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By midnight the ships, with all sails set and oars inboard, were abreast of the Mull of Kintyre, and at sunrise the next morning, beating due north the voyagers sighted the little isle of Cara, with the higher land of the larger isle of Gigha rising boldly behind it.
He waged war against the Norsemen of the Western Isles, and he made conquest of Bute, Arran, and Gigha, with the Cumbraes and other smaller isles that still remain in the hands of the Scots, for he was a most powerful warrior, and it was said that no man ever crossed swords with him but to be slain. His enemies fell before him like ripe grain in the swath of the mower's sickle. And his sword "
So ere the curtain of night had fallen over the Arran hills the outlawed earl of Gigha had left behind him the little isle of Bute, and it was thereafter told how he had in secret confessed his manifold sins to the abbot of St.
"Methought you knew that they were here three gallant kings out of the west they are, and one of them is your own uncle, Earl Roderic of Gigha, whom, when he was but a bairn as high as my girdle, I taught to bend the bow and wield the broadsword.
The thought of the terrible vengeance that was about to fall upon Bute on account of the bad work of the wild Scots of Galloway was a matter for far graver consideration. On his return from Gigha he passed many hours pacing the great hall of his castle, racking his brain to discover a means whereby he might protect the lives of the women and children who were under his care.
Earl Roderic of Gigha had doubtless in his sea rovings slept on many a less easy couch. But it may be that in those dark hours of solitude his mind was more disturbed than were his hardy limbs. He had come to Bute full of a guilty design, by the fulfilment of which he had hoped to at last gain possession of the rich dominions that he had coveted for twenty years.
Earl John of Islay and many of his neighbours were now paying homage to both Norway and Scotland. The isle of Gigha, which had been a possession of Alpin of Bute, had been bestowed at that chief's death upon his younger son Roderic. But Roderic, as has been told, had gone over entirely to King Hakon, and had refused to acknowledge his vassalage to his rightful sovereign of Scotland.
The hall was now in darkness, saving only for the feeble light of the fire, and the moonbeams that slanted in through the mullioned windows and shone here and there upon some burnished helmet or corselet upon the walls. As Roderic of Gigha ceased speaking, Erland the Old coughed thrice and stroked his silvery beard.
Had he been in less hurry he might have reached the isle of Gigha by taking a larger craft and sailing down Kilbrannan Sound and so round the Mull of Kintyre, by the way he had gone with the galleys. But he now adopted a speedier way and a much safer one. The great peninsula of Kintyre, which at the north joins to Knapdale, forms at Tarbert a narrow isthmus of but a mile broad.
Roderic of Gigha, for all that he had been absent from Bute for a score of years, had not forgotten the old landmarks that had been familiar to him in boyhood. After swimming across Loch Fad he found himself among the tall pine trees of the forest of Barone.
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