of, Davie: that they would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago, and, man! but ye’re a grand hand at the sleeping! We’re in a narrow place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with a glass; but if they’ll only keep in the foot of the valley, we’ll do yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we’ll try our hand at getting by them.”
“And what are we to do till night?” I asked.
“Lie here,” says he, “and birstle.”
That one good Scotch word, “birstle,” was indeed the most of the story of the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the same climate and at only a few days’ distance, I should have suffered so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this rock.
All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying it in the
