THE MYSTERY OF THE JACOBITES LAST STAND

Carys Rodgers, 11

BunSgoil Ghaidlig LochAber, Fort William

It was impossible to cook right now. The sea was swelling into a storm. The waves were breaking angrily onto the ship and the strong wind was making it heel. He was supposed to be making the captains dinner. The ship swayed back and forth; he was certain that the ship was going down. He could hear the shouting voices of men from the deck above. The soup pot tipped. That was it - he ran to the hold, broke the seal of a wooden casket with an axe. He filled his pouch with all the gold coins he could carry.

Suddenly - CRASH!

He was thrown to the floor.

He scrambled through the darkness, he could feel water starting to fill his boots.

As he emerged onto the deck he grabbed onto a mast.

Then it was just the wetness and turmoil of the sea.

He was being tossed and turned wildly through the ferocious waves of Loch Nan Uamh. It felt an age of clutching onto a spar of the sinking ship. By some miracle the gale force winds battered him to the golden sand on the shore of Samalaman Beach. He was exhausted and barely able to drag himself away from the unmerciful Loch. He slumped amidst a rocky nook only to find that he fell into slumber straight away.

Nicolas was a sailor on board the now sunken Le Juno that had been part of the shipment of the Spanish gold livres along with the ships Le Mars and La BelIona in April 1746 to support Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite’s.

He woke with a start. Nicolas could hear children nearby. He hid deeper in the rocks. The children were coming closer. Suddenly they stopped. There were two of them.

"Aonghas," said Sìne.

"Ssh, Tha e beò," (He's alive) whispered Aonghas.

Nicolas thought 'was this the language of the Jacobites?' He was cold, his body ached, and he could not speak. The girl took off her shawl and wrapped it around him and ran away. The boy stayed close by and watched over him. The children were talking Gaelic, a language that he did not know.

The girl, Sìne and what appeared to be her mother returned a while later. They wiped his bleeding face and gave him some water, though he struggled to drink. He smiled weakly and closed his eyes.

Nicolas had died.

Aonghas, Sìne and their mother were Jacobites in hiding. Sìne bent down to retrieve her shawl and underneath Nicolas she saw the pouch and a glimmer of gold. "Oh! SeaII seo, buinn òir!" (Oh! Look here, gold coins!).

They all dragged Nicolas to a nearby field. They buried him, leaving a handful of the gold coins in his pouch and made a small cairn in his memory. Would the gold coins that they took bring them happiness?