Climbing Ben Voirlich

— For several days we had been loitering and lazing at Inversnaid. The tide of travel swept by, but we did not feel the effect of its smallest eddy. Loch Lomond remained placid for us ; the Scottish sky withheld its mists, as though in fear of our maledictions. The silver sheen of the adjoining waterfall in Glen Arklet seemed to gather daily a new glamour from the sun, and Sometimes we thought, as we watched the falling floss, that if we tarried long enough it would turn into a shower of gold.

We often spent our mornings in the vicinity of Rob Roy’s cave, for whose dark and damp recesses we had no especial fondness after curiosity had once been gratified. The world of under-earth, when seen at its best, has little attraction for mortals, and in Rob Roy’s cave it shows to a decided disadvantage. We found an exhilaration, however, in clambering about among the huge boulders with which the slope above the lake is strewn, and in seeking out new points of vision, from each one of which unfolded an infinite variety of lake and mountain views. Nevertheless, after all our experiments, we invariably reverted to a tiny shingly cove, where great banks of soft bracken made love to the beach timorously, like a shy wooer. Here we would stretch at full length in the sun, and watch the ever-changing clouds above the summit of Ben Voirlich, which was now capped with shadow, and now agleam with amber rays. Though from the first we had felt a fondness for that soaring pinnacle, it did not exert its magnetic influence upon us strongly until we had studied it several days. Then, suddenly, we began to realize that we must obey its beckoning. It hade us climb, and there was no escaping the mandate.

The morning on which the final command came down to us was one of those unsurpassed half-days with which nature, in pity, sometimes dowers the Scottish highlands. Before noon we had all our arrangements made, and at two o’clock we embarked in a stanch rowboat. We shaped our course towards Inveruglas Island, which lifts its rounded cap of greenery not far from the opposite shore. When we first dipped our oars there was scarcely a film of cloud near Ben Voirlich’s crest, but by the time we had beached our boat in a tiny bay on Inveruglas the white forerunners of the storm had begun to rally. In the days when the highland clans mustered for war, and descended upon the lowlands through the pass of Beal’maha, there was a stronghold of the MacFarlanes upon this craggy isle. The massive fragments of wall that peep from enveloping boughs bear witness that these clansmen were substantial builders, as they were, if tradition err not, wild and fearless raiders. By night they gathered for their reckless forays, and if “ MacFarlane’s lantern,” the moon, shone in a clear sky at the harvest season, there was anxiety among grain - gatherers in adjacent lowland districts. The shepherds as far as Clyde-side had keen ears for the war-cry of these marauders, — “ Loch Sloy ! Loch Sloy ! ” — which was the ominous herald of their comings and goings.

The south wind was whispering its secrets to the reeds when we landed at the base of Ben Voirlich. Pathway up the mountain there was none, so we were left to choose our own course. At first the slopes were grassy, starred with tiny flowers of blue ; then heather began to show itself, and erelong we were knee-deep in bracken. We were just congratulating ourselves upon having made a propitious start, when, gaining the top of a somewhat steep ridge, we discovered a precipitous seam at our feet which separated the height we had just scaled from the main bulk of the mountain. Down we were forced to scramble, and practically recommence the ascent.

Though the fleecy outriders of the storm had now darker company, we allowed hope to lure us into the belief that it was not above the goal of our desire that the clouds had appointed a tryst. With one or two notable exceptions we made easy work of our climb until we reached the spot where the peak proper springs suddenly and sharply from Ben Voirlich’s shoulder. Here the heather and fern vanished, save in sheltered clefts, and we picked our upward way along the dry bed of a torrent, then by a series of shelves or natural stairs, and finally, on all fours, over a steep slide of loose rockfragments, to a diminutive boulder-dotted plateau just below the summit. While we stretched ourselves here for a long, restful breath, the thunder began to growl behind the peak.

Although we now realized that we had ventured into the very lair of the storm, we resolved not to be baffled of our conquest of the crest, and so gathered our energies for a final effort. The wind came in powerful puffs, smiting us as with invisible goads, and we found it necessary to crouch as near as possible to the earth in order to avoid being carried bodily into space. Thus we reached Ben Voirlich’s crown, and sheltered ourselves as best we might in a slight depression while we looked down into the great gulf where lay Loch Sloy, over which the gray darkness of the tempest brooded. The water was inky, save in one spot near the further shore, where, as fitfully as a firefly in the June dusk, there wavered ever and anon a line of foam. The trees that skirted the base of the mountain cowered as though they were, human creatures smitten with awe. Ben Vane, beyond the loch, was lost in a blur of mist.

Now from the heart of the cloud, and now from its edges, flash followed vivid flash. Soon, borne upon the vicious windbursts, great raindrops fell about us, and we knew if we tarried another moment we should be enveloped in a drenching downpour. With a simultaneous impulse we rose, ran a few steps, and then stumbled, rolled, slid, to where, upon the edge of the little plateau, a gigantic boulder threw out a shelf like a roof. Beneath this shelter we were as dry for the time being, as protected from wind and rain, as though we were in the cosy hotel smoking-room at Inversnaid, where, I will not deny, we rather wished ourselves.

Yet we were rarely recompensed both for past privations and for those in store ; for while we sat listening to the roar of the elements about us, the lake below and to the south was as placid as a smile, a striking contrast to the scene we had just viewed upon the other side of the peak. The remote islands were all aglow with sunshine, and around Ben Lomond’s summit hung a halo of golden haze. Even while we watched, that portion of the cloud which blotted the blue above us parted, there was a sudden gleam of kindling rays, and lo ! opposite, from hill to hill, spanning Glen Arklet, setting distant Loch Katrine in a glorious frame, arched a perfect rainbow, unbroken from end to end, brilliant in color, beautiful beyond words, miraculous.

Upon our descent recollection bids me not to dwell. The bracken through which we must perforce plunge, knee-deep, was soaked; the bog-holes, which had been dry an hour previous, were each a-brim; the shingle and lichened rock-slopes which had afforded reasonably sure footing were wet and slippery. Yet, that evening, as we lingered in the long, slowly deepening twilight beneath the beeches by the Inversnaid pier, we thought of these discomforts laughingly, so quickly does human nature rebound. As the moon rose above the giant shoulder of Ben Arthur (the Cobbler), and lightened the purples that shrouded Ben Voirlich, once again in imagination, as we have often since, we sat beneath the boulder, just below the mountain’s storm-swept crest, and looked into the etherealized distance at the lake of Ellen’s Isle, slumbering in unsullied sapphire under the arches of that marvelous bow.