Israel Potter/Chapters 11-15

by Herman Melville

 

CHAPTER XI.

PAUL JONES IN A REVERIE.

“‘God helps them that help themselves.’  That’s a clincher.  That’s been my experience.  But I never saw it in words before.  What pamphlet is this?  ‘Poor Richard,’ hey!”

Upon entering Israel’s room, Captain Paul, stepping towards the table and spying the open pamphlet there, had taken it up, his eye being immediately attracted to the passage previously marked by our adventurer.

“A rare old gentleman is ‘Poor Richard,’” said Israel in response to Paul’s observations.

“So he seems, so he seems,” answered Paul, his eye still running over the pamphlet again; “why, ‘Poor Richard’ reads very much as Doctor Franklin speaks.”

“He wrote it,” said Israel.

“Aye?  Good.  So it is, so it is; it’s the wise man all over.  I must get me a copy of this and wear it around my neck for a charm.  And now about our quarters for the night.  I am not going to deprive you of your bed, my man.  Do you go to bed and I will doze in the chair here.  It’s good dozing in the crosstrees.”

“Why not sleep together?” said Israel; “see, it is a big bed.  Or perhaps you don’t fancy your bed-fellow.  Captain?”

“When, before the mast, I first sailed out of Whitehaven to Norway,” said Paul, coolly, “I had for hammock-mate a full-blooded Congo.  We had a white blanket spread in our hammock.  Every time I turned in I found the Congo’s black wool worked in with the white worsted.  By the end of the voyage the blanket was of a pepper-and-salt look, like an old man’s turning head.  So it’s not because I am notional at all, but because I don’t care to, my lad.  Turn in and go to sleep.  Let the lamp burn.  I’ll see to it.  There, go to sleep.”

Complying with what seemed as much a command as a request, Israel, though in bed, could not fall into slumber for thinking of the little circumstance that this strange swarthy man, flaming with wild enterprises, sat in full suit in the chair.  He felt an uneasy misgiving sensation, as if he had retired, not only without covering up the fire, but leaving it fiercely burning with spitting fagots of hemlock.

But his natural complaisance induced him at least to feign himself asleep; whereupon.  Paul, laying down “Poor Richard,” rose from his chair, and, withdrawing his boots, began walking rapidly but noiselessly to and fro, in his stockings, in the spacious room, wrapped in Indian meditations.  Israel furtively eyed him from beneath the coverlid, and was anew struck by his aspect, now that Paul thought himself unwatched.  Stern relentless purposes, to be pursued to the points of adverse bayonets and the muzzles of hostile cannon, were expressed in the now rigid lines of his brow.  His ruffled right hand was clutched by his side, as if grasping a cutlass.  He paced the room as if advancing upon a fortification.  Meantime a confused buzz of discussion came from the neighboring chamber.  All else was profound midnight tranquillity.  Presently, passing the large mirror over the mantel, Paul caught a glimpse of his person.  He paused, grimly regarding it, while a dash of pleased coxcombry seemed to mingle with the otherwise savage satisfaction expressed in his face.  But the latter predominated.  Soon, rolling up his sleeve, with a queer wild smile, Paul lifted his right arm, and stood thus for an interval, eyeing its image in the glass.  From where he lay, Israel could not see that side of the arm presented to the mirror, but he saw its reflection, and started at perceiving there, framed in the carved and gilded wood, certain large intertwisted ciphers covering the whole inside of the arm, so far as exposed, with mysterious tattooings.  The design was wholly unlike the fanciful figures of anchors, hearts, and cables, sometimes decorating small portions of seamen’s bodies.  It was a sort of tattooing such as is seen only on thoroughbred savages—­deep blue, elaborate, labyrinthine, cabalistic.  Israel remembered having beheld, on one of his early voyages, something similar on the arm of a New Zealand warrior, once met, fresh from battle, in his native village.  He concluded that on some similar early voyage Paul must have undergone the manipulations of some pagan artist.  Covering his arm again with his laced coat-sleeve, Paul glanced ironically at the hand of the same arm, now again half muffled in ruffles, and ornamented with several Parisian rings.  He then resumed his walking with a prowling air, like one haunting an ambuscade; while a gleam of the consciousness of possessing a character as yet un-fathomed, and hidden power to back unsuspected projects, irradiated his cold white brow, which, owing to the shade of his hat in equatorial climates, had been left surmounting his swarthy face, like the snow topping the Andes.

So at midnight, the heart of the metropolis of modern civilization was secretly trod by this jaunty barbarian in broadcloth; a sort of prophetical ghost, glimmering in anticipation upon the advent of those tragic scenes of the French Revolution which levelled the exquisite refinement of Paris with the bloodthirsty ferocity of Borneo; showing that broaches and finger-rings, not less than nose-rings and tattooing, are tokens of the primeval savageness which ever slumbers in human kind, civilized or uncivilized.

Israel slept not a wink that night.  The troubled spirit of Paul paced the chamber till morning; when, copiously bathing himself at the wash-stand, Paul looked care-free and fresh as a daybreak hawk.  After a closeted consultation with Doctor Franklin, he left the place with a light and dandified air, switching his gold-headed cane, and throwing a passing arm round all the pretty chambermaids he encountered, kissing them resoundingly, as if saluting a frigate.  All barbarians are rakes.

 

CHAPTER XII.

RECROSSING THE CHANNEL, ISRAEL RETURNS TO THE SQUIRE’S ABODE—­HIS ADVENTURES THERE.

On the third day, as Israel was walking to and fro in his room, having removed his courier’s boots, for fear of disturbing the Doctor, a quick sharp rap at the door announced the American envoy.  The man of wisdom entered, with two small wads of paper in one hand, and several crackers and a bit of cheese in the other.  There was such an eloquent air of instantaneous dispatch about him, that Israel involuntarily sprang to his boots, and, with two vigorous jerks, hauled them on, and then seizing his hat, like any bird, stood poised for his flight across the channel.

“Well done, my honest friend,” said the Doctor; “you have the papers in your heel, I suppose.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Israel, perceiving the mild irony; and in an instant his boots were off again; when, without another word, the Doctor took one boot, and Israel the other, and forthwith both parties proceeded to secrete the documents.

“I think I could improve the design,” said the sage, as, notwithstanding his haste, he critically eyed the screwing apparatus of the boot.  “The vacancy should have been in the standing part of the heel, not in the lid.  It should go with a spring, too, for better dispatch.  I’ll draw up a paper on false heels one of these days, and send it to a private reading at the Institute.  But no time for it now.  My honest friend, it is now half past ten o’clock.  At half past eleven the diligence starts from the Place-du-Carrousel for Calais.  Make all haste till you arrive at Brentford.  I have a little provender here for you to eat in the diligence, as you will not have time for a regular meal.  A day-and-night courier should never be without a cracker in his pocket.  You will probably leave Brentford in a day or two after your arrival there.  Be wary, now, my good friend; heed well, that, if you are caught with these papers on British ground, you will involve both yourself and our Brentford friends in fatal calamities.  Kick no man’s box, never mind whose, in the way.  Mind your own box.  You can’t be too cautious, but don’t be too suspicious.  God bless you, my honest friend.  Go!”

And, flinging the door open for his exit, the Doctor saw Israel dart into the entry, vigorously spring down the stairs, and disappear with all celerity across the court into the vaulted way.

The man of wisdom stood mildly motionless a moment, with a look of sagacious, humane meditation on his face, as if pondering upon the chances of the important enterprise:  one which, perhaps, might in the sequel affect the weal or woe of nations yet to come.  Then suddenly clapping his hand to his capacious coat-pocket, dragged out a bit of cork with some hen’s feathers, and hurrying to his room, took out his knife, and proceeded to whittle away at a shuttlecock of an original scientific construction, which at some prior time he had promised to send to the young Duchess D’Abrantes that very afternoon.

Safely reaching Calais, at night, Israel stepped almost from the diligence into the packet, and, in a few moments, was cutting the water.  As on the diligence he took an outside and plebeian seat, so, with the same secret motive of preserving unsuspected the character assumed, he took a deck passage in the packet.  It coming on to rain violently, he stole down into the forecastle, dimly lit by a solitary swinging lamp, where were two men industriously smoking, and filling the narrow hole with soporific vapors.  These induced strange drowsiness in Israel, and he pondered how best he might indulge it, for a time, without imperilling the precious documents in his custody.

But this pondering in such soporific vapors had the effect of those mathematical devices whereby restless people cipher themselves to sleep.  His languid head fell to his breast.  In another moment, he drooped half-lengthwise upon a chest, his legs outstretched before him.

Presently he was awakened by some intermeddlement with his feet.  Starting to his elbow, he saw one of the two men in the act of slyly slipping off his right boot, while the left one, already removed, lay on the floor, all ready against the rascal’s retreat Had it not been for the lesson learned on the Pont Neuf, Israel would instantly have inferred that his secret mission was known, and the operator some designed diplomatic knave or other, hired by the British Cabinet, thus to lie in wait for him, fume him into slumber with tobacco, and then rifle him of his momentous dispatches.  But as it was, he recalled Doctor Franklin’s prudent admonitions against the indulgence of premature suspicions.

“Sir,” said Israel very civilly, “I will thank you for that boot which lies on the floor, and, if you please, you can let the other stay where it is.”

