The Tory Lover 52

The Tory Lover 52

The Roscoff lads looked at their true captain with mingled sleepiness

and admiration as he took the steersman’s place. He presently opened a

large knotted bundle handkerchief, and gave them a share of the rich

treat of tobacco and early apples within; then, seeing that they kept

their right course, he made a pillow of his arm and fell sound asleep.

 

As they came under the vessel’s side the barking of a little dog on

board waked him again with a start. He looked weary enough as he stood

to give his orders and watch his opportunity to leap from the boat, as

they bobbed about in the choppy sea. All was quiet on deck in the

bright sunlight; only the little French dog kept an anxious lookout.

The captain gave orders to break out their anchor and be off down

channel, and then turned toward the cabin, just as Dickson made his

appearance, yawning, in the low companion way.

 

 

Dickson had found such life as this on the fisherman very dull, besides

having a solid resentment of its enforced privations. None of the crew

could speak English save Cooper and Hanscom, who had come to hate him,

and would not speak to him at all except in the exercise of duty. He

knew nothing of the Breton talk, and was a man very fond of idle and

argumentative conversation. The captain had been ashore now for

thirty-six long hours, and his offended colleague stood back, with a

look of surly discontent and no words of welcome, to let the tyrant

pass. The captain took a letter out of his pocket and gave it to him,

with a quick but not unfriendly glance, as if half amused by Dickson’s

own __EXPRESSION__ of alarm as he turned the folded paper and looked at its

unbroken seal. He mumbled something about a tailor’s bill, and then

insisted that the letter could not be meant for him. He did not seem to

know what it would be safe to say.

 

"Come below; I wish to speak with you." The captain spoke impatiently,

as usual, and had the air of a kingbird which dealt with a helpless

crow. "We are in no danger of being overheard. I must speak with you

before you read your letter. I have chanced upon some important

information; I have a new plan on foot."

 

"Certainly, sir," replied Dickson, looking very sour-tempered, but

putting a most complaisant alacrity into his voice.

 

"The news was given me by a man who succeeded in making his escape from

the Mill Prison some months since, and who came to Bristol, where he had

old acquaintances; he is now at work in a coppersmith’s shop," explained

the captain. "He has been able to help some of his shipmates since

then, and, under the assumed character of an American Loyalist, has

enjoyed the confidence of both parties. ’T will be a dangerous fellow

to tamper with; I have heard something of him before. I doubt if he is

very honest, but he turns many a good sound penny for himself. Lee

believes that all his spies are as trusty as Ford and Thornton, but I

can tell you that they are not." The captain’s temper appeared to be

rising, and Dickson winced a little. "I know of some things that go on

unbeknownst to him, and so perhaps do you, Mr. Dickson; this man has

advised me of some matters in Bristol this very night, about which I own

myself to be curious. He says that there are two men out of the Mill

Prison who may be expected in, and are hoping to get safe away to sea.

It would be a pretty thing to add a pair of good American sailors to our

number without the trouble of formal exchange. So I must again delay

our sailing for France, and I shall leave you here to-night, while I go

to inspect the fugitives. There are special reasons, too, why I wish to

get news from the prison."

 

The captain seemed excited, and spoke with unusual frankness and

civility. Though Dickson had begun to listen with uneasiness, he now

expressed approval of such a plan, but ventured at the same time to give

an officious warning that there might be danger of a plot among the

Bristol Loyalists. They would make themselves very happy by securing

such an enemy as John Paul Jones. But this proof of sagacity and

unselfishness on Dickson’s part the captain did not deign to notice.

 

"I shall pass the day in fishing, and toward night take another

anchorage farther up the channel," he continued. "There are reasons why

prudence forbids my going into the Avon again by boat, or being seen by

day about the Bristol quays. I shall run farther up the Severn and land

there, and ride across by Westbury, and over the downs into Bristol, and

so return by daybreak. I have bespoken a horse to wait for me, and you

will see that a boat is ready to take me off in the morning."

 

Dickson received these instructions with apparent interest and an

unconscious sigh of relief. He understood that the captain’s mind was

deeply concerned in so innocent a matter; there was probably no reason

for apprehension on his own part. The next moment his spirits fell, and

his face took on that evil color which was the one sign of emotion and

animosity that he was unable to conceal. There was likely to be direct

news now from the Mill Prison; and the grievous nightmare that haunted

Dickson’s thoughts was the possible reappearance of Roger Wallingford.

 

Once or twice he swallowed hard, and tried to gather courage to speak,

but the words would not come. The captain passed him with a scowl, and

threw himself into the wretched bunk of the cabin to get some sleep.

 

"Captain Jones," and Dickson boldly followed him, "I have something

important which I must say"—

 

"Will not you read your letter first?" inquired the captain, with

unaccustomed politeness. "I am very much fatigued, as you might see. I

want a little sleep, after these two nights."

