University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.

Twelfth Night.

Captain Truck cast an eye aloft to see if everything
drew, as coolly as if nothing out of the usual course had
happened; he and his crew having, seemingly, regarded
the attempt to board them as men regard the natural phenomena
of the planets, or in other words, as if the ship, of
which they were merely parts, had escaped by her own instinct
or volition. This habit of considering the machine
as the governing principle is rather general among seamen,
who, while they ease a brace, or drag a bowline, as the
coachman checks a rein, appear to think it is only permitting
the creature to work her own will a little more freely.
It is true all know better, but none talk, or indeed would
seem to feel, as if they thought otherwise.

“Did you observe how the old barky jumped out of the
way of those rovers in the cutter?” said the captain complacently
to the quarter-deck group, when his survey aloft
had taken sufficient heed that his own nautical skill should
correct the instinct of the ship. “A skittish horse, or a
whale with the irons in him, or, for that matter, one of the
funniest of your theatricals, would not have given a prettier
aside than this poor old hulk, which is certainly just

the clumsiest craft that sails the ocean. I wish King William
would take it into his royal head, now, to send one of
his light-heeled cruisers out to prove it, by way of resenting
the cantaverous trick the Montauk played his boat!”

The dull report of a gun, as the sound came short and
deadened up against the breeze, checked the raillery of Mr.
Truck. On looking to leeward, there was sufficient light to
see the symmetrical sails of the corvette they had left at
anchor, trimmed close by the wind, and the vessel itself
standing out under a press of canvas, apparently in chase.
The gun had evidently been fired as a signal of recall to the
cutter, blue lights being burnt on board of both the ship and
its boat, in proof that they were communicating.

The passengers now looked gravely at each other, for
the matter, in their eyes, began to be serious. Some suggested
the possibility that the offence of Davis might be
other than debt, but this was disproved by the process and
the account of the bailiff himself; while most concluded
that a determination to resent the slight done the authorities
had caused the cruiser to follow them out, with the intention
of carrying them back again. The English passengers
in particular began now to reason in favour of the authority
of the crown, while those who were known to be
Americans grew warm in maintaining the rights of their
flag. Both the Effinghams, however, were moderate in
the expression of their opinions; for education, years, and
experience, had taught them to discriminate justly.

“As respects the course of Captain Truck, in refusing to
permit the cutter to board him, he is probably a better judge
than any of us,” Mr. Effingham observed with gentlemanly
reserve—“for he must better understand the precise position
of his ship at the time; but concerning the want of right in
a foreign vessel of war to carry this ship into port in a time
of profound peace, when sailing on the high seas, as will
soon be the case with the Montauk,—admitting that she is
not there at present,—I should think there can be no reasonable
doubt. The dispute, if there is to be any, has now
to become matter of negotiation; or redress must be sought
through the general agents of the two nations, and not
taken by the inferior officers of either party. The instant
the Montauk reaches the public highway of nations, she is

within the exclusive jurisdiction of the country under whose
flag she legally sails.”

“Vattel, to the back-bone!” said the captain, giving a
nod of approbation, again clearing the end of his cigar.

Now, John Effingham was a man of strong feelings,
which is often but another word for a man of strong prejudices;
and he had been educated between thirty or forty
years before, which is saying virtually, that he was educated
under the influence of the British opinions, that then
weighed (and many of which still weigh) like an incubus
on the national interests of America. It is true, Mr. Effingham
was in all senses the contemporary, as he had been
the school-fellow, of his cousin; that they loved each other
as brothers, had the utmost reliance on each other's principles
in the main, thought alike in a thousand things, and
yet, in the particular of English domination, it was scarcely
possible for one man to resemble another less than the
widowed kinsman resembled the bachelor.