“Excuse me,” said the rascal, an accomplished, self-possessed practitioner in his thievish art; “I thought your boots might be pinching you, and only wished to ease you a little.”

“Much obliged to ye for your kindness, sir,” said Israel; “but they don’t pinch me at all.  I suppose, though, you think they wouldn’t pinch you either; your foot looks rather small.  Were you going to try ’em on, just to see how they fitted?”

“No,” said the fellow, with sanctimonious seriousness; “but with your permission I should like to try them on, when we get to Dover.  I couldn’t try them well walking on this tipsy craft’s deck, you know.”

“No,” answered Israel, “and the beach at Dover ain’t very smooth either.  I guess, upon second thought, you had better not try ’em on at all.  Besides, I am a simple sort of a soul—­eccentric they call me—­and don’t like my boots to go out of my sight.  Ha! ha!”

“What are you laughing at?” said the fellow testily.

“Odd idea!  I was just looking at those sad old patched boots there on your feet, and thinking to myself what leaky fire-buckets they would be to pass up a ladder on a burning building.  It would hardly be fair now to swop my new boots for those old fire-buckets, would it?”

“By plunko!” cried the fellow, willing now by a bold stroke to change the subject, which was growing slightly annoying; “by plunko, I believe we are getting nigh Dover.  Let’s see.”

And so saying, he sprang up the ladder to the deck.  Upon Israel following, he found the little craft half becalmed, rolling on short swells almost in the exact middle of the channel.  It was just before the break of the morning; the air clear and fine; the heavens spangled with moistly twinkling stars.  The French and English coasts lay distinctly visible in the strange starlight, the white cliffs of Dover resembling a long gabled block of marble houses.  Both shores showed a long straight row of lamps.  Israel seemed standing in the middle of the crossing of some wide stately street in London.  Presently a breeze sprang up, and ere long our adventurer disembarked at his destined port, and directly posted on for Brentford.

The following afternoon, having gained unobserved admittance into the house, according to preconcerted signals, he was sitting in Squire Woodcock’s closet, pulling off his boots and delivering his dispatches.

Having looked over the compressed tissuey sheets, and read a line particularly addressed to himself, the Squire, turning round upon Israel, congratulated him upon his successful mission, placed some refreshment before him, and apprised him that, owing to certain suspicious symptoms in the neighborhood, he (Israel) must now remain concealed in the house for a day or two, till an answer should be ready for Paris.

It was a venerable mansion, as was somewhere previously stated, of a wide and rambling disorderly spaciousness, built, for the most part, of weather-stained old bricks, in the goodly style called Elizabethan.  As without, it was all dark russet bricks, so within, it was nothing but tawny oak panels.

“Now, my good fellow,” said the Squire, “my wife has a number of guests, who wander from room to room, having the freedom of the house.  So I shall have to put you very snugly away, to guard against any chance of discovery.”

So saying, first locking the door, he touched a spring nigh the open fire-place, whereupon one of the black sooty stone jambs of the chimney started ajar, just like the marble gate of a tomb.  Inserting one leg of the heavy tongs in the crack, the Squire pried this cavernous gate wide open.

“Why, Squire Woodcock, what is the matter with your chimney?” said Israel.

“Quick, go in.”

“Am I to sweep the chimney?” demanded Israel; “I didn’t engage for that.”

“Pooh, pooh, this is your hiding-place.  Come, move in.”

“But where does it go to, Squire Woodcock?  I don’t like the looks of it.”

“Follow me.  I’ll show you.”

Pushing his florid corpulence into the mysterious aperture, the elderly Squire led the way up steep stairs of stone, hardly two feet in width, till they reached a little closet, or rather cell, built into the massive main wall of the mansion, and ventilated and dimly lit by two little sloping slits, ingeniously concealed without, by their forming the sculptured mouths of two griffins cut in a great stone tablet decorating that external part of the dwelling.  A mattress lay rolled up in one corner, with a jug of water, a flask of wine, and a wooden trencher containing cold roast beef and bread.

“And I am to be buried alive here?” said Israel, ruefully looking round.

“But your resurrection will soon be at hand,” smiled the Squire; “two days at the furthest.”

“Though to be sure I was a sort of prisoner in Paris, just as I seem about to be made here,” said Israel, “yet Doctor Franklin put me in a better jug than this, Squire Woodcock.  It was set out with boquets and a mirror, and other fine things.  Besides, I could step out into the entry whenever I wanted.”

“Ah, but, my hero, that was in France, and this is in England.  There you were in a friendly country:  here you are in the enemy’s.  If you should be discovered in my house, and your connection with me became known, do you know that it would go very hard with me; very hard indeed?”

“Then, for your sake, I am willing to stay wherever you think best to put me,” replied Israel.

“Well, then, you say you want boquets and a mirror.  If those articles will at all help to solace your seclusion, I will bring them to you.”

“They really would be company; the sight of my own face particularly.”

“Stay here, then.  I will be back in ten minutes.”

In less than that time, the good old Squire returned, puffing and panting, with a great bunch of flowers, and a small shaving-glass.

“There,” said he, putting them down; “now keep perfectly quiet; avoid making any undue noise, and on no account descend the stairs, till I come for you again.”

“But when will that be?” asked Israel.

“I will try to come twice each day while you are here.  But there is no knowing what may happen.  If I should not visit you till I come to liberate you—­on the evening of the second day, or the morning of the third—­you must not be at all surprised, my good fellow.  There is plenty of food-and water to last you.  But mind, on no account descend the stone-stairs till I come for you.”

With that, bidding his guest adieu, he left him.

Israel stood glancing pensively around for a time.  By and by, moving the rolled mattress under the two air-slits, he mounted, to try if aught were visible beyond.  But nothing was to be seen but a very thin slice of blue sky peeping through the lofty foliage of a great tree planted near the side-portal of the mansion; an ancient tree, coeval with the ancient dwelling it guarded.

Sitting down on the Mattress, Israel fell into a reverie.

“Poverty and liberty, or plenty and a prison, seem to be the two horns of the constant dilemma of my life,” thought he.  “Let’s look at the prisoner.”

And taking up the shaving-glass, he surveyed his lineaments.

“What a pity I didn’t think to ask for razors and soap.  I want shaving very badly.  I shaved last in France.  How it would pass the time here.  Had I a comb now and a razor, I might shave and curl my hair, and keep making a continual toilet all through the two days, and look spruce as a robin when I get out.  I’ll ask the Squire for the things this very night when he drops in.  Hark! ain’t that a sort of rumbling in the wall?  I hope there ain’t any oven next door; if so, I shall be scorched out.  Here I am, just like a rat in the wainscot.  I wish there was a low window to look out of.  I wonder what Doctor Franklin is doing now, and Paul Jones?  Hark! there’s a bird singing in the leaves.  Bell for dinner, that.”

And for pastime, he applied himself to the beef and bread, and took a draught of the wine and water.

At last night fell.  He was left in utter darkness.  No Squire.

After an anxious, sleepless night, he saw two long flecks of pale gray light slanting into the cell from the slits, like two long spears.  He rose, rolled up his mattress, got upon the roll, and put his mouth to one of the griffins’ months.  He gave a low, just audible whistle, directing it towards the foliage of the tree.  Presently there was a slight rustling among the leaves, then one solitary chirrup, and in three minutes a whole chorus of melody burst upon his ear.

“I’ve waked the first bird,” said he to himself, with a smile, “and he’s waked all the rest.  Now then for breakfast.  That over, I dare say the Squire will drop in.”

But the breakfast was over, and the two flecks of pale light had changed to golden beams, and the golden beams grew less and less slanting, till they straightened themselves up out of sight altogether.  It was noon, and no Squire.

“He’s gone a-hunting before breakfast, and got belated,” thought Israel.

The afternoon shadows lengthened.  It was sunset; no Squire.

“He must be very busy trying some sheep-stealer in the hall,” mused Israel.  “I hope he won’t forget all about me till to-morrow.”

He waited and listened; and listened and waited.

Another restless night; no sleep; morning came.  The second day passed like the first, and the night.  On the third morning the flowers lay shrunken by his side.  Drops of wet oozing through the air-slits, fell dully on the stone floor.  He heard the dreary beatings of the tree’s leaves against the mouths of the griffins, bedashing them with the spray of the rain-storm without.  At intervals a burst of thunder rolled over his head, and lightning flashing down through the slits, lit up the cell with a greenish glare, followed by sharp splashings and rattlings of the redoubled rain-storm.

“This is the morning of the third day,” murmured Israel to himself; “he said he would at the furthest come to me on the morning of the third day.  This is it.  Patience, he will be here yet.  Morning lasts till noon.”

But, owing to the murkiness of the day, it was very hard to tell when noon came.  Israel refused to credit that noon had come and gone, till dusk set plainly in.  Dreading he knew not what, he found himself buried in the darkness of still another night.  However patient and hopeful hitherto, fortitude now presently left him.  Suddenly, as if some contagious fever had seized him, he was afflicted with strange enchantments of misery, undreamed of till now.

