“A chieftain to the Highlands bound
Cries, 'Boatman, do not tarry!
And I'll give thee a silver pound,
To row us o'er the ferry.'”
_Lord Ullin's Daughter_.
The sky had been without a cloud during the day, the gale having been
dry and piercing, and thousands of stars were now shining through a
chill atmosphere. As the eye, therefore, became accustomed to the change
of light, it obtained a more distinct view of surrounding objects. At
the head of the line that was stretched along the narrow pathway marched
a platoon of the marines, who maintained the regular and steady front of
trained warriors. They were followed at some little distance by a
large and confused body of seamen, heavily armed, whose disposition
to disorder and rude merriment, which became more violent from their
treading on solid ground, was with difficulty restrained by the presence
and severe rebukes of their own officers. In the centre of this confused
mass the whole of the common prisoners were placed, but were not
otherwise attended to by their nautical guard than as they furnished the
subjects of fun and numberless quaint jokes. At some distance in
their rear marched Colonel Howard and Borroughcliffe, arm in arm, both
maintaining the most rigid and dignified silence, though under the
influence of very bitter feelings. Behind these again, and pressing as
nigh as possible to her uncle, was Miss Howard, leaning on the arm
of Alice Dunscombe, and surrounded by the female domestics of the
establishment of St. Ruth. Katherine Plowden moved lightly, by herself,
in the shadow of this group, with elastic steps but with a maiden
coyness that taught her to veil her satisfaction with the semblance of
captivity. Barnstable watched her movements with delight, within six
feet of her, but submitted to the air of caprice in his mistress, which
seemed to require that he should come no nearer. Griffith, avoiding the
direct line of the party, walked on its skirts in such a situation
that his eye could command its whole extent, in order, if necessary, to
direct the movements. Another body of the marines marched at the close
of the procession, and Manual, in person, brought up the rear. The music
had ceased by command, and nothing was now audible but the regular
tread of the soldiers, with the sighs of the dying gale, interrupted
occasionally by the voice of an officer, or the hum of low dialogue.
“This has been a Scotch prize that we've taken,” muttered a surly old
seaman; “a ship without head-money or cargo! There was kitchen-timber
enough in the old jug of a place to have given an outfit in crockery and
knee-buckles to every lad in the ship; but, no! let a man's mouth water
ever so much for food and raiment, damme, if the officers would give him
leave to steal even so good a thing as a spare Bible.”
“You may say all that, and then make but a short yarn of the truth,”
returned the messmate who walked by his side: “if there had been such
a thing as a ready-made prayer handy, they would have choused a poor
fellow out of the use of it.--I say, Ben, I'll tell ye what; it's my
opinion that if a chap is to turn soldier and carry a musket, he should
have soldier's play, and leave to plunder a little--now the devil a
thing have I laid my hands on to-night, except this firelock and my
cutlash--unless you can call this bit of a table-cloth something of a
windfall.”
“Ay! you have fallen in there with a fresh bolt of duck, I see!” said
the other, in manifest admiration of the texture of his companion's
prize--“why, it would spread as broad a clew as our mizzen-royal, if it
was loosened! Well, your luck hasn't been every man's luck--for my part,
I think this here hat was made for some fellow's great toe: I've rigged
it on my head both fore and aft, and athwart-ships; but curse the
inch can I drive it down--I say, Sam! you'll give us a shirt off that
table-cloth?”
“Ay, ay, you can have one corner of it; or for that matter, ye can take
the full half, Nick; but I don't see that we go off to the ship any
richer than we landed, unless you may muster she-cattle among your
prize-money.”
“No richer!” interrupted a waggish young sailor, who had been hitherto
a silent listener to the conversation between his older and more
calculating shipmates; “I think we are set up for a cruise in them seas
where the day watches last six months; don't you see we have caught a
double allowance of midnight!”
While speaking, he laid his hands on the bare and woolly heads of
Colonel Howard's two black slaves, who were moving near him, both
occupied in mournful forebodings on the results that were to flow
from this unexpected loss of their liberty. “Slew your faces this way,
gentlemen,” he added; “there; don't you think that a sight to put out
the binnacle lamps? there's darkness visible for ye!”
