TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
while the only perceptible change was in the number of those who partook of the cheer. The master of the mansion and Borroughcliffe were seated opposite to each other, employed in discussing the events of the day, and diligently pushing to and fro the glittering vessel, that contained a portion of the generous liquor they both loved so well; a task which each moment rendered lighter.
“If Kit would but return,” exclaimed the veteran, whose back was to the opening door, “bringing with, him his honest brows encircled, as they will be or ought to be, with laurel, I should be the happiest old fool, Borroughcliffe, in his majesty’s realm of Great Britain!”
The captain, who felt the necessity for the unnatural restraint he had imposed on his thirst to be removed by the capture of his enemies, pointed towards the door with one hand, while he grasped the sparkling reservoir of the “south side” with the other, and answered:
“Lo! the Cacique himself! his brow inviting the diadem—ha! who have we in his highness’ train? By the Lord, sir Cacique, if you travel with a body-guard of such grenadiers, old Frederick of Prussia himself will have occasion to envy you the corps! a clear six-footer in nature’s stockings! and the arms as unique as the armed!”
The colonel did not, however, attend to half of his companion’s exclamations, but turning, he beheld the individual he had so much desired, and received him with a delight proportioned to the unexpectedness of the pleasure. For several minutes, Dillon was compelled to listen to the rapid questions of his venerable relative, to all of which he answered with a prudent reserve, that might, in some measure, have been governed by the presence of the cockswain. Tom stood with infinite composure, leaning on his harpoon, and surveying, with a countenance where wonder was singularly blended with contempt, the furniture and arrangements of an apartment that was far more splendid than any he had before seen. In the mean time, Borroughcliffe entirely disregarded the private communications that passed between his host and Dillon, which gradually became more deeply interesting, and finally drew them to a distant corner of the apartment, but taking a most undue advantage of the absence of the gentleman, who had so lately been his boon companion, he swallowed one potation after another, as if a double duty had devolved on him, in consequence of the desertion of the veteran. Whenever his eye did wander from the ruby tints of his glass, it was to survey with unrepressed admiration the inches of the cockswain, about whose stature and frame there were numberless excellent points to attract the gaze of a recruiting officer. From this double pleasure, the captain was, however, at last summoned, to participate in the councils of his friends.
Dillon was spared the disagreeable duty of repeating the artful tale he had found it necessary to palm on the colonel, by the ardor of the veteran himself, who executed the task in a manner that gave to the treachery of his kinsman every appearance of a justifiable artifice and of unshaken zeal in the cause of his prince. In substance, Tom was to be detained as a prisoner, and the party of Barnstable were to be entrapped, and of course to share a similar fate. The sunken eye of Dillon cowered before the steady gaze which Borroughcliffe fastened on him, as the latter listened to the plaudits the colonel lavished on his cousin’s ingenuity; but the hesitation that lingered in the soldier’s manner vanished when he turned to examine their unsuspecting prisoner, who was continuing his survey of the apartment, while he innocently imagined the consultations he witnessed were merely the proper and preparatory steps to his admission into the presence of Mr. Griffith.
“Drill,” said Borroughcliffe, aloud, “advance, and receive your orders.” The cockswain turned quickly at this sudden mandate, and, for the first time, perceived that he had been followed into the gallery by the orderly and two files of the recruits, armed. “Take this man to the guard-room, and feed him, and see that he dies not of thirst.”
There was nothing alarming in this order; and Tom was following the soldiers, in obedience to a gesture from their captain, when their steps were arrested in the gallery, by the cry of “Halt!”
“On recollection, Drill,” said Borroughcliffe, in a tone from which all dictatorial sounds were banished, “show the gentleman into my own room, and see him properly supplied.”
The orderly gave such an intimation of his comprehending the meaning of his officer, as the latter was accustomed to receive, when Borroughcliffe returned to his bottle, and the cockswain followed his guide, with an alacrity and good will that were not a little increased by the repeated mention of the cheer that awaited him.
Luckily for the impatience of Tom, the quarters of the captain were at hand, and the promised entertainment by no means slow in making its appearance. The former was an apartment that opened from a lesser gallery, which communicated with the principal passage already mentioned; and the latter was a bountiful but ungarnished supply of that staple of the British Isles, called roast beef; of which the kitchen of Colonel Howard was never without a due and loyal provision,—The sergeant, who certainly understood one of the signs of his captain to imply an attack on the citadel of the cockswain’s brain, mingled, with his own hands, a potation that he styled a rummer of grog, and which he thought would have felled the animal itself that Tom was so diligently masticating, had it been alive and in its vigor. Every calculation that was made on the infirmity of the cockswain’s intellect, under the stimulus of Jamaica, was, however, futile. He swallowed glass after glass, with prodigious relish, but, at the same time, with immovable steadiness; and the eyes of the sergeant, who felt it incumbent to do honor to his own cheer, were already glistening in his head, when, happily for the credit of his heart, a tap at the door announced the presence of his captain, and relieved him from the impending disgrace of being drunk blind by a recruit.
As Borroughcliffe entered the apartment, he commanded his orderly to retire, adding:
“Mr. Dillon will give you instructions, which you are implicitly to obey.”
Drill, who had sense enough remaining to apprehend the displeasure of his officer, should the latter discover his condition, quickened his departure, and the cockswain soon found himself alone with the captain. The vigor of Tom’s attacks on the remnant of the sirloin was now much abated, leaving in its stead that placid quiet which is apt to linger about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain drew a seat nigh the cockswain; and, with a familiarity and kindness infinitely condescending, when the difference in their several conditions is considered, he commenced the following dialogue:
“I hope you have found your entertainment to your liking, Mr. a-a-I must own my ignorance of your name.”
“Tom,” said the cockswain, keeping his eyes roaming over the contents of the trencher; “commonly called long Tom, by my shipmates.”
“You have sailed with discreet men, and able navigators, it will seem, as they understood longitude so well,” rejoined the captain; “but you have a patronymic—I would say another name?”
“Coffin,” returned the cockswain; “I’m called Tom, when there is any hurry, such as letting go the haulyards, or a sheet; long Tom, when they want to get to windward of an old seaman, by fair weather; and long Tom Coffin, when they wish to hail me, so that none of my cousins of the same name, about the islands, shall answer; for I believe the best man among them can’t measure much over a fathom, taking him from his headworks to his heel.”
“You are a most deserving fellow,” cried Borroughcliffe, “and it is painful to think to what a fate the treachery of Mr. Dillon has consigned you.”
The suspicions of Tom, if he ever entertained any, were lulled to rest too effectually by the kindness he had received, to be awakened by this equivocal lament; he therefore, after renewing his intimacy with the rummer, contented himself by saying, with a satisfied simplicity:
“I am consigned to no one, carrying no cargo but this Mr. Dillon, who is to give me Mr. Griffith in exchange, or go back to the Ariel himself, as my prisoner.”
“Ah!