He had eaten all the beef, but there was bread and water sufficient to last, by economy, for two or three days to come.  It was not the pang of hunger then, but a nightmare originating in his mysterious incarceration, which appalled him.  All through the long hours of this particular night, the sense of being masoned up in the wall, grew, and grew, and grew upon him, till again and again he lifted himself convulsively from the floor, as if vast blocks of stone had been laid on him; as if he had been digging a deep well, and the stonework with all the excavated earth had caved in upon him, where he burrowed ninety feet beneath the clover.  In the blind tomb of the midnight he stretched his two arms sideways, and felt as if coffined at not being able to extend them straight out, on opposite sides, for the narrowness of the cell.  He seated himself against one side of the wall, crosswise with the cell, and pushed with his feet at the opposite wall.  But still mindful of his promise in this extremity, he uttered no cry.  He mutely raved in the darkness.  The delirious sense of the absence of light was soon added to his other delirium as to the contraction of space.  The lids of his eyes burst with impotent distension.  Then he thought the air itself was getting unbearable.  He stood up at the griffin slits, pressing his lips far into them till he moulded his lips there, to suck the utmost of the open air possible.

And continually, to heighten his frenzy, there recurred to him again and again what the Squire had told him as to the origin of the cell.  It seemed that this part of the old house, or rather this wall of it, was extremely ancient, dating far beyond the era of Elizabeth, having once formed portion of a religious retreat belonging to the Templars.  The domestic discipline of this order was rigid and merciless in the extreme.  In a side wall of their second storey chapel, horizontal and on a level with the floor, they had an internal vacancy left, exactly of the shape and average size of a coffin.  In this place, from time to time, inmates convicted of contumacy were confined; but, strange to say, not till they were penitent.  A small hole, of the girth of one’s wrist, sunk like a telescope three feet through the masonry into the cell, served at once for ventilation, and to push through food to the prisoner.  This hole opening into the chapel also enabled the poor solitaire, as intended, to overhear the religious services at the altar; and, without being present, take part in the same.  It was deemed a good sign of the state of the sufferer’s soul, if from the gloomy recesses of the wall was heard the agonized groan of his dismal response.  This was regarded in the light of a penitent wail from the dead, because the customs of the order ordained that when any inmate should be first incarcerated in the wall, he should be committed to it in the presence of all the brethren, the chief reading the burial service as the live body was sepulchred.  Sometimes several weeks elapsed ere the disentombment, the penitent being then usually found numb and congealed in all his extremities, like one newly stricken with paralysis.

This coffin-cell of the Templars had been suffered to remain in the demolition of the general edifice, to make way for the erection of the new, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.  It was enlarged somewhat, and altered, and additionally ventilated, to adapt it for a place of concealment in times of civil dissension.

With this history ringing in his solitary brain, it may readily be conceived what Israel’s feelings must have been.  Here, in this very darkness, centuries ago, hearts, human as his, had mildewed in despair; limbs, robust as his own, had stiffened in immovable torpor.

At length, after what seemed all the prophetic days and years of Daniel, morning broke.  The benevolent light entered the cell, soothing his frenzy, as if it had been some smiling human face—­nay, the Squire himself, come at last to redeem him from thrall.  Soon his dumb ravings entirely left him, and gradually, with a sane, calm mind, he revolved all the circumstances of his condition.

He could not be mistaken; something fatal must have befallen his friend.  Israel remembered the Squire’s hinting that in case of the discovery of his clandestine proceedings it would fare extremely hard with him, Israel was forced to conclude that this same unhappy discovery had been made; that owing to some untoward misadventure his good friend had been carried off a State-prisoner to London; that prior to his going the Squire had not apprised any member of his household that he was about to leave behind him a prisoner in the wall; this seemed evident from the circumstance that, thus far, no soul had visited that prisoner.  It could not be otherwise.  Doubtless the Squire, having no opportunity to converse in private with his relatives or friends at the moment of his sudden arrest, had been forced to keep his secret, for the present, for fear of involving Israel in still worse calamities.  But would he leave him to perish piecemeal in the wall?  All surmise was baffled in the unconjecturable possibilities of the case.  But some sort of action must speedily be determined upon.  Israel would not additionally endanger the Squire, but he could not in such uncertainty consent to perish where he was.  He resolved at all hazards to escape, by stealth and noiselessly, if possible; by violence and outcry, if indispensable.

Gliding out of the cell, he descended the stone stairs, and stood before the interior of the jamb.  He felt an immovable iron knob, but no more.  He groped about gently for some bolt or spring.  When before he had passed through the passage with his guide, he had omitted to notice by what precise mechanism the jamb was to be opened from within, or whether, indeed, it could at all be opened except from without.

He was about giving up the search in despair, after sweeping with his two hands every spot of the wall-surface around him, when chancing to turn his whole body a little to one side, he heard a creak, and saw a thin lance of light.  His foot had unconsciously pressed some spring laid in the floor.  The jamb was ajar.  Pushing it open, he stood at liberty, in the Squire’s closet.

 

CHAPTER XIII.

HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE, WITH VARIOUS ADVENTURES FOLLOWING.

He started at the funereal aspect of the room, into which, since he last stood there, undertakers seemed to have stolen.  The curtains of the window were festooned with long weepers of crape.  The four corners of the red cloth on the round table were knotted with crape.

Knowing nothing of these mournful customs of the country, nevertheless, Israel’s instinct whispered him that Squire Woodcock lived no more on this earth.  At once the whole three days’ mystery was made clear.  But what was now to be done?  His friend must have died very suddenly; most probably struck down in a fit, from which he never more rose.  With him had perished all knowledge of the fact that a stranger was immured in the mansion.  If discovered then, prowling here in the inmost privacies of a gentleman’s abode, what would befall the wanderer, already not unsuspected in the neighborhood of some underhand guilt as a fugitive?  If he adhered to the strict truth, what could he offer in his own defence without convicting himself of acts which, by English tribunals, would be accounted flagitious crimes?  Unless, indeed, by involving the memory of the deceased Squire Woodcock in his own self acknowledged proceedings, so ungenerous a charge should result in an abhorrent refusal to credit his extraordinary tale, whether as referring to himself or another, and so throw him open to still more grievous suspicions?

While wrapped in these dispiriting reveries, he heard a step not very far off in the passage.  It seemed approaching.  Instantly he flew to the jamb, which remained unclosed, and disappearing within, drew the stone after him by the iron knob.  Owing to his hurried violence the jamb closed with a dull, dismal and singular noise.  A shriek followed from within the room.  In a panic, Israel fled up the dark stairs, and near the top, in his eagerness, stumbled and fell back to the last step with a rolling din, which, reverberated by the arch overhead, smote through and through the wall, dying away at last indistinctly, like low muffled thunder among the clefts of deep hills.  When raising himself instantly, not seriously bruised by his fall, Israel instantly listened, the echoing sounds of his descent were mingled with added shrieks from within the room.  They seemed some nervous female’s, alarmed by what must have appeared to her supernatural, or at least unaccountable, noises in the wall.  Directly he heard other voices of alarm undistinguishably commingled, and then they retreated together, and all again was still.

Recovering from his first amazement, Israel revolved these occurrences.  “No creature now in the house knows of the cell,” thought he.  “Some woman, the housekeeper, perhaps, first entered the room alone.  Just as she entered the jamb closed.  The sudden report made her shriek; then, afterwards, the noise of my fall prolonging itself, added to her fright, while her repeated shrieks brought every soul in the house to her, who aghast at seeing her lying in a pale faint, it may be, like a corpse, in a room hung with crape for a man just dead, they also shrieked out, and then with blended lamentations they bore the fainting person away.  Now this will follow; no doubt it has followed ere now:—­they believe that the woman saw or heard the spirit of Squire Woodcock.  Since I seem then to understand how all these strange events have occurred, since I seem to know that they have plain common causes, I begin to feel cool and calm again.  Let me see.  Yes.  I have it.  By means of the idea of the ghost prevailing among the frightened household, by that means I will this very night make good my escape.  If I can but lay hands on some of the late Squire’s clothing, if but a coat and hat of his, I shall be certain to succeed.  It is not too early to begin now.  They will hardly come back to the room in a hurry.  I will return to it and see what I can find to serve my purpose.  It is the Squire’s private closet, hence it is not unlikely that here some at least of his clothing will be found.”

With these, thoughts, he cautiously sprung the iron under foot, peeped in, and, seeing all clear, boldly re-entered the apartment.  He went straight to a high, narrow door in the opposite wall.  The key was in the lock.  Opening the door, there hung several coats, small-clothes, pairs of silk stockings, and hats of the deceased.  With little difficulty Israel selected from these the complete suit in which he had last seen his once jovial friend.  Carefully closing the door, and carrying the suit with him, he was returning towards the chimney, when he saw the Squire’s silver-headed cane leaning against a corner of the wainscot.  Taking this also, he stole back to his cell.

Slipping off his own clothing, he deliberately arrayed himself in the borrowed raiment, silk small-clothes and all, then put on the cocked hat, grasped the silver-headed cane in his right hand, and moving his small shaving-glass slowly up and down before him, so as by piecemeal to take in his whole figure, felt convinced that he would well pass for Squire Woodcock’s genuine phantom.  But after the first feeling of self-satisfaction with his anticipated success had left him, it was not without some superstitious embarrassment that Israel felt himself encased in a dead man’s broadcloth; nay, in the very coat in which the deceased had no doubt fallen down in his fit.  By degrees he began to feel almost as unreal and shadowy as the shade whose part he intended to enact.

