals for line abreast. And for the torches to be lit.”

And so the trumpets neighed shrilly out over the summer sea, and their martial notes could not fail to be heard by the patrolling fleet. As the King’s vessels moved up into a long line, red flame blossomed aboard each, as the pine-branch torches, contrived from selected material from the tree-trimming operations at East Loch Tarbert, were set alight.

Quickly the entire scene was transformed. The night, from being one of quiet luminous peace, became angry with the crimson murky flame of smoking pitch-pine. Hundreds of the torches flared, and stained sea and sky.

Bruce’s reason for bringing along nearly a score of the anchored vessels from Ardminish Bay was now clear. He had almost trebled the size of his fleet, and this would be all too evident from the enemy’s standpoint. Yet the half-light would prevent it from being apparent that these were not righting ships. John MacDougall could not be other than a very alarmed man.

Bruce kept the trumpets blaring, a martial challenging din, as they drove down upon the patrolling squadrons on a two-mile wide front.

Then the pinpoints of red light began to break out far to the south. One or two, wide-scattered, quickly multiplied into scores, winking, flickering, growing. Cheers rose from the King’s ships.

Angus Og was there, and responding.

MacDougall of Lorn was no craven; but nor had he the rash, headlong

gallantry of, say, Edward Bruce. And his role here, anyway, was to

harry the Scots’ flanks, to seek to prevent major operations against

England, not to fight pitched battles against odds. He could not know whose was this northern fleet; but clearly it was in league with Angus of the Isles. He had to accept that his present position was untenable, and took steps to alter it.

He had not much room for manoeuvre. The very strength of his former situation, in the narrows, was now its weakness. He had three choices. Either he sought to break through to the south, or to the north; or else tried to escape to the west, into the open Hebridean Sea.

That he chose the third was hardly to be wondered at. Angus’s power he knew, and feared. What threatened from the north was a mystery-and therefore the more alarming. An escape round the west of Islay would give him the freedom of wide waters, and the possibility of communicating with his base of Gigha,from the north.

Bruce was far from blind to these alternatives. He himself would

probably have chosen as did MacDougall, in similar circumstances

* especially as the loom of the great island of Islay would provide a dark background against which shipping would not be readily visible.

The King was ready, therefore, for the first signs of a sustained westerly movement amongst the ships ahead. Swiftly he sent orders to his fast galleys to swing out of line to starboard at fullest speed, west by south, torches doused.

It became a race, a race which the King could not really win, clearly, since many of MacDougall’s ships were already to the west of his own. Some inevitably would escape; but he might trap much of the centre and east of the enemy line.

The breeze was south-westerly, and of no use to either side. It was now a case of sheer muscle and determination, the oars lashing the water in a disciplined frenzy of urgent rhythm, the panting refrain abandoned now for the clanging beat of broadsword on metal-studded targe, faster and faster. Each galley surged ahead in a cloud of spray raised by its scores of oars.

Soon it was evident that at least some of Angus Og’s ships were on the same mission, on an intercepting course. The three groups, or rather lines, of galleys, approximated to an arrowhead formation with an extra long point.

Inevitably, it was a short race, of only three or four miles, and for the last of them the leading ships were within hailing distance of each other-near enough for Bruce to try to pick out flags and banners, the sail devices being meantime hidden. There seemed to be two or three of the fleeing line wearing flags of various shapes and sizes.

“Which will be MacDougal’s own?” the King demanded of his

shipmaster.

“Who knows? Angus Og flies always a long whip-pennant at his masthead.

But Ian Bacach …?”.

“He will be proud to be the English king’s Admiral of the West,”

Gilbert Hay suggested.

“He will likely fly a large flag of that traitorous office, as well as

his own banner of Lorn.”

“Aye, you are right. Two large flags…”

The trouble was that there seemed to be two vessels wearing two large flags each, sailing close together. Perhaps King Edward appointed a deputy admiral to keep an eye on MacDougall? It would be typical English practice.

There was not much time for any decision. Ardmore Point of Islay looked very close, half-right, and the profusion of skerries and reefs would be closer still. Details were hard to distinguish in the half-light. Any action would have to be taken quickly now.

“Gut in between those two,” the King jerked.

“Can we do it? A last spurring of speed. Are they able? The

rowers?”

“Clan Donald are always able! Most of all against MacDougall.

Murtach -the pipes!”

So, with the bagpipes screaming and sobbing their high challenge and the oarsmen miraculously redoubling their huge efforts-aided undoubtedly by the High Steward of Scotland who went along the benches with a great flagon of the islanders’ whisky, proffering each open, gasping mouth a swallow-the King’s galley swung to port and hurled itself across the intervening quarter-mile of sea, at a steepening angle, to head in between the two fleeing be flagged craft in a burst of speed that had to be experienced to be believed.

Now it was possible to distinguish banners. Both ships ahead flew the Leopards of England; but, while that in front also flew a blue and white device of three boars’ heads, two and one, the second flew also the emblem of a galley, not unlike Angus Og’s own. Only this galley was on gold, not silver, and with dragon heads at stern and prow, and a cross at the masthead. It was the Galley of Lorn.