The pilot a tale of the sea |
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| 12. | CHAPTER XII. |
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 | CHAPTER XII. The pilot |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
“Food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better.”
Falstaff.
The three men, who now entered the apartment,
appeared to be nothing daunted by the
presence into which they were ushered, though
clad in the coarse and weather-beaten vestments
of seamen who had been exposed to recent and
severe duty. They silently obeyed the direction
of the soldier's finger, and took their stations
in a distant corner of the room, like men who
knew the deference due to rank, at the same time
that the habits of their lives had long accustomed
them to encounter the vicissitudes of the
world. With this slight preparation, Colonel
Howard began the business of examination.
“I trust ye are all good and loyal subjects,”
the veteran commenced, with a considerate respect
for innocence, “but the times are such that
even the most worthy characters become liable to
suspicion; and, consequently, if our apprehensions
of you should prove erroneous, you must
overlook the mistake, and attribute it to the awful
condition into which nebellion has plunged this
project is about to be undertaken on the coast
by the enemy, as he has appeared, we know, with
a frigate and schooner; and the audacity of the
rebels is only equalled by their shameless and
wicked disrespect for the rights of the sovereign.”
While Colonel Howard was uttering his apologetic
preamble, the prisoners fastened their
eyes on him with much interest; but when he
alluded to the apprehended attack, the gaze of
two of them became more keenly attentive, and,
when concluded, they exchanged furtive glances
of deep meaning. No reply was made, however,
and after a short pause, as if to allow time for
his words to make a proper impression, the veteran
continued—
“We have no evidence, I understand, that you
are in the smallest degree connected with the
enemies of this country; but as you have been
found out of the king's highway, or, rather, on a
by-path, which I must confess is frequently used by
the people of the neighbourhood, but which is
nevertheless nothing but a by-path, it becomes
no more than what self-preservation requires of
us, to ask you a few such questions as I trust will
be satisfactorily answered. To use your own
nautical phrases, `from whence came ye, pray?'
and `whither are ye bound?' ”
A low, deep voice replied—
“From Sunderland, last, and bound, over-land,
to Whitehaven.”
This simple and direct answer was hardly
given, before the attention of the listeners was
called to Alice Dunscombe, who uttered a faint
shriek, and rose from her seat involuntarily,
while her eyes seemed to roll fearfully, and perhaps
a little wildly, round the room.
“Are you ill, Miss Alice?” said the sweet,
indeed you are; lean on me, that I may lead
you to your apartment.”
“Did you hear it, or was it only fancy!” she
answered, her cheek blanched to the whiteness of
death, and her whole frame shuddering as if in
convulsions; “say, did you hear it too?”
“I have heard nothing but the voice of my
uncle, who is standing near you, anxious, as we
all are, for your recovery from this dreadful agitation.”
Alice still gazed wildly from face to face. Her
eye did not rest satisfied with dwelling on those
who surrounded her, but surveyed, with a sort of
frantic eagerness, the figures and appearance of
the three men, who stood in humble patience, the
silent and unmoved witnesses of this extraordinary
scene. At length she veiled her eyes with
both her hands, as if to shut out some horrid vision,
and then removing them, she smiled languidly,
as she signed for Cecilia to assist her
from the room. To the polite and assiduous
offers of the gentlemen, she returned no other
thanks than those conveyed in her looks and gestures;
but when the sentinels who paced the gallery
were passed, and the ladies were alone, she
breathed a long, shivering sigh, and found an
utterance.
“'Twas like a voice from the silent grave!”
she said, “but it could be no more than mockery.
No, no, 'tis a just punishment for letting the
image of the creature fill the place that should be
occupied only with the Creator. Ah! Miss
Howard, Miss Plowden, ye are both young—in
the pride of your beauty and loveliness—but
little do ye know, and less do ye dread, the temptations
and errors of a sinful world.”
“Her thoughts wander!” whispered Katherine,
has affected her intellects!”
“Yes, it must be that my sinful thoughts have
wandered, and conjured sounds that it would have
been dreadful to have heard in truth, and within
these walls,” said Alice, more composedly, smiling
with a ghastly expression, as she gazed on
the two beautifully solicitous maidens who supported
her yielding person. “But the moment
of weakness is passed, and I am better; aid me
to my room, and return, that you may not interrupt
the reviving harmony between you and
Colonel Howard. I am now better, nay, I am
quite restored.”
