University of Virginia Library

1. THE
RED ROVER,
A TALE. VOL. I.

CHAPTER I.

All's Well that ends Well.

No one, who is familiar with the bustle and activity
of an American commercial town, would recognize,
in the repose which now reigns in the ancient
mart of Rhode Island, a place that, in its day, has
been ranked amongst the most important ports along
the whole line of our extended coast. It would
seem, at the first glance, that nature had expressly
fashioned the spot to anticipate the wants and to
realize the wishes of the mariner. Enjoying the
four great requisites of a safe and commodious haven,
a placed basin, an outer harbour, and a convenient
roadstead, with a clear offing, Newport appeared,
to the eyes of our European ancestors, designed to
shelter fleets and to nurse a race of hardy and expert
seamen. Though the latter anticipation has
not been entirely disappointed, how little has reality
answered to expectation in respect to the former!
A successful rival has arisen, even in the immediate
vicinity of this seeming favourite of nature, to defeat
all the calculations of mercantile sagacity, and to
add another to the thousand existing evidences “that
the wisdom of man is foolishness.”

There are few towns of any magnitude, within
our broad territories, in which so little change has
been effected in half a century as in Newport. Until
the vast resources of the interior were developed,

the beautiful island on which it stands was a chosen
retreat of the affluent planters of the south, from the
heats and diseases of their burning climate. Here
they resorted in crowds, to breathe the invigorating
breezes of the sea. Subjects of the same government,
the inhabitants of the Carolinas and of Jamaica
met here, in amity, to compare their respective
habits and policies, and to strengthen each other in
a common delusion, which the descendants of both,
in the third generation, are beginning to perceive
and to regret.

The communion left, on the simple and unpractised
offspring of the Puritans, its impression both
of good and evil. The inhabitants of the country,
while they derived, from the intercourse, a portion
of that bland and graceful courtesy for which the
gentry of the southern British colonies were so distinguished,
did not fail to imbibe some of those peculiar
notions, concerning the distinctions in the
races of men, for which they are no less remarkable.
Rhode Island was the foremost among the New-England
provinces to recede from the manners and
opinions of their simple ancestors. The first shock
was given, through her, to that rigid and ungracious
deportment which was once believed a necessary
concomitant of true religion, a sort of outward
pledge of the healthful condition of the inward man;
and it was also through her that the first palpable
departure was made from those purifying principles
which might serve as an apology for even far more
repulsive exteriors. By a singular combination of
circumstances and qualities, which is, however, no
less true than perplexing, the merchants of Newport
were becoming, at the same time, both slave-dealers
and gentlemen.

Whatever might have been the moral condition
of its proprietors at the precise period of 1759, the
island itself was never more enticing and lovely. Its

swelling crests were still crowned with the wood of
centuries; its little vales were then covered with the
living verdure of the north; and its unpretending,
but neat and comfortable villas lay sheltered in
groves, and embedded in flowers. The beauty and
fertility of the place gained for it a name which,
probably, expressed far more than was, at that early
day, properly understood. The inhabitants of the
country styled their possessions the “Garden of
America.” Neither were their guests, from the
scorching plains of the south, reluctant to concede
so imposing a title to distinction. The appellation
descended even to our own time; nor was it entirely
abandoned, until the traveller had the means of
contemplating the thousand broad and lovely vallies
which, fifty years ago, lay buried in the dense shadows
of the forest.

The date we have just named was a period fraught
with the deepest interest to the British possessions
on this Continent. A bloody and vindictive war,
which had been commenced in defeat and disgrace,
was about to end in triumph. France was deprived
of the last of her possessions on the main, while the
immense region which lay between the bay of Hudson
and the territories of Spain submitted to the
power of England. The colonists had shared largely
in contributing to the success of the mother country.
Losses and contumely, that had been incurred by
the besotting prejudices of European commanders,
were beginning to be forgotten in the pride of success.
The blunders of Braddock, the indolence of
Loudon, and the impotency of Abercrombie, were
repaired by the vigour of Amherst, and the genius
of Wolfe. In every quarter of the globe the arms
of Britain were triumphant. The loyal provincials
were among the loudest in their exultations and rejoicings;
wilfully shutting their eyes to the scanty
meed of applause that a powerful people ever reluctantly

bestows on its dependants, as though love
of glory, like avarice, increases by its means of indulgence.

