Other beacons, not calculated to draw general notice,
but sufficiently understood by the initiated, soon
made their appearance, telegraphing the news from place
to place. As soon as the evening began to close
in the Crooked Mary would be observed rapidly approaching
the land, and occasionally giving out signals indicating
the creek into which she meant to run. Both on
sea and land hairbreadth escapes were the rule rather
than the exception, and it is related of one of the
Crooked Mary’s confederates on shore, poor Philip
Kennedy, that one night, while clearing the way for
the cargo just landed from the contraband trader’s
hold, he was simply murdered by the excise-officers.
The heavy cart laden with the cargo was yet some distance
behind, and Kennedy with some dastardly companions
was slowly going forward to ascertain if all was safe,
when three officers of the customs suddenly made their
unwelcome appearance. Brave as a lion, Kennedy
attacked two of them, and actually succeeded for a
time in keeping them down in his powerful grasp, while
he called to his party to secure the third. They,
however, thinking prudence the better part of valor,
decamped ignominiously, and the enemy remained master
of the brave man’s life. Anderson, the
third officer, was observed to hold up his sword to
the moon, as if to ascertain if he were using the
edge, and then to bring it down with accurate aim
and tremendous force upon the smuggler’s skull.
Strange to say, Kennedy, streaming with blood, actually
succeeded in reaching Kirkton of Slains, nearly a quarter
of a mile away, but expired a few moments after his
arrival. His last words were: “If
all had been true as I was, the goods would have been
safe, and I should not have been bleeding to death.”
The brave fellow was buried in the churchyard of Slains,
where a plain stone marks his grave, and bears the
simple inscription, “To the memory of Philip
Kennedy,
in Ward, who died the 19th of December,
1798. Aged 38.”
My own earliest recollections of the grand, desolate
old castle are derived, not from my first visit to
it made in infancy, but from the descriptions of one
whose home it was during a brief but intensely observant
period of childhood. There came one day a storm
such as seldom even on that coast lashes up the gray,
livid ocean. The waves, as far out as sight could
reach, were one mass of foam, and the ghastly lightning
flashed upon the torn sails of a ship as near destruction
as it well could be. Cries came up from below
in the brief pauses of the storm, and above lanterns
were quickly carried to and fro, while pale attendants
hurriedly and silently obeyed the signals of a more
collected master. The occupants of the castle
hardly knew to what its chambers might be destined—whether
to receive the dead or to afford rest to the saved.
Beds, fires and cordials were in readiness, and strong
men bore dread burdens up dizzy paths leading from
beneath. The ship broke in pieces on the merciless