“Let the niggers alone,” grumbled one of the more aged speakers; “what
are ye skylarking with the like of them for? The next thing they'll sing
out, and then you'll hear one of the officers in your wake. For my part,
Nick, I can't see why it is that we keep dodging along shore here,
with less than ten fathoms under us, when, by stretching into the broad
Atlantic, we might fall in with a Jamaicaman every day or two, and have
sugar hogsheads and rum puncheons as plenty aboard us as hard fare is
now.”
“It is all owing to that Pilot,” returned the other; “for, d'ye see,
if there was no bottom, there would be no pilots. This is dangerous
cruising-ground, where we stretch into five fathoms, and then drop our
lead on a sand-pit or a rock! Besides, they make night-work of it, too!
If we had daylight for fourteen hours instead of seven, a man might
trust to feeling his way for the other ten.”
“Now, a'n't ye a couple of old horse-marines!” again interrupted the
young sailor; “don't you see that Congress wants us to cut up Johnny
Bull's coasters, and that old Blow-Hard has found the days too short for
his business, and so he has landed a party to get hold of night. Here
we have him! and when we get off to the ship, we shall put him under
hatches, and then you'll see the face of the sun again! Come, my lilies!
let these two gentlemen look into your cabin windows--what? you won't!
Then I must squeeze your woolen nightcaps for ye!”
The negroes, who had been submitting to his humors with the abject
humility of slavery, now gave certain low intimations that they were
suffering pain, under the rough manipulation of their tormentor.
“What's that!” cried a stern voice, whose boyish tones seemed to mock
the air of authority that was assumed by the speaker--“who's that, I
say, raising that cry among ye?”
The willful young man slowly removed his two hands from the woolly polls
of the slaves, but as he suffered them to fall reluctantly along their
sable temples, he gave the ear of one of the blacks a tweak that caused
him to give vent to another cry, that was uttered with a much greater
confidence of sympathy than before.
“Do ye hear there!” repeated Merry--“who's skylarking with those
negroes?”
“'Tis no one, sir,” the sailor answered with affected gravity; “one of
the palefaces has hit his shin against a cobweb, and it has made his
earache!”
“Harkye, you Mr. Jack Joker! how came you in the midst of the
prisoners?--Did not I order you to handle your pike, sir, and to keep in
the outer line?”
“Ay, ay, sir, you did; and I obeyed orders as long as I could; but these
niggers have made the night so dark that I lost my way!”
A low laugh passed through the confused crowd of seamen; and even the
midshipman might have been indulging himself in a similar manner at this
specimen of quaint humor from the fellow, who was one of those licensed
men that are to be found in every ship. At length:
“Well, sir,” he said, “you have found out your false reckoning now; so
get you back to the place where I bid you stay.”
“Ay, ay, sir, I'm going. By all the blunders in the purser's book, Mr.
Merry, but that cobweb has made one of these niggers shed tears! Do let
me stay to catch a little ink, sir, to write a letter with to my poor
old mother-devil the line has she had from me since we sailed from the
Chesapeake!”
“If ye don't mind me at once, Mr. Jack Joker, I'll lay my cutlass over
your head,” returned Merry, his voice now betraying a much greater
sympathy in the sufferings of that abject race, who are still in some
measure, but who formerly were much more, the butts of the unthinking
and licentious among our low countrymen; “then ye can write your letter
in red ink if ye will!”
“I wouldn't do it for the world,” said Joker, sneaking away towards his
proper station--“the old lady wouldn't forget the hand, and swear it was
a forgery--I wonder, though, if the breakers on the coast of Guinea be
black! as I've heard old seamen say who have cruised in them latitudes.”
His idle levity was suddenly interrupted by a voice that spoke above the
low hum of the march, with an air of authority, and a severity of tone,
that could always quell, by a single word, the most violent ebullition
of merriment in the crew.
The low buzzing sounds of “Ay, there goes Mr. Griffith!” and of
“Jack has woke up the first lieutenant, he had better now go to sleep
himself,” were heard passing among the men. But these suppressed
communications soon ceased, and even Jack Joker himself pursued his way
with diligence on the skirts of the party, as mutely as if the power of
speech did not belong to his organization.