“Say not so, dear Miss Alice,” returned Cecilia;
“your face denies what your kindness to us
induces you to utter; ill, very ill, you are, nor
shall even your own commands induce me to
leave you.”
“Remain, then,” said Miss Dunscombe, bestowing
a look of grateful affection on her lovely
supporter; “and while our Katherine returns
to the drawing-room, to give the gentlemen their
coffee, you shall continue with me, as my gentle
nurse.”
By this time they had gained the apartment,
and Katherine, after assisting her cousin to place
Alice on her bed, returned to do the honours of
the drawing-room.
Colonel Howard ceased his examination of the
prisoners at her entrance, to inquire, with courtly
solicitude, after the invalid; and, when his questions
were answered, he again proceeded, as
follows—
“This is what the lads would call plain-sailing,
Borroughcliffe; they are out of employment in
Sunderland, and have acquaintances and relatives
in Whitehaven, to whom they are going for assistance
harmless.”
“Nothing more so, my respectable host,” returned
the jocund soldier; “but it seemeth a
grievous misfortune that a trio of such flesh and
blood should need work wherewithal to exercise
their thews and sinews, while so many of the
vessels of his majesty's fleet navigate the ocean
in quest of the enemies of old England.”
“There is truth in that; much truth in your
remark,” cried the colonel. “What say you, my
lads, will you fight the Frenchman and the Don,
ay! and even my own rebellious and infatuated
countrymen? Nay, by heaven, it is not a trifle
that shall prevent his majesty from possessing
the services of three such heroes. Here are five
guineas a-piece for you the moment that you put
foot on board the Alacrity cutter; and that can
easily be done, as she lies at anchor this very
night, only two short leagues to the south of this,
in a small port, where she is riding out the gale
as snugly as if she were in a corner of this
room.”
One of the men affected to gaze at the money
with longing eyes, while he asked, as if weighing
the terms of the engagement—
“Whether the Alacrity was called a good sea-boat,
and was thought to give a comfortable
birth to her crew?”
“Comfortable!” echoed Borroughcliffe; “for
that matter, she is called the bravest cutter in the
navy. You have seen much of the world, I dare
say; did you ever see such a place as the marine
arsenal at Carthagena, in old Spain?”
“Indeed I have, sir,” returned the seaman, in
a cool, collected tone.
“Ah! you have! well, did you ever meet with a
it's a dog-kennel to the Alacrity.”
“I have even fallen in with the place you mention,
sir,” returned the sailor; “and must own
the birth quite good enough for such as I am, if
it tallies with your description.”
“The deuce take these blue-jackets,” muttered
Borroughcliffe, addressing himself unconsciously
to Miss Plowden, near whom he happened to be
at the time; “they run their tarry countenances
into all the corners of the earth, and abridge a
man most lamentably in his comparisons. Now,
who the devil would have thought that fellow had
ever put his sea-green eyes on the palace of King
Louis!”
Katherine heeded not his speech, but sat eyeing
the group of prisoners with a confused and wavering
expression of countenance, while Colonel
Howard renewed the discourse, by exclaiming—
“Come, come, Borroughcliffe, let us give the
lads no tales for a recruit, but good, plain, honest
English—God bless the language, and the land
for which it was first made, too. There is no
necessity to tell these men, if they are, what they
seem to be, practical seamen, that a cutter of ten
guns contains all the room and accommodation of
a palace.”
“Do you allow nothing for English oak and
English comfort, mine host,” said the immovable
captain; “do you think, good sir, that I measure
fitness and propriety by square and compass,
as if I were planning Solomon's temple anew!
All I mean to say is, that the Alacrity is a vessel
of singular compactness and magical arrangement
of room. Like the tent of that handsome
brother of the fairy, in the Arabian Nights,
she is big or she is little, as occasion needeth;
and now, hang me, if I don't think I have uttered
say to help me to a recruit, though no lad in the
three kingdoms should appear willing to try how
a scarlet coat would suit his boorish figure.”
“That time has not yet arrived, and God forbid
that it ever should, while the monarch needs
a soldier in the field to protect his rights. But
what say ye, my men? you have heard the recommendation
that Captain Borroughcliffe has
given of the Alacrity, which is altogether true—
after making some allowances for language.
Will ye serve? shall I order you a cheering glass
a man, and lay by the gold, till I hear from the
cutter that you are enrolled under the banners of
the best of kings?”
