Afloat and Ashore - James Fenimore Cooper (book club books .TXT) 📗

might understand it. In that case, I should say that the sheriff's men were in "pursuit of knowledge;" that is, hunting after you ; but Latin, you remember, was always an inverted sort of stuff, and that ' pro ' alters the whole signification. The paper says they've ' entered a nolle prosequi; ' and the 'entered' explains the whole. 'Entered a nolle' means, have entered on the knowledge, got a scent; you see it is law English; 'pro' means 'how,' and 'sequi,' 'to give chase.' The amount of it all is, Tom, that they are on your heels, and I must go to work and send you off, at once, two or three hundred miles into the interior, where you may laugh at them and their 'nolle prosequis' together." [*]

[Footnote *: There is said to be foundation for this story.]

Sweeney laughed heartily at this story, though he clearly did not take the joke, which I presume he fancied lay concealed under an American flash language; and he proposed by way of finishing the day, to carry me to an entertainment where, he gave me to understand, American officers were fond of sometimes passing a few minutes. I was led to a Wapping assembly-room, on entering which I found myself in a party composed of some forty or fifty cooks and stewards of American vessels, all as black as their own pots with partners of the usual colour and bloom of English girls I have as few prejudices of colour as any American well can have; but I will confess this scene struck me as being painfully out of keeping. In England, however, nothing seemed to be thought of it; and I afterwards found that marriages between English women, and men of all the colours of the rainbow, were very common occurrences.

When he had given me this ball as the climax of his compliments, Sweeney betrayed the real motive of all his attentions. After drinking a pot of beer extra, well laced with gin, he offered his services in smuggling anything ashore that the Amanda might happen to contain, and which I, as the prize-master, might feel a desire to appropriate to my own particular purposes. I met the proposal with a little warmth, letting my tempter understand that I considered his offer so near an insult, that it must terminate our acquaintance. The man seemed astounded. In the first place, he evidently thought all goods and chattels were made to be plundered, and then he was of opinion that plundering was a very common "Yankee trick." Had I been an Englishman, he might possibly have understood my conduct; but, with him, it was so much a habit to fancy an American a rogue, that, as I afterwards discovered, he was trying to persuade the leader of a press-gang that I was the half-educated and illegitimate son of some English merchant, who wished to pass himself off for an American. I pretend not to account for the contradiction, though I have often met with the same moral phenomena among his countrymen; but here was as regular a rogue as ever cheated, who pretended to think roguery indigenous to certain nations, among whom his own was not included.

At length I was cheered with the sight of the Crisis, as she came drifting through the tiers, turning, and twisting, and glancing along, just as the Amanda had done before her. The pilot carried her to moorings quite near us; and Talcott, Neb and I were on board her, before she was fairly secured. My reception was very favourable, Captain Williams having seen the account of the "Yankee trick" in the papers; and, understanding the thing just as it had happened, he placed the most advantageous construction on all I had done. For myself, I confess I never had any misgivings on the subject.

All hands of us were glad to be back in the Crisis again. Captain Williams had remained at Falmouth longer than he expected, to make some repairs that could not be thoroughly completed at sea, which alone prevented him from getting into the river as soon as I did myself. Now the ship was in, we no longer felt any apprehension of being impressed, Sweeney's malignancy having set several of the gang upon the scent after us. Whether the fellow actually thought I was an English subject or not, is more than I ever knew; but I felt no disposition myself to let the point be called in question, before my Lord Chief Justice of a Rendezvous. The King's Bench was more governed by safe principles, in its decisions, than the gentlemen who presided in these marine courts of the British navy.

