,
the Mackenzies sallied forth, and rowing towards Kyleakin, lay in wait
for the approach of the Macdonalds. The first of the Glengarry boats
they allowed to pass unchallenged, but the second, which was the
thirty-two-oared galley of the chief was furiously attacked. The
unprepared Macdonalds rushing to the side of the heavily loaded boat,
swamped the craft, and were all thrown into the sea, where they were
despatched in large numbers, and those who escaped to the land were
destroyed "by the Kintail men, who killed them like _sealchagan_."[A]
The body of young Glengarry was secured and buried in the very door-way
of the Kirk of Kintail, that the Mackenzies might trample over it
whenever they went to church. Time passed on, Donald _Gruamach_, the
old chief, died ere he could mature matters for adequate retaliation of
the Kyle tragedy and the loss of his son Angus. The chief of the clan
was an infant in whom the feelings of revenge could not be worked out by
action; but there was one, his cousin, who was the Captain or Leader in
whom the bitterest thoughts exercised their fullest sway. It seems now
impossible that such acts could have occurred, and it gives one a
startling idea of the state of the country then, when such a terrible
instance of private vengeance could have been carried out so recent as
the beginning of the seventeenth century, without any notice being taken
of it, even, in those days of general blood and rapine. Notwithstanding
the hideousness of sacrilege and murder, which, certainly, in magnitude
of atrocity, was scarcely ever equalled, there are many living, even in
the immediate neighbourhood, who are ignorant of the cause of the act.
Macranuil of Lundi, captain of the clan, whose personal prowess was only
equalled by his intense ferocity, made many incursions into the
Mackenzie country, sweeping away their cattle, and otherwise doing them
serious injury; but these were but preludes to that sanguinary act on
which his soul gloated, and by which he hoped effectually to avenge the
loss of influence and property of which his clan were deprived by the
Mackenzies, and more particularly wash out the records of death of his
chief and clansmen at Kyleakin. In order to form his plans more
effectually he wandered for some time as a mendicant among the
Mackenzies in order the more successfully to fix on the best means and
spot for his revenge. A solitary life offered up to expiate the manes of
his relatives was no