TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
the stricken deer, united to keep the female listeners, for many moments, silent through amazement. During this brief period, Tom advanced upon his nerveless victim, and lashing his arms together behind his back, he fastened him, by a strong cord, to the broad canvas belt that he constantly wore around his own body, leaving to himself, by this arrangement, the free use of his arms and weapons of offence, while he secured his captive.
“Surely,” said Cecilia, recovering her recollection the first of the astonished group, “Mr. Barnstable has not commissioned you to offer this violence to my uncle’s kinsman, under the roof of Colonel Howard?—Miss Plowden, your friend has strangely forgotten himself in this transaction, if this man acts in obedience to his order!”
“My friend, my cousin Howard,” returned Katharine, “would never commission his cockswain, or any one, to do an unworthy deed. Speak, honest sailor; why do you commit this outrage on the worthy Mr. Dillon, Colonel Howard’s kinsman, and a cupboard cousin of St. Ruth’s Abbey?”
“Nay, Katherine—”
“Nay, Cecilia, be patient, and let the stranger have utterance; he may solve the difficulty altogether.”
The cockswain, understanding that an explanation was expected from his lips, addressed himself to the task with an energy suitable both to the subject and to his own feelings. In a very few words, though a little obscured by his peculiar diction, he made his listeners understand the confidence that Barnstable had reposed in Dillon, and the treachery of the latter. They heard him with increased astonishment, and Cecilia hardly allowed him time to conclude, before she exclaimed:
“And did Colonel Howard, could Colonel Howard listen to this treacherous project!”
“Ay, they spliced it together among them,” returned Tom; “though one part of this cruise will turn out but badly.”
“Even Borroughcliffe, cold and hardened as he appears to be by habit, would spurn at such dishonor,” added Miss Howard.
“But Mr. Barnstable?” at length Katherine succeeded in saying, when her feelings permitted her utterance, “said you not that soldiers were in quest of him?”
“Ay, ay, young madam,” the cockswain replied, smiling with grim ferocity, “they are in chase, but he has shifted his anchorage, and even if they should find him, his long pikes would make short work of a dozen redcoats. The Lord of tempests and calms have mercy, though, on the schooner! Ah, young madam she, is as lovely to the eyes of an old seafaring man as any of your kind can be to human nature!”
“But why this delay?—away then, honest Tom, and reveal the treachery to your commander; you may not yet be too late—why delay a moment?”
“The ship tarries for want of a pilot.—I could carry three fathom over the shoals of Nantucket, the darkest night that ever shut the windows of heaven, but I should be likely to run upon breakers in this navigation. As it was, I was near getting into company that I should have had to fight my way out of.”
“If that be all, follow me,” cried the ardent Katherine; “I will conduct you to a path that leads to the ocean, without approaching the sentinels.”
Until this moment, Dillon had entertained a secret expectation of a rescue, but when he heard this proposal he felt his blood retreating to his heart, from every part of his agitated frame, and his last hope seemed wrested from him. Raising himself from the abject shrinking attitude, in which both shame and dread had conspired to keep him as though he had been fettered to the spot, he approached Cecilia, and cried, in tones of horror:
“Do not, do not consent, Miss Howard, to abandon me to the fury of this man! Your uncle, your honorable uncle, even now applauded and united with me in my enterprise, which is no more than a common artifice in war.”
“My uncle would unite, Mr. Dillon, in no project of deliberate treachery like this,” said Cecilia, coldly.
“He did, I swear by——”
“Liar!” interrupted the deep tones of the cockswain.
Dillon shivered with agony and terror, while the sounds of this appalling voice sunk into his inmost soul; but as the gloom of the night, the secret ravines of the cliffs, and the turbulence of the ocean flashed across his imagination, he again yielded to a dread of the horrors to which he should be exposed, in encountering them at the mercy of his powerful enemy, and he continued his solicitations:
“Hear me, once more hear me—Miss Howard, I beseech you, hear me! Am I not of your own blood and country? will you see me abandoned to the wild, merciless, malignant fury of this man, who will transfix me with that—oh, God! if you had but seen the sight I beheld in the Alacrity!—hear me. Miss Howard; for the love you bear your Maker, intercede for me! Mr. Griffith shall be released——”
“Liar!” again interrupted the cockswain.
“What promises he?” asked Cecilia, turning her averted face once more at the miserable captive.
“Nothing at all that will be fulfilled,” said Katherine; “follow, honest Tom, and I, at least, will conduct you in good faith.”
“Cruel, obdurate Miss Plowden; gentle, kind Miss Alice, you will not refuse to raise your voice in my favor; your heart is not hardened by any imaginary dangers to those you love.”
“Nay, address not me,” said Alice, bending her meek eyes to the floor; “I trust your life is in no danger; and I pray that he who has the power will have the mercy to see you unharmed.”
“Away,” said Tom, grasping the collar of the helpless Dillon, and rather carrying than leading him into the gallery: “if a sound, one-quarter as loud as a young porpoise makes when he draws his first breath, comes from you, villain, you shall see the sight of the Alacrity over again. My harpoon keeps its edge well, and the old arm can yet drive it to the seizing.”
This menace effectually silenced even the hard, perturbed breathings of the captive, who, with his conductor, followed the light steps of Katherine through some of the secret mazes of the building, until, in a few minutes, they issued through a small door into the open air. Without pausing to deliberate, Miss Plowden led the cockswain through the grounds, to a different wicket from the one by which he had entered the paddock, and pointing to the path, which might be dimly traced along the faded herbage, she bade God bless him, in a voice that discovered her interest in his safety, and vanished from his sight like an aerial being.
Tom needed no incentive to his speed, now that his course lay so plainly before him, but loosening his pistols in his belt, and poising his harpoon, he crossed the fields at a gait that compelled his companion to exert his utmost powers, in the way of walking, to equal. Once or twice, Dillon ventured to utter a word or two; but a stern “silence” from the cockswain warned him to cease, until perceiving that they were approaching the cliffs, he made a final effort to obtain his liberty, by hurriedly promising a large bribe. The cockswain made no reply, and the captive was secretly hoping that his scheme was producing its wonted effects, when he unexpectedly felt the keen cold edge of the barbed iron of the harpoon pressing against his breast, through the opening of his ruffles, and even raising the skin.
“Liar!” said Tom; “another word, and I’ll drive it through your heart!”
From that moment, Dillon was as silent as the grave. They reached the edge of the cliffs, without encountering the party that had been sent in quest of Barnstable, and at a point near where they had landed. The old seaman paused an instant on the verge of the precipice, and cast his experienced eyes along the wide expanse of water that lay before him. The sea was no longer sleeping, but already in heavy motion, and rolling its surly waves against the base of the rocks on which he stood, scattering their white crests high in foam. The cockswain, after bending his looks along the whole line of the eastern horizon, gave utterance to a low and stifled groan; and then, striking the staff of his harpoon violently against the earth, he pursued his way along the very edge of the cliffs, muttering certain dreadful denunciations, which the conscience of his appalled listener did not fail to apply to himself. It