Waiting long and anxiously till darkness came, and then till he thought it was fairly midnight, he stole back into the closet, and standing for a moment uneasily in the middle of the floor, thinking over all the risks he might run, he lingered till he felt himself resolute and calm.  Then groping for the door leading into the hall, put his hand on the knob and turned it.  But the door refused to budge.  Was it locked?  The key was not in.  Turning the knob once more, and holding it so, he pressed firmly against the door.  It did not move.  More firmly still, when suddenly it burst open with a loud crackling report.  Being cramped, it had stuck in the sill.  Less than three seconds passed when, as Israel was groping his way down the long wide hall towards the large staircase at its opposite end, he heard confused hurrying noises from the neighboring rooms, and in another instant several persons, mostly in night-dresses, appeared at their chamber-doors, thrusting out alarmed faces, lit by a lamp held by one of the number, a rather elderly lady in widow’s weeds, who by her appearance seemed to have just risen from a sleepless chair, instead of an oblivious couch.  Israel’s heart beat like a hammer; his face turned like a sheet.  But bracing himself, pulling his hat lower down over his eyes, settling his head in the collar of his coat, he advanced along the defile of wildly staring faces.  He advanced with a slow and stately step, looked neither to the right nor the left, but went solemnly forward on his now faintly illuminated way, sounding his cane on the floor as he passed.  The faces in the doorways curdled his blood by their rooted looks.  Glued to the spot, they seemed incapable of motion.  Each one was silent as he advanced towards him or her, but as he left each individual, one after another, behind, each in a frenzy shrieked out, “The Squire, the Squire!” As he passed the lady in the widow’s weeds, she fell senseless and crosswise before him.  But forced to be immutable in his purpose, Israel, solemnly stepping over her prostrate form, marched deliberately on.

In a few minutes more he had reached the main door of the mansion, and withdrawing the chain and bolt, stood in the open air.  It was a bright moonlight night.  He struck slowly across the open grounds towards the sunken fields beyond.  When-midway across the grounds, he turned towards the mansion, and saw three of the front windows filled with white faces, gazing in terror at the wonderful spectre.  Soon descending a slope, he disappeared from their view.

Presently he came to hilly land in meadow, whose grass having been lately cut, now lay dotting the slope in cocks; a sinuous line of creamy vapor meandered through the lowlands at the base of the hill; while beyond was a dense grove of dwarfish trees, with here and there a tall tapering dead trunk, peeled of the bark, and overpeering the rest.  The vapor wore the semblance of a deep stream of water, imperfectly descried; the grove looked like some closely-clustering town on its banks, lorded over by spires of churches.

The whole scene magically reproduced to our adventurer the aspect of Bunker Hill, Charles River, and Boston town, on the well-remembered night of the 16th of June.  The same season; the same moon; the same new-mown hay on the shaven sward; hay which was scraped together during the night to help pack into the redoubt so hurriedly thrown up.

Acted on as if by enchantment, Israel sat down on one of the cocks, and gave himself up to reverie.  But, worn out by long loss of sleep, his reveries would have soon merged into slumber’s still wilder dreams, had he not rallied himself, and departed on his way, fearful of forgetting himself in an emergency like the present.  It now occurred to him that, well as his disguise had served him in escaping from the mansion of Squire Woodcock, that disguise might fatally endanger him if he should be discovered in it abroad.  He might pass for a ghost at night, and among the relations and immediate friends of the gentleman deceased; but by day, and among indifferent persons, he ran no small risk of being apprehended for an entry-thief.  He bitterly lamented his omission in not pulling on the Squire’s clothes over his own, so that he might now have reappeared in his former guise.

As meditating over this difficulty, he was passing along, suddenly he saw a man in black standing right in his path, about fifty yards distant, in a field of some growing barley or wheat.  The gloomy stranger was standing stock-still; one outstretched arm, with weird intimation pointing towards the deceased Squire’s abode.  To the brooding soul of the now desolate Israel, so strange a sight roused a supernatural suspicion.  His conscience morbidly reproaching him for the terrors he had bred in making his escape from the house, he seemed to see in the fixed gesture of the stranger something more than humanly significant.  But somewhat of his intrepidity returned; he resolved to test the apparition.  Composing itself to the same deliberate stateliness with which it had paced the hall, the phantom of Squire Woodcock firmly, advanced its cane, and marched straight forward towards the mysterious stranger.

As he neared him, Israel shrunk.  The dark coat-sleeve flapped on the bony skeleton of the unknown arm.  The face was lost in a sort of ghastly blank.  It was no living man.

But mechanically continuing his course, Israel drew still nearer and saw a scarecrow.

Not a little relieved by the discovery, our adventurer paused, more particularly to survey so deceptive an object, which seemed to have been constructed on the most efficient principles; probably by some broken down wax figure costumer.  It comprised the complete wardrobe of a scarecrow, namely:  a cocked hat, bunged; tattered coat; old velveteen breeches; and long worsted stockings, full of holes; all stuffed very nicely with straw, and skeletoned by a frame-work of poles.  There was a great flapped pocket to the coat—­which seemed to have been some laborer’s—­standing invitingly opened.  Putting his hands in, Israel drew out the lid of an old tobacco-box, the broken bowl of a pipe, two rusty nails, and a few kernels of wheat.  This reminded him of the Squire’s pockets.  Trying them, he produced a handsome handkerchief, a spectacle-case, with a purse containing some silver and gold, amounting to a little more than five pounds.  Such is the difference between the contents of the pockets of scarecrows and the pockets of well-to-do squires.  Ere donning his present habiliments, Israel had not omitted to withdraw his own money from his own coat, and put it in the pocket of his own waistcoat, which he had not exchanged.

Looking upon the scarecrow more attentively, it struck him that, miserable as its wardrobe was, nevertheless here was a chance for getting rid of the unsuitable and perilous clothes of the Squire.  No other available opportunity might present itself for a time.  Before he encountered any living creature by daylight, another suit must somehow be had.  His exchange with the old ditcher, after his escape from the inn near Portsmouth, had familiarized him with the most deplorable of wardrobes.  Well, too, he knew, and had experienced it, that for a man desirous of avoiding notice, the more wretched the clothes, the better.  For who does not shun the scurvy wretch, Poverty, advancing in battered hat and lamentable coat?

Without more ado, slipping off the Squire’s raiment, he donned the scarecrow’s, after carefully shaking out the hay, which, from many alternate soakings and bakings in rain and sun, had become quite broken up, and would have been almost dust, were it not for the mildew which damped it.  But sufficient of this wretched old hay remained adhesive to the inside of the breeches and coat-sleeves, to produce the most irritating torment.

The grand moral question now came up, what to do with the purse.  Would it be dishonest under the circumstances to appropriate that purse?  Considering the whole matter, and not forgetting that he had not received from the gentleman deceased the promised reward for his services as courier, Israel concluded that he might justly use the money for his own.  To which opinion surely no charitable judge will demur.  Besides, what should he do with the purse, if not use it for his own?  It would have been insane to have returned it to the relations.  Such mysterious honesty would have but resulted in his arrest as a rebel, or rascal.  As for the Squire’s clothes, handkerchief, and spectacle-case, they must be put out of sight with all dispatch.  So, going to a morass not remote, Israel sunk them deep down, and heaped tufts of the rank sod upon them.  Then returning to the field of corn, sat down under the lee of a rock, about a hundred yards from where the scarecrow had stood, thinking which way he now had best direct his steps.  But his late ramble coming after so long a deprivation of rest, soon produced effects not so easy to be shaken off, as when reposing upon the haycock.  He felt less anxious too, since changing his apparel.  So before he was aware, he fell into deep sleep.

When he awoke, the sun was well up in the sky.  Looking around he saw a farm-laborer with a pitchfork coming at a distance into view, whose steps seemed bent in a direction not far from the spot where he lay.  Immediately it struck our adventurer that this man must be familiar with the scarecrow; perhaps had himself fashioned it.  Should he miss it then, he might make immediate search, and so discover the thief so imprudently loitering upon the very field of his operations.

Waiting until the man momentarily disappeared in a little hollow, Israel ran briskly to the identical spot where the scarecrow had stood, where, standing stiffly erect, pulling the hat well over his face, and thrusting out his arm, pointed steadfastly towards the Squire’s abode, he awaited the event.  Soon the man reappeared in sight, and marching right on, paused not far from Israel, and gave him an one earnest look, as if it were his daily wont to satisfy that all was right with the scarecrow.  No sooner was the man departed to a reasonable distance, than, quitting his post, Israel struck across the fields towards London.  But he had not yet quite quitted the field when it occurred to him to turn round and see if the man was completely out of sight, when, to his consternation, he saw the man returning towards him, evidently by his pace and gesture in unmixed amazement.  The man must have turned round to look before Israel had done so.  Frozen to the ground, Israel knew not what to do; but next moment it struck him that this very motionlessness was the least hazardous plan in such a strait.  Thrusting out his arm again towards the house, once more he stood stock still, and again awaited the event.

It so happened that this time, in pointing towards the house, Israel unavoidably pointed towards the advancing man.  Hoping that the strangeness of this coincidence might, by operating on the man’s superstition, incline him to beat an immediate retreat, Israel kept cool as he might.  But the man proved to be of a braver metal than anticipated.  In passing the spot where the scarecrow had stood, and perceiving, beyond the possibility of mistake, that by, some unaccountable agency it had suddenly removed itself to a distance, instead of being, terrified at this verification of his worst apprehensions, the man pushed on for Israel, apparently resolved to sift this mystery to the bottom.