Edward Effingham was a singularly just-minded man,
and having succeeded at an early age to his estate, he had
lived many years in that intellectual retirement which, by
withdrawing him from the strifes of the world, had left a
cultivated sagacity to act freely on a natural disposition.
At the period when the entire republic was, in substance,
exhibiting the disgraceful picture of a nation torn by adverse
factions, that had their origin in interests alien to its own;
when most were either Englishmen or Frenchmen, he had
remained what nature, the laws and reason intended him to
be, an American. Enjoying the otium cum dignitate on
his hereditary estate, and in his hereditary abode, Edward
Effingham, with little pretensions to greatness, and with
many claims to goodness, had hit the line of truth which
so many of the “god-likes” of the republic, under the influence
of their passions, and stimulated by the transient
and fluctuating interests of the day, entirely overlooked, or
which, if seeing, they recklessly disregarded. A less impracticable
subject for excitement,—the primum mobile of
all American patriotism and activity, if we are to believe
the theories of the times,—could not be found, than this
gentleman. Independence of situation had induced independence
of thought; study and investigation rendered

him original and just, by simply exempting him from the
influence of the passions; and while hundreds were keener,
abler in the exposition of subtleties, or more imposing with
the mass, few were as often right, and none of less selfishness,
than this simple-minded and upright gentleman. He
loved his native land, while he saw and regretted its weaknesses;
was its firm and consistent advocate abroad, without
becoming its interested or mawkish flatterer at home, and
at all times, and in all situations, manifested that his heart
was where it ought to be.

In many essentials, John Effingham was the converse of
all this. Of an intellect much more acute and vigorous
than that of his cousin, he also possessed passions less
under control, a will more stubborn, and prejudices that
often neutralized his reason. His father had inherited most
of the personal property of the family, and with this he had
plunged into the vortex of monied speculation that succeeded
the adoption of the new constitution, and verifying the
truth of the sacred saying, that “where treasure is, there
will the heart be also,” he had entered warmly and blindly
into all the factious and irreconcilable principles of party,
if such a word can properly be applied to rules of conduct
that vary with the interests of the day, and had adopted the
current errors with which faction unavoidably poisons the
mind.

America was then much too young in her independence,
and too insignificant in all eyes but her own, to reason and
act for herself, except on points that pressed too obviously
on her immediate concerns to be overlooked; but the great
social principles,—or it might be better to say, the great
social interests,—that then distracted Europe, produced
quite as much sensation in that distant country, as at all
comported with a state of things that had so little practical
connexion with the result. The Effingham family had
started Federalists, in the true meaning of the term; for
their education, native sense and principles, had a leaning
to order, good government, and the dignity of the country;
but as factions became fiercer, and names got to be confounded
and contradictory, the landed branch settled down
into what they thought were American, and the commercial
branch into what might properly be termed English Federalists.

We do not mean that the father of John intended
to be untrue to his native land; but by following up the
dogmas of party he had reasoned himself into a set of
maxims which, if they meant anything, meant everything
but that which had been solemnly adopted as the governing
principles of his own country, and many of which were
diametrically opposed to both its interests and its honour.

John Effingham had insensibly imbibed the sentiments of
his particular sect, though the large fortune inherited from
his father had left him too independent to pursue the sinuous
policy of trade. He had permitted temperament to act on
prejudice to such an extent that he vindicated the right of
England to force men from under the American flag, a doctrine
that his cousin was too simple-minded and clear-headed
ever to entertain for an instant: and he was singularly
ingenious in discovering blunders in all the acts of the republic,
when they conflicted with the policy of Great Britain.
In short, his talents were necessary, perhaps, to reconcile
so much sophistry, or to render that reasonably
plausible that was so fundamentally false. After the peace
of 1815, John Effingham went abroad for the second time,
and he hurried through England with the eagerness of strong
affection; an affection that owed its existence even more to
opposition than to settled notions of truth, or to natural ties.
The result was disappointment, as happens nineteen times
in twenty, and this solely because, in the zeal of a partisan,
he had fancied theories, and imagined results. Like the
English radical, who rushes into America with a mind unsettled
by impracticable dogmas, he experienced a reaction,
and this chiefly because he found that men were not superior
to nature, and discovered so late in the day, what he
might have known at starting, that particular causes must
produce particular effects. From this time, John Effingham
became a wiser and a more moderate man; though, as the
shock had not been sufficiently violent to throw him backward
on truth, or rather upon the opposing prejudices of
another sect, the remains of the old notions were still to be
discovered lingering in his opinions, and throwing a species
of twilight shading over his mind; as, in nature, the hues
of evening and the shadows of the morning follow, or precede,
the light of the sun.