The system of oppression and misrule, which
hastened a separation that sooner or later must have
occurred, had not yet commenced. The mother
country, if not just, was still complaisant. Like
all old and great nations, she was indulging in the
pleasing, but dangerous, enjoyment of self-contemplation.
The qualities and services of a race, who
were believed to be inferior, were, however, soon
forgotten; or, if remembered, it was in order to be
misrepresented and vituperated. As this feeling increased
with the discontent of the civil dissensions,
it led to still more striking injustice, and greater folly.
Men who, from their observations, should have
known better, were not ashamed to proclaim, even
in the highest council of the nation, their ignorance
of the character of a people with whom they had
mingled their blood. Self-esteem gave value to the
opinions of fools. It was under this soothing infatuation
that veterans were heard to disgrace their noble
profession, by boastings that should have been
hushed in the mouth of a soldier of the carpet; it
was under this infatuation that Burgoyne gave, in
the Commons of England, that memorable promise
of marching from Quebec to Boston, with a force he
saw fit to name—a pledge that he afterwards redeemed,
by going over the same ground, with twice
the number of followers, as captives; and it was
under this infatuation that England subsequently
threw away her hundred thousand lives, and lavished
her hundred millions of treasure.

The history of that memorable struggle is familiar
to every American. Content with the knowledge
that his country triumphed, he is willing to let the
glorious result take its proper place in the pages of
history. He sees that her empire rests on a broad

and natural foundation, which needs no support from
venal pens; and, happily for his peace of mind, no
less than for his character, he feels that the prosperity
of the Republic is not to be sought in the degradation
of surrounding nations.

Our present purpose leads us back to the period
of calm which preceded the storm of the Revolution.
In the early days of the month of October
1759, Newport, like every other town in America,
was filled with the mingled sentiment of grief and
joy. The inhabitants mourned the fall of Wolfe,
while they triumphed in his victory. Quebec, the
strong-hold of the Canadas, and the last place of any
importance held by a people whom they had been
educated to believe were their natural enemies, had
just changed its masters. That loyalty to the Crown
of England, which endured so much before the
strange principle became extinct, was then at its
height; and probably the colonist was not to be found
who did not, in some measure, identify his own honour
with the fancied glory of the head of the house
of Brunswick. The day on which the action of our
tale commences had been expressly set apart to manifest
the sympathy of the good people of the town,
and its vicinity, in the success of the royal arms. It
had opened, as thousands of days have opened since,
with the ringing of hells and the firing of cannon;
and the population had, at an early hour, poured into
the streets of the place, with that determined zeal,
in the cause of merriment, which ordinarily makes
preconcerted joy so dull an amusement. The chosen
orator of the day had exhibited his eloquence,
in a sort of prosaic monody in praise of the dead
hero, and had sufficiently manifested his loyalty, by
laying the glory, not only of that sacrifice, but all
that had been reaped by so many thousands of his
brave companions also, most humbly at the foot of
the throne.

Content with these demonstrations of their allegiance,
the inhabitants began to retire to their dwellings,
as the sun settled towards those immense regions
which then lay an endless and unexplored wilderness,
but which now are teeming with the fruits
and enjoyments of civilized life. The countrymen
from the environs, and even from the adjoining main,
were beginning to turn their faces towards their distant
homes, with that frugal care which still distinguishes
the inhabitants of the country even in the
midst of their greatest abandonment to pleasures, in
order that the approaching evening might not lead
them into expenditures which were not deemed germain
to the proper feelings of the occasion. In short,
the excess of the hour was past, and each individual
was returning into the sober channels of his ordinary
avocations, with an earnestness and discretion
which proved he was not altogether unmindful of
the time that had been squandered in the display of
a spirit that he already appeared half disposed to
consider a little supererogatory.

