The Pilot (37 page)

As Borroughcliffe entered the apartment, he commanded his orderly to
retire, adding:

"Mr. Dillon will give you instructions, which you are implicitly to
obey."

Drill, who had sense enough remaining to apprehend the displeasure of
his officer, should the latter discover his condition, quickened his
departure, and the cockswain soon found himself alone with the captain.
The vigor of Tom's attacks on the remnant of the sirloin was now much
abated, leaving in its stead that placid quiet which is apt to linger
about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been
appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe,
utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his
lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox,
with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian
Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin.
The captain drew a seat nigh the cockswain; and, with a familiarity and
kindness infinitely condescending, when the difference in their several
conditions is considered, he commenced the following dialogue:

"I hope you have found your entertainment to your liking, Mr. a-a-I must
own my ignorance of your name."

"Tom," said the cockswain, keeping his eyes roaming over the contents of
the trencher; "commonly called long Tom, by my shipmates."

"You have sailed with discreet men, and able navigators, it will seem,
as they understood longitude so well," rejoined the captain; "but you
have a patronymic—I would say another name?"

"Coffin," returned the cockswain; "I'm called Tom, when there is any
hurry, such as letting go the haulyards, or a sheet; long Tom, when they
want to get to windward of an old seaman, by fair weather; and long Tom
Coffin, when they wish to hail me, so that none of my cousins of the
same name, about the islands, shall answer; for I believe the best man
among them can't measure much over a fathom, taking him from his
headworks to his heel."

"You are a most deserving fellow," cried Borroughcliffe, "and it is
painful to think to what a fate the treachery of Mr. Dillon has
consigned you."

The suspicions of Tom, if he ever entertained any, were lulled to rest
too effectually by the kindness he had received, to be awakened by this
equivocal lament; he therefore, after renewing his intimacy with the
rummer, contented himself by saying, with a satisfied simplicity:

"I am consigned to no one, carrying no cargo but this Mr. Dillon, who is
to give me Mr. Griffith in exchange, or go back to the Ariel himself, as
my prisoner."

"Ah! my good friend, I fear you will find, when the time comes to make
this exchange, that he will refuse to do either."

"But, I'll be d—d if he don't do one of them! My orders are to see it
done, and back he goes; or Mr. Griffith, who is as good a seaman, for
his years, as ever trod a deck, slips his cable from this here
anchorage."

Borroughcliffe affected to eye his companion with great commiseration;
an exhibition of compassion that was, however, completely lost on the
cockswain, whose nerves were strung to their happiest tension by his
repeated libations, while his wit was, if anything, quickened by the
same cause, though his own want of guile rendered him slow to comprehend
its existence in others. Perceiving it necessary to speak plainly, the
captain renewed the attack in a more direct manner:

"I am sorry to say that you will not be permitted to return to the
Ariel; and that your commander, Mr. Barnstable, will be a prisoner
within the hour; and, in fact, that your schooner will be taken before
the morning breaks."

"Who'll take her?" asked the cockswain with a grim smile, on whose
feelings, however, this combination of threatened calamities was
beginning to make some impression.

"You must remember that she lies immediately under the heavy guns of a
battery that can sink her in a few minutes; an express has already been
sent to acquaint the commander of the work with the Ariel's true
character; and as the wind has already begun to blow from the ocean, her
escape is impossible."

The truth, together with its portentous consequences, now began to glare
across the faculties of the cockswain. He remembered his own prognostics
on the weather, and the helpless situation of the schooner, deprived of
more than half her crew, and left to the keeping of a boy, while her
commander himself was on the eve of captivity. The trencher fell from
his lap to the floor, his head sunk on his knees, his face was concealed
between his broad palms, and, in spite of every effort the old seaman
could make to conceal his emotion, he fairly groaned aloud.

