of the ship, and the men, a half-dozen or more of them, trooped aboard,
bringing a prisoner. Following quickly there was a medley of shouted
sailor orders in the harsh nasal twang of Elijah Sprigg’s best voice;
and then Jack came to kneel beside me, beseeching Beatrix to tell him I
was not dead.
The white canvas was snapping and crackling overhead, and the _Nancy
Jane_ was heeling to the fair half-gale and racing down the harbor,
before they would let me speak; and then all I could say was “Tell
me--tell me.”
And they told me, Beatrix and Jack, with Cousin Ju to stroke my
forehead and to break in with tearful self-reproachings for the
tongue-lashing she had given me in Mr. Vandeventer’s parlor: told
me how Jack had got Major Lee’s leave to follow Seytoun to the
meeting-place on the Tarrytown road with Askew and Castner; how he had
overheard enough to make him disguise himself as a farmer, and dog the
three back to New York; how he had accidentally stumbled upon Sprigg
and the women as they were making their way to the waterside, and so
had been present when Champe brought the news of me.
“But--but how did you come to be so late in starting?” I said, holding
my loved one close with the arm they had not bandaged.
“It was God’s Providence, no less, in a thing we took for the greatest
disaster that could befall,” said Beatrix gently, taking up the
narrative where Jack broke off. “Major Simcoe returned with his troop,
and the twenty men of the _Nancy Jane’s_ allotment were sent down to
embark. Captain Sprigg claimed to have only the little boat, and he
fetched the troopers aboard two or three at a time, and the sailors
made prisoners of them, putting them in the hold as fast as they came
over the side. All this took so much time that the captain was but just
bringing us to the shore when Sergeant Champe came with your message.”
“Lord, lord!” cried I, laughing weakly. “And you’ve got twenty men of
the Queen’s Rangers in the hold?”
“Twenty men _and_ the tobacco,” Jack boasted; adding: “and one other
fine young fellow--an officer, who was so forward in his pursuit of you
that he got tangled up in a hand-to-hand mellay with the long-boat’s
crew and we brought him off with us. He says his name is Castner, and
he was most anxious to inquire about you, when I told him you were
winged.”
Again I laughed, as I should have laughed with my last breath, I think.
“Castner--_Castner_ a prisoner? Treat him well, I do beseech you,” I
begged. “He is my friend and one of God’s own gentlemen. But you tell
me nothing of Champe.”
“Because there is nothing to tell,” said Pettus sorrowfully. “He
went back to the fort to try to get word to you; to tell you that if
you failed to dig out, we meant to fall upon your gallows guard for
a rescue when they brought you out. They will hang poor Champe, I’m
thinking.”
“No,” said I, “they will not hang him. But he may wish they had before
he ever hears the old troop call again, Jack,” and I was far indeed
from knowing at the moment how true a prophecy I was making.
At this Pettus stood up, and looking back over the schooner’s
foaming wake told us how they were displaying signal lanterns on the
battlements of Fort George, and how a Bengal light was burning on a
ship near the shore to show the sailors heaving up the anchor and
making ready to chase us.
“But they’ll never catch us, dear heart!” said my loved one bravely,
and again her arms went about my neck.
And so they did not; though to tell of how we ran the gauntlet of the
fleet in the lower bay, and of what befell us and our one-and-twenty
British captives on a voyage that ended far enough from the Capes of
Virginia, would take a livelier pen than mine. For this, as you will
see, is but a tale of a few landward days, while that other is of storm
and shipwreck, of perilous weeks and weary months, before we saw the
tidewater homeland again.
So, then, with the _Nancy Jane_ dancing down the harbor with a bone
in her teeth and her canvas straining to the gale; with Cousin Ju
beginning to feel the coming sickness and begging Jade to take her to
the cabin; and with my dear heart whispering to me between her kisses
to know if my shoulder pain was more than I could bear, this pen need
add no more to a tale which, brief as its measuring was in days and
hours, has already grown over-long.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.