 | CHAPTER XXI.
In which Robin Day meets another surprise, and a perilous one;
which is succeeded by a story of much interest to the Intendant. The adventures of Robin Day |  |
21. CHAPTER XXI.
In which Robin Day meets another surprise, and a perilous one;
which is succeeded by a story of much interest to the Intendant.
I now thought I might return again to the society
of the enchanting Isabel; but Colonel Aubrey informed
me he must beg my assistance in the examination
of yet another American; adding, with a
smile, that he fancied I would meet another surprise,
and a pleasant one: “for,” said he, “some of my
troopers have just brought in from the woods, where
they found him lost and famished, a poor man who
reports that he has just escaped from captivity and
torture among the Creeks; and, as they say he has
the appearance of an old sailor, it would not surprise
me if he should prove the poor fellow, your companion
in flight.”
The poor fellow, my companion in flight! A
pleasant surprise, indeed! I was horrified by the
announcement; for, not to say that the appearance
of Captain Brown had always boded me some new
misfortune, his entrance upon the present scene
could not be otherwise than dangerous to me. I
would gladly have dispensed with the interview,
but perceived I could not do so without awakening
suspicion. My hope was that the stranger should,
after all, prove not to be Brown, but some other
person unknown. But, alas, the hope was almost
fellow,” who proved to be Captain Jack Brown
himself, though sorely altered by famine and distress.
His appearance was emaciated and squalid, and even
his spirit seemed broken down by suffering; the
look of fearless self-possession and audacity had deserted
his countenance, which now wore a hangdog
expression of suspicion and fear, enough to convince
any one he was a rogue; and I perceived it had but
an unfavourable effect upon Colonel Aubrey. I
might myself have been astonished at such a change
in the man, who seemed scarce able to look the Intendant
in the face, had I been less occupied with
my own anxieties.”
“Well,” cried the Intendant, “is this the man?”
Brown startled at the words, and looking round
him, caught sight of me, seemed astonished, and
then brightened up in a wonderful manner, as if—
for I thought I could read what was passing in his
mind—satisfied that my presence would be of advantage
to him. “Ah! shiver me, Chowder, my
hearty!” he cried, rushing forward and seizing me
very affectionately by the hand; “and so you've
clear'd them blasted Injun niggurs after all, have
you?—Tell him,” he added in a whisper, which he
sought to conceal from the Intendant, and uttered
with great haste and vehemence—“tell him my name's
John Smith; or d—n me, I'll murder you!—Glad
to see you alive again;”—here he raised his voice,
and shook my hand with terrible ardour; “glad
to see you afloat; for, sink me, I thought the red
rascals had sunk you to Davy Jones long ago.”
With that, letting go his hold of me, he now, as
if quite restored to his courage, raised his eyes to
the Intendant's face, gave him a scrape of his foot;
and hitching up his trowsers, and otherwise putting
the forms and ceremonies of the world, he exclaimed,
“Split my topsails! (axing your honour and
excellency's pardon,) if, so be there's no offence,
I'm an American sailor, sink me; and so I axes to
know what your honour and excellency means, by
making a prisoner of me? because how, I sails under
the stars and stripes, and I knows my rights, and,
split me, I sticks to 'em. But perhaps your honour
and excellency don't understand my lingo? which is
a thing whereof I am sorry, because as how, I don't
know no Spanish.”
His honour and excellency surveyed the speaker
very earnestly, smiled faintly at his eloquence,
passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow, and
then surveyed him again; when, finally, turning to
me, he demanded with abruptness, “Have you
known this man long?”
“Not long, señor,” I replied, not disposed to
speak too much to the point: “but he is the fellowprisoner
I spoke of.”
“To my mind, he has an evil look,” said the
Intendant; “and methinks I have seen him before.
Do you know enough of him to answer for his
honesty?”
Alas! what a question! I knew, perfectly well,
that Brown was a villain deserving the halter; but
the services he had rendered me among the Creeks,
and especially his manful attempt to snatch me from
the stake, even at the risk of his own life, dwelt
upon my memory, and I was loath to say any
thing to his prejudice. But to assume the responsibility
of giving him a good name was entirely too
much for my gratitude.
“I should be sorry, señor,” I replied, “to be
answerable for the honesty of any person, upon so
throat; for I felt that, however evasive, it involved a
substantial falsehood.
“His name,” demanded Colonel Aubrey.