Katherine Plowden, who hardly seemed to
breathe, so close and intent was the interest with
which she regarded the seamen, fancied she observed
lurking smiles on their faces; but if her
conjecture were true, their disposition to be merry
went no farther, and the one who had spoken
hitherto, replied, in the same calm manner as
before—
“You will excuse us, if we decline shipping
in the cutter, sir; we are used to distant voyages
and large vessels, whereas the Alacrity is kept at
coast duty, and is not of a size to lay herself
alongside of a Don or a Frenchman with a double
row of teeth.”
“If you prefer that sort of sport, you must to
the right-about for Yarmouth; there you will
find ships that will meet any thing that swims,”
said the colonel.
“Perhaps the gentlemen would prefer abandoning
the cares and dangers of the ocean for a
life of ease and gayety,” said the captain. “The
hand that has long dallied with a marlinspike may
be easily made to feel a trigger, as gracefully as a
is and there is not a great resemblance between the
life of a sailor and that of a soldier. There are
no gales of wind, or short-allowances, or reefing
topsails, or shipwrecks, among soldiers—and at
the same time, there is just as much, or even more
grog-drinking, jollifying, care-killing fun around
a canteen and an open knapsack, as there is on
the end of a mess-chest, with a full can and a
Saturday night's breeze. I have crossed the
ocean several times, and I must own that a ship,
in good weather, is very much the same as a
camp or comfortable barracks.”
“We have no doubt that all you say is true,
sir,” observed the spokesman of the three; “but
what to you may seem a hardship, to us is pleasure.
We have faced too many a gale to mind a
cap-full of wind, and should think ourselves always
in the calm latitudes, in one of your barracks,
where there is nothing to do but to eat our
grub, and to march a little fore and aft a small
piece of green earth. We hardly know one end
of a musket from the other.”
“No!” said Borroughcliffe, musing; and then
advancing with a quick step towards them, he
cried, in a spirited manner—“attention! right
dress!”
The speaker, and the seaman next him, gazed
at the captain in silent wonder; but the third individual
of the party, who had drawn himself a
little aside, as if willing to be unnoticed, or perhaps
pondering on his condition, involuntarily started
at this unexpected order, and erecting himself,
threw his head to the right, as promptly as if he
had been on a parade ground.
“Oho! ye are apt scholars, gentlemen, and
ye can learn, I see,” continued Borroughcliffe.
“I feel it to be proper that I detain this man till
would give them better quarters than the hard
benches of the guard-room.”
“Act your pleasure, Captain Borroughcliffe,”
returned the host, “so you do but your duty to
our royal master. They shall not want for
cheer, and they can have a room over the servants'
offices in the south side of the Abbey.”
“Three rooms, my colonel, three rooms must
be provided, though I give up my own.”
“There are several small empty apartments
there, where blankets might be taken, and the
men placed for safe keeping, if you deem it necessary;
though, to me, they seem like good, loyal
tars, whose greatest glory it would be to serve their
prince, and whose principal pleasure would consist
in getting alongside of a Don or a Monsieur.”
“We shall discuss these matters anon,” said
Borroughcliffe, dryly. “I see Miss Plowden
begins to look grave at our abusing her patience
so long, and I know that cold coffee is, like withered
love, but a tasteless sort of a beverage.
Come, gentlemen, en avant! you have seen the
Thuilleries, and must have heard a little French.
Mr. Christopher Dillon, know you where these
three small apartments are `situate, lying, and
beings,' as your parchments read.”
“I do, sir,” said the complying lawyer, “and
shall take much pleasure in guiding you to them.
I think your decision that of a prudent and sagacious
officer, and much doubt whether Durham
Castle, or some other fortress, will be thought too
big to hold them, ere long.”
As this speech was uttered while the men were
passing from the room, its effect on them was unnoticed;
but Katherine Plowden, who was left
for a few moments by herself, sat and pondered
over what she had seen and heard, with a
her gay and buoyant spirits. The sounds of
the retiring footsteps, however, gradually grew
fainter, and the return of her guardian alone,
recalled the recollection of the young lady to
the duties of her situation.
While engaged in the little offices of the tea-table,
Katherine threw many furtive glances at the
veteran; but, although he seemed to be musing,
there was nothing austere or suspicious in his
frank, open countenance.
“There is much useless trouble taken with
these wandering seamen, sir,” said Katherine, at
length; “it seems to be the particular province
of Mr. Christopher Dillon, to make all that come
in contact with him excessively uncomfortable.”
“And what has Kit to do with the detention of
the men?”