Under the influence of these latent prejudices, then, John
Effingham replied to the remarks of his cousin, and the
discourse soon partook of the discursive character of all
arguments, in which the parties are not singularly clear-headed,
and free from any other bias than that of truth.
Nearly all joined in it, and half an hour was soon passed
in settling the law of nations, and the particular merits or
demerits of the instance before them.

It was a lovely night, and Mademoiselle Viefville and
Eve walked the deck for exercise, the smoothness of the
water rendering the moment every way favourable. As
has been already said, the common feeling in the escape
of the new-married couple had broken the ice, and less
restraint existed between the passengers, at the moment
when Mr. Grab left the ship, than would have been the case
at the end of a week, under ordinary circumstances. Eve
Effingham had passed her time since her eleventh year
principally on the continent of Europe, and in the mixed
intercourse that is common to strangers in that part of the
world; or, in other words, equally without the severe
restraint that is usually imposed there on the young of her
own sex, or without the extreme license that is granted to
them at home. She came of a family too well toned to run
into the extravagant freedoms that sometimes pass for easy
manners in America, had she never quitted her father's
house even: but her associations abroad had unavoidably
imparted greater reserve to her ordinary deportment than
the simplicity of cis-Atlantic usages would have rendered
indispensable in the most fastidious circles. With the usual
womanly reserves, she was natural and unembarrassed in
her intercourse with the world, and she had been allowed
to see so many different nations, that she had obtained a
self-confidence that did her no injury, under the influence
of an exemplary education, and great natural dignity of
mind. Still, Mademoiselle Viefville, notwithstanding she
had lost some of her own peculiar notions on the subject, by
having passed so many years in an American family, was
a little surprised at observing that Eve received the respectful
advances of Mr. Sharp and Mr. Blunt with less reserve
than it was usual to her to manifest to entire strangers.
Instead of remaining a mere listener, she answered several

remarks of the first, and once or twice she even laughed
with him openly at some absurdity of the committee of five.
The cautious governess wondered, but half disposed to fancy
that there was no more than the necessary freedom of a
ship in it all,—for, like a true Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle
Viefville had very vague notions of the secrets of the mighty
deep—she permitted it to pass, confiding in the long-tried
taste and discretion of her charge. While Mr. Sharp discoursed
with Eve, who held her arm the while, she herself
had fallen into an animated conversation with Mr. Blunt,
who walked at her side, and who spoke her own language
so well, that she at first set him down as a countryman,
travelling under an English appellation, as a nom de guerre.
While this dialogue was at its height of interest—for Paul
Blunt discoursed with his companion of Paris and its excellencies
with a skill that soon absorbed all her attention,
“Paris, ce magnifique Paris,” having almost as much influence
on the happiness of the governess, as it was said to
have had on that of Madame de Stael, Eve's companion
dropped his voice to a tone that was rather confidential for
a stranger, although it was perfectly respectful, and said,—

“I have flattered myself, perhaps through the influence
of self-love alone, that Miss Effingham has not so far forgotten
all whom she has met in her travels, as to think me
an utter stranger.”

“Certainly not,” returned Eve, with perfect simplicity
and composure; “else would one of my faculties, that of
memory, be perfectly useless. I knew you at a glance, and
consider the worthy captain's introduction as so much
finesse of breeding utterly thrown away.”

“I am equally gratified and vexed at all this; gratified
and infinitely flattered to find that I have not passed before
your eyes like the common herd, who leave no traces of
even their features behind them; and vexed at finding myself
in a situation that, I fear, you fancy excessively ridiculous?”

“Oh, one hardly dare to attach such consequences to
acts of young men, or young women either, in an age as
original as our own. I saw nothing particularly absurd
but the introduction;—and so many absurder have since
passed, that this is almost forgotten.”

“And the name—?”

“—Is certainly a keen one. If I am not mistaken, when
we were in Italy you were content to let your servant bear
it; but, venturing among a people so noted for sagacity as
the Yankees, I suppose you have fancied it was necessary
to go armed cap-á-pié.”

