“You have communicated such matter as becometh a faithful and loyal servant of the King. It is well known that a heavy price is set on the head of the meanest follower of the Rover, and that a rich, ay, a splendid reward will be the fortune of him who is the instrument of delivering the whole knot of miscreants into the hands of the executioner. Indeed I know not but some marked evidence of the royal pleasure might follow such a service. There was Phipps, a man of humble origin, who received knighthood—”
“Knighthood!” echoed the tailor, in awful admiration.
“Knighthood,” coolly repeated the stranger; “honourable and chivalric knighthood. What may have been the appellation you received from your sponsors in baptism?”
“My given name, gracious and grateful sir, is Hector.”
“And the house itself?—the distinctive appellation of the family?”
“We have always been called Homespun.”
“Sir Hector Homespun will sound as well as another! But to secure these rewards, my friend, it is necessary to be discreet. I admire your ingenuity, and am a convert to your logic. You have so entirely demonstrated the truth of your suspicions, that I have no more doubt of yonder vessel being the pirate, than I have of your wearing spurs, and being called sir Hector. The two things are equally established in my mind: but it is needful that we proceed in the matter with caution. I understand you to say, that no one else has been enlightened by your erudition in this affair?”
“Not a soul. Tape himself is ready to swear that the crew are conscientious slavers.”
“So best. We must first render conclusions certain; then to our reward. Meet me at the hour of eleven this night, at yonder low point, where the land juts into the outer harbour. From that stand will we make our observations; and, having removed every doubt, let the morning produce a discovery that shall ring from the Colony of the Bay to the settlements of Oglethorpe. Until then we part; for it is not wise that we be longer seen in conference. Remember silence, punctuality, and the favour of the King. These are our watch-words.”
“Adieu, honourable gentlemen,” said his companion making a reverence nearly to the earth, as the other slightly touched his hat in passing.
“Adieu, sir Hector,” returned the stranger in green, with an affable smile and a gracious wave of the hand. He then walked slowly up the wharf, and disappeared behind the mansion of the Homespuns; leaving the head of that ancient family, like many a predecessor and many a successor, so rapt in the admiration of his own good fortune, and so blinded by his folly, that, while physically he saw to the right and to the left as well as ever, his mental vision was completely obscured in the clouds of ambition.
Chapter III
Alonzo. “Good boatswain, have care.”
—Tempest
The instant the stranger had separated from the credulous tailor, he lost his assumed air in one far more natural and sedate. Still it would seem that thought was an unwonted, or an unwelcome tenant of his mind; for, switching his boot with his little riding whip, he entered the principal street of the place with a light step and a wandering eye. Though his look was unsettled, few of the individuals, whom he passed, escaped his quick glances; and it was quite apparent, from the hurried manner in which he began to regard objects, that his mind was not less active than his body. A stranger thus accoutred, and one bearing about his person so many evidences of his recent acquaintance with the road, did not fail to attract the attention of the provident publicans we have had occasion to mention in our opening chapter. Declining the civilities of the most favoured of the inn-keepers, he suffered his steps to be, oddly enough, arrested by the one whose house was the usual haunt of the hangers-on of the port.
On entering the bar-room of this tavern, as it was called, but which in the mother country would probably have aspired to be termed no more than a pot-house he found the hospitable apartment thronged with its customary revellers. A slight interruption was produced by the appearance of a guest who was altogether superior, in mien and attire, to the ordinary customers of the house, but it ceased the moment the stranger had thrown himself on a bench, and intimated to the host the nature of his wants. As the latter furnished the required draught, he made a sort of apology, which was intended for the ears of all his customers nigh the stranger, for the manner in which an individual, in the further end of the long narrow room, not only monopolized the discourse, but appeared to extort the attention of all within hearing to some portentous legend he was recounting.
“It is the boatswain of the slaver in the outer harbour, squire,” the worthy disciple of Bacchus concluded; “a man who has followed the water many a day, and who has seen sights and prodigies enough to fill a smart volume. Old Bor’us the people call him, though his lawful name is Jack Nightingale. Is the toddy to the squire’s relish?”
The stranger assented to the latter query, by smacking his lips, and bowing, as he put down the nearly untouched draught. He then turned his head, to examine the individual who might, by the manner in which he declaimed, have been termed, in the language of the country, the second “orator of the day.”
A stature which greatly exceeded six feet; enormous whiskers, that quite concealed a moiety of his grim countenance; a scar, which was the memorial of a badly healed gash, that had once threatened to divide that moiety in quarters; limbs in proportion; the whole rendered striking by the dress of a sea man; a long, tarnished silver chain, and a little whistle of the same metal, served to render the individual in question sufficiently remarkable. Without appearing to be in the smallest decree aware of the entrance of one altogether so superior to the class of his usual auditors, this son of the Ocean continued his narrative as follows, and in a voice that seemed given to him by nature as if in very mockery of his musical name; indeed, so very near did his tones approach to the low murmurings of a bull, that some little practice was necessary to accustom the ear to the strangely uttered words.
“Well!” he continued, thrusting his brawny arm forth, with the fist clenched, indicating the necessary point of the compass by the thumb; “the coast of Guinea might have lain hereaway, and the wind you see, was dead off shore, blowing in squalls, as a cat spits, all the same as if the old fellow, who keeps it bagged for the use of us seamen, sometimes let the stopper slip through his fingers, and was sometimes fetching it up again with a double turn round the end of his sack.—You know what a sack is, brother?”
This abrupt question was put to the gaping bumpkin, already known to the reader, who, with the nether garment just received from the tailor under his arm, had lingered, to add the incidents of the present legend to the stock of lore that he had already obtained for the ears of his kinsfolk in the country. A general laugh, at the expense of the admiring Pardon succeeded. Nightingale bestowed a knowing wink on one or two of his familiars, and, profiting by the occasion, “to freshen his nip,” as he quaintly styled swallowing a pint of rum and water, he continued his narrative by saying, in a sort of admonitory tone,—
“And the time may come when you will know what a round-turn is, too, if you let go your hold of honesty. A man’s neck was made, brother, to keep his head above water, and not to be stretched out of shape like a pair of badly fitted dead-eyes. Therefore have your reckoning worked up in season, and the lead of conscience going, when you find yourself drifting on the shoals of temptation.” Then, rolling his tobacco in his mouth, he looked boldly about him, like one who had acquitted himself of a moral obligation, and continued: