 | CHAPTER IV. The wigwam and the cabin |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
James Grayling, with the same eager impatience which he has
been suffered to describe in his own language, had already hired
a boat to go on board the British packet, when he remembered
that he had neglected all those means, legal and otherwise, by
which alone his purpose might be properly effected. He did not
know much about legal process, but he had common sense enough,
the moment that he began to reflect on the subject, to know that
some such process was necessary. This conviction produced another
difficulty; he knew not in which quarter to turn for counsel
and assistance; but here the boatman who saw his bewilderment,
and knew by his dialect and dress that he was a back-countryman,
came to his relief, and from him he got directions where
to find the merchants with whom his uncle, Sparkman, had done
business in former years. To them he went, and without circumlocution,
told the whole story of his ghostly visitation. Even as
a dream, which these gentlemen at once conjectured it to be, the
story of James Grayling was equally clear and curious; and his
intense warmth and the entire absorption, which the subject had
effected, of his mind and soul, was such that they judged it not
improper, at least to carry out the search of the vessel which he
contemplated. It would certainly, they thought, be a curious coincidence—believing
James to be a veracious youth—if the Scotchman
should be found on board. But another test of his narrative
was proposed by one of the firm. It so happened that the business
agents of Major Spencer, who was well known in Charleston,
kept their office but a few rods distant from their own; and to
them all parties at once proceeded. But here the story of James
was encountered by a circumstance that made somewhat against
it. These gentlemen produced a letter from Major Spencer, intimating
the utter impossibility of his coming to town for the space
of a month, and expressing his regret that he should be unable to
avail himself of the opportunity of the foreign vessel, of whose arrival
themselves advised him. They read the letter aloud to James
and their brother merchants, and with difficulty suppressed their
smiles at the gravity with which the former related and insisted
upon the particulars of his vision.
“He has changed his mind,” returned the impetuous youth;
“he was on his way down, I tell you,—a hundred miles on his
way,—when he camped with us. I know him well, I tell you,
and talked with him myself half the night.”
“At least,” remarked the gentlemen who had gone with James,
“it can do no harm to look into the business. We can procure a
warrant for searching the vessel after this man, Macnab; and
should he be found on board the packet, it will be a sufficient circumstance
to justify the magistrates in detaining him, until we
can ascertain where Major Spencer really is.”
The measure was accordingly adopted, and it was nearly sunset
before the warrant was procured, and the proper officer in
readiness. The impatience of a spirit so eager and so devoted as
James Grayling, under these delays, may be imagined; and
when in the boat, and on his way to the packet where the criminal
was to be sought, his blood became so excited that it was with
much ado he could be kept in his seat. His quick, eager action
continually disturbed the trim of the boat, and one of his mercantile
friends, who had accompanied him, with that interest in the
affair which curiosity alone inspired, was under constant apprehension
lest he would plunge overboard in his impatient desire to
shorten the space which lay between. The same impatience enabled
the youth, though never on shipboard before, to grasp the
rope which had been flung at their approach, and to mount her
sides with catlike agility. Without waiting to declare himself or
his purpose, he ran from one side of the deck to the other, greedily
staring, to the surprise of officers, passengers, and seamen, in the
faces of all of them, and surveying them with an almost offensive
scrutiny. He turned away from the search with disappointment.
There was no face like that of the suspected man among them.
By this time, his friend, the merchant, with the sheriff's officer,
had entered the vessel, and were in conference with the captain.
Grayling drew nigh in time to hear the latter affirm that there
among his passengers or crew.
“He is—he must be!” exclaimed the impetuous youth. “The
major never lied in his life, and couldn't lie after he was dead.
Macnab is here—he is a Scotchman—”
The captain interrupted him—
“We have, young gentleman, several Scotchmen on board, and
one of them is named Macleod—”
“Let me see him—which is he?” demanded the youth.
By this time, the passengers and a goodly portion of the crew
were collected about the little party. The captain turned his
eyes upon the group, and asked,
“Where is Mr. Macleod?”
“He is gone below—he's sick!” replied one of the passengers.
“That's he! That must be the man!” exclaimed the youth.
“I'll lay my life that's no other than Macnab. He's only taken
a false name.”
