John Buchan - John Burnet of Barns - A Romance

I leaned over the side of the ship in a very disconsolate frame of mind. If this was all I was to get on my journey, I had better have stayed at home. I was landward-bred, and knew naught of boats, save one which Tam Todd had made as a ferry across the Tweed, and which was indeed more like a meal-chest than aught else. In it we were wont to paddle across when we were fearful of wetting our shoon. But this rolling, boisterous ship and turgid seas were strange to me, and I fear I fell monstrous sick.

Nicol Plenderleith had disappeared almost as soon as he came aboard, and I saw him deep in converse with the sailors. When we had cleared the Forth he came back to me, as I leaned disconsolately against the bulwarks, and asked me how I did. His lean, brown face was not a whit changed by the rocking of the ship; indeed, if he had been astraddle the Saddleback in a gale he would not have been perturbed. When he saw my plight he ran below and brought brandy.

"Here, sir, tak some o' this. It's tasty at a' times, but it's mair than tasty the noo, it's halesome."

"Nicol," I groaned, "if I never gee home again, I look to you to tell the folk in Tweeddale. It's terrible to die here of this villainous sickness, for I shall certainly die if it continues. Will it never cease?"

"I've been speirin' at the captain and by a' accounts we're no at the warst o't. He says it's juist like the backs o' Leith. If ye win by the Fisherraw ye'll meet your death i' the Kettle Wynd, and, if by any chance ye're no killed there, ye'll be dune for i' the Walk. He was speaking o' the stinks o' the place and no the folk, for they're peaceable eneuch, puir bodies. 'Weel,' says he, 'it's the same here. It's ill for some folk to win by the Forth, but it's waur i' the open sea, and when it comes to the Dutch waters, it's fair awfu'.' I wis, Laird, ye maunna dee."

This was poor consolation, and had I not formed some guess of my servant's manners, I should have been downhearted enough; but there was a roguish twinkle in his eye, and, even as he spoke, his mouth broadened to a grin. I heard him humming the lines of an old ditty which I supposed to have some reference to my state:

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