For a moment, the better feelings of Borroughcliffe prevailed, and he
paused as he witnessed this exhibition of suffering in one whose head
was already sprinkled with the marks of time; but his habits, and the
impressions left by many years passed in collecting victims for the
wars, soon resumed their ascendency, and the recruiting officer
diligently addressed himself to an improvement of his advantage.

"I pity from my heart the poor lads whom artifice or mistaken notions of
duty may have led astray, and who will thus be taken in arms against
their sovereign; but as they are found in the very island of Britain,
they must be made examples to deter others. I fear that, unless they can
make their peace with government, they will all be condemned to death."

"Let them make their peace with God, then; your government can do but
little to clear the log-account of a man whose watch is up for this
world."

"But, by making their peace with those who have the power, their lives
may be spared," said the captain, watching, with keen eyes, the effect
his words produced on the cockswain.

"It matters but little, when a man hears the messenger pipe his hammock
down for the last time; he keeps his watch in another world, though he
goes below in this. But to see wood and iron, that has been put together
after such moulds as the Ariel's, go into strange hands, is a blow that
a man may remember long after the purser's books have been squared
against his name for ever! I would rather that twenty shot should strike
my old carcass, than one should hull the schooner that didn't pass out
above her water-line."

Borroughcliffe replied, somewhat carelessly, "I may be mistaken, after
all; and, instead of putting any of you to death, they may place you all
on board the prison-ships, where you may yet have a merry time of it
these ten or fifteen years to come."

"How's that, shipmate!" cried the cockswain, with a start; "a prison-
ship, d'ye say? you may tell them they can save the expense of one man's
rations by hanging him, if they please, and that is old Tom Coffin."

"There is no answering for their caprice: to-day they may order a dozen
of you to be shot for rebels; to-morrow they may choose to consider you
as prisoners of war, and send you to the hulks for a dozen years."

"Tell them, brother, that I'm a rebel, will ye? and ye'll tell 'em no
lie—one that has fou't them since Manly's time, in Boston Bay, to this
hour. I hope the boy will blow her up! it would be the death of poor
Richard Barnstable to see her in the hands of the English!"

"I know of one way," said Borroughcliffe, affecting to muse, "and but
one, that will certainly avert the prison-ship; for, on second thoughts,
they will hardly put you to death."

"Name it, friend," cried the cockswain, rising from his seat in evident
perturbation, "and if it lies in the power of man, it shall be done."

"Nay," said the captain, dropping his hand familiarly on the shoulder of
the other, who listened with the most eager attention, "'tis easily
done, and no dreadful thing in itself; you are used to gunpowder, and
know its smell from otto of roses!"

"Ay, ay," cried the impatient old seaman; "I have had it flashing under
my nose by the hour; what then?"

"Why, then, what I have to propose will be nothing to a man like you—
you found the beef wholesome, and the grog mellow!"

"Ay, ay, all well enough; but what is that to an old sailor?" asked the
cockswain, unconsciously grasping the collar of Borroughcliffe's coat,
in his agitation; "what then?"

The captain manifested no displeasure at this unexpected familiarity,
but with suavity as he unmasked the battery, from behind which he had
hitherto carried on his attacks.

"Why, then, you have only to serve your king as you have before served
the Congress—and let me be the man to show you your colors."

The cockswain stared at the speaker intently, but it was evident he did
not clearly comprehend the nature of the proposition, and the captain
pursued the subject:

"In plain English, enlist in my company, my fine fellow, and your life
and liberty are both safe."

Tom did not laugh aloud, for that was a burst of feeling in which he was
seldom known to indulge; but every feature of his weatherbeaten visage
contracted into an expression of bitter, ironical contempt.
Borroughcliffe felt the iron fingers, that still grasped his collar,
gradually tightening about his throat, like a vice; and, as the arm
slowly contracted, his body was drawn, by a power that it was in vain to
resist, close to that of the cockswain, who, when their faces were
within a foot of each other, gave vent to his emotions in words:

"A messmate, before a shipmate; a shipmate, before a stranger; a
stranger, before a dog—but a dog before a soldier!"