The reader has too often accompanied us over the ground between the
abbey and the ocean, to require any description of the route pursued by
the seamen during the preceding characteristic dialogue; and we shall at
once pass to the incidents which occurred on the arrival of the party
at the cliffs. As the man who had so unexpectedly assumed a momentary
authority within St. Ruth had unaccountably disappeared from among them,
Griffith continued to exercise the right of command, without referring
to any other for consultation. He never addressed himself to Barnstable,
and it was apparent that both the haughty young men felt that the tie
which had hitherto united them in such close intimacy was, for the
present at least, entirely severed. Indeed, Griffith was only restrained
by the presence of Cecilia and Katherine from arresting his refractory
inferior on the spot; and Barnstable, who felt all the consciousness of
error, without its proper humility, with difficulty so far repressed his
feelings as to forbear exhibiting in the presence of his mistress such a
manifestation of his spirit as his wounded vanity induced him to imagine
was necessary to his honor. The two, however, acted in harmony on one
subject, though it was without concert or communication. The first
object with both the young men was to secure the embarkation of the fair
cousins; and Barnstable proceeded instantly to the boats, in order to
hasten the preparations that were necessary before they could receive
these unexpected captives: the descent of the Pilot having been made in
such force as to require the use of all the frigate's boats, which were
left riding in the outer edge of the surf, awaiting the return of the
expedition. A loud call from Barnstable gave notice to the officer in
command, and in a few moments the beach was crowded with the busy and
active crews of the “cutters,” “launches,” “barges,” “jolly-boats,”
“pinnaces,” or by whatever names the custom of the times attached to
the different attendants of vessels of war. Had the fears of the ladies
themselves been consulted, the frigate's launch would have been selected
for their use, on account of its size; but Barnstable, who would have
thought such a choice on his part humiliating to his guests, ordered the
long, low barge of Captain Munson to be drawn upon the sand, it being
peculiarly the boat of honor. The hands of fifty men were applied to the
task, and it was soon announced to Colonel Howard and his wards that the
little vessel was ready for their reception. Manual had halted on the
summit of the cliffs with the whole body of the marines, where he
was busily employed in posting pickets and sentinels, and giving the
necessary instructions to his men to cover the embarkation of the
seamen, in a style that he conceived to be altogether military. The mass
of the common prisoners, including the inferior domestics of the abbey,
and the men of Borroughcliffe, were also held in the same place, under
a suitable guard: but Colonel Howard and his companion, attended by the
ladies and their own maids, had descended the rugged path to the beach,
and were standing passively on the sands, when the intelligence that the
boat waited for them was announced.
“Where is he?” asked Alice Dunscombe, turning her head, as if anxiously
searching for some other than those around her.
“Where is who?” inquired Barnstable; “we are all here, and the boat
waits.”
“And will he tear me--even me, from the home of my infancy! the land of
my birth and my affections!”
“I know not of whom you speak, madam, but if it be of Mr. Griffith, he
stands there, just without that cluster of seamen.”
Griffith, hearing himself thus named, approached the ladies, and, for
the first time since leaving the abbey, addressed them: “I hope I am
already understood,” he said, “and that it is unnecessary for me to say
that no female here is a prisoner; though, should any choose to trust
themselves on board our ship, I pledge them to the honor of an officer
that they shall find themselves protected, and safe.”
“Then will I not go,” said Alice.
“It is not expected of you,” said Cecilia; “you have no ties to bind
you to any here.” (The eyes of Alice were still wandering over the
listeners.) “Go, then, Miss Alice, and be the mistress of St. Ruth,
until my return; or,” she added, timidly, “until Colonel Howard may
declare his pleasure.”
“I obey you, dear child; but the agent of Colonel Howard, at B----, will
undoubtedly, be authorized to take charge of his effects.”
While no one but his niece alluded to his will, the master of the
abbey had found, in his resentment, a sufficient apology for his rigid
demeanor; but he was far too well bred to bear, in silence, such a
modest appeal to his wishes, from so fair and so loyal a subject as
Alice Dunscombe.
“To relieve you, madam, and for no other reason, will I speak on this
subject,” he said; “otherwise, I should leave the doors and windows of
St. Ruth open, as a melancholy monument of rebellion, and seek my future
compensation from the Crown, when the confiscated estates of the leaders
of this accursed innovation on the rights of princes shall come to the
hammer. But you, Miss Alice, are entitled to every consideration that a
lady can expect from a gentleman. Be pleased, therefore, to write to my
agent, and request him to seal up my papers, and transmit them to the
office of his majesty's Secretary of State. They breathe no treason,
madam, and are entitled to official protection. The house, and most of
the furniture, as you know, are the property of my landlord, who, in due
time, will doubtless take charge of his own interest. I kiss your hand,
Miss Alice, and I hope we shall yet meet at St. James's--depend on it,
madam, that the royal Charlotte shall yet honor your merits; I know she
cannot but estimate your loyalty.”