Both laughed lightly, as if they equally enjoyed the
pleasantry, and then he resumed:

“But I sincerely hope you do not impute improper motives
to the incognito?”

“I impute it to that which makes many young men run
from Rome to Vienna, or from Vienna to Paris; which
causes you to sell the vis-a-vis to buy a dormeuse; to know
your friends to-day, and to forget them to-morrow; or, in
short, to do a hundred other things that can be accounted
for on no other motive.”

“And this motive—?”

“—Is simply caprice.”

“I wish I could persuade you to ascribe some better reason
to all my conduct. Can you think of nothing, in the
present instance, less discreditable?”

“Perhaps I can,” Eve answered, after a moment of
thought; then laughing lightly again, she added, quickly,
“But I fear, in exonerating you from the charge of unmitigated
caprice, I shall ascribe a reason that does little less
credit to your knowledge.”

“This will appear in the end. Does Mademoiselle
Viefville remember me, do you fancy?”

“It is impossible; she was ill, you will remember, the
three months we saw so much of you.”

“And your father, Miss Effingham;—am I really forgotten
by him?”

“I am quite certain you are not. He never forgets a
face, whatever in this instance may have befallen the
name.”

“He received me so coldly, and so much like a total
stranger!”

“He is too well-bred to recognise a man who wishes to
be unknown, or to indulge in exclamations of surprise, or
in dramatic starts. He is more stable than a girl, moreover,
and may feel less indulgence to caprice.”

“I feel obliged to his reserve; for exposure would be ridiculous,
and so long as you and he alone know me, I shall
feel less awkward in the ship. I am certain neither will
betray me.”

“Betray!”

“Betray, discover, annihilate me if you will. Anything
is preferable to ridicule.”

“This touches a little on the caprice; but you flatter
yourself with too much security; you are known to one
more besides my father, myself, and the honest man whom
you have robbed of all his astuteness, which I believe was
in his name.”

“For pity's sake, who can it be?”

“The worthy Nanny Sidley, my whilom nurse, and actual
femme de chambre. No ogre was ever more vigilant
on his ward than the faithful Nanny, and it is vain to suppose
she does not recall your features.”

“But ogres sometimes sleep; recollect how many have
been overcome in that situation.”

Eve smiled, but shook her head. She was about to assure
Mr. Sharp of the vanity of his belief, when an exclamation
from her governess diverted the attention of both,
and before either had time to speak again, Mademoiselle
turned to them, and said rapidly in French—

“I assure you, ma chère, I should have mistaken monsieur
for a compatriote by his language, were it not for a
single heinous fault that he has just committed.”

“Which fault you will suffer me to inquire into, that I
may hasten to correct it?” asked Mr. Blunt.

“Mais, monsieur, you speak too perfectly, too grammatically,
for a native. You do not take the liberties with the
language that one who feels he owns it thinks he has a right
to do. It is the fault of too much correctness.”

“And a fault it easily becomes. I thank you for the
hint, mademoiselle; but as I am now going where little
French will be heard, it is probable it will soon be lost in
greater mistakes.”

The two then turned away again, and continued the dialogue
that had been interrupted by this trifling.

“There may also be one more to whom you are known,”

continued Eve, as soon as the vivacity of the discourse of
the others satisfied her the remark would not be heard.

“Surely, you cannot mean him?”

“Surely, I do mean him. Are you quite certain that
`Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt; Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp,' never saw
each other before?”

“I think not until the moment we entered the boat in company.
He is a gentlemanly young man; he seems even
to be more, and one would not be apt to forget him. He is
altogether superior to the rest of the set: do you not agree
with me?”

Eve made no answer, probably because she thought her
companion was not sufficiently intimate to interrogate her
on the subject of her opinions of others. Mr. Sharp had
too much knowledge of the world not to perceive the little
mistake he had made, and after begging the young lady,
with a ludicrous deprecation of her mercy, not to betray
him, he changed the conversation with the tact of a man
who saw that the discourse could not be continued without
assuming a confidential character that Eve was indisposed
to permit. Luckily, a pause in the discourse between the
governess and her colloquist permitted a happy turn to the
conversation.