Seeing him now determinately coming, with pitchfork valiantly presented, Israel, as a last means of practising on the fellow’s fears of the supernatural, suddenly doubled up both fists, presenting them savagely towards him at a distance of about twenty paces, at the same time showing his teeth like a skull’s, and demoniacally rolling his eyes.  The man paused bewildered, looked all round him, looked at the springing grain, then across at some trees, then up at the sky, and satisfied at last by those observations that the world at large had not undergone a miracle in the last fifteen minutes, resolutely resumed his advance; the pitchfork, like a boarding-pike, now aimed full at the breast of the object.  Seeing all his stratagems vain, Israel now threw himself into the original attitude of the scarecrow, and once again stood immovable.  Abating his pace by degrees almost to a mere creep, the man at last came within three feet of him, and, pausing, gazed amazed into Israel’s eyes.  With a stern and terrible expression Israel resolutely returned the glance, but otherwise remained like a statue, hoping thus to stare his pursuer out of countenance.  At last the man slowly presented one prong of his fork towards Israel’s left eye.  Nearer and nearer the sharp point came, till no longer capable of enduring such a test, Israel took to his heels with all speed, his tattered coat-tails streaming behind him.  With inveterate purpose the man pursued.  Darting blindly on, Israel, leaping a gate, suddenly found himself in a field where some dozen laborers were at work, who recognizing the scarecrow—­an old acquaintance of theirs, as it would seem—­lifted all their hands as the astounding apparition swept by, followed by the man with the pitchfork.  Soon all joined in the chase, but Israel proved to have better wind and bottom than any.  Outstripping the whole pack he finally shot out of their sight in an extensive park, heavily timbered in one quarter.  He never saw more of these people.

Loitering in the wood till nightfall, he then stole out and made the best of his way towards the house of that good natured farmer in whose corn-loft he had received his first message from Squire Woodcock.  Rousing this man up a little before midnight, he informed him somewhat of his recent adventures, but carefully concealed his having been employed as a secret courier, together with his escape from Squire Woodcock’s.  All he craved at present was a meal.  The meal being over, Israel offered to buy from the farmer his best suit of clothes, and displayed the money on the spot.

“Where did you get so much money?” said his entertainer in a tone of surprise; “your clothes here don’t look as if you had seen prosperous times since you left me.  Why, you look like a scarecrow.”

“That may well be,” replied Israel, very soberly.  “But what do you say? will you sell me your suit?—­here’s the cash.”

“I don’t know about it,” said the farmer, in doubt; “let me look at the money.  Ha!—­a silk purse come out of a beggars pocket!—­Quit the house, rascal, you’ve turned thief.”

Thinking that he could not swear to his having come by his money with absolute honesty—­since indeed the case was one for the most subtle casuist—­Israel knew not what to reply.  This honest confusion confirmed the farmer, who with many abusive epithets drove him into the road, telling him that he might thank himself that he did not arrest him on the spot.

In great dolor at this unhappy repulse, Israel trudged on in the moonlight some three miles to the house of another friend, who also had once succored him in extremity.  This man proved a very sound sleeper.  Instead of succeeding in rousing him by his knocking, Israel but succeeded in rousing his wife, a person not of the greatest amiability.  Raising the sash, and seeing so shocking a pauper before her, the woman upbraided him with shameless impropriety in asking charity at dead of night, in a dress so improper too.  Looking down at his deplorable velveteens, Israel discovered that his extensive travels had produced a great rent in one loin of the rotten old breeches, through which a whitish fragment protruded.

Remedying this oversight as well as he might, he again implored the woman to wake her husband.

“That I shan’t!” said the woman, morosely.  “Quit the premises, or I’ll throw something on ye.”

With that she brought some earthenware to the window, and would have fulfilled her threat, had not Israel prudently retreated some paces.  Here he entreated the woman to take mercy on his plight, and since she would not waken her husband, at least throw to him (Israel) her husband’s breeches, and he would leave the price of them, with his own breeches to boot, on the sill of the door.

“You behold how sadly I need them,” said he; “for heaven’s sake befriend me.”

“Quit the premises!” reiterated the woman.

“The breeches, the breeches! here is the money,” cried Israel, half furious with anxiety.

“Saucy cur,” cried the woman, somehow misunderstanding him; “do you cunningly taunt me with wearing the breeches’? begone!”

Once more poor Israel decamped, and made for another friend.  But here a monstrous bull-dog, indignant that the peace of a quiet family should be disturbed by so outrageous a tatterdemalion, flew at Israel’s unfortunate coat, whose rotten skirts the brute tore completely off, leaving the coat razeed to a spencer, which barely came down to the wearer’s waist.  In attempting to drive the monster away, Israel’s hat fell off, upon which the dog pounced with the utmost fierceness, and thrusting both paws into it, rammed out the crown and went snuffling the wreck before him.  Recovering the wretched hat, Israel again beat a retreat, his wardrobe sorely the worse for his visits.  Not only was his coat a mere rag, but his breeches, clawed by the dog, were slashed into yawning gaps, while his yellow hair waved over the top of the crownless beaver, like a lonely tuft of heather on the highlands.

In this plight the morning discovered him dubiously skirmishing on the outskirts of a village.

“Ah! what a true patriot gets for serving his country!” murmured Israel.  But soon thinking a little better of his case, and seeing yet another house which had once furnished him with an asylum, he made bold to advance to the door.  Luckily he this time met the man himself, just emerging from bed.  At first the farmer did not recognize the fugitive, but upon another look, seconded by Israel’s plaintive appeal, beckoned him into the barn, where directly our adventurer told him all he thought prudent to disclose of his story, ending by once more offering to negotiate for breeches and coat.  Having ere this emptied and thrown away the purse which had played him so scurvy a trick with the first farmer, he now produced three crown-pieces.

“Three crown-pieces in your pocket, and no crown to your hat!” said the farmer.

“But I assure you, my friend,” rejoined Israel, “that a finer hat was never worn, until that confounded bull-dog ruined it.”

“True,” said the farmer, “I forgot that part of your story.  Well, I have a tolerable coat and breeches which I will sell you for your money.”

In ten minutes more Israel was equipped in a gray coat of coarse cloth, not much improved by wear, and breeches to match.  For half-a-crown more he procured a highly respectable looking hat.

“Now, my kind friend,” said Israel, “can you tell me where Horne Tooke and John Bridges live?”

Our adventurer thought it his best plan to seek out one or other of those gentlemen, both to report proceedings and learn confirmatory tidings concerning Squire Woodcock, touching whose fate he did not like to inquire of others.

“Horne Tooke?  What do you want with Horne Tooke,” said the farmer.  “He was Squire Woodcock’s friend, wasn’t he?  The poor Squire!  Who would have thought he’d have gone off so suddenly.  But apoplexy comes like a bullet.”

“I was right,” thought Israel to himself.  “But where does Horne Tooke live?” he demanded again.

“He once lived in Brentford, and wore a cassock there.  But I hear he’s sold out his living, and gone in his surplice to study law in Lunnon.”

This was all news to Israel, who, from various amiable remarks he had heard from Horne Tooke at the Squire’s, little dreamed he was an ordained clergyman.  Yet a good-natured English clergyman translated Lucian; another, equally good-natured, wrote Tristram Shandy; and a third, an ill-natured appreciator of good-natured Rabelais, died a dean; not to speak of others.  Thus ingenious and ingenuous are some of the English clergy.

“You can’t tell me, then, where to find Horne Tooke?” said Israel, in perplexity.

“You’ll find him, I suppose, in Lunnon.”

“What street and number?”

“Don’t know.  Needle in a haystack.”

“Where does Mr. Bridges live?”

“Never heard of any Bridges, except Lunnon bridges, and one Molly Bridges in Bridewell.”

So Israel departed; better clothed, but no wiser than before.

What to do next?  He reckoned up his money, and concluded he had plenty to carry him back to Doctor Franklin in Paris.  Accordingly, taking a turn to avoid the two nearest villages, he directed his steps towards London, where, again taking the post-coach for Dover, he arrived on the channel shore just in time to learn that the very coach in which he rode brought the news to the authorities there that all intercourse between the two nations was indefinitely suspended.  The characteristic taciturnity and formal stolidity of his fellow-travellers—­all Englishmen, mutually unacquainted with each other, and occupying different positions in life—­having prevented his sooner hearing the tidings.

Here was another accumulation of misfortunes.  All visions but those of eventual imprisonment or starvation vanished from before the present realities of poor Israel Potter.  The Brentford gentleman had flattered him with the prospect of receiving something very handsome for his services as courier.  That hope was no more.  Doctor Franklin had promised him his good offices in procuring him a passage home to America.  Quite out of the question now.  The sage had likewise intimated that he might possibly see him some way remunerated for his sufferings in his country’s cause.  An idea no longer to be harbored.  Then Israel recalled the mild man of wisdom’s words—­“At the prospect of pleasure never be elated; but without depression respect the omens of ill.”  But he found it as difficult now to comply, in all respects, with the last section of the maxim, as before he had with the first.