“What! why, has he not undertaken to stand
godfather to their prisons?—by my woman's patience,
I think, Colonel Howard, this business
will gain a pretty addition to the names of St.
Ruth. It is already called a house, an abbey, a
place, and by some a castle; let Mr. Dillon have
his way for a month, and it will add gaol to the
number.”
“Kit is not so happy as to possess the favour
of Miss Plowden; but still Kit is a worthy fellow,
and a good fellow, and a sensible fellow, ay! and
what is of more value than all these put together,
Miss Katherine, Mr. Christopher Dillon is a
faithful and loyal subject to his prince. His
mother was my cousin-german, madam, and I
cannot say how soon I may call him my nephew.
The Dillons are of good Irish extraction, and I
believe that even Miss Plowden will admit that
the Howards have some pretensions to a name.”
“Ah! it is those very things called names that
an hour since, you were indignant, my dear
guardian, because you suspected that I insinuated
you ought to write gaoler behind the name of
Howard, and even now you submit to have
the office palmed upon you.”
“You forget, Miss Katherine Plowden, that it
is the pleasure of one of his majesty's officers to
detain these men.”
“But I thought that the glorious British constitution,
which you so often mention,” interrupted
the young lady, spiritedly, “gives liberty to all
who touch these blessed shores; you know, sir, that
out of twenty blacks that you brought with you,
how few remain; the rest having fled on the wings
of the spirit of British liberty!”
This was touching a festering sore in the colonel's
feelings, and his provoking ward well knew
the effect her observation was likely to produce.
Her guardian did not break forth in a violent
burst of rage, or furnish those manifestations of
his ire that he was wont to do on less important
subjects, but he arose, with all his dignity concentred
in a look, and, after making a violent
effort to restrain his feelings within the bounds
necessary to preserve the decorum of his exit, he
ventured a reply.
“That the British constitution is glorious,
madam, is most true. That this island is the sole
refuge where liberty has been able to find a
home, is also true. The tyranny and oppression
of the Congress, which are grinding
down the colonies to the powder of desolation
and poverty, are not worthy of the sacred name.
Rebellion pollutes all that it touches, madam.
Although it often commences under the sanction
of holy liberty, it ever terminates in despotism.
The annuals of the world, from the time of the
Greeks and Romans down to the present day,
he was one of your people's men, and he
ended a tyrant. Oliver Cromwell was another—
a rebel, a demagogue, and a tyrant. The gradations,
madam, are as inevitable as from childhood
to youth, and from youth to age. As for
the little affair that you have been pleased to
mention, of the—of the—of my private concerns,
I can only say that the affairs of nations are not
to be judged of by domestic incidents, any more
than domestic occurrences are to be judged of
by national politics.” The colonel, like many a
better logician, mistook his antithesis for argument,
and paused a moment to admire his own
eloquence; but the current of his thoughts,
which always flowed in torrents on this subject,
swept him along in its course, and he continued—
“Yes, madam, here, and here alone is true liberty
to be found. With this solemn asseveration, which
is not lightly made, but which is the result of
sixty years' experience, I leave you, Miss Plowden;
let it be a subject of deep reflection with
you, for I too well understand your treacherous
feelings not to know that your political errors
encourage you in your personal foibles; reflect,
for your own sake, if you love not only your
own happiness, but your respectability and standing
in the world. As for the black hounds that
you spoke of, they are a set of rebellious, mutinous,
ungrateful rascals; and if ever I meet one
of the damned—”
The colonel had so far controlled his feelings,
as to leave the presence of the lady before he
broke out into the bitter invectives we have recorded,
and Katherine stood a minute, pressing
her forefinger on her lips, listening to his voice
as it grumbled along the gallery, until the
sounds were finally excluded by the closing of a
dark locks, and a smile of arch mischief, blended
with an expression of regret, in her countenance,
as she spoke to herself, while with hurried
hands she threw her tea-equipage aside in a confused
pile—
“It was perhaps a cruel experiment, but it has
succeeded. Though prisoners ourselves, we are
at least left free for the remainder of this night.
These mysterious sailors must be examined more
closely. If the proud eye of Edward Griffith
was not glaring under the black wig of one of
them, I am no judge of features; and where has
Master Barnstable concealed his charming visage!
for neither of the others could be he.
But now for Cecilia.”
Her light form glided from the room, while
she was yet speaking, and flitting along the
dimly lighted passages, it disappeared in one of
those turnings that led to the more secret apartments
of the abbey.
| CHAPTER XII. The pilot | |