The sounds of the hammer, the axe, and the saw
were again heard in the place; the windows of more
than one shop were half opened, as if its owner had
made a sort of compromise between his interests
and his conscience; and the masters of the only
three inns in the town were to be seen standing before
their doors, regarding the retiring countrymen
with eyes that plainly betrayed they were seeking
customers among a people who were always much
more ready to sell than to buy. A few noisy and
thoughtless seamen, belonging to the vessels in the
haven, together with some half dozen notorious tavern-hunters
were, however, the sole fruits of all
their nods of recognition, inquiries into the welfare
of wives and children, and, in some instances, of
open invitations to alight and drink.

Worldly care, with a constant, though sometimes

an oblique, look at the future state, formed the great
characteristic of all that people who then dwelt in
what were called the provinces of New-England.
The business of the day, however, was not forgotten,
though it was deemed unnecessary to digest its
proceedings in idleness, or over the bottle. The
travellers along the different roads that led into the
interior of the island formed themselves into little
knots, in which the policy of the great national events
they had just been commemorating, and the manner
they had been treated by the different individuals
selected to take the lead in the offices of the day,
were freely handled, though still with great deference
to the established reputations of the distinguished
parties most concerned. It was every where conceded,
that the prayers, which had been in truth a
little conversational and historical, were faultless
and searching exercises; and, on the whole, (though
to this opinion there were some clients of an advocate
adverse to the orator, who were moderate dissenters)
it was established, that a more eloquent oration
had never issued from the mouth of man, than
had that day been delivered in their presence. Precisely
in the same temper was the subject discussed
by the workmen on a ship, which was then building
in the harbour, and which, in the same spirit of provincial
admiration that has since immortalized so
many edifices, bridges, and even individuals, within
their several precincts, was confidently affirmed to
be the rarest specimen then extant of the nice proportions
of naval architecture!

Of the orator himself it may be necessary to say
a word, in order that so remarkable an intellectual
prodigy should fill his proper place in our frail and
short-lived catalogue of the worthies of that day.
He was the usual oracle of his neighbourhood, when
a condensation of its ideas on any great event, like

the one just mentioned, became necessary. His
learning was justly computed, by comparison, to be
of the most profound and erudite character; and it
was very truly affirmed to have astonished more than
one European scholar, who had been tempted, by a
fame which, like heat, was only the more intense
from its being so confined, to grapple with him on
the arena of ancient literature. He was a man who
knew how to improve these high gifts to his exclusive
advantage. In but one instance had he ever
been thrown enough off his guard to commit an act
that had a tendency to depress the reputation he had
gained in this manner; and that was, in permitting
one of his laboured flights of eloquence to be printed;
or, as his more witty though less successful rival,
the only other lawyer in the place, expressed it,
in suffering one of his fugitive essays to be caught.
But even this experiment, whatever might have been
its effects abroad, served to confirm his renown at
home. He now stood before his admirers in all the
dignity of types; and it was in vain for that miserable
tribe of “animalculæ, who live by feeding on
the body of genius,” to attempt to undermine a reputation
that was embalmed in the faith of so many
parishes. The brochure was diligently scattered
through the provinces, lauded around the tea-pot,
openly extolled in the prints—by some kindred
spirit, as was manifest in the striking similarity of
style—and by one believer, more zealous or perhaps
more interested than the rest, actually put on board
the next ship which sailed for “home,” as England
was then affectionately termed, enclosed in an envelope
which bore an address no less imposing than
the Majesty of Britian. Its effect on the straight-going
mind of the dogmatic German, who then filled
the throne of the Conqueror, was never known,
though they, who were in the secret of the transmission,
long looked, in vain, for the signal reward
that was to follow so striking an exhibition of human
intellect.

Notwithstanding these high and beneficent gifts,
their possessor was now as unconsciously engaged in
that portion of his professional labours which bore
the strongest resemblance to the occupation of a scrivener,
as though nature, in bestowing such rare endowments,
had denied him the phrenological quality
of self-esteem. A critical observer might, however,
have seen, or fancied that he saw, in the forced humility
of his countenance, certain gleamings of a triumph
that should not properly be traced to the fall
of Quebec. The habit of appearing meek had,
however, united with a frugal regard for the precious
and irreclaimable minutes, in producing this extraordinary
diligence in a pursuit of a character that was
so humble, when compared with his recent mental
efforts.

