… “Ye,
Children of the night, ye are seen, and lost!”
About the time that, on board the Euphrasia, Fitz-Ullin’s champagne was
spreading hilarity among his officers, to whom he gave an excellent
dinner in honour of their late escape, a tall, large proportioned,
elderly man, in a college cap and gown, was pacing up and down by the
dim light of the lamps, in one of the then best streets of Auld Reekie,
immediately beneath the windows of Lord L⸺’s hotel. He cast from time
to time impatient glances at the door as he passed and repassed. At
length it opened and shewed the figure of a younger man, habited in naval
uniform, and in the act of taking his cocked hat from a servant in the
lit up hall. The door closed again, and the officer joined him of the cap
and gown. “So,” said Henry, for he was the officer, “the game is up, I
fear.”
“The devil it is,” replied the person addressed.
“Is it not?” said Henry.
“Throw again,” said the stranger. They walked on for a time in silence.
“Why certainly,” said Henry, “however strong their suspicions may be,
they have no proofs that would enable them to take any steps against me;
and as to my being forbid Lord L⸺’s house, and my aunt’s, whenever Julia
is there, it can make very little difference, unless they absolutely
incarcerate her. We now have the title-deeds, we have only to seize her
person, the first opportunity that offers, and I can still compel her to
retract all her declarations of having been carried off against her will.
“I wish the devil would tempt her,” said the stranger, “to take a
moonlight view of the Bass Rock.”
“I can see,” continued Henry, “by Fitz-Ullin’s countenance that they have
not come to any explanation, nor are they likely to do so; and her absurd
infatuation about him will keep her from marrying any one else, for some
time at least.”
“What, then, is Lord L⸺’s present belief?” asked the stranger.
“Faith,” replied Henry, “I hardly know; I believe he hardly knows
himself. We had quite a scene there, just now. His lordship took me to
task in rather strong terms, for my supposed misdemeanours. I replied,
however, very coolly, that I should neither deny nor confess any thing,
but refer him to his daughter, who must know whether she had eloped with
me or not. She, of course, declared she had not. But she was evidently
afraid of exasperating me, therefore said very little. Lord L⸺ showed
her the three notes found on her table. She declared she had never
written them. ‘Am I then to believe these letters forgeries?’ said his
lordship, and he looked towards me. I met his eye with all the steadiness
I could command, but remained silent. So, after a few more questions,
for the answers to which I persisted in referring him to Julia, I was
dismissed, having been, of course, forbid the house.”
An expression of contempt was here muttered by the stranger.
“But how did you know,” asked Henry, “that the Euphrasia was going round
to Leith, and how did you gain admittance into the ship?” “I learned her
destination at Plymouth: the admiral’s certificate settled the rest,”
replied the stranger. “The difficulty was, to get in time to where the
pilots for Leith are taken on board.”
“Who was the second pilot?” asked Henry.
“Charpantier. I have always three or four fellows, regular sworn
port-pilots.”
“And did you really mean to run the ship aground?” again asked Henry.
“Most certainly!” replied his companion, in a tone indicating neither
doubt nor compunction. “Why,” he continued, “I could have run her high
and dry without danger to our lives, when she must have gone to pieces;
and I had hands enough on the rock to do the rest.”
“Men whom you could depend upon?” demanded Henry.
“A more determined set of fellows never hauled a boat up the Bass since
the time of good King James,” replied the stranger. “And our men would
not have been the last,” he added with a sneer, “to have rendered their
timely assistance to the distressed crew of the Euphrasia; nor should
Lady Julia L⸺ have been the last of the passengers their praiseworthy
exertions would have rescued from a watery grave.” Henry laughed.
“Fool!” uttered in no very persuasive tone, was the courteous rejoinder
of his companion, who, now that he happened to turn while passing a lamp,
displayed the same fierce features which we have seen bending over the
title-deeds of the Craigs, by the light of the colliery lantern. “And, as
for Fitz-Ullin,” he continued, “if he did not know his way to the bottom,
he might have been shown it! Confound him! If he had not given the order
to let go the anchor, in less than two minutes no power could have saved
the ship!” Both personages now proceeded in silence along the street,
till their figures were lost in the gloom of its further extremity.
Not long after the same two figures became visible on the verge of the
Salisbury Craigs, and finally disappeared around the brow of the hill,
a little below Arthur’s Seat, leaving the calm serenity of the scene
unbroken by any living or moving object; while the distant villages,
the bare hills, the waters of the Frith, the shipping in the roads, the
deserted palace and ruined chapel, all slumbered silently in the clear
moonshine of a summer night. And the city itself, so full of human
life, where so many hearts and so many pulses at the very moment beat,
presented an image as still and cold as though its piles of building,
reflecting partial lights, and casting from their singularly irregular
site gigantic shadows, were but the steep sides of so many masses of
solid rock.