As Tom concluded, his nervous arm was suddenly extended to the utmost,
the fingers relinquishing their grasp at the same time; and, when
Borroughcliffe recovered his disordered faculties, he found himself in a
distant corner of the apartment, prostrate among a confused pile of
chairs, tables, and wearing-apparel. In endeavoring to rise from this
humble posture, the hand of the captain fell on the hilt of his sword,
which had been included in the confused assemblage of articles produced
by his overthrow.

"How now, scoundrel!" he cried, baring the glittering weapon, and
springing on his feet; "you must be taught your distance, I perceive."

The cockswain seized the harpoon which leaned against the wall, and
dropped its barbed extremity within a foot of the breast of his
assailant, with an expression of the eye that denoted the danger of a
nearer approach. The captain, however, wanted not for courage, and stung
to the quick by the insult he had received, he made a desperate parry,
and attempted to pass within the point of the novel weapon of his
adversary. The slight shock was followed by a sweeping whirl of the
harpoon, and Borroughchffe found himself without arms, completely at the
mercy of his foe. The bloody intentions of Tom vanished with his
success; for, laying aside his weapon, he advanced upon his antagonist,
and seized him with an open palm. One more struggle, in which the
captain discovered his incompetency to make any defence against the
strength of a man who managed him as if he had been a child, decided the
matter. When the captain was passive in the hands of his foe, the
cockswain produced sundry pieces of sennit, marline, and ratlin-stuff,
from his pockets, which appeared to contain as great a variety of small
cordage as a boatswain's storeroom, and proceeded to lash the arms of
the conquered soldier to the posts of his bed, with a coolness that had
not been disturbed since the commencement of hostilities, a silence that
seemed inflexible, and a dexterity that none but a seaman could equal.
When this part of his plan was executed, Tom paused a moment, and gazed
around him as if in quest of something. The naked sword caught his eye,
and, with this weapon in his hand, he deliberately approached his
captive, whose alarm prevented his observing that the cockswain had
snapped the blade asunder from the handle, and that he had already
encircled the latter with marline.

"For God's sake," exclaimed Borroughcliffe, "murder me not in cold
blood!"

The silver hilt entered his mouth as the words issued from it, and the
captain found, while the line was passed and repassed in repeated
involutions across the back of his neck, that he was in a condition to
which he often subjected his own men, when unruly, and which is
universally called being "gagged." The cockswain now appeared to think
himself entitled to all the privileges of a conqueror; for, taking the
light in his hand, he commenced a scrutiny into the nature and quality
of the worldly effects that lay at his mercy. Sundry articles, that
belonged to the equipments of a soldier, were examined, and cast aside
with great contempt, and divers garments of plainer exterior were
rejected as unsuited to the frame of the victor. He, however, soon
encountered two articles, of a metal that is universally understood. But
uncertainty as to their use appeared greatly to embarrass him. The
circular prongs of these curiosities were applied to either hand, to the
wrists, and even to the nose, and the little wheels at their opposite
extremity were turned and examined with as much curiosity and care as a
savage would expend on a watch, until the idea seemed to cross the mind
of the honest seaman, that they formed part of the useless trappings of
a military man; and he cast them aside also, as utterly worthless.
Borroughcliffe, who watched every movement of his conqueror, with a
good-humor that would have restored perfect harmony between them, could
he but have expressed half what he felt, witnessed the safety of a
favorite pair of spurs with much pleasure, though nearly suffocated by
the mirth that was unnaturally repressed. At length, the cockswain found
a pair of handsomely mounted pistols, a sort of weapon with which he
seemed quite familiar. They were loaded, and the knowledge of that fact
appeared to remind Tom of the necessity of departing, by bringing to his
recollection the danger of his commander and of the Ariel. He thrust the
weapons into the canvas belt that encircled his body, and, grasping his
harpoon, approached the bed, where Borroughcliffe was seated in duresse.