Homeward Bound - James Fenimore Cooper (free e books to read .txt) 📗

cousin Jacks on earth."

"I wish I knew what the other business of this gentleman is! He seems amicably disposed, except as regards Mr. Blunt. They looked coldly and suspiciously at each other."

Eve thought so too, and she lost all her desire for pleasantry. Just at this moment Captain Ducie quitted his companion, both touching their hats distantly, and returned to the group he had so unceremoniously left a few minutes before.

"I believe, Captain Truck, you now know my errand," he said, "and can say whether you will consent to my examining the person whom you have mentioned?"

"I know one of your errands, sir; you spoke of having two ."

"Both will find their completion in this ship, with your permission."

"Permission! That sounds well, at least, my dear young lady. Permit me to inquire, Captain Ducie, has either of your errands the flavour of tobacco about it?"

The young man looked surprised, and he began to suspect another mystification.

"The question is so singular that it is not very intelligible."

"I wish to know, Captain Ducie, if you have anything to say to this ship in the way of smuggling?"

"Certainly not. I am not a custom-house officer, sir, nor on the revenue duty; and I had supposed this vessel a regular packet, whose interest is too plain to enter into such a pursuit."

"You have supposed nothing but the truth, sir; though we cannot always answer for the honesty or discretion of our people. A single pound of tobacco might forfeit this noble ship; and, observing the perseverance with which you have chased me, I was afraid all was not right with the excise."

"You have had a needless alarm then, for my two objects in coming to America are completely answered by meeting with Mr. Powis and the Mr. Sandon, who, I have been given to understand, is in his state-room below."

The party looked at each other, but nothing was said.

"Such being the facts, Captain Ducie, I beg to offer you every facility so far as the hospitality of my ship is concerned."

"You will permit us to have an interview with Mr. Sandon?"

"Beyond a doubt. I see, sir, you have read Vattel, and understand the rights of neutrals, or of independent nations. As this interview most probably will be interesting, you may desire to have it held in private, and a state-room will be too small for the purpose. My dear young lady, will you have the complaisance to lend us your cabin for half an hour?"

Eve bowed assent, and Captain Truck then invited the two Englishmen below.

"My presence at this interview is of little moment," observed Captain Ducie; "Mr. Green is master of the whole affair, and I have a matter of importance to arrange with Mr. Powis. If one or two of you gentlemen will have the kindess to be present, and witnesses of what passes between Mr. Sandon and Mr. Green, it would be a great favour. Templemore, I may claim this of you?"

"With all my heart, though it is an unpleasant office to see guilt exposed. Should I presume too much by asking Mr. John Effingham to be of our party?"

"I was about to make the same request," put in the captain. "We shall then be two Englishmen and two Yankees,--if Mr. John Effingham will allow me so to style him?"

"Until we get within the Hook, Captain Truck, I am a Yankee; once in the country, I belong to the Middle States, if you will allow me the favour to choose."

The last speaker was stopped by a nudge from Captain Truck, who seized an opportunity to whisper,

"Make no such distinction between outside and inside, I beg of you, my dear sir. I hold that the ship is, at this identical moment, in the United States of America in a positive sense, as well as by a legal fiction; and I think Vattel will bear me out in it."

"Let it pass for that, then. I will be present at your interview with the fugitive. If the case is not clear against him, he shall be protected."

Things were now soon arranged; it being decided that Mr. Green, who belonged to one of the English offices, accompanied by the gentlemen just named, should descend to the cabin of Miss Effingham, in order to receive the delinquent; while Captain Ducie should have his interview with Paul Powis in the state-room of the latter.

The first party went below immediately; but Captain Ducie remained on deck a minute or two to give an order to the midshipman of his boat, who immediately quitted the Montauk, and pulled to the corvette. During this brief delay Paul approached the ladies, to whom he spoke with a forced indifference, though it was not possible to avoid seeing his concern.

His servant, too, was observed watching his movements with great interest; and when the two gentlemen went below in company, the man shrugged his shoulders, and actually held up his hands, as one is wont to do at the occurrence of any surprising or distressing circumstance.


Chapter XXXIII.


Norfolk, for thee remains a heavy doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce.

SHAKSPEARE.


The history of the unfortunate young man, who, after escaping all the hazards and adventures of the passage was now so unexpectedly overtaken as he was about to reach what he fancied an asylum, was no more than one of those common-place tissue of events that lead, through vanity and weakness, to crime. His father had held an office under the British government. Marrying late, and leaving a son and daughter just issuing into life at the time of his decease, the situation he had himself filled had been given to the first, out of respect to the unwearied toil of a faithful servant.

