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Page 71
In the hush that fell upon the company the senior officer spoke
sharply: "Take him down at once, Sergeant. The whole affair is most
unfortunate, and you will please tender my apologies at the
churchyard and the restaurant, as well as your own, and I will see
the Lord Provost."
The military salute was given to Bobby when he leaped from the
table at the sergeant's call: "Come awa', Bobby. I'll tak' ye to
Auld Jock i' the kirkyaird noo."
He stepped out onto the lawn to wait for his pass. Bobby stood at
his feet, quivering with impatience to be off, but trusting in the
man's given word. The upper air was clear, and the sky studded with
stars. Twenty minutes before the May Light, that guided the ships
into the Firth, could be seen far out on the edge of the ocean, and
in every direction the lamps of the city seemed to fall away in a
shower of sparks, as from a burst meteor. But now, while the stars
above were as numerous and as brilliant as before, the lights below
had vanished. As the sergeant looked, the highest ones expired in
the rising fog. The Island Rock appeared to be sinking in a
waveless sea of milk.
A startled exclamation from the sergeant brought other men out on
the terrace to see it. The senior officer withheld the pass in his
hand, and scouted the idea of the sergeant's going down into the
city. As the drum began to beat the tattoo and the bugle to rise on
a crescendo of lovely notes, soldiers swarmed toward the barracks.
Those who had been out in the town came running up the roadway into
the Castle, talking loudly of adventures they had had in the fog.
The sergeant looked down at anxious Bobby, who stood agitated and
straining as at a leash, and said that he preferred to go.
"Impossible! A foolish risk, Sergeant, that I am unwilling you
should take. Edinburgh is too full of pitfalls for a man to be
going about on such a night. Our guests will sleep in the Castle,
and it will be safer for the little dog to remain until morning."
Bobby did not quite understand this good English, but the excited
talk and the delay made him uneasy. He whimpered piteously. He lay
across the sergeant's feet, and through his boots the man could
feel the little creature's heart beat. Then he rose and uttered his
pleading cry. The sergeant stooped and patted the shaggy head
consolingly, and tried to explain matters.
"Be a gude doggie noo. Dinna fash yersel' aboot what canna be
helped. I canna tak' ye to the kirkyaird the nicht."
"I'll take charge of Bobby, Sergeant." The dog-loving guest ran out
hastily, but, with a wild cry of reproach and despair, Bobby was
gone.
The group of soldiers who had been out on the cliff were standing
in the postern a moment to look down at the opaque flood that was
rising around the rock. They felt some flying thing sweep over
their feet and caught a silvery flash of it across the promenade.
The sergeant cried to them to stop the dog, and he and the guest
were out in time to see Bobby go over the precipice.
For a time the little dog lay in a clump of hazel above the fog,
between two terrors. He could see the men and the lights moving
along the top of the cliff, and he could hear the calls. Some one
caught a glimpse of him, and the sergeant lay down on the edge of
the precipice and talked to him, saying every kind and foolish
thing he could think of to persuade Bobby to come back. Then a
drummer boy was tied to a rope and let down to the ledge to fetch
him up. But at that, without any sound at all, Bobby dropped out of
sight.
Through the smother came the loud moaning of fog-horns in the
Firth. Although nothing could be seen, and sounds were muffled as
if the ears of the world were stuffed with wool, odors were held
captive and mingled in confusion. There was nothing to guide a
little dog's nose, everything to make him distrust his most
reliable sense. The smell of every plant on the crag was there; the
odors of leather, of paint, of wood, of iron, from the crafts shops
at the base. Smoke from chimneys in the valley was mixed with the
strong scent of horses, hay and grain from the street of King's
Stables. There was the smell of furry rodents, of nesting birds, of
gushing springs, of the earth itself, and something more ancient
still, as of burned-out fires in the Huge mass of trap-rock.
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