Leaving this gifted favourite of fortune and nature,
we shall pass to an entirely different individual, and
to another quarter of the place. The spot, to which
we wish now to transport the reader, was neither
more nor less than the shop of a tailor, who did not
disdain to perform the most minute offices of his vocation,
in his own heedful person. The humble edifice
stood at no great distance from the water, in the
skirts of the town, and in such a situation as to enable
its occupant to look out upon the loveliness of
the inner basin, and, through a vista cut by the
element between islands, even upon the lake-like
scenery of the outer harbour. A small, though little
frequented wharf lay before his door, while a certain
air of negligence, and the absence of bustle, sufficiently
manifested that the place itself was not the
immediate site of the much-boasted commercial
prosperity of the port.

The afternoon was like a morning in spring, the

breeze which occasionally rippled the basin possessing
that peculiarly bland influence which is so often
felt in the American autumn; and the worthy mechanic
laboured at his calling, seated on his shop-board,
at an open window, far better satisfied with
himself than many of those whose fortune it is to be
placed in state, beneath canopies of velvet and gold.
On the outer side of the little building, a tall, awkward,
but vigorous and well-formed countryman was
lounging, with one shoulder placed against the side
of the shop, as if his legs found the task of supporting
his heavy frame too grievous to be endured without
assistance, seemingly in waiting for the completion
of the garment at which the other toiled, and
with which he intended to adorn the graces of his
person, in an adjoining parish, on the succeeding
sabbath.

In order to render the minutes shorter, and, possibly,
in indulgence to a powerful propensity to talk,
of which he who wielded the needle was somewhat
the subject, but few of the passing moments were
suffered to escape without a word from one or the
other of the parties. As the subject of their discourse
had a direct reference to the principal matter
of our tale, we shall take leave to give such portions
of it to the reader as we deem most relevant to a
clear exposition of that which is to follow. The
latter will always bear in mind, that he who worked
was a man drawing into the wane of life; that he
bore about him the appearance of one who, either
from incompetency or from some fatality of fortune,
had been doomed to struggle through the world,
keeping poverty from his residence only by the aid
of great industry and rigid frugality; and that the
idler was a youth of an age and condition that the
acquisition of an entire set of habiliments formed to
him a sort of era in his adventures.

“Yes,” exclaimed the indefatigable shaper of

cloth, with a species of sigh which might have been
equally construed into an evidence of the fulness of
his mental enjoyment, or of the excess of his bodily
labours; “yes, smarter sayings have seldom fallen
from the lips of man, than such as the squire pour'd
out this very day. When he spoke of the plains of
father Abraham, and of the smoke and thunder of
the battle, Pardon, it stirred up such stomachy feelings
in my bosom, that I verily believe I could have
had the heart to throw aside the thimble, and go
forth myself, to seek glory in battling in the cause of
the King.”

The youth, whose Christian or `given' name, as it
is even now generally termed in New-England, had
been intended, by his pious sponsors, humbly to express
his future hopes, turned his head towards the
heroic tailor, with an expression of drollery about
the eye, that proved nature had not been niggardly
in the gift of humour, however the quality was suppressed
by the restraints of a very peculiar manner,
and no less peculiar education.

“There's an opening now, neighbour Homespun,
for an ambitious man,” he said, “sin' his Majesty has
lost his stoutest general.”

“Yes, yes,” returned the individual who, either
in his youth or in his age, had made so capital a
blunder in the choice of a profession, “a fine and
promising chance it is for one who counts but five-and-twenty;
most of my day has gone by, and I
must spend the rest of it here, where you see me,
between buckram and osnaburghs—who put the dye
into your cloth, Pardy? it is the best laid-in bark
l've fingered this fall.”

“Let the old woman alone for giving the lasting
colour to her web; I'll engage, neighbour Home-spun,
provided you furnish the proper fit, there'll
not be a better dress'd lad on the island than my own
mother's son! But, sin' you cannot be a general,

good-man, you'll have the comfort of knowing
there'll be no more fighting without you. Every
body agrees the French won't hold out much longer,
and then we must have a peace for want of enemies.”

“So best, so best, boy; for one, who has seen so
much of the horrors of war as I, knows how to put
a rational value on the blessings of tranquillity!”

“Then you ar'n't altogether unacquainted, good-man,
with the new trade you thought of setting up?”

