The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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“After all, the occupation of a slaver is bad enough, and unhappily by far too probable, to render it necessary to attribute any worse character to the stranger. I would I knew the motive of your singular assertions, Mr Wilder?”
“I cannot better explain them, Madam: unless my manner produces its effect, I fail altogether in my intentions, which at least are sincere.”
“Is not the risk lessened by your presence?”
“Lessened, but not removed.”
Until now, Gertrude had rather listened, as if unavoidably, than seemed to make one of the party. But here she turned quickly, and perhaps a little impatiently, to Wilder, and, while her cheeks glowed she demanded, with a smile that might have brought even a more obdurate man to his confession,—
“Is it forbidden to be more explicit?”
The young Commander hesitated, perhaps as much to dwell upon the ingenuous features of the speaker, as to decide upon his answer. The colour mounted into his own embrowned cheek, and his eye lighted with a gleam of open pleasure; then, as though suddenly reminded that he was delaying to reply, he said,—
“I am certain, that, in relying on your discretion, I shall be safe.”
“Doubt it not,” returned Mrs Wyllys. “In no event shall you ever be betrayed.”
“Betrayed! For myself, Madam, I have little fear. If you suspect me of personal apprehension you do me great injustice.”
“We suspect you of nothing unworthy,” said Gertrude hastily, “but—we are very anxious for ourselves.”
“Then will I relieve your uneasiness, though at the expense of”——
A call, from one of the mates to the other, arrested his words for the moment, and drew his attention to the neighbouring ship.
“The slaver’s people have just found out that their ship is not made to put in a glass case, to be looked at by women and children,” cried the speaker in tones loud enough to send his words into the fore-top, where the messmate he addressed was attending to some especial duty.
“Ay, ay,” was the answer; “seeing us in motion, has put him in mind of his next voyage. They keep watch aboard the fellow, like the sun in Greenland six months on deck, and six months below!”
The witticism produced, as usual, a laugh among the seamen, who continued their remarks in a similar vein, but in tones more suited to the deference due to their superiors.
The eyes, however, of Wilder had fastened themselves on the other ship. The man so long seated on the end of the main-yard had disappeared, and another sailor was deliberately walking along the opposite quarter of the same spar, steadying himself by the boom, and holding in one hand the end of a rope, which he was apparently about to reeve in the place where it properly belonged. The first glance told Wilder that the latter was Fid, who was so far recovered from his debauch as to tread the giddy height with as much, if not greater, steadiness than he would have rolled along the ground, had his duty called him to terra firma. The countenance of the young man, which, an instant before, had been flushed with excitement, and which was beaming with the pleasure of an opening confidence, changed directly to a look of gloom and reserve. Mrs Wyllys who had lost no shade of the varying expression of his face, resumed the discourse, with some earnestness, where he had seen fit so abruptly to break it off.
“You would relieve us,” she said, “at the expense of”——
“Life, Madam; but not of honour.”
“Gertrude, we can now retire to our cabin,” observed Mrs Wyllys, with an air of cold displeasure, in which disappointment was a good deal mingled with resentment at the trifling of which she believed herself the subject. The eye of Gertrude was no less averted and distant than that of her governess, while the tint that gave lustre to its beam was brighter, if not quite so resentful. As the two moved past the silent Wilder, each dropped a distant salute, and then our adventurer found himself the sole occupant of the quarter-deck. While his crew were busied in coiling ropes, and clearing the decks, their young Commander leaned his head on the taffrail, (that part of the vessel which the good relict of the Rear-Admiral had so strangely confounded with a very different object in the other end of the ship), remaining for many minutes in an attitude of deep abstraction. From this reverie he was at length aroused, by a sound like that produced by the lifting and falling of a light oar into the water. Believing himself about to be annoyed by visiters from the land, he raised his head, and cast a dissatisfied glance over the vessel’s side, to see who was approaching.
A light skiff, such as is commonly used by fishermen in the bays and shallow waters of America, was lying within ten feet of the ship, and in a position where it was necessary to take some little pains in order to observe it. It was occupied by a single man, whose back was towards the vessel, and who was apparently abroad on the ordinary business of the owner of such a boat.
“Are you in search of rudder-fish, my friend, that you hang so closely under my counter?” demanded Wilder. “The bay is said to be full of delicious bass, and other scaly gentlemen, that would far better repay your trouble.”
“He is well paid who gets the bite he baits for,” returned the other, turning his head, and exhibiting the cunning eye and chuckling countenance of old Bob Bunt, as Wilder’s recent and treacherous confederate had announced his name to be.
“How now! Dare you trust yourself with me, in five-fathom water, after the villanous trick you have seen fit”—
“Hist! noble Captain, hist!” interrupted Bob, holding up a finger, to repress the other’s animation, and intimating, by a sign, that their conference must be held in lower tones; “there is no need to call all hands to help us through a little chat. In what way have I fallen to leeward of your favour, Captain?”
“In what way, sirrah! Did you not receive money, to give such a character of this ship to the ladies as (you said yourself) would make them sooner pass the night in a churchyard, than trust foot on board her?”
“Something of the sort passed between us, Captain; but you forgot one half of the conditions, and I overlooked the other; and I need not tell so expert a navigator, that two halves make a whole. No wonder, therefore, that the affair dropt through between us.”
“How! Do you add falsehood to perfidy? What part of my engagement did I neglect?”
“What part!” returned the pretended fisherman, leisurely drawing in a line, which the quick eye of Wilder saw, though abundantly provided with lead at the end, was destitute of the equally material implement—the hook; “What part, Captain! No less a particular than the second guinea.”
“It was to have been the reward of a service done, and not an earnest, like its fellow, to induce you to undertake the duty.”
“Ah! you have helped me to the very word I wanted. I fancied it was not in earnest, like the one I got, and so I left the job half finished.”
“Half finished, scoundrel! you never commenced what you swore so stoutly to perform.”
“Now are you on as wrong a course, my Master, as if you steered due east to get to the Pole. I religiously performed one half my undertaking; and, you will acknowledge, I was only half paid.”
“You would find it difficult to prove that you even did that little.”
“Let us look into the log. I enlisted to walk up the hill as far as the dwelling of the good Admiral’s widow, and there to make certain alterations in my sentiments, which it is not necessary to speak of between us.”
“Which you did not make; but, on the contrary, which you thwarted, by telling an exactly contradictory tale.”
“True.”
“True! knave?—Were justice done you, an acquaintance with a rope’s end would be a merited reward.”
“A squall of words!—If your ship steer as wild as your ideas,