Ardmillan landed soon after near the ruins of
Tantallan, promising to return in a fortnight, at
latest, with supplies.

The two weeks expired, and several days
more passed without their reappearing. The
only boat was gone now, and the little band
were beginning to lose courage, so Captain
Maitland sent Ensign Dunbar to the officer at
Castleton—after signalling for a boat—
concerning a surrender.

But lo! while the arrangements were pending,
a large barge under full sail, manned by
Middleton, Ardmillan, and eight others, with
a load of provisions, was seen bearing in
between the land and the Bass, under the guns
of which it ran in safety, before it could be
intercepted. Hostilities were at once resumed,
and poor Ensign Dunbar was detained as a
prisoner.

Five days after this, a patrol contrived to
seize the same boat, when quitting the isle in
the night, and there were found in her four
seamen, four women, Swan, the gunner, and the
soldier who had been retained when the castle
was surprised.

The garrison now numbered sixteen men.
They had thirteen sheep, fifteen bolls of meal,
two hundred-weight of biscuit, two barrels of
butter, plenty of peas, salt, candles, coals, hard
fish, salt beef, and a great hogshead of brandy,
taken from the galliot. They had fourteen iron
cannon, sixty stand of arms, ten casks of powder,
plenty of small shot, and four hundred cannonballs,
most of which had been fired at the
island.

This ammunition they stored in the little
chapel, which is of great antiquity, though it
was consecrated to St. Baldwin only so lately as
1542, by order of Cardinal Beaton, four years
before his murder.

A whole year now passed away, and still these
few resolute men defied all efforts to subdue
them.

In March, 1692, the Admiralty sent orders to
Captain Anthony Roofe, commander of the
Sheerness, and to Captain Orton, of the London
Merchant, both then lying in Leith roads, "to
attack the Bass immediately, to do it what
prejudice they could, by breaking the crew and
boats, dismounting the cannon, and ruining the
houses upon it."

In the naval lists for that year, the Sheerness
appears to have been a fifth rate, mounting thirty
guns, with one hundred and thirty men; but
neither she nor her consort could achieve
anything, and quite failed to prevent the
garrison from doubling their store of powder,
pillaging wheat and barley from several sloops
going from Dunbar to Leith, carrying off all
the coals from the pharos on the Isle of
Moy, and seizing a large boat in the harbour
of Dundee.

The Lion, commanded by Captain Edmond
Burd, with a dogger of six guns; and a large
armed pinnace of Kirkaldy, under a Captain
Boswell, were now ordered to cruise off the
island. The only king's ship then called the
Lion had fifty guns and a crew of two hundred
and thirty men, and if Burd's vessel was the
same, she failed to achieve much either; for the
Scottish Jacobites in France had now heard of
these affairs, and in August, 1693, they sent a
French frigate, on the appearance of which in
the Firth the Lion and her two Scottish consorts
vanished, quietly allowing the stranger to lie to
under the guns of the Bass with fresh supplies.
In the same month, however, a privateer of
Dunkirk, which came on the same errand,
was attacked by the Lion and driven off the
coast.

The most serious occurrence for the besieged
was the arrest of a person named Trotter, who
had supplied them with provisions. His execution
was ordered to take place at the hamlet
of Castleton, in view of the garrison; but while
the gallows were being erected, a shot from the
Bass is said to have broken up the assemblage.
This, however, did not prevent the sacrifice being
made elsewhere, according to the Domestic
Annals; but why a shot should reach the mainland
from the isle, and not vice versa, no reason
is given.

The land blockade was conducted by Thomas
Drury, chief of the Scottish engineers, who has
left a very careful drawing of the island and
its prisons, and whose name is still borne by an
old battery, which he constructed on the south
side of Edinburgh Castle. A heavy frigate and
a large armed launch were now ordered to
cruise constantly near the Bass to cut off all
supplies. So the spring of 1694 saw the little
garrison reduced to the verge of starvation,
and growing weary of their secluded life and
hopeless defence.

In April, Middleton, who acted now as captain
of the fortress, made proposals to surrender.
The articles were put into the hands
of a Major Reid and other officers who were
commissioned to treat with those remarkable
offenders, who continued to the last to appear
well off and in the highest spirits.

When the commissioners came to the Bass,
Middleton gave them a hearty luncheon, with
French wines and fine biscuits, inviting them
to "eat freely, as there was no scarcity of
provisions." On their departure, the little band
gave them three cheers, and had the walls lined
with old muskets and stuffed figures, with
military hats and red coats on them, as if there
had been a strong garrison.

The terms were, that the garrison should have
their lives, liberties, and fortunes guaranteed,
whether under sentence of death or not; that
they were to march out with all their baggage,
swords, and weapons "in their own boats,"
and to land where they pleased.

That all persons belonging to the Bass,
whether in or out of prison, should have a ship,
under Captain Formand, provided and
provisioned for their transport to Dunkirk or Havre-
de-Grace, and that those who cared not to go
might remain in Scotland unmolested.

That they should have permission to sell all
their fishing-nets, anchors, cables, and other