“I! I have been through five long and bloody
wars, and I've reason to thank God that I've gone
through them all without a scratch so big as this
needle would make. Five long and bloody, ay, and
I may say glorious wars, have I liv'd through in
safety!”

“A perilous time it must have been for you, neighbour.
But I don't remember to have heard of more
than two quarrels with the Frenchmen in my day.”

“You are but a boy, compared to one who has
seen the end of his third score of years. Here is
this war that is now so likely to be soon ended—
Heaven, which rules all things in wisdom, be praised
for the same! Then there was the business of '45,
when the bold Warren sailed up and down our
coasts; a scourge to his Majesty's enemies, and a
safeguard to all the loyal subjects. Then, there was
a business in Garmany, concerning which we had
awful accounts of battles fou't, in which men were
mowed down like grass falling before the scythe of a
strong arm. That makes three. The fourth was
the rebellion of '15, of which I pretend not to have
seen much, being but a youth at the time; and the
fifth was a dreadful rumour, that was spread through
the provinces, of a general rising among the blacks
and Indians, which was to sweep all us Christians
into eternity at a minute's warning!”

“Well, I had always reckoned you for a home-staying
and a peaceable man, neighbour;” returned

the admiring countryman; “nor did I ever dream
that you had seen such serious movings.”

“I have not boasted, Pardon, or I might have added
other heavy matters to the list. There was a
great struggle in the East, no longer than the year
'32, for the Persian throne. You have read of the
laws of the Medes and the Persians: Well, for the very
throne that gave forth those unalterable laws was
there a frightful struggle, in which blood ran like
water; but, as it was not in Christendom, I do not
account it among my own experiences; though I
might have spoken of the Porteous mob with great
reason, as it took place in another portion of the
very kingdom in which I lived.”

“You must have journeyed much, and been stirring
late and early, good-man, to have seen all these
things, and to have got no harm.”

“Yes, yes, I've been something of a traveller too,
Pardy. Twice have I been over land to Boston,
and once have I sailed through the Great Sound of
Long Island, down to the town of York. It is an
awful undertaking the latter, as it respects the distance,
and more especially because it is needful to
pass a place that is likened, by its name, to the entrance
of Tophet.”

“I have often heard the spot call'd `Hell Gate'
spoken of, and I may say, too, that I know a man
well who has been through it twice; once in going to
York, and once in coming homeward.”

“He had enough of it, as I'll engage! Did he tell
you of the pot which tosses and roars as if the biggest
of Beelzebub's fires was burning beneath, and
of the hog's-back over which the water pitches, as
it may tumble over the Great Falls of the West!
Owing to reasonable skill in our seamen, and uncommon
resolution in the passengers, we happily
made a good time of it, through ourselves; though,
I care not who knows it, I will own it is a severe trial

to the courage to enter that same dreadful Strait.
We cast out our anchors at certain islands, which
lie a few furlongs this side the place, and sent the
pinnace, with the captain and two stout seamen, to
reconnoitre the spot, in order to see if it were in a
peaceful state or not. The report being favourable,
the passengers were landed, and the vessel was got
through, by the blessing of Heaven, in safety. We
had all reason to rejoice that the prayers of the congregation
were asked before we departed from the
peace and security of our homes!”

“You journeyed round the `Gate' on foot?”—demanded
the attentive boor.

“Certain! It would have been a sinful and a blasphemous
tempting of Providence to have done otherwise,
seeing that our duty called us to no such sacrifice.
But all that danger is gone by, and so I trust
will that of this bloody war, in which we have both
been actors; and then I humbly hope his sacred
Majesty will have leisure to turn his royal mind to
the pirates who infest the coast, and to order some
of his stout naval captains to mete out to the rouges
the treatment they are so fond of giving unto others.
It would be a joyful sight to my old eyes to see the
famous and long-hunted Red Rover brought into this
very port, towing at the poop of a King's cruiser.”

“And is it a desperate villain, he of whom you
now make mention?”

“He! There are many he's in that one lawless
ship, and bloody-minded and nefarious thieves are
they, to the smallest boy. It is heart-searching and
grievous, Pardy, to hear of their evil-doings on the
high seas of the King!”