While standing wrapped in afflictive reflections on the shore, gazing towards the unattainable coast of France, a pleasant-looking cousinly stranger, in seamen’s dress, accosted him, and, after some pleasant conversation, very civilly invited him up a lane into a house of rather secret entertainment.  Pleased to be befriended in this his strait, Israel yet looked inquisitively upon the man, not completely satisfied with his good intentions.  But the other, with good-humored violence, hurried him up the lane into the inn, when, calling for some spirits, he and Israel very affectionately drank to each other’s better health and prosperity.

“Take another glass,” said the stranger, affably.

Israel, to drown his heavy-heartedness, complied.  The liquor began to take effect.

“Ever at sea?” said the stranger, lightly.

“Oh, yes; been a whaling.”

“Ah!” said the other, “happy to hear that, I assure you.  Jim!  Bill!” And beckoning very quietly to two brawny fellows, in a trice Israel found himself kidnapped into the naval service of the magnanimous old gentleman of Kew Gardens—­his Royal Majesty, George III.

“Hands off!” said Israel, fiercely, as the two men pinioned him.

“Reglar game-cock,” said the cousinly-looking man.  “I must get three guineas for cribbing him.  Pleasant voyage to ye, my friend,” and, leaving Israel a prisoner, the crimp, buttoning his coat, sauntered leisurely out of the inn.

“I’m no Englishman,” roared Israel, in a foam.

“Oh! that’s the old story,” grinned his jailers.  “Come along.  There’s no Englishman in the English fleet.  All foreigners.  You may take their own word for it.”

To be short, in less than a week Israel found himself at Portsmouth, and, ere long, a foretopman in his Majesty’s ship of the line, “Unprincipled,” scudding before the wind down channel, in company with the “Undaunted,” and the “Unconquerable;” all three haughty Dons bound to the East Indian waters as reinforcements to the fleet of Sir Edward Hughs.

And now, we might shortly have to record our adventurer’s part in the famous engagement off the coast of Coromandel, between Admiral Suffrien’s fleet and the English squadron, were it not that fate snatched him on the threshold of events, and, turning him short round whither he had come, sent him back congenially to war against England; instead of on her behalf.  Thus repeatedly and rapidly were the fortunes of our wanderer planted, torn up, transplanted, and dropped again, hither and thither, according as the Supreme Disposer of sailors and soldiers saw fit to appoint.

 

CHAPTER XVI.

IN WHICH ISRAEL IS SAILOR UNDER TWO FLAGS, AND IN THREE SHIPS, AND ALL IN ONE NIGHT.

As running down channel at evening, Israel walked the crowded main-deck of the seventy-four, continually brushed by a thousand hurrying wayfarers, as if he were in some great street in London, jammed with artisans, just returning from their day’s labor, novel and painful emotions were his.  He found himself dropped into the naval mob without one friend; nay, among enemies, since his country’s enemies were his own, and against the kith and kin of these very beings around him, he himself had once lifted a fatal hand.  The martial bustle of a great man-of-war, on her first day out of port, was indescribably jarring to his present mood.  Those sounds of the human multitude disturbing the solemn natural solitudes of the sea, mysteriously afflicted him.  He murmured against that untowardness which, after condemning him to long sorrows on the land, now pursued him with added griefs on the deep.  Why should a patriot, leaping for the chance again to attack the oppressor, as at Bunker Hill, now be kidnapped to fight that oppressor’s battles on the endless drifts of the Bunker Hills of the billows?  But like many other repiners, Israel was perhaps a little premature with upbraidings like these.

Plying on between Scilly and Cape Clear, the Unprincipled—­which vessel somewhat outsailed her consorts—­fell in, just before dusk, with a large revenue cutter close to, and showing signals of distress.  At the moment, no other sail was in sight.

Cursing the necessity of pausing with a strong fair wind at a juncture like this, the officer-of-the-deck shortened sail, and hove to; hailing the cutter, to know what was the matter.  As he hailed the small craft from the lofty poop of the bristling seventy-four, this lieutenant seemed standing on the top of Gibraltar, talking to some lowland peasant in a hut.  The reply was, that in a sudden flaw of wind, which came nigh capsizing them, not an hour since, the cutter had lost all four foremost men by the violent jibing of a boom.  She wanted help to get back to port.

“You shall have one man,” said the officer-of-the-deck, morosely.

“Let him be a good one then, for heaven’s sake,” said he in the cutter; “I ought to have at least two.”

During this talk, Israel’s curiosity had prompted him to dart up the ladder from the main-deck, and stand right in the gangway above, looking out on the strange craft.  Meantime the order had been given to drop a boat.  Thinking this a favorable chance, he stationed himself so that he should be the foremost to spring into the boat; though crowds of English sailors, eager as himself for the same opportunity to escape from foreign service, clung to the chains of the as yet imperfectly disciplined man-of-war.  As the two men who had been lowered in the boat hooked her, when afloat, along to the gangway, Israel dropped like a comet into the stern-sheets, stumbled forward, and seized an oar.  In a moment more, all the oarsmen were in their places, and with a few strokes the boat lay alongside the cutter.

“Take which of them you please,” said the lieutenant in command, addressing the officer in the revenue-cutter, and motioning with his hand to his boat’s crew, as if they were a parcel of carcasses of mutton, of which the first pick was offered to some customer.  “Quick and choose.  Sit down, men”—­to the sailors.  “Oh, you are in a great hurry to get rid of the king’s service, ain’t you?  Brave chaps indeed!—­Have you chosen your man?”

All this while the ten faces of the anxious oarsmen looked with mute longings and appealings towards the officer of the cutter; every face turned at the same angle, as if managed by one machine.  And so they were.  One motive.

“I take the freckled chap with the yellow hair—­him,” pointing to Israel.

Nine of the upturned faces fell in sullen despair, and ere Israel could spring to his feet, he felt a violent thrust in his rear from the toes of one of the disappointed behind him.

“Jump, dobbin!” cried the officer of the boat.

But Israel was already on board.  Another moment, and the boat and cutter parted.  Ere long, night fell, and the man-of-war and her consorts were out of sight.

The revenue vessel resumed her course towards the nighest port, worked by but four men:  the captain, Israel, and two officers.  The cabin-boy was kept at the helm.  As the only foremast man, Israel was put to it pretty hard.  Where there is but one man to three masters, woe betide that lonely slave.  Besides, it was of itself severe work enough to manage the vessel thus short of hands.  But to make matters still worse, the captain and his officers were ugly-tempered fellows.  The one kicked, and the others cuffed Israel.  Whereupon, not sugared with his recent experiences, and maddened by his present hap, Israel seeing himself alone at sea, with only three men, instead of a thousand, to contend against, plucked up a heart, knocked the captain into the lee scuppers, and in his fury was about tumbling the first-officer, a small wash of a fellow, plump overboard, when the captain, jumping to his feet, seized him by his long yellow hair, vowing he would slaughter him.  Meanwhile the cutter flew foaming through the channel, as if in demoniac glee at this uproar on her imperilled deck.  While the consternation was at its height, a dark body suddenly loomed at a moderate distance into view, shooting right athwart the stern of the cutter.  The next moment a shot struck the water within a boat’s length.

“Heave to, and send a boat on board!” roared a voice almost as loud as the cannon.

“That’s a war-ship,” cried the captain of the revenue vessel, in alarm; “but she ain’t a countryman.”

Meantime the officers and Israel stopped the cutter’s way.

“Send a boat on board, or I’ll sink you,” again came roaring from the stranger, followed by another shot, striking the water still nearer the cutter.

“For God’s sake, don’t cannonade us.  I haven’t got the crew to man a boat,” replied the captain of the cutter.  “Who are you?”

“Wait till I send a boat to you for that,” replied the stranger.

“She’s an enemy of some sort, that’s plain,” said the Englishman now to his officers; “we ain’t at open war with France; she’s some bloodthirsty pirate or other.  What d’ye say, men?” turning to his officers; “let’s outsail her, or be shot to chips.  We can beat her at sailing, I know.”

With that, nothing doubting that his counsel would be heartily responded to, he ran to the braces to get the cutter before the wind, followed by one officer, while the other, for a useless bravado, hoisted the colors at the stern.

But Israel stood indifferent, or rather all in a fever of conflicting emotions.  He thought he recognized the voice from the strange vessel.

“Come, what do ye standing there, fool?  Spring to the ropes here!” cried the furious captain.

But Israel did not stir.

Meantime the confusion on board the stranger, owing to the hurried lowering of her boat, with the cloudiness of the sky darkening the misty sea, united to conceal the bold manoeuvre of the cutter.  She had almost gained full headway ere an oblique shot, directed by mere chance, struck her stern, tearing the upcurved head of the tiller in the hands of the cabin-boy, and killing him with the splinters.  Running to the stump, the captain huzzaed, and steered the reeling ship on.  Forced now to hoist back the boat ere giving chase, the stranger was dropped rapidly astern.

All this while storms of maledictions were hurled on Israel.  But their exertions at the ropes prevented his shipmates for the time from using personal violence.  While observing their efforts, Israel could not but say to himself, “These fellows are as brave as they are brutal.”

Soon the stranger was seen dimly wallowing along astern, crowding all sail in chase, while now and then her bow-gun, showing its red tongue, bellowed after them like a mad bull.  Two more shots struck the cutter, but without materially damaging her sails, or the ropes immediately upholding them.  Several of her less important stays were sundered, however, whose loose tarry ends lashed the air like scorpions.  It seemed not improbable that, owing to her superior sailing, the keen cutter would yet get clear.

