Wandering Ghost (1746–1747)
The Highlands bled after Culloden.
Villages were razed, glens emptied, cattle driven off by redcoats. Smoke rose in thin, cruel pillars where homes had stood. The sound of the pipes was stilled by law, tartan outlawed, weapons seized. The old ways were crushed beneath the boot of Cumberland's army.
Seumas Gunn — no, Flint — walked alone through it all like a shade unburied.
He kept to deer paths and burns, where water masked his tracks. Nights he slept in caves, under fallen trees, or in peat-cut hollows covered with heather. His plaid, once a badge of pride, was cut into strips to bandage wounds and keep out the cold. His stomach was a gnawing emptiness; he lived on roots, nettles boiled when he dared light a fire, and the rare kindness of a crofter's wife who pressed bannocks into his hand while her eyes darted to the hills for soldiers.
Every day was a narrow escape.
Once, near Strathnaver, he heard the baying of dogs and the shouts of redcoat patrols. He waded into a loch up to his chest, clinging to reeds until his lips turned blue, while muskets glinted on the shore. The dogs sniffed, barked, but lost his trail to the water. Hours later, shivering and coughing, he crawled into a peat-cutting and lay there until dawn.
Another time, he was cornered in a glen by dragoons. He fought like a trapped wolf, claymore flashing, pistols emptying in the dark. Two soldiers fell, another fled bleeding. Flint vanished into the heather before reinforcements came, leaving only blood and fear behind.
Word spread: The Black Gunn still lives.
For every family that fed him in secret, another cursed his name. The bounty had climbed to sixty pounds, a fortune for poor folk. "Hand him over," some whispered, "and we'll eat for a year." Children were warned that if they lied or stole, "The Black Gunn will come for you." He had become a legend — not a man, but a threat.
And yet he endured.
Through hunger, cold, and grief, he endured.
One autumn evening in 1747, Flint stood on a ridge above a glen he had known since boyhood. Once, cattle had grazed here, fires had burned in hearths, laughter had echoed across the moor. Now only blackened timbers remained, smoke long since blown away.
He sank to his knees, hands pressing into the heather. His father's voice came to him — the last command on Culloden's mire: Gunn blood must not die with me.
But what was Gunn blood now? His father and brothers lay in the mud of Drummossie Moor. His clan was scattered, broken. His name was hunted, cursed, outlawed. To call himself Seumas mac Dhomhnaill Ghunn was to invite death, and worse, to bring death to any who harboured him.
He clenched his fists until his nails cut skin. Blood welled, dark against the heather.
"Seumas is dead," he whispered. The words tasted like ash. "Gunn is dead."
The wind carried the sound away, but it did not matter. He knew it was truth.
He rose, shoulders bowed beneath an invisible weight. His claymore was strapped across his back, his dirk at his belt, but he felt naked without his name. Still, he walked on.
From that night, he told no one who he was. To crofters he gave false names. To traders he offered silence and coin. To himself, in the cold dark, he whispered only one word: Flint.
A stone, hard and sharp. A spark-maker. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Thus began his survival.
Descent to the Lowlands (1747)
The Highlands could no longer keep him.
Every glen, every moor, every burn whispered of the dead. Patrols prowled like wolves, and though Flint had evaded them time and again, he knew his luck was a candle burning low. The land itself seemed to reject him — food scarce, kin scattered, the old life outlawed.
One morning, crouched in a peat hovel above Wick, he looked down at himself — hair long, matted with rain; plaid in tatters; boots cracked to the bone. A Gunn warrior, once feared, now little more than a beggar in rags.
He drew his dirk. Not to use it on himself — though the thought lingered — but to cut.
Lock by lock, he hacked away the dark hair that had fallen like a banner past his shoulders. He cut until his head was rough, uneven, the face in the stream below a stranger's. Then he took what remained of his plaid, tore it into strips, and fed them to a fire of damp heather. The smoke stung his eyes. It smelt of wool and peat, and of all he had lost.
When the last scrap burned to ash, he stood. He was no longer a Highlander. He was no longer Gunn.
He was Flint.
The journey south was long and dangerous.
He walked by night, skirting roads, hiding in woods and hollows by day. He avoided villages where redcoats billeted, but sometimes crept near enough to hear drunken voices through tavern shutters, or the clatter of boots in courtyards. At times he stole food from drying racks or henhouses, though the guilt gnawed him worse than hunger.
Crossing the Forth was the worst. Bridges were watched, ferries searched. So he waded at night through a shallow ford, the water biting cold to his chest, claymore held high on his back. He emerged soaked, coughing, teeth chattering, but alive.
On the southern side, the land was different. The moors gave way to tilled fields, stone walls, neat rows of crops. The language on men's lips shifted, Gaelic giving way to Scots and English. Flint kept his tongue still. Silence was safer than betraying himself.