“I have often heard mention made of the Rover,”
returned the countryman; “but never to enter into
any of the intricate particulars of his knavery.”

“How should you, boy, who live up in the country,
know so much of what is passing on the great deep,

as we who dwell in a port that is so much resorted
to by mariners! I am fearful you'll be making it
late home, Pardon,” he added, glancing his eye at
certain lines drawn on his shop-board, by the aid of
which he was enabled to note the progress of the
setting sun. “It is drawing towards the hour of five,
and you have twice that number of miles to go, before
you can, by any manner of means, reach the
nearest boundary of your father's farm.”

“The road is plain, and the people honest,” returned
the countryman, who cared not if it were
midnight, provided he could be the bearer of tidings
of some dreadful sea robbery to the ears of those
whom he well knew would throng around him, at
his return, to hear the tidings from the port. “And
is he, in truth, so much feared and sought for, as
people say?”

“Is he sought for! Is Tophet sought by a praying
Christian? Few there are on the mighty deep, let
them even be as stout for battle as was Joshua the
great Jewish captain, that would not rather behold
the land than see the top-gallants of that wicked
pirate! Men fight for glory, Pardon, as I may say I
have seen, after living through so many wars, but
none love to meet an enemy who hoists a bloody flag
at the first blow, and who is ready to cast both parties
into the air, when he finds the hand of Satan has
no longer power to help him.”

“If the rogue is so desperate,” returned the youth,
straightening his powerful limbs, with a look of rising
pride, “why do not the Island and the Plantations
fit out a coaster in order to bring him in, that he
might get a sight of a wholesome gibbet? Let the
drum beat on such a message through our neighbourhood,
and I'll engage that it don't leave it without
one volunteer at least.”

“So much for not having seen war! Of what use
would flails and pitch-forks prove against men who

have sold themselves to the devil? Often has the
Rover been seen at night, or just as the sun has been
going down, by the King's cruisers, who, having
fairly surrounded the thieves, had good reason to believe
that they had them already in the bilboes; but,
when the morning has come, the prize was vanished,
by fair means or by foul!”

“And are the villains so bloody-minded that they
are called `Red?”'

“Such is the title of their leader,” returned the
worthy tailor, who by this time was swelling with
the importance of possessing so interesting a legend
to communicate; “and such is also the name they
give to his vessel; because no man, who has put
foot on board her, has ever come back to say that
she has a better or a worse; that is, no honest mariner
or lucky voyager. The ship is of the size of a
King's sloop, they say, and of like equipments and
form; but she has miraculously escaped from the
hands of many a gallant frigate; and once, it is whispered,
for no loyal subject would like to say such a
scandalous thing openly, Pardon, that she lay under
the guns of a fifty for an hour, and seemingly, to all
eyes, she sunk like hammered lead to the bottom.
But, just as every body was shaking hands, and wishing
his neighbour joy at so happy a punishment coming
over the knaves, a West-Indiaman came into
port, that had been robbed by the Rover on the
morning after the night in which it was thought they
had all gone into eternity together. And what makes
the matter worse, boy, while the King's ship was
careening with her keel out, to stop the holes of cannon
balls, the pirate was sailing up and down the
coast, as sound as the day that the wrights first turned
her from their hands!”

“Well, this is unheard of!” returned the countryman,
on whom the tale was beginning to make a
sensible impression: “Is she a well-turned and comely

ship to the eye? or is it by any means certain that
she is an actual living vessel at all?”

“Opinions differ. Some say, yes; some say, no.
But I am well acquainted with a man who travelled
a week in company with a mariner, who passed within
a hundred feet of her, in a gale of wind. Lucky
it was for them, that the hand of the Lord was felt
so powerfully on the deep, and that the Rover had
enough to do to keep his own ship from foundering.
The acquaintance of my friend had a good view of
both vessel and captain, therefore, in perfect safety.
He said, that the pirate was a man may-be half as
big again as the tall preacher over on the main, with
hair of the colour of the sun in a fog, and eyes that
no man would like to look upon a second time. He
saw him as plainly as I see you; for the knave stood
in the rigging of his ship, beckoning, with a hand as
big as a coat-flap, for the honest trader to keep off,
in order that the two vessels might not do one another
damage by coming foul.”

