Kidnapped

Having taken his first steps into adulthood aboard the Covenant, David is now thrust into the wider world and forced to navigate its complexities, stumbling through the Highland countryside and customs in pursuit of Alan. He has to rely on his wits and instincts, which are still plagued by inexperience, but he is able to make his way thanks to the token Alan gave him. Chapters 15 and 16 contain “The Lad With the Silver Button” in their titles (79, 85), emphasizing David’s status as an inexperienced young man and foreshadowing Alan’s role as his button unlocks sources of direction, insight, and guidance.

David’s time on the islet is a microcosm of the challenges he will face. He is far from helpless and takes steps to survive the wilderness but is hampered by naivete. He scrapes together food and shelter, figures out where he needs to go next, and assesses the challenges in getting there. However, as a southerner who has never been to sea and doesn’t understand the Highlands, he sometimes misses obvious solutions to his problems and survives only through the kindness of locals, whom he initially considered cruel, backward, and simple. David emphasizes his folly in these chapters. He tries to bribe a local man for information, not realizing that he is a noble. He curses the fishermen thinking that they are laughing at him out of cruelty. He also takes up with a swindler as a traveling companion. David is so blinded by his assumptions that he fails to recognize each situation until it’s almost too late. Later, he recontextualizes his experiences through the gentle remonstrations of the locals who help him on his way.

The Highlanders David encounters deepen the novel’s theme of The Duality of Human Nature, both adding more examples and broadening its scope. David has brief interactions with a wide range of characters on the road from Mull to Appin, many of whom challenge his assumptions. While David never explicitly expresses negative thoughts about the Highlanders, the language he uses suggests he thinks of them as uncivilized and savage. After being surprised by the hospitality of an old couple on Mull, however, David reflects, “If these are the wild highlanders, I could wish my own folk wilder” (79). His time on the road isn’t universally positive, though. While he encounters many generous and helpful people, others take advantage of his inexperience to extort what they can, and the section ends with the assassination of the Red Fox. The Highlanders, like the sailors on the Covenant, are a mix of virtue and vice.

David also continues to develop his understanding of moral complexity as he increasingly values the Highlander’s alien (to him) moral code. David sees the poverty and oppression of the Highlanders, thus developing the novel’s thematic exploration of the relationship between Authority, Treachery, and Justice. He sees firsthand how they are robbed of their culture, traditions, leaders, and freedom, and he begins to understand the reasoning of the Highlanders who oppose the crown. The vessel taking Scottish prisoners to the colonies reflects David’s disenfranchisement by his uncle, as does the Red Fox’s plan to remove Stewart tenants from their properties. Henderland, a southerner like David who spent time among the Highlanders, foreshadows the sympathy David will come to feel for their sense of honor and loyalty. “There’s something fine about it,” Henderland says of the Highland morality, “no perhaps Christian, but humanly fine” (88).