spare, into a rope strong enough to bear the
weight of a man, and long enough to let
him down from the window to the ledge of
rock. It took us three days to make
our preparations, and by the aid of Mr.
Leslie we managed to break the bars
of the window, and to be let down one
after the other to the rock. Mr. Leslie
himself was the last to descend. We began
our work soon after midnight, but the sun
had risen, and was an hour high on the
horizon ere we completed it. Some lasses
from the neighbouring village having come
to wash their clothes within sight of the
rock gave the alarm to the sentinels, and
fifteen out of our twenty-five were
captured, just as freedom seemed within our
reach. The other ten, of whom Mr. Leslie
was one, managed to escape. I was one
of the fifteen unfortunates brought back
to prison. The Highland captain was furious
against us. It seemed as if nothing
could satisfy him so much as our torture.
One after the other we were stripped naked,
without other covering than a cloth around
our loins, and in that condition were
strapped upon our backs to a board, so that
we could stir neither hand nor foot. Then
with a diabolical cruelty, burning matches
were applied between each of our fingers
of both hands, and between the toes of
our feet, and were left to burn themselves
out. One poor sickly creature, named
Dalgleish, died under this torture; several lost
the use of their hands or feet. I, more
fortunate than the others, only suffered
from some severe flesh wounds, which
speedily healed. We were then put into
a darker vault in the interior, and were
threatened with death on the following
Monday.

The Monday came, but not the death,
though to live as we all lived was to die
daily. In the first week of August,
Captain M'Dougall announced to us, in bad
English, that he was sorry to say the
merciful government had spared our worthless
lives, and banished us to the plantations,
on condition that we should never
again return to Scotland. About the
eleventh or twelfth of August we were
shipped to Leith to the number of one
hundred and fourteen, where, lying in our ship
opposite Musselburgh, twenty-eight of us
addressed a letter to our friends, wherein
we declared that we left our native land by
an unjust sentence, for no other offence than
the performance of our duty, the studying
how to hold by the Covenant and our
baptismal vows, whereby we stood obliged to
resist and testify against all that was
contrary to God's Word. We furthermore
declared that our sentence, first of death,
and afterwards of banishment, was
pronounced against us because we would not
take the oath of allegiance to the king as
lord spiritual as well as temporal, which in
conscience we could not take, because, if
we had done so, we should have denied
that the Lord Jesus was supreme or had
any power in his own church. I do not
know whether this protest was promulgated
among our friends, or published
for the encouragement of the long-suffering
people of Scotland, but it relieved our souls
to sign it.

We lay in Leith Roads, waiting for a fair
wind, thirteen days. After this, the weather
being favourable, we sailed for North
America. On the seventh day, when near
the Land's End, a malignant fever broke
out in our ship, which pressed very heavily
on the weakest of the brethren who had
suffered from the close confinement of
Burntisland, and afterwards of the doleful
Castle of Dunottar. Our captain was a
coarse and brutal man, who behaved to us
with great harshness. Even the fever
which broke out among us did not seem to
soften his temper, and he declared, with
horrid imprecations, that he commanded a
doomed ship in having such canting
hypocrites, and damnable rebels, and
roundheads, aboard, as we were. In one day
seven of the poor people died. The next
day there died five; the third day there
died nine; and as their bodies were thrown
into the sea, one after another, I think
there were few amongst us who did not
envy the dead. But I was not of these.
I clung to my life, and prayed to the Lord
that I might yet be spared to testify in
the flesh to the truth of His Word. In
one hundred and ten days thereafter,
suffering much all the time, and especially
at the last, for want of food and water,
and beating about in contrary winds, we
caught sight of North American land
and the heights of Neversink; with a fair
breeze, we passed the Narrows, and sailed
into the Bay of New York, greatly rejoiced,
every one of us, not excepting our captain,
at once again seeing the dry land.

It was in the midst of the winter, on the
23rd of December, 1685, that we landed at
Hoboken, a village on the southern bank of
the Hudson river, opposite the city of New
York. We were unexpectedly told on
landing that we were free, and might go
where we listed, and do what seemed good
to us, except that if we returned to England
or Scotland we would render ourselves