 

"We are alone now, sir, and there is something that has lain very heavy

on my mind." The man was fluent enough, once his voice had found

utterance.

 

The captain, with neither an oath nor a growl, sat up in his berth, and

listened with some successful mockery of respect, looking him straight

in the face.

 

"That night,—you remember, sir, at Whitehaven? I have come to be

troubled about that night. You may not recall the fact that so

unimportant a person as I stood in any real danger on such an occasion

of glory to you, but I was set upon by the town guard, and only escaped

with my life. I returned to the Ranger in a suffering condition. You

were a little overset by your disappointment, and by Mr. Wallingford’s

disappearance and your suspicions of his course. But in my

encounter,—you know that it was not yet day,—and in the excitement of

escaping from an armed guard, I fear that I fought hand to hand with

Wallingford himself, taking him for a constable. He was the last of

them to attack me, when I was unable to discriminate,—or he, either,"

added Dickson slyly, but with a look of great concern. "The thought has

struck me that he might not have been disloyal to our cause, and was

perhaps escaping to the boat, as I was, when we fell into such desperate

combat in that dark lane. It would put me into an awful position, you

can see, sir.... I may be possessed of too great a share of human

frailty, but I have had more than my share of ill fortune. I have

suffered from unjust suspicions, too, but this dreadful accident would

place me"—

 

"You thought to save your life from an unknown enemy?" the captain

interrupted him. "You struck one of your own party, by mischance, in

the dark?" he suggested, without any apparent reproach in his voice.

 

"Exactly so, sir," said Dickson, taking heart, but looking very

mournful.

 

"Yet you told us that Mr. Wallingford alarmed the guard?"

 

"I could suspect nothing else, sir, at the time; you heard my reasons

when I returned."

 

"Never mind your return," urged Paul Jones, still without any tone of

accusation. "’T was long after the gray of the morning, it was almost

broad day, when I left the shore myself at Whitehaven, and a man might

easily know one of his shipmates. ’T was a dark lane, you told me,

however," and his eyes twinkled with the very least new brightness. "If

we should ever see poor Wallingford again, you could settle all that

between you. I can well understand your present concern. Do you think

that you did the lieutenant any serious damage before you escaped? I

recall the fact that you were badly mauled about the countenance."

 

"I fear that I struck him worst in the shoulder, sir," and Dickson

shifted his position uneasily, and put one hand to the deck timber above

to hold himself steady, now that they were rolling badly with the anchor

off ground. "I know that I had my knife in my hand. He is a very

strong fellow, and a terrible man to wrestle with,—I mean the man whom I

struck, who may have been Wallingford. I thought he would kill me

first."

 

"I wish you had bethought yourself to speak sooner," said the captain

patiently. "’T is a thing for us to reflect upon deeply, but I can hear

no more now. I must sleep, as you see, before I am fit for anything. Do

not let the men disturb me; they may get down channel to their fishing.

If they succeed as well as yesterday, we shall soon make the cost of

this little adventure."

 

He spoke drowsily, and drew the rough blanket over his head to keep the

light away.

 

Dickson mounted to the deck. If he had known how easy it would be to

make things straight with the captain, how much suffering he might have

spared himself! You must take him in the right mood, too. But the

captain had an eye like a gimlet, that twisted into a man’s head.

 

"Wallingford may never turn up, after all. I wish I had killed him

while I was about it," said Dickson to himself uneasily. "It may be all

a lie that he was sent to Plymouth; it would be such a distance!" There

was something the matter with this world. To have an eye like Paul

Jones’s fixed upon you while you were trying to make a straight story

was anything but an assistance or a pleasure.

 

The captain was shaking with laughter in the cabin as Dickson

disappeared. "What a face he put on the smooth-spoken hypocrite! His

race is run; he told me more than he needed," and Paul Jones’s face grew

stern, as he lay there looking at the planks above his head. "He ’s at

the bottom of the hill now, if he only knew it. When a man ’s character

is gone, his reputation is sure enough to follow;" and with this sage

reflection the captain covered his head again carefully, and went to

sleep.

 

Unaware of this final verdict, Dickson was comfortably reading his

letter on the deck, and feeling certain that fortune had turned his way.

His mind had been made up some days before to leave the Ranger as soon

as he got back to France, even if he must feign illness to gain his

discharge, or desert the ship, as others had done. He had already a

good sum of money that had been paid him for information useful to the

British government, and, to avoid future trouble, proposed to hide

himself in the far South or in one of the West Indian Islands. "My poor

wife would gain by the change of climate," said the scoundrel, pitying

himself now for the loss of friendship and respect from which he felt

himself begin to suffer, and for those very conditions which he had so carefully evolved.