The young man was one of those who, without principles or high motives, live only for vanity. Of prominent vices he had none, for there were no salient points in his character on which to hang any quality of sufficient boldness to encourage crime of that nature. Perhaps he owed his ruin to the circumstance that he had a tolerable person, and was six feet high, as much as to any one other thing. His father had been a short, solid, square-built little man, whose ambition never towered above his stature, and who, having entered fairly on the path of industry and integrity early in life, had sedulously persevered in it to the end. Not so with the son. He read so much about aristocratic stature, aristocratic ears, aristocratic hands, aristocratic feet, and aristocratic air, that he was delighted to find that in all these high qualities he was not easily to be distinguished from most of the young men of rank he occasionally saw riding in the parks, or met in the streets, and, though he very well knew he was not a lord, he began to fancy it a happiness to be thought one by strangers, for an hour or two in a week.

His passion for trifles and toys was inherent, and it had been increased by reading two or three caricatures of fashionable men in the novels of the day, until his happiness was chiefly centered in its indulgence. This was an expensive foible; and its gratification ere long exhausted his legitimate means. One or two trifling and undetected peculations favoured his folly, until a large sum happening to lie at his sole mercy for a week or two, he made such an inroad on it as compelled a flight. Having made up his mind to quit England, he thought it would be as easy to escape with forty thousand pounds as with the few hundreds he had already appropriated to himself. This capital mistake was the cause of his destruction; for the magnitude of the sum induced the government to take unusual steps to recover it, and was the true cause of its having despatched the cruiser in chase of the Montauk.

The Mr. Green who had been sent to identify the fugitive, was a cold, methodical man, every way resembling the delinquent's father, whose office-companion he had been, and in whose track of undeviating attention to business and negative honesty he had faithfully followed. He felt the peculation, or robbery, for it scarce deserved a milder term, to be a reproach on the corps to which he belonged, besides leaving a stigma on the name of one to whom he had himself looked up as to a model for his own imitation and government. It will readily be supposed, therefore, that this person was not prepared to meet the delinquent in a very forgiving mood.

"Saunders," said Captain Truck in the stern tone with which he often hailed a-top, and which implied that instant obedience was a condition of his forbearance, "go to the state-room of the person who has called himself Sir George Templemore--give him my compliments--be very particular, Mr. Saunders--and say Captain Truck's compliments, and then tell him I expect the honour of his company in this cabin--the honour of his company, remember, in this cabin. If that don't bring him out of his state-room, I'll contrive something that shall."

The steward turned up the white of his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and proceeded forthwith on the errand. He found time, however, to stop in the pantry, and to inform Toast that their suspicions were at least in part true.

"This elucidates the circumstance of his having no attendant with him, like other gentlemen on board, and a wariety of other incidents, that much needed dewelopement. Mr. Blunt, I do collect from a few hints on deck, turns out to be a Mr. Powis, a much genteeler name; and as they spoke to some one in the ladies' cabin as 'Sir George,' I should not be overcome with astonishment should Mr. Sharp actually eventuate as the real baronite."

There was time for no more, and Saunders proceeded to summon the delinquent.

"This is the most unpleasant part of the duty of a packet-master between England and America," continued Captain Truck, as soon as Saunders was out of sight. "Scarce a ship sails that it has not some runaway or other, either in the steerage or in the cabins, and we are often called on to aid the civil authorities on both sides of the water."

"America seems to be a favourite country with our English rogues," observed the office-man, drily. "This is the third that has gone from our own department within as many years."

"Your department appears to be fruitful of such characters, sir," returned Captain Truck, pretty much in the spirit in which the first remark had been given.

Mr. Green was as thorough-going an Englishman as any of his class in the island. Methodical, plodding, industrious, and regular in all his habits, he was honest by rule, and had no leisure or inclination for any other opinions than those which were obtained with the smallest effort. In consequence of the limited sphere in which he dwelt, in a moral sense at least, he was a mass of the prejudices that were most prevalent at the period when he first obtained his notions. His hatred of France was unconquerable, for he had early learned to consider her as the fast enemy of England; and as to America, he deemed her to be the general asylum of all the rogues of his own country--the possession of a people who had rebelled against their king because the restraints of law were inherently