It was now remembered by one of the passengers, and remarked,
that Macleod had expressed himself as unwell, but a few moments
before, and had gone below even while the boat was rapidly approaching
the vessel. At this statement, the captain led the way
into the cabin, closely followed by James Grayling and the rest.
“Mr. Macleod,” he said with a voice somewhat elevated, as
he approached the berth of that person, “you are wanted on deck
for a few moments.”
“I am really too unwell, captain,” replied a feeble voice from
behind the curtain of the berth.
“It will be necessary,” was the reply of the captain. “There
is a warrant from the authorities of the town, to look after a fugitive
from justice.”
Macleod had already begun a second speech declaring his feebleness,
when the fearless youth, Grayling, bounded before the
captain and tore away, with a single grasp of his hand, the curtain
which concealed the suspected man from their sight.
“It is he!” was the instant exclamation of the youth, as he beheld
him. “It is he—Macnab, the Scotchman—the man that
murdered Major Spencer!”
Macnab,—for it was he,—was deadly pale. He trembled like
and his lips were perfectly livid. Still, he found strength
to speak, and to deny the accusation. He knew nothing of the
youth before him—nothing of Major Spencer—his name was
Macleod, and he had never called himself by any other. He denied,
but with great incoherence, everything which was urged
against him.
“You must get up, Mr. Macleod,” said the captain; “the circumstances
are very much against you. You must go with the
officer!”
“Will you give me up to my enemies?” demanded the culprit.
“You are a countryman—a Briton. I have fought for the king,
our master, against these rebels, and for this they seek my life.
Do not deliver me into their bloody hands!”
“Liar!” exclaimed James Grayling—“Didn't you tell us at
our own camp-fire that you were with us? that you were at
Gates's defeat, and Ninety-Six?”
“But I didn't tell you,” said the Scotchman, with a grin,
“which side I was on!”
“Ha! remember that!” said the sheriff's officer. “He denied,
just a moment ago, that he knew this young man at all; now, he
confesses that he did see and camp with him.”
The Scotchman was aghast at the strong point which, in his
inadvertence, he had made against himself; and his efforts to excuse
himself, stammering and contradictory, served only to involve
him more deeply in the meshes of his difficulty. Still he
continued his urgent appeals to the captain of the vessel, and his
fellow-passengers, as citizens of the same country, subjects to the
same monarch, to protect him from those who equally hated and
would destroy them all. In order to move their national prejudices
in his behalf, he boasted of the immense injury which he had
done, as a tory, to the rebel cause; and still insisted that the
murder was only a pretext of the youth before him, by which to
gain possession of his person, and wreak upon him the revenge
which his own fierce performances during the war had naturally
enough provoked. One or two of the passengers, indeed, joined
with him in entreating the captain to set the accusers adrift and
make sail at once; but the stout Englishman who was in command,
better aware of the dangers which would follow any such rash
proceeding. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, had been already
refitted and prepared for an enemy; and he was lying, at
that moment, under the formidable range of grinning teeth, which
would have opened upon him, at the first movement, from the jaws
of Castle Pinckney.
“No, gentlemen,” said he, “you mistake your man. God
forbid that I should give shelter to a murderer, though he were
from my own parish.”
“But I am no murderer,” said the Scotchman.
“You look cursedly like one, however,” was the reply of the
captain. “Sheriff, take your prisoner.”
The base creature threw himself at the feet of the Englishman,
and clung, with piteous entreaties, to his knees. The latter shook
him off, and turned away in disgust.
“Steward,” he cried, “bring up this man's luggage.”
He was obeyed. The luggage was brought up from the cabin
and delivered to the sheriff's officer, by whom it was examined in
the presence of all, and an inventory made of its contents. It
consisted of a small new trunk, which, it afterwards appeared, he
had bought in Charleston, soon after his arrival. This contained
a few changes of raiment, twenty-six guineas in money, a gold
watch, not in repair, and the two pistols which he had shown while
at Joel Sparkman's camp fire; but, with this difference, that the
stock of one was broken off short just above the grasp, and the
butt was entirely gone. It was not found among his chattels. A
careful examination of the articles in his trunk did not result in
anything calculated to strengthen the charge of his criminality;
but there was not a single person present who did not feel as morally
certain of his guilt as if the jury had already declared the
fact. That night he slept—if he slept at all—in the common jail
of the city.
| CHAPTER IV. The wigwam and the cabin | |