As I was the only officer in the ship who had ever seen anything of London, my fortnight's experience made me a notable man in the cabin. It was actually greater preferment for me than when I was raised from third to be second-mate. Marble was all curiosity to see the English capital, and he made me promise to be his pilot, as soon as duty would allow time for a stroll, and to show him everything I had seen myself. We soon got out the cargo, and then took in ballast for our North-West voyage; the articles we intended to traffic with on the coast, being too few and too light to fill the ship. This kept us busy for a fortnight, after which we had to look about us to obtain men to supply the places of those who had been killed, or sent away in la Dame de Nantes . Of course we preferred Americans; and this so much the more, as Englishmen were liable to be pressed at any moment. Fortunately, a party of men that had been taken out of an American ship, a twelvemonth before, by an English cruiser, had obtained their discharges; and they all came to London, for the double purpose of getting some prize-money, and of obtaining passages home. These lads were pleased with the Crisis and the voyage, and, instead of returning to their own country, sailor-like, they took service to go nearly round the world. These were first-rate men--Delaware-river seamen--and proved a great accession to our force. We owed the windfall to the reputation the ship had obtained by her affairs with the letter-of-marque; an account of which, copied from the log-book and a little embellished by some one on shore, he consignee had taken care should appear in the journals. The history of the surprise, in particular, read very well; and the English were in a remarkably good humour, at that time, to receive an account of any discomfiture of a Frenchman. At no period since the year 1775, had the American character stood so high in England as it did just then; the two nations, for a novelty, fighting on the same side. Not long after we left London, the underwriters at Lloyd's actually voted a handsome compliment to an American commander for capturing a French frigate. Stranger things have happened than to have the day arrive when English and American fleets may be acting in concert. No one can tell what is in the womb of time; and I have lived long enough to know that no man can foresee who will continue to be his friends, or a nation what people may become its enemies.

The Crisis at length began to take in her bales and boxes for the North-West Coast, and, as the articles were received slowly, or a few packages at a time, it gave us leisure for play. Our captain was in such good humour with us, on account of the success of the outward-bound passage, that he proved very indulgent. This disposition was probably increased by the circumstance that a ship arrived in a very short passage from New York, which spoke our prize; all well, with a smacking southerly breeze, a clear coast, and a run of only a few hundred miles to make. This left the almost moral certainty that la Dame de Nantes had arrived safe, no Frenchman being likely to trust herself on that distant coast, which was now alive with our own cruisers, going to or returning from the West Indies.

I had a laughable time in showing Marble the sights of London. We began with the wild beasts in the Tower, as in duty bound; but of these our mate spoke very disparagingly. He had been too often in the East "to be taken in by such animals;" and, to own the truth, the cockneys were easily satisfied on the score of their menagerie . We next went to the Monument; but this did not please him. He had seen a shot-tower in America--there was but one in that day--that beat it out and out as to height, and he thought in beauty, too. There was no reasoning against this. St. Paul's rather confounded him. He frankly admitted there was no such church at Kennebunk; though he did not know but Trinity, New York, "might stand up alongside of it." "Stand up along side of it!" I repeated, laughing. "Why, Mr. Marble, Trinity, steeple and all, could stand up in it-- under that dome-and then leave more room in this building than all the other churches in New York contain, put altogether."

It was a long time before Marble forgave this speech. He said it was "unpatriotic;" a word which was less used in 1799 than it is used to-day, certainly; but which, nevertheless, was used. It often meant then, as now, a thick and thin pertinacity in believing in provincial marvels; and, in this, Marble was one of the most patriotic men with whom I ever met. I got him out of the church, and along Fleet street, through Temple Bar, and into the Strand, however, in peace; and then we emerged into the arena of fashion, aristocracy and the court. After a time, we worked our way into Hyde Park, where we brought up, to make our observations.

Marble was deeply averse to acknowledging all the admiration he really felt at the turn-outs of London, as they were exhibited in the Park, of a fine day, in their season. It is probable the world elsewhere never saw anything approaching the beauty and magnificence that is here daily seen, at certain times, so far as beauty and magnificence are connected with equipages, including carriages, horses and servants. Unable to find fault with the tout ensemble , our mate made a violent attack on the liveries. He protested it was indecent to put a "hired man"--the word help never being applied to the male sex, I believe, by the most fastidious New England purist--in a cocked hat; a decoration that ought to be exclusively devoted to the uses of ministers of the gospel, governors of States, and militia officers. I had some notions of the habits of the great world, through books, and some little learned by observation and listening; but Marble scouted at most of my explanations. He put his own construction on everything he saw; and I have often thought, since, could the publishers of travels have had the benefit of his blunders, how many would have profited by them. Gentlemen were just then beginning to drive their own coaches; and I remember, in a particular instance, an ultra in the new mode had actually put his coachman in the inside, while he occupied the dickey in person. Such a gross violation of the proprieties was unusual, even in London; but there sat Jehu, in all the dignity of cotton-lace, plush, and a cocked hat. Marble took it into his head that this man was the king, and no reasoning of mine could persuade