At this juncture Israel, running towards the captain, who still held the splintered stump of the tiller, stood full before him, saying, “I am an enemy, a Yankee, look to yourself.”

“Help here, lads, help,” roared the captain, “a traitor, a traitor!”

The words were hardly out of his mouth when his voice was silenced for ever.  With one prodigious heave of his whole physical force, Israel smote him over the taffrail into the sea, as if the man had fallen backwards over a teetering chair.  By this time the two officers were hurrying aft.  Ere meeting them midway, Israel, quick as lightning, cast off the two principal halyards, thus letting the large sails all in a tumble of canvass to the deck.  Next moment one of the officers was at the helm, to prevent the cutter from capsizing by being without a steersman in such an emergency.  The other officer and Israel interlocked.  The battle was in the midst of the chaos of blowing canvass.  Caught in a rent of the sail, the officer slipped and fell near the sharp iron edge of the hatchway.  As he fell he caught Israel by the most terrible part in which mortality can be grappled.  Insane with pain, Israel dashed his adversary’s skull against the sharp iron.  The officer’s hold relaxed, but himself stiffened.  Israel made for the helmsman, who as yet knew not the issue of the late tussle.  He caught him round the loins, bedding his fingers like grisly claws into his flesh, and hugging him to his heart.  The man’s ghost, caught like a broken cork in a gurgling bottle’s neck, gasped with the embrace.  Loosening him suddenly, Israel hurled him from him against the bulwarks.  That instant another report was heard, followed by the savage hail—­“You down sail at last, do ye?  I’m a good mind to sink ye for your scurvy trick.  Pull down that dirty rag there, astern!”

With a loud huzza, Israel hauled down the flag with one hand, while with the other he helped the now slowly gliding craft from falling off before the wind.

In a few moments a boat was alongside.  As its commander stepped to the deck he stumbled against the body of the first officer, which, owing to the sudden slant of the cutter in coming to the wind, had rolled against the side near the gangway.  As he came aft he heard the moan of the other officer, where he lay under the mizzen shrouds.

“What is all this?” demanded the stranger of Israel.

“It means that I am a Yankee impressed into the king’s service, and for their pains I have taken the cutter.”

Giving vent to his surprise, the officer looked narrowly at the body by the shrouds, and said, “This man is as good as dead, but we will take him to Captain Paul as a witness in your behalf.”

“Captain Paul?—­Paul Jones?” cried Israel.

“The same.”

“I thought so.  I thought that was his voice hailing.  It was Captain Paul’s voice that somehow put me up to this deed.”

“Captain Paul is the devil for putting men up to be tigers.  But where are the rest of the crew?”

“Overboard.”

“What?” cried the officer; “come on board the Ranger.  Captain Paul will use you for a broadside.”

Taking the moaning man along with them, and leaving the cutter untenanted by any living soul, the boat now left her for the enemy’s ship.  But ere they reached it the man had expired.

Standing foremost on the deck, crowded with three hundred men, as Israel climbed the side, he saw, by the light of battle-lanterns, a small, smart, brigandish-looking man, wearing a Scotch bonnet, with a gold band to it.

“You rascal,” said this person, “why did your paltry smack give me this chase?  Where’s the rest of your gang?”

“Captain Paul,” said Israel, “I believe I remember you.  I believe I offered you my bed in Paris some months ago.  How is Poor Richard?”

“God!  Is this the courier?  The Yankee courier?  But how now? in an English revenue cutter?”

“Impressed, sir; that’s the way.”

“But where’s the rest of them?” demanded Paul, turning to the officer.

Thereupon the officer very briefly told Paul what Israel told him.

“Are we to sink the cutter, sir?” said the gunner, now advancing towards Captain Paul.  “If it is to be done, now is the time.  She is close under us, astern; a few guns pointed downwards will settle her like a shotted corpse.”

“No.  Let her drift into Penzance, an anonymous earnest of what the whitesquall in Paul Jones intends for the future.”

Then giving directions as to the course of the ship, with an order for himself to be called at the first glimpse of a sail, Paul took Israel down with him into his cabin.

“Tell me your story now, my yellow lion.  How was it all?  Don’t stand, sit right down there on the transom.  I’m a democratic sort of sea-king.  Plump on the woolsack, I say, and spin the yarn.  But hold; you want some grog first.”

As Paul handed the flagon, Israel’s eye fell upon his hand.

“You don’t wear any rings now, Captain, I see.  Left them in Paris for safety.”

“Aye, with a certain marchioness there,” replied Paul, with a dandyish look of sentimental conceit, which sat strangely enough on his otherwise grim and Fejee air.

“I should think rings would be somewhat inconvenient at sea,” resumed Israel.  “On my first voyage to the West Indies, I wore a girl’s ring on my middle finger here, and it wasn’t long before, what with hauling wet ropes, and what not, it got a kind of grown down into the flesh, and pained me very bad, let me tell you, it hugged the finger so.”

“And did the girl grow as close to your heart, lad?”

“Ah, Captain, girls grow themselves off quicker than we grow them on.”

“Some experience with the countesses as well as myself, eh?  But the story; wave your yellow mane, my lion—­the story.”

So Israel went on and told the story in all particulars.

At its conclusion Captain Paul eyed him very earnestly.  His wild, lonely heart, incapable of sympathizing with cuddled natures made humdrum by long exemption from pain, was yet drawn towards a being, who in desperation of friendlessness, something like his own, had so fiercely waged battle against tyrannical odds.

“Did you go to sea young, lad?”

“Yes, pretty young.”

“I went at twelve, from Whitehaven.  Only so high,” raising his hand some four feet from the deck.  “I was so small, and looked so queer in my little blue jacket, that they called me the monkey.  They’ll call me something else before long.  Did you ever sail out of Whitehaven?”

“No, Captain.”

“If you had, you’d have heard sad stories about me.  To this hour they say there that I—­bloodthirsty, coward dog that I am—­flogged a sailor, one Mungo Maxwell, to death.  It’s a lie, by Heaven!  I flogged him, for he was a mutinous scamp.  But he died naturally, some time afterwards, and on board another ship.  But why talk?  They didn’t believe the affidavits of others taken before London courts, triumphantly acquitting me; how then will they credit my interested words?  If slander, however much a lie, once gets hold of a man, it will stick closer than fair fame, as black pitch sticks closer than white cream.  But let ’em slander.  I will give the slanderers matter for curses.  When last I left Whitehaven, I swore never again to set foot on her pier, except, like Caesar, at Sandwich, as a foreign invader.  Spring under me, good ship; on you I bound to my vengeance!”

Men with poignant feelings, buried under an air of care-free self command, are never proof to the sudden incitements of passion.  Though in the main they may control themselves, yet if they but once permit the smallest vent, then they may bid adieu to all self-restraint, at least for that time.  Thus with Paul on the present occasion.  His sympathy with Israel had prompted this momentary ebullition.  When it was gone by, he seemed not a little to regret it.  But he passed it over lightly, saying, “You see, my fine fellow, what sort of a bloody cannibal I am.  Will you be a sailor of mine?  A sailor of the Captain who flogged poor Mungo Maxwell to death?”

“I will be very happy, Captain Paul, to be sailor under the man who will yet, I dare say, help flog the British nation to death.”

“You hate ’em, do ye?”

“Like snakes.  For months they’ve hunted me as a dog,” half howled and half wailed Israel, at the memory of all he had suffered.

“Give me your hand, my lion; wave your wild flax again.  By Heaven, you hate so well, I love ye.  You shall be my confidential man; stand sentry at my cabin door; sleep in the cabin; steer my boat; keep by my side whenever I land.  What do you say?”

“I say I’m glad to hear you.”

“You are a good, brave soul.  You are the first among the millions of mankind that I ever naturally took to.  Come, you are tired.  There, go into that state-room for to-night—­it’s mine.  You offered me your bed in Paris.”

“But you begged off, Captain, and so must I. Where do you sleep?”

“Lad, I don’t sleep half a night out of three.  My clothes have not been off now for five days.”

“Ah, Captain, you sleep so little and scheme so much, you will die young.”

“I know it:  I want to:  I mean to.  Who would live a doddered old stump?  What do you think of my Scotch bonnet?”

“It looks well on you, Captain.”

“Do you think so?  A Scotch bonnet, though, ought to look well on a Scotchman.  I’m such by birth.  Is the gold band too much?”

“I like the gold band, Captain.  It looks something as I should think a crown might on a king.”

“Aye?”

“You would make a better-looking king than George III.”

“Did you ever see that old granny?  Waddles about in farthingales, and carries a peacock fan, don’t he?  Did you ever see him?”

“Was as close to him as I am to you now, Captain.  In Kew Gardens it was, where I worked gravelling the walks.  I was all alone with him, talking for some ten minutes.”

“By Jove, what a chance!  Had I but been there!  What an opportunity for kidnapping a British king, and carrying him off in a fast sailing smack to Boston, a hostage for American freedom.  But what did you?  Didn’t you try to do something to him?”

“I had a wicked thought or two, Captain, but I got the better of it.  Besides, the king behaved handsomely towards me; yes, like a true man.  God bless him for it.  But it was before that, that I got the better of the wicked thought.”