“Really,” said I, “I am not certain I know even
that. He told me once it was Smith: but”—Here
Brown gave me a direful look of warning and
menace, which I disregarded; for I found that one
falsehood in his favour was all my conscience would
permit—“at other times, I understood him it was
Brown.”
“Brown!” ejaculated the Intendant, starting
wildly from the chair, on which he had taken his
seat, and advancing towards Brown; who immediately
putting a good face on the matter, exclaimed—
“Ay, your honour, there's no gainsaying it;
that's name I sometimes sails under, and, mayhap,
have the best right to, because why, it belongs to
the family.”
“Brown!” again cried Colonel Aubrey, surveying
him with the utmost agitation. “Can it be!
Is it possible? I knew the face. And yet—and
yet”—And here the disorder of his spirits rendered
his expressions for a moment inarticulate; and he
sat down again upon the chair; from which, however,
he immediately afterwards sprang up, exclaiming,
“Fellow, if you be he indeed, you must know
me. Look! My name is Aubrey! Seventeen
years have not yet changed me so far that you can
say you do not remember me?”
“Never saw your honour's excellency before in
all my life,” said Brown, with great apparent
sincerity.
“If you have lost all memory of me,” said the
Intendant, seizing Brown by the arm, and pointing
hanging upon the wall—“If you have lost all
memory of me, him, at least, you cannot have
forgotten!”
I had been greatly struck by this singular turn of
affairs, and was burning with curiosity to know
what fate could have ever connected the affairs of
the Intendant with such a rogue as Brown. And,
it may be supposed, I looked on with a double interest
when the portrait was referred to—that very
picture, or its duplicate, which, when I had pointed
Brown's attention to it, in Mr. Bloodmoney's house,
had discomposed him not a little, and drawn from
him the explanation, that it was “an old friend of
his who had gone to Davy Jones long before.”—
It produced a somewhat similar effect upon him on
the present occasion; and he muttered, “Ay!
I knows him! It looks just like him, when—”
But he interrupted himself. “I knows him,” he
repeated; “poor gentleman. His name was Mowbray
—”
“Aubrey! Aubrey!” cried the Intendant, with a
smothered voice.
“Well, it may be,” said Brown, “but I always
thought it was Mowbray; and, sure, his own brother,
the sodger, told us so—the skipper and me—when
he bought us over to the sarvice. It was Aubrey,
or Mowbray; and, poor gentleman, the hellcats
(whereof I mean, the d—d Spanish constables,) were
after him; because how, he was a traitor, or conspirator,
or whatsoever you call it; and so we sent the
boat, and took him off by night, him and the rest of
them and a whole chestful of money; and off went
the Sally Ann a bragging through blue water. Off
she went, and, split me, the blue water soon had the
best of her: she foundered, please your honour's excellency;
poor Mr. Aubrey, if so be that's his name, went
down with her to the bottom.”
“My miserable brother!” cried the Intendant,
covering his face with his hands, and sinking into
a chair. But starting up again, he demanded,
“But how is this? You were saved—others were
saved —”
“None but me and Tim Duck,” said Brown: at
which name Colonel Aubrey eagerly demanded,
turning to me—“What! was not that the name of
the fellow, the captain of the sloop, just before us?”
This question, which I answered in the affirmative,
not without alarm lest Duck should be sent for,
and immediately impeach my honest acquaintance,
had the effect of disturbing the latter likewise; so
that, forgetting his former assurance, that he knew no
Spanish, he hastened to exclaim, “There's more
Ducks than swim on salt water; but this here fellow
can't be Tim Duck, because how, Davy Jones has
got him.”—Fortunately for Brown, the Intendant
was too much excited to notice the inconsistency; and
Brown, to secure his attention to less dangerous subjects,
immediately resumed his story.
“None but me and Tim Duck,” said he, “stood
it out; because how, d'ye see, we took to the boat
—the three men and me, which was the mate, and
was to be skipper next voyage, and the niggur-boy,
which jumped after us; and that was all of us when
we pushed off —”
“What then!” cried Colonel Aubrey, “my poor
brother was abandoned, without an effort to save
him!”
“Why, d'ye see,” quoth Brown, “he would run
below after the younker; and just then, the schooner
took a lurch, and so we pushed off, and down she
he was lying sick in his bunk, unable to help himself.
And so we pushed off in the boat, without
bread, water, or compass, and pitch'd about fourteen
days on a stretch; and two of the men, they died;
and says I to Tim Duck, says I, `Tim Duck, we
must draw lots;' and says he to me, `Let's do for
the niggur;' and so he killed the blacky; and we
lived on him six days; and then came the ship, the
Good Hope of Boston, and pick'd us up; and there,
shiver my timbers, your honour and excellency,
there's the end of the story.”