“He was a bold mariner, that trader, to go so nigh
such a merciless rogue.”

“I warrant you, Pardon, it was desperately against
his will! But it was on a night so dark—”

“Dark!” interrupted the other; by what contrivance
then did he manage to see so well?”

“No man can say!” answered the tailor, “but see
he did, just in the manner, and the very things I have
named to you. More than that, he took good note
of the vessel, that he might know her, if chance, or
Providence, should ever happen to throw her again
into his way. She was a long, black ship, lying low
in the water, like a snake in the grass, with a desperate
wicked look, and altogether of dishonest dimensions.
Then, every body says that she appears
to sail faster than the clouds above, seeming to care
little which way the wind blows, and that no one is
a jot safer from her speed than her honesty. According

to all that I have heard, she is something
such a craft as yonder slaver, that has been lying the
week past, the Lord knows why, in our outer harbour.”

As the gossipping tailor had necessarily lost many
precious moments, in relating the preceding history,
he now set about redeeming them with the utmost
diligence, keeping time to the rapid movement of his
needle-hand, by corresponding jerks of his head and
shoulders. In the meanwhile, the bumpkin, whose
wondering mind was by this time charged nearly to
bursting with what he had heard, turned his look
towards the vessel the other had pointed out, in
order to get the only image that was now required,
to enable him to do fitting credit to so moving a tale,
suitably engraved on his imagination. There was
necessarily a pause, while the respective parties
were thus severally occupied. It was suddenly
broken by the tailor, who clipped the thread with
which he had just finished the garment, cast every
thing from his hands, threw his spectacles upon his
forehead, and, leaning his arms on his kness in
such a manner as to form a perfect labyrinth with
the limbs, he stretched his body forward so far as to
lean out of the window, riveting his eyes also on the
ship, which still attracted the gaze of his companion.

“Do you know, Pardy,” he said, “that strange
thoughts and cruel misgivings have come over me
concerning that very vessel? They say she is a
slaver come in for wood and water, and there she
has been a week, and not a stick bigger than an oar
has gone up her side, and I'll engage that ten drops
from Jamaica have gone on board her, to one from
the spring. Then you may see she is anchored in
such a way that but one of the guns from the battery
can touch her; whereas, had she been a real
timid trader, she would naturally have got into a
place where, if a straggling picaroon should come

into the port, he would have found her in the very
hottest of the fire.”

“You have an ingenious turn with you, good-man,”
returned the wondering countryman; “now,
a ship might have lain on the battery island itself,
and I would have hardly noticed the thing.”

“'Tis use and experience, Pardon, that makes
men of us all. I should know something of batteries,
having seen so many wars, and I served a campaign
of a week, in that very fort, when the rumour came
that the French were sending cruisers from Louisburg
down the coast. For that matter, my duty was
to stand sentinel over that very cannon; and, if I
have done the thing once, I have twenty times
squinted along the piece, to see in what quarter it
would send its shot, provided such a calamity should
arrive as that it might become necessary to fire it,
loaded with real warlike balls.”

“And who are these?” demanded Pardon, with
that species of sluggish curiosity which had been
awakened by the wonders related by the other:
“Are these mariners of the slaver, or are they idle
Newporters?”

“Them!” exclaimed the tailor; “sure enough,
they are new-comers, and it may be well to have a
closer look at them in these troublesome times! Here,
Nab, take the garment, and press down the seams,
you idle hussy; for neighbour Hopkins is straitened
for time, while your tongue is going like a young
lawyer's in a justice court. Don't be sparing of your
elbow, girl; for it's no India muslin that you'll have
under the iron, but cloth that would do to side a
house with. Ah! your mother's loom, Pardy, robs
the seamster of many an honest job.”

Having thus transferred the remainder of the job
from his own hands to those of an awkward, pouting
girl, who was compelled to abandon her gossip with
a neighbour, in order to obey his injunctions, he

quickly removed his own person, notwithstanding
a miserable limp with which he had come into the
world, from the shop-board to the open air. As
more important characters are, however, about to be
introduced to the reader, we shall defer the ceremony
to the opening of another chapter.