“Ah, meant to stick him, I suppose.  Glad you didn’t.  It would have been very shabby.  Never kill a king, but make him captive.  He looks better as a led horse, than a dead carcass.  I propose now, this trip, falling on the grounds of the Earl of Selkirk, a privy counsellor and particular private friend of George III.  But I won’t hurt a hair of his head.  When I get him on board here, he shall lodge in my best state-room, which I mean to hang with damask for him.  I shall drink wine with him, and be very friendly; take him to America, and introduce his lordship into the best circles there; only I shall have him accompanied on his calls by a sentry of two disguised as valets.  For the Earl’s to be on sale, mind; so much ransom; that is, the nobleman, Lord Selkirk, shall have a bodily price pinned on his coat-tail, like any slave up at auction in Charleston.  But, my lad with the yellow mane, you very strangely draw out my secrets.  And yet you don’t talk.  Your honesty is a magnet which attracts my sincerity.  But I rely on your fidelity.”

“I shall be a vice to your plans, Captain Paul.  I will receive, but I won’t let go, unless you alone loose the screw.”

“Well said.  To bed now; you ought to.  I go on deck.  Good night, ace-of-hearts.”

“That is fitter for yourself, Captain Paul, lonely leader of the suit.”

“Lonely?  Aye, but number one cannot but be lonely, my trump.”

“Again I give it back.  Ace-of-trumps may it prove to you, Captain Paul; may it be impossible for you ever to be taken.  But for me—­poor deuce, a trey, that comes in your wake—­any king or knave may take me, as before now the knaves have.”

“Tut, tut, lad; never be more cheery for another than for yourself.  But a fagged body fags the soul.  To hammock, to hammock! while I go on deck to clap on more sail to your cradle.”

And they separated for that night.

 

CHAPTER XV.

THEY SAIL AS FAR AS THE CRAG OF AILSA.

Next morning Israel was appointed quartermaster—­a subaltern selected from the common seamen, and whose duty mostly stations him in the stern of the ship, where the captain walks.  His business is to carry the glass on the look-out for sails; hoist or lower the colors; and keep an eye on the helmsman.  Picked out from the crew for their superior respectability and intelligence, as well as for their excellent seamanship, it is not unusual to find the quartermasters of an armed ship on peculiarly easy terms with the commissioned officers and captain.  This birth, therefore, placed Israel in official contiguity to Paul, and without subjecting either to animadversion, made their public intercourse on deck almost as familiar as their unrestrained converse in the cabin.

It was a fine cool day in the beginning of April.  They were now off the coast of Wales, whose lofty mountains, crested with snow, presented a Norwegian aspect.  The wind was fair, and blew with a strange, bestirring power.  The ship—­running between Ireland and England, northwards, towards the Irish Sea, the inmost heart of the British waters—­seemed, as she snortingly shook the spray from her bow, to be conscious of the dare-devil defiance of the soul which conducted her on this anomalous cruise.  Sailing alone from out a naval port of France, crowded with ships-of-the-line, Paul Jones, in his small craft, went forth in single-armed championship against the English host.  Armed with but the sling-stones in his one shot-locker, like young David of old, Paul bearded the British giant of Gath.  It is not easy, at the present day, to conceive the hardihood of this enterprise.  It was a marching up to the muzzle; the act of one who made no compromise with the cannonadings of danger or death; such a scheme as only could have inspired a heart which held at nothing all the prescribed prudence of war, and every obligation of peace; combining in one breast the vengeful indignation and bitter ambition of an outraged hero, with the uncompunctuous desperation of a renegade.  In one view, the Coriolanus of the sea; in another, a cross between the gentleman and the wolf.

As Paul stood on the elevated part of the quarter-deck, with none but his confidential quartermaster near him, he yielded to Israel’s natural curiosity to learn something concerning the sailing of the expedition.  Paul stood lightly, swaying his body over the sea, by holding on to the mizzen-shrouds, an attitude not inexpressive of his easy audacity; while near by, pacing a few steps to and fro, his long spy-glass now under his arm, and now presented at his eye, Israel, looking the very image of vigilant prudence, listened to the warrior’s story.  It appeared that on the night of the visit of the Duke de Chartres and Count D’Estaing to Doctor Franklin in Paris—­the same night that Captain Paul and Israel were joint occupants of the neighboring chamber—­the final sanction of the French king to the sailing of an American armament against England, under the direction of the Colonial Commissioner, was made known to the latter functionary.  It was a very ticklish affair.  Though swaying on the brink of avowed hostilities with England, no verbal declaration had as yet been made by France.  Undoubtedly, this enigmatic position of things was highly advantageous to such an enterprise as Paul’s.

Without detailing all the steps taken through the united efforts of Captain Paul and Doctor Franklin, suffice it that the determined rover had now attained his wish—­the unfettered command of an armed ship in the British waters; a ship legitimately authorized to hoist the American colors, her commander having in his cabin-locker a regular commission as an officer of the American navy.  He sailed without any instructions.  With that rare insight into rare natures which so largely distinguished the sagacious Franklin, the sage well knew that a prowling brave, like Paul Jones, was, like the prowling lion, by nature a solitary warrior.  “Let him alone,” was the wise man’s answer to some statesman who sought to hamper Paul with a letter of instructions.

Much subtile casuistry has been expended upon the point, whether Paul Jones was a knave or a hero, or a union of both.  But war and warriors, like politics and politicians, like religion and religionists, admit of no metaphysics.

On the second day after Israel’s arrival on board the Ranger, as he and Paul were conversing on the deck, Israel suddenly levelling his glass towards the Irish coast, announced a large sail bound in.  The Ranger gave chase, and soon, almost within sight of her destination—­the port of Dublin—­the stranger was taken, manned, and turned round for Brest.

The Ranger then stood over, passed the Isle of Man towards the Cumberland shore, arriving within remote sight of Whitehaven about sunset.  At dark she was hovering off the harbor, with a party of volunteers all ready to descend.  But the wind shifted and blew fresh with a violent sea.

“I won’t call on old friends in foul weather,” said Captain Paul to Israel.  “We’ll saunter about a little, and leave our cards in a day or two.”

Next morning, in Glentinebay, on the south shore of Scotland, they fell in with a revenue wherry.  It was the practice of such craft to board merchant vessels.  The Ranger was disguised as a merchantman, presenting a broad drab-colored belt all round her hull; under the coat of a Quaker, concealing the intent of a Turk.  It was expected that the chartered rover would come alongside the unchartered one.  But the former took to flight, her two lug sails staggering under a heavy wind, which the pursuing guns of the Ranger pelted with a hail-storm of shot.  The wherry escaped, spite the severe cannonade.

Off the Mull of Galoway, the day following, Paul found himself so nigh a large barley-freighted Scotch coaster, that, to prevent her carrying tidings of him to land, he dispatched her with the news, stern foremost, to Hades; sinking her, and sowing her barley in the sea broadcast by a broadside.  From her crew he learned that there was a fleet of twenty or thirty sail at anchor in Lochryan, with an armed brigantine.  He pointed his prow thither; but at the mouth of the lock, the wind turned against him again in hard squalls.  He abandoned the project.  Shortly after, he encountered a sloop from Dublin.  He sunk her to prevent intelligence.

Thus, seeming as much to bear the elemental commission of Nature, as the military warrant of Congress, swarthy Paul darted hither and thither; hovering like a thundercloud off the crowded harbors; then, beaten off by an adverse wind, discharging his lightnings on uncompanioned vessels, whose solitude made them a more conspicuous and easier mark, like lonely trees on the heath.  Yet all this while the land was full of garrisons, the embayed waters full of fleets.  With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad havoc with her vitals.

Seeing next a large vessel steering for the Clyde, he gave chase, hoping to cut her off.  The stranger proving a fast sailer, the pursuit was urged on with vehemence, Paul standing, plank-proud, on the quarter-deck, calling for pulls upon every rope, to stretch each already half-burst sail to the uttermost.

While thus engaged, suddenly a shadow, like that thrown by an eclipse, was seen rapidly gaining along the deck, with a sharp defined line, plain as a seam of the planks.  It involved all before it.  It was the domineering shadow of the Juan Fernandez-like crag of Ailsa.  The Kanger was in the deep water which makes all round and close up to this great summit of the submarine Grampians.

The crag, more than a mile in circuit, is over a thousand feet high, eight miles from the Ayrshire shore.  There stands the cove, lonely as a foundling, proud as Cheops.  But, like the battered brains surmounting the Giant of Gath, its haughty summit is crowned by a desolate castle, in and out of whose arches the aerial mists eddy like purposeless phantoms, thronging the soul of some ruinous genius, who, even in overthrow, harbors none but lofty conceptions.

As the Ranger shot higher under the crag, its height and bulk dwarfed both pursuer and pursued into nutshells.  The main-truck of the Ranger was nine hundred feet below the foundations of the ruin on the crag’s top: 

While the ship was yet under the shadow, and each seaman’s face shared in the general eclipse, a sudden change came over Paul.  He issued no more sultanical orders.  He did not look so elate as before.  At length he gave the command to discontinue the chase.  Turning about, they sailed southward.

“Captain Paul,” said Israel, shortly afterwards, “you changed your mind rather queerly about catching that craft.  But you thought she was drawing us too far up into the land, I suppose.”

“Sink the craft,” cried Paul; “it was not any fear of her, nor of King George, which made me turn on my heel; it was yon cock of the walk.”

“Cock of the walk?”

“Aye, cock of the walk of the sea; look—­yon Crag of Ailsa.”