The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper (best e books to read txt) 📗

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