“I believe you are an American, Mr. Blunt,” he remarked;
“and as I am an Englishman, we may be fairly pitted
against each other on this important question of international
law, and about which I hear our worthy captain
flourishing extracts from Vattel as familiarly as household
terms. I hope, at least, you agree with me in thinking that
when the sloop-of-war comes up with us, it will be very
silly on our part to make any objections to being boarded
by her?”

“I do not know that it is at all necessary I should be an
American to give an opinion on such a point,” returned the
young man he addressed, courteously, though he smiled to
himself as he answered—“For what is right, is right, quite
independent of nationality. It really does appear to me
that a public-armed vessel ought, in war or peace, to have
a right to ascertain the character of all merchant-ships, at
least on the coast of the country to which the cruisers
belong. Without this power, it is not easy to see in what

manner they can seize smugglers, capture pirates, or otherwise
enforce the objects for which such vessels are usually
sent to sea, in the absence of positive hostilities.”

“I am happy to find you agreeing with me, then, in the
legality of the doctrine of the right of search.”

Paul Blunt again smiled, and Eve, as she caught a
glimpse of his fine countenance in turning in their short
walk, fancied there was a concealed pride of reason in the
expression. Still he answered as mildly and quietly as
before.

“The right of search, certainly, to attain these ends, but
to attain no more. If nations denounce piracy, for instance,
and employ especial agents to detect and overcome the free-booters,
there is reason in according to these agents all the
rights that are requisite to the discharge of the duties: but,
in conceding this much, I do not see that any authority is
acquired beyond that which immediately belongs to the particular
service to be performed. If we give a man permission
to enter our house to look for thieves, it does not follow
that, because so admitted, he has a right to exercise
any other function. I do believe that the ship in chase of
us, as a public cruiser, ought to be allowed to board this
vessel; but finding nothing contrary to the laws of nations
about her, that she will have no power to detain or otherwise
molest her. Even the right I concede ought to be
exercised in good faith, and without vexatious abuses.”

“But, surely, you must think that in carrying off a refugee
from justice we have placed ourselves in the wrong,
and cannot object, as a principle, to the poor man's being
taken back again into the country from which he has
escaped, however much we may pity the hardships of the
particular case?”

“I much question if Captain Truck will be disposed to
reason so vaguely. In the first place, he will be apt to say
that his ship was regularly cleared, and that he had authority
to sail; that in permitting the officer to search his vessel,
while in British waters, he did all that could be required
of him, the law not compelling him to be either a bailiff or
an informer; that the process issued was to take Davis, and
not to detain the Montauk; that, once out of British waters,
American law governs, and the English functionary became

an intruder of whom he had every right to rid himself, and
that the process by which he got his power to act at all
became impotent the instant it was without the jurisdiction
under which it was granted.”

“I think you will find the captain of yonder cruiser indisposed
to admit this doctrine.”

“That is not impossible; men often preferring abuses to
being thwarted in their wishes. But the captain of yonder
cruiser might as well go on board a foreign vessel of war,
and pretend to a right to command her, in virtue of the
commission by which he commands his own ship, as to
pretend to find reason or law in doing what you seem to
predict.”

“I rejoice to hear that the poor man cannot now be torn
from his wife!” exclaimed Eve.

“You then incline to the doctrine of Mr. Blunt, Miss
Effingham?” observed the other controversialist a little reproachfully.
“I fear you make it a national question.”

“Perhaps I have done what all seem to have done, permitted
sympathy to get the better of reason. And yet it
would require strong proof to persuade me that villanous-looking
attorney was engaged in a good cause, and that
meek and warm-hearted wife in a bad one!”

Both the gentlemen smiled, and both turned to the fair
speaker, as if inviting her to proceed. But Eve checked
herself, having already said more than became her, in her
own opinion.

“I had hoped to find an ally in you, Mr. Blunt, to sustain
the claim of England to seize her own seamen when
found on board of vessels of another nation,” resumed Mr.
Sharp, when a respectful pause had shown both the young
men that they need expect nothing more from their fair
companion; “but I fear I must set you down as belonging
to those who wish to see the power of England reduced,
coûte qui coûte.”

This was received as it was meant, or as a real opinion
veiled under pleasantry.