It was late autumn when he first saw Glasgow.
The city rose on the banks of the Clyde, a sprawl of stone and smoke. The air stank of tar and coal, sharper than any Highland peat fire. Hammers rang, saws rasped, men shouted over the din of industry. Ships crowded the river, their masts a forest of wood and rope, sails furled like wings at rest.
Flint stood on a ridge above it, cloak drawn tight, and felt both awe and dread. He had never seen so many people, never heard such a noise. The Highlands had been silence and wind, broken by song or battle cry. This was a constant roar — the voice of trade, of coin, of a new world rising.
He walked down into it, one among thousands.
No one looked twice at him. No one whispered his name. In the Highlands, he had been hunted, cursed, feared. Here, he was invisible.
It was a strange kind of freedom.
The shipyards drew him.
Day after day he lingered by the Clyde, watching men plane timber, hammer rivets, caulk seams. He smelled tar, salt, and smoke, the lifeblood of the whaling trade. He watched keels laid, hulls raised, sails stitched. He saw men brawny as oxen, arms corded with rope and scarred by splinters, heaving beams into place.
It was war of a different kind — war against the sea, against the Arctic cold, against the whale. Flint felt the pull of it, the discipline, the danger.
One day he stepped forward, offering his hands for hire.
The foreman squinted at him — a tall, broad man with the look of hard winters in his bones. "Name?"
Flint paused, then said the first that came to him. "James Flint."
The man grunted. "Highland, eh?"
"Aye," Flint answered, though careful to keep his voice low.
"Fine. We'll see if you can swing more than a sword. Grab that mallet. Show me you've got use."
Flint hefted the tool. It was not so different from a claymore — heavy, unforgiving, requiring strength and precision both. He drove nails into timber with the force of a man who had swung steel against bone. The wood shuddered, the iron bit deep. The foreman nodded once.
"Work's yours. Pay's meagre. But if you're half as strong as you look, you'll last."
And so Flint began again.
The first nights he slept rough on the docks, wrapped in his cloak, the river mist damp in his lungs. Later he rented a cot in a crowded tavern room, the air foul with sweat and ale. He asked nothing, gave nothing, kept his head down.
But day by day, coin gathered in his hand.
And slowly, the rhythm of shipbuilding became his new battle-drum.
Among Shipwrights (1748–1751)
The Clyde became Flint's battlefield.
Not the heather and moor of his youth, but planks of oak and pine, iron nails, tar and hemp. Each day began with the roar of voices, the hammer of mallets, the rasp of saws. The shipyard was chaos made into order, a place where timber grew into hulls, where sweat turned into vessels that would brave the Arctic seas.
Flint bent himself to the work.
His arms, once trained for claymore and targe, found new rhythm with hammer and adze. He drove nails into oak with blows that rang like musket fire, shaped beams with strokes steady as swordplay. When others tired, he kept swinging. When others cursed splinters and rope-burn, he bore them in silence. His body hardened further, muscle corded like ship's rope.
The men noticed.
"He works like three," one muttered.
"Aye, and never breaks his back," another replied.
"Don't cross him, though. There's a look in his eye."
For though Flint spoke little, his gaze was fierce. Some said he stared as if weighing whether to cut a man down. Some swore they had seen him smile only when steel was in his hands.
But respect came slowly, and often through blood.
Dockside life was harsh. Coin was scarce, and gangs prowled the taverns and alleys. One evening, carrying his week's wages in a pouch at his belt, Flint was cornered by three men near the wynd.
"Hand it over, Highland bastard," one sneered, knife glinting.
Flint's hand closed on his dirk. He said nothing.
The first lunged. Flint sidestepped, drove his fist into the man's jaw, then buried the dirk in his side. The second swung a cudgel; Flint raised his arm, took the blow on muscle and bone, then slashed low, cutting the man's thigh. The third turned to flee, but Flint's hand caught his collar. He slammed him against the wall, pressing the dirk's bloody edge to his throat.
"Go," Flint growled, the first word he had spoken that night.
The man fled into the dark.
The others groaned on the cobbles. Flint wiped his blade, tucked his pouch deeper, and walked on. His pace never faltered.
Word spread through the docks: James Flint was not a man to cross.
In the yards, he became indispensable. Foremen saw his discipline, his tireless labour. Merchants saw his strength, his silence, his refusal to waste time on drink or dice. He learned fast — not only the craft of building ships, but the trade they served.
Whalers, bound for Greenland, needed strong hulls, broad beams, iron nails thick as a man's thumb. They carried casks for oil, racks for harpoons, decks sturdy enough for men to flense a whale beside the ship. Flint studied it all — the design of keels, the art of rigging, the balance of weight and sail. He asked questions, watched, listened.
