The Red Rover & Other Sea Adventures – 3 Novels in One Volume. Джеймс Фенимор Купер
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acting too true to nature, and you get applauded in a manner quite as well performed.”
The fellow promised caution and amendment; and then he was dismissed, with his reward in gold, and with an injunction to be secret in his return. So soon as the interview was ended, the Rover and Wilder resumed their walk; the former having made sure that no evesdropper had been at hand to steal into his mysterious connexion with the spy. The silence was again long, thoughtful, and deep.
“Good ears” (recommenced the Rover) “are nearly as important, in a ship like this, as a stout heart. The rogues forward must not be permitted to eat of the fruit of knowledge, lest we, who are in the cabins, die.”
“This is a perilous service in which we are embarked,” observed his companion, by a sort of involuntary exposure of his secret thoughts.
The Rover remained silent, making many turns across the deck, before he again opened his lips. When he spoke, it was in a voice so bland and gentle, that his words sounded more like the admonitory tones of a considerate friend, than like the language of a man who had long been associated with a set of beings so rude and unprincipled as those with whom he was now seen.
“You are still on the threshold of your life, Mr Wilder,” he said, “and it is all before you to choose the path on which you will go. As yet, you have been present at no violation of what the world calls its laws; nor is it too late to say you never will be. I may have been selfish in my wish to gain you; but try me; and you will find that self, though often active, cannot, nor does not, long hold its dominion over my mind. Say but the word, and you are free; it is easy to destroy the little evidence which exists of your having made one of my crew. The land is not far beyond that streak of fading light; before to-morrow’s sun shall set, your foot may tread it.”
“Then, why not both? If this irregular life be evil for me, it is the same for you. Could I hope”—
“What would you say?” calmly demanded the Rover, after waiting sufficiently long to be sure his companion hesitated to continue. “Speak freely; your words are for the ears of a friend.”
“Then, as a friend will I unbosom myself. You say, the land is here in the west. It would be easy for you and I, men nurtured on the sea, to lower this boat into the water; and, profiting by the darkness, long ere our absence could be known, we should be lost to the eye of any who might seek us.”
“Whither would you steer?”
“To the shores of America, where shelter and peace might be found in a thousand secret places.”
“Would you have a man, who has so long lived a prince among his followers, become a beggar in a land of strangers?”
“But you have gold. Are we not masters here? Who is there that might dare even to watch our movements, until we were pleased ourselves to throw off the authority with which we are clothed? Ere the middle watch was set, all might be done.”
“Alone! Would you go alone?”
“No—not entirely—that is—it would scarcely become us, as men, to desert the females to the brutal power of those we should leave behind.”
“And would it become us, as men, to desert those who put faith in our fidelity? Mr Wilder, your proposal would make me a villain! Lawless, in the opinion of the world, have I long been; but a traitor to my faith and plighted word, never! The hour may come when the beings whose world is in this ship shall part; but the separation must be open, voluntary, and manly. You never knew what drew me into the haunts of man, when we first met in the town of Boston?”
“Never,” returned Wilder, in a tone of deep disappointment
“Listen, and you shall hear. A sturdy follower had fallen into the hands of the minions of the law. It was necessary to save him. He was a man I little loved, but he was one who had ever been honest, after his opinions. I could not desert the victim; nor could any but I effect his escape. Gold and artifice succeeded; and the fellow is now here, to sing the praises of his Commander to the crew. Could I forfeit a good name, obtained at so much hazard?”
“You would forfeit the good opinions of knaves, to gain a reputation among those whose commendations are an honour.”
“I know not. You little understand the nature of man, if you are now to learn that he has pride in maintaining a reputation for even vice, when he has once purchased notoriety by its exhibition. Besides, I am not fitted for the world, as it is found among your dependant colonists.”
“You claim your birth, perhaps, in the mother country?”
“I am no better than a poor provincial, sir; an humble satellite of the mighty sun. You have seen my flags, Mr Wilder:—but there was one wanting among them all; ay, and one which, had it existed, it would have been my pride, my glory, to have upheld with my heart’s best blood!”
“I know not what you mean.”
“I need not tell a seaman, like you, how many noble rivers pour their waters into the sea along this coast of which we have been speaking—how many wide and commodious havens abound there—or how many sails whiten the ocean, that are manned by men who first drew breath on that spacious and peaceful soil.”
“Surely I know the advantages of the country you mean.”
“I fear not!” quickly returned the Rover. “Were they known, as they should be, by you and others like you, the flag I mentioned would soon be found in every sea; nor would the natives of our country have to succumb to the hirelings of a foreign prince.
“I will not affect to misunderstand your meaning for I have known others as visionary as yourself in fancying that such an event may arrive.”
“May!—As certain as that star will settle in the ocean, or that day is to succeed to night, it must. Had that flag been abroad, Mr Wilder, no man would have ever heard the name of the Red Rover.”
“The King has a service of his own, and it is open to all his subjects alike.”
“I could be a subject of a King; but to be the subject of a subject, Wilder, exceeds the bounds of my poor patience. I was educated, I might almost have said born, in one of his vessels; and how often have I been made to feel, in bitterness, that an ocean separated my birth-place from the footstool of his throne! Would you think it, sir? one of his Commanders dared to couple the name of my country with an epithet I will not wound your ear by repeating!”
“I hope you taught the scoundrel manners.”
The Rover faced his companion, and there was a ghastly smile on his speaking features, as he answered—
“He never repeated the offence! ‘Twas his blood or mine; and dearly did he pay the forfeit of his brutality!”
“You fought like men, and fortune favoured the injured party?”
“We fought, sir.—But I had dared to raise my hand against a native of the holy isle!—It is enough, Mr Wilder; the King rendered a faithful subject desperate, and he has had reason to repent it. Enough for the present; another time I may say more.—Good night.”
Wilder saw the figure of his companion descend the ladder to the quarter-deck; and then was he left to pursue the current of his thoughts, alone, during the remainder of a watch which to his impatience seemed without an end.
Chapter XXII
“She made good view of me; indeed so much,
That sure, methought, her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts, distractedly.”
—Twelfth Night
Though most of the crew of the “Dolphin” slept, either in their hammocks or among the guns, there were bright and anxious eyes still open in a different part of