“Here I was born, in humble obscurity--here I have lived, and here I
hope to die in quiet,” returned the meek Alice; “if I have known any
pleasure, in late years, beyond that which every Christian can find
in our daily duties, it has been, my sweet friends, in your accidental
society.--Such companions, in this remote corner of the kingdom, has
been a boon too precious to be enjoyed without alloy, it seems; and I
have now to exchange the past pleasure for present pain. Adieu! my young
friend; let your trust be in Him, to whose eyes both prince and peasant,
the European and the American, are alike, and we shall meet again,
though it be neither in the island of Britain nor on your own wide
continent.”
“That,” said Colonel Howard, advancing, and taking her hand with
kindness, “that is the only disloyal sentiment I have ever heard fall
from the lips of Miss Alice Dunscombe! Is it to be supposed that Heaven
has established orders among men, and that it does not respect the works
of its own formation! But adieu; no doubt, if time was allowed us for
suitable explanations, we should find but little or no difference of
opinion on this subject.”
Alice did not appear to consider the matter as worthy of further
discussion at such a moment; for she gently returned the colonel's
leave-taking, and then gave her undivided attention to her female
friends. Cecilia wept bitterly on the shoulder of her respected
companion, giving vent to her regret at parting, and her excited
feelings, at the same moment; and Katherine pressed to the side of
Alice, with the kindliness prompted by her warm but truant heart, Their
embraces were given and received in silence, and each of the young
ladies moved towards the boat, as she withdrew herself from the arms
of Miss Dunscombe. Colonel Howard would not precede his wards, neither
would he assist them into the barge. That attention they received from
Barnstable, who, after seeing the ladies and their attendants seated,
turned to the gentlemen, and observed:
“The boat waits.”
“Well, Miss Alice,” said Borroughcliffe, in bitter irony, “you are
entrusted by our excellent host with a message to his agent; will you
do a similar service to me, and write a report to the commander of the
district, and just tell him what a dolt--ay, use the plainest terms, and
say what an ass one Captain Borroughcliffe has proved himself in this
affair? You may throw in, by way of episode, that he has been playing
bo-peep with a rebellious young lady from the Colonies, and, like a
great boy, has had his head broken for his pains! Come, my worthy host,
or rather fellow-prisoner, I follow you, as in duty bound.”
“Stay,” cried Griffith; “Captain Borroughcliffe does not embark in that
boat.”
“Ha! sir; am I to be herded with the common men? Forget you that I have
the honor to bear the commission of his Britannic Majesty, and that--”
“I forget nothing that a gentleman is bound to remember, Captain
Borroughcliffe; among other things, I recollect the liberality of your
treatment to myself, when a prisoner. The instant the safety of my
command will justify such a step, not only you, but your men, shall be
set at liberty.”
Borroughcliffe started in surprise, but his feelings were too much
soured by the destruction of those visions of glory, in which he had
been luxuriously indulging for the last day or two, to admit of his
answering as became a man. He swallowed his emotions, therefore, by a
violent effort, and walked along the beach, affecting to whistle a low
but lively air.
“Well, then,” cried Barnstable, “all our captives are seated. The boat
waits only for its officers!”
In his turn, Griffith walked away, in haughty silence, as if disdaining
to hold communion with his former friend. Barnstable paused a moment,
from a deference that long habit had created for his superior officer,
and which was not to be shaken off by every burst of angry passion; but
perceiving that the other had no intention to return, he ordered the
seamen to raise the boat from the sand, and bear it bodily into the
water. The command was instantly obeyed; and, by the time the young
lieutenant was in his seat, the barge was floating in the still heavy
though no longer dangerous surf, and the crew sprang into their places.
“Bear her off, boys!” he cried; “never mind a wet jacket. I've seen many
a worthy fellow tumbling on this beach in a worse time than this! Now
you have her head to sea; give way, my souls, give way.”
The seamen rose simultaneously at their oars, and by an united effort
obtained the command of their boat; which, after making a few sudden
ascents, and as many heavy pitches in the breakers, gained the smoother
seas of the swelling ocean, and stemmed the waters in a direction for
the place where the Alacrity was supposed to be in waiting.