At night, while others drank, he traced lines in chalk on planks, sketching hulls and masts. His hand was clumsy at first, but grew steadier. Soon, he could draw a ship as surely as he once sharpened a blade.
The years hardened him further, but also gave him something he had not known since Culloden: purpose.
Not kin, not clan, but craft.
Yet the Highland in him never slept.
When the foreman once mocked him for silence — "Cat got your tongue, Flint?" — he met the man's eyes, cold and sharp. "Better silence than foolish words." The foreman laughed, but with unease.
When gangs tried again to test him, he broke a man's wrist with a hammer and sent him screaming into the Clyde. None troubled him after.
And when the work was done, and he stood on the wharf watching a new-built whaler slip into the water, Flint felt something stir. Not pride — not yet — but the sense that he had carved a place for himself in this Lowland world, as once he had carved through redcoat ranks.
By 1751, his name was known not just among shipwrights, but among merchants.
"James Flint," they said, "is a man you can trust to finish what he begins. He works like a Highland bull, but his head is sharp as well."
He had saved coin, enough to buy small shares in vessels. He dealt carefully, always cautious, never revealing more than needed. He wore plain clothes, ate simple meals, drank sparingly. Yet behind that restraint lay hunger — not for food, but for power.
The price of survival, he was learning, was not only silence and disguise. It was ambition.
The Price of Survival (1752–1759)
By 1752, James Flint was no longer merely a shipwright. He was a partner.
The yards that once paid him by the week now looked to him for direction. He had bought shares with his savings, then more shares with profit. He hired men, trained them, drove them as he once drove himself. Soon, he controlled yards along the Clyde, and vessels left under his name for Greenland.
Whalers, big-bellied and strong, their hulls tarred black, their holds fitted for casks of oil. Flint watched them launch, their masts stabbing the sky, their sails unfurling like wings. Each one was a fortress against the sea, and each one a vein of silver flowing into his coffers.
He left trusted managers to oversee the labour. He knew men well enough to see who was steady and who was weak, who could be bought and who could not. His Highland sense for kinship had turned cold — loyalty was coin, nothing more.
With his business secured, Flint turned to something he had long denied himself: learning.
That same year he enrolled at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen, two years after it opened its doors.
The halls were filled with young men of merchants and lairds, eager for arithmetic, navigation, the Latin tongue. Flint stood among them, taller, older, his hands scarred by blade and hammer alike. Some sneered at his rough speech, his silence, his age. But Flint did not come to win friends. He came to sharpen the only weapon he had left: his mind.
He bent himself to study as he had once bent to shipbuilding, as he had once bent to war. Numbers became sails, trade winds, profits and losses traced in chalk on slates. Geography became not hills and glens, but oceans, coasts, and harbours. Language became the key to letters of credit, contracts, and diplomacy.
The tutors noted his intensity, though not his brilliance. He was not a scholar born, but a soldier repurposed. He worked harder than all, rose earlier, stayed later. When others went to drink, Flint studied by tallow light until his eyes burned.
He left the College with more than learning. He left with the conviction that wealth and knowledge together were a shield thicker than steel.
By 1759, Flint was rich.
His yards thrived. His ships returned heavy with whale oil, baleen, and bone. The oil lit lamps across Britain, the baleen stiffened the stays of fashionable corsets, the bones found use in tools. He had coin enough for fine clothes, for a townhouse in Aberdeen, for wine and horses and silk.
And yet he lived simply still. His coats were plain, his meals modest, his household sparse. The wealth he poured back into ships, into trade, into the fortress he was building against the world.
But at night, when silence fell, the fortress crumbled.
He dreamed of Culloden. Of his father's claymore falling into the mire. Of his brothers' screams. Of the Cailleach's words — He will think himself a ghost.
And waking, he would rise and walk his halls alone, a candle in hand. The stone floors echoed with his steps, but no other voices answered. He was master of much, but lord of nothing.
This was the price of survival.
One evening, standing on the wharf in Glasgow, Flint watched a new-built whaler slip into the Clyde. Its hull gleamed, its sails caught the wind, and men cheered as it moved toward the open sea. Behind him the city smoked, chimneys belching black into the sky. Ahead, the sea stretched endless, swallowing the sun in red fire.
He stood between them — the land that had made him and the sea that now sustained him — and felt neither as home.
A merchant at his side clapped him on the shoulder. "Fine ship, Flint. She'll make you a fortune."
Flint gave a small nod. His eyes never left the horizon.
In the fading light, his reflection shimmered on the water — tall, broad, cloaked in shadow. He thought of the boy lifted to dawn on Bruan's cliffs, of the warrior charging through sleet at Falkirk, of the fugitive whispering his name to the heather.
All gone. All burned. All traded.
He had survived.
But survival had cost him everything.