“I certainly do not wish to see her power maintained,
coûte qui coûte,” returned the other, laughing; “and in
this opinion, I believe, I may claim both these ladies as
allies.”

“Certainement!” exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, who
was a living proof that the feelings created by centuries of
animosity are not to be subdued by a few flourishes of
the pen.

“As for me, Mr. Sharp,” added Eve, “you may suppose,
being an American girl, I cannot subscribe to the
right of any country to do us injustice; but I beg you will
not include me among those who wish to see the land of
my ancestors wronged, in aught that she may rightfully
claim as her due.”

“This is powerful support, and I shall rally to the rescue.
Seriously, then, will you allow me to inquire, sir, if
you think the right of England to the services of her seamen
can be denied?”

“Seriously, then, Mr. Sharp, you must permit me to ask
if you mean by force, or by reason?”

“By the latter, certainly.”

“I think you have taken the weak side of the English
argument; the nature of the service that the subject, or
the citizen, as it is now the fashion to say at Paris, mademoiselle—”

“—Tant pis,” muttered the governess.

“—Owes his government,” continued the young man,
slightly glancing at Eve, at the interruption, “is purely a
point of internal regulation. In England there is compulsory
service for seamen without restriction, or what is
much the same, without an equal protection; in France, it
is compulsory service on a general plan; in America, as
respects seamen, the service is still voluntary.”

“Your pardon;—will the institutions of America permit
impressment at all?”

“I should think, not indiscriminate impressment; though
I do not see why laws might not be enacted to compel drafts
for the ships of war, as well as for the army: but this is a
point that some of the professional gentlemen on board, if
there be any such, might better answer than myself.”

“The skill with which you have touched on these subjects
to-night, had made me hope to have found such a one
in you; for to a traveller, it is always desirable to enter a
country with a little preparation, and a ship might offer as
much temptation to teach as to learn.”

“If you suppose me an American lawyer, you give me
credit for more than I can lay claim to.”

As he hesitated, Eve wondered whether the slight emphasis
he had laid on the two words we have italicised, was
heaviest on that which denoted the country, or on that
which denoted the profession.

“I have been much in America, and have paid a little
attention to the institutions, but should be sorry to mislead
you into the belief that I am at all infallible on such points,”
Mr. Blunt continued.

“You were about to touch on impressment.”

“Simply to say that it is a municipal national power;
one in no degree dependent on general principles, and that
it can properly be exercised in no situation in which the
exercise of municipal or national powers is forbidden. I
can believe that this power may be exercised on board American
ships in British waters—or at least, that it is a more
plausible right in such situations; but I cannot think it can
be rightfully exercised anywhere else. I do not think England
would submit to such a practice an hour, reversing the
case, and admitting her present strength: and an appeal of
this sort is a pretty good test of a principle.”

“Ay, ay, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the
gander, as Vattel says,” interrupted Captain Truck, who
had overheard the last speech or two: “not that he says
this in so many words, but then, he has the sentiment at
large scattered throughout his writings. For that matter,
there is little that can be said on a subject that he does not
put before his readers, as plainly as Beachy Head lies
before the navigator of the British Channel. With Bowditch
and Vattel, a man might sail round the globe, and
little fear of a bad landfall, or a mistake in principles. My
present object is to tell you, ladies, that the steward has
reported the supper in waiting for the honour of your presence.”

Before quitting the deck, the party inquired into the state
of the chase, and the probable intentions of the sloop-of-war.

“We are now on the great highway of nations,” returned
Mr. Truck, “and it is my intention to travel it
without jostling, or being jostled. As for the sloop, she

is standing out under a press of canvas, and we are
standing from her, in nearly a straight line, in like circumstances.
She is some eight or ten miles astern of us,
and there is an old saying among seamen that `a stern
chase is a long chase.' I do not think our case is about to
make an exception to the rule. I shall not pretend to say
what will be the upshot of the matter; but there is not the
ship in the British navy that can gain ten miles on the
Montauk, in her present trim, and with this breeze, in as
many hours; so we are quit of her for the present.”

The last words were uttered just as Eve put her foot on
the step to descend into the cabin.