A chieftain to the Highlands bound,
And I'll give thee a silver pound,
— Lord Ullin's DaughterThe 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 no 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 Col. 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 approach 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 sucha 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 soldiers' 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 clue as our mizen-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 foreand-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 Col. 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. "Slue 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 niggars alone," grumbled one of the more aged speakers; "what are ye sky-larking 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 Jamaica-man 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-spit, or a rock! Besides, they make night work of it too! If we had day-light 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 old gentlemen look into your cabin windows—what? you won't! Then I must squeeze your woollen night-caps for ye!"
The negroes, who had been submitting to his humours with the abject humility of slavery, nowgave 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 wilful 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 sky-larking with those negroes?"
"'Tis no one, sir," the sailor answered with affected gravity; "one of the pale faces has hit his shin against a cob-web, and it has made his ear ache!"
"Harkye, you mister 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 niggars 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 humour, 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 bid you stay."
"Ay, ay, sir, I'm going. By all the blundersin the purser's book, Mr. Merry, but that cobweb has made one of these niggars 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 bythe 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 honour. 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 attachedto 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 Capt. Munson to be drawn upon the sand, it being peculiarly the boat of honour. The hands of fifty men were applied to the task, and it was soon announced to Col. 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 picquets 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 Col. 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 to them the honour 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 Col. Howard may declare his pleasure."
"I obey you, dear child; but the agent of Col. 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 hear, 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 toseal 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 honour 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 friends; 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 Col. 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, forshe 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. Col. 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—
"Well, Miss Alice," said Borroughcliffe, in bitterirony, "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 Capt. 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; "Capt. Borroughcliffe does not embark in that boat."
"Ha! sir; am I to be herded with the common men? Forget you that I have the honour to bear the commission of his Britannic Majesty, and that—"
"I forget nothing that a gentleman is bound to remember, Capt. 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.