“It is not yet the end of it,” said Colonel Aubrey,
with a stern voice. “It is now seventeen years
since that vessel sailed out of her port, never more
to enter another; and up to this moment, not a word of
her fate was ever breathed to human being; and no
one but believed she had foundered at sea, and that
every soul on board had perished with her. How
comes it that neither you nor the fellow Duck, the survivors
of the wreck, ever gave information of the calamity
to any one—to owners or underwriters?
how could this have happened, if your story be true?
And, by Heaven, your silence throws a suspicious
character over what was before only deemed a natural
accident of the sea. Speak, fellow: though
you pretend to have forgotten me, I remember you
well—and I remember, too, there were persons who
said the mate of the Sally Ann had not always been
in so honest a vessel, and was not the safest man to
entrust with either a rich cargo or the life of a
wealthy passenger!”
“They lied then, d—n their blood,” cried
Brown, with great emphasis; “for the mate of the
Sally Ann was as honest a lad, at her sailing, as ever
rose from the forecastle to the quarter-deck: and if
whereof I disremember, who made the bargain with
the skipper and me, and brought him and the
younker, and the young niggur, and the money,
aboard, you must know the old skipper said I was
to have the schooner next voyage, blast her, because
how, he was the owner, and he was old, and he
knew I was a man to be depended on. And as for
this here thing that surprises you,” he added, very
bluffly, “because as how your honour never heard
tell of the sinking of the schooner till now, why
sink me, that's matter soon settled. For, d'ye
see, the ship that pick'd up me and Tim Duck was
the Good Hope of Boston; and she was an Injieman
on her outward voyage; and so says Captain Jones,
her commander, to us, says he, `I'll send you back
to the States by the first return ship we meets, or
I'll drop you at the Cape;' but hang me, there was
no return ship we sees; and when we comes to the
Cape, there was nothing there; and the Good Hope
was short of hands, because she lost four men overboard
in a squall; and says Captain Jones to us, says he,
“If you'll enter for the voyage, my boys, you shall
he well treated, and have pay from the time of picking
up into the bargain.” And so we entered for
the voyage, me and Tim Duck; but it was a blasted
unlucky voyage for all of us, for the ship she was
caught in a Typhoon, and wreck'd on the east coast
of Sumatra; and the Malays fell on us, curse 'em;
and them that wasn't drown'd they kill'd, and them
they didn't kill they captivated, whereof I, John
Brown, was one; but Tim Duck they kill'd. And
I was a slave among 'em twelve years, and they
treated me like a niggur: and a Dutch captain that
was there after pepper, he bought me for a barrel of
rum and two old muskets; but he said it was six
a Dutch judge there says I must sarve the Dutch
captain four years for the money; and I sarved him.
And when my time was out, I ships in the Dutch
ship call'd the Polly Frow for Amsterdam: and
there I ships in an American brig call'd the George
Washington, which fetches me right straight to
Boston, where I landed on the seventh day of May,
in this here year of Our Lord, after an absence of
seventeen years, or thereabouts. And then I tells
my story, and they logg'd it right away in the newspapers,
with the whole account of the sinking of the
Sally Ann; whereof nobody cared, because how,
the captain he was the owner, and not insured, and
his wife was married to another man. And,” quoth
Brown, to whose relation I listened with mingled
wonder and distrust, having strong reasons of my
own to believe it was a tissue of falsehoods from
beginning to end—“if you axes to know how a
sailor like me comes into the hands of them cursed
Injuns; why here's the case, blast me: for my friends
they makes me up a purse in Boston, because of my
misfortunes, and so I starts off to try my luck a pedlering;
because, d'ye see, I've had enough of the
sea, sink me, and don't want to see no more of it.
And so I turns my back to it, and that fetched me
among the Injuns, and they snapp'd me up, pack
and all; and they fatted me up to make a feast of
me; whereof this young gentleman” (meaning me)
“will bear witness, because he was tied up with me.
And we broke loose, and sailed off in a canoe; and
she was wreck'd on a log; and we swum for it, him
one way, and me another, and so we parted company;
and I navigated the woods alone; and I'll be
hang'd, but I found it a crooked and dangerous navigation.”
| CHAPTER XXI.
In which Robin Day meets another surprise, and a perilous one;
which is succeeded by a story of much interest to the Intendant. The adventures of Robin Day | |