The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper (reading diary txt) 📖

contest with a seared conscience, and bloody hands, but all shall be forgotten for the present, when both opportunity and power offer to make her feel our vengeance, even in her vitals. I came on no such errand.”

“What, then, has led you blindly into snares, where all your boasted aid would avail you nothing? for, should I call aloud your name, even here, in the dark and dreary passages of this obscure edifice, the cry would echo through the country ere the morning, and a whole people would be found in arms to punish your audacity.”

“My name has been sounded, and that in no gentle strains,” returned the Pilot, scornfully, “when a whole people have quailed at it, the craven cowardly wretches flying before the man they had wronged. I have lived to bear the banners of the new republic proudly in sight of the three kingdoms, when practised skill and equal arms have in vain struggled to pluck it down. Ay! Alice, the echoes of my guns are still roaring among your eastern hills, and would render my name more appalling than inviting to your sleeping yeomen.”

“Boast not of the momentary success that the arm of God has yielded to your unhallowed efforts,” said Alice; “for a day of severe and heavy retribution must follow: nor flatter yourself with the idle hope that your name, terrible as ye have rendered it to the virtuous, is sufficient, of itself, to drive the thoughts of home, and country, and kin, from all who hear it.—Nay, I know not that even now, in listening to you, I am not forgetting a solemn duty, which would teach me to proclaim your presence, that the land might know that her unnatural son is a dangerous burden in her bosom.”

The Pilot turned quickly in his short walk; and, after reading her countenance, with the expression of one who felt his security, he said in gentler tones:

“Would that be Alice Dunscombe? would that be like the mild, generous girl whom I knew in my youth? But I repeat, the threat would fail to intimidate, even if you were capable of executing it. I have said that it is only to make the signal, to draw around me a force sufficient to scatter these dogs of soldiers to the four winds of heaven.”

“Have you calculated your power justly, John?” said Alice, unconsciously betraying her deep interest in his safety. “Have you reckoned the probability of Mr. Dillon's arriving, accompanied by an armed band of horsemen, with the morning's sun? for it's no secret in the abbey that he is gone in quest of such assistance.”

“Dillon!” exclaimed the Pilot, starting; “who is he? and on what suspicion does he seek this addition to your guard?”

“Nay, John, look not at me, as if you would know the secrets of my heart. It was not I who prompted him to such a step; you cannot for a moment think that I would betray you! But too surely he has gone; and, as the night wears rapidly away, you should be using the hour of grace to effect our own security.”

“Fear not for me, Alice,” returned the Pilot proudly, while a faint smile struggled around his compressed lip: “and yet I like not this movement either. How call you his name? Dillon! is he a minion of King George?”

“He is, John, what you are not, a loyal subject of his sovereign lord the king; and, though a native of the revolted colonies, he has preserved his virtue uncontaminated amid the corruptions and temptations of the times.”

“An American! and disloyal to the liberties of the human race! By Heaven, he had better not cross me; for if my arm reach him, it shall hold him forth as a spectacle of treason to the world.”

“And has not the world enough of such a spectacle in yourself? Are ye not, even now, breathing your native air, though lurking through the mists of the island, with desperate intent against its peace and happiness?”

A dark and fierce expression of angry resentment flashed from the eyes of the Pilot, and even his iron frame seemed to shake with emotion, as he answered:

“Call you his dastardly and selfish treason, aiming, as it does, to aggrandize a few, at the expense of millions, a parallel case to the generous ardor that impels a man to fight in the defence of sacred liberty? I might tell you that I am armed in the common cause of my fellow-subjects and countrymen; that though an ocean divided us in distance, yet are we a people of the same blood, and children of the same parents, and that the hand which oppresses one inflicts an injury on the other. But I disdain all such narrow apologies. I was born on this orb, and I claim to be a citizen of it. A man with a soul not to be limited by the arbitrary boundaries of tyrants and hirelings, but one who has the right as well as the inclination to grapple with oppression, in whose name so ever it is exercised, or in whatever hollow and specious shape it founds its claim to abuse our race.”

“Ah! John, John, though this may sound like reason to rebellious ears, to mine it seemeth only as the ravings of insanity. It is in vain ye build up your new and disorganizing systems of rule, or rather misrule, which are opposed to all that the world has ever yet done, or ever will see done in peace and happiness. What avail your subtleties and false reasonings against the heart? It is the heart which tells us where our home is, and how to love it.”

“You talk like a weak and prejudiced woman, Alice,” said the Pilot, more composedly; “and one who would shackle nations with the ties that bind the young and feeble of your own sex together.”

“And by what holier or better bond can they be united?” said Alice. “Are not the relations of domestic life of God's establishing, and have not the nations grown from families, as branches spread from the stem, till the tree overshadows the land? 'Tis an ancient and sacred tie that binds man to his nation; neither can it be severed without infamy.”

The Pilot smiled disdainfully, and throwing open the rough exterior of his dress, he drew forth, in succession, several articles, while a glowing pride lighted his countenance, as he offered them singly to her notice.

“See, Alice!” he said, “call you this infamy! This broad sheet of parchment is stamped with a seal of no mean importance, and it bears the royal name of the princely Louis also! And view this cross! decorated as it is with jewels, the gift of the same illustrious hand; it is not apt to be given to the children of infamy, neither is it wise or decorous to stigmatize a man who has not been thought unworthy to consort with princes and nobles by the opprobrious name of the 'Scotch Pirate.'”

“And have ye not earned the title, John, by ruthless deeds and bitter animosity? I could kiss the baubles ye show me, if they were a thousand times less splendid, had they been laid upon your breast by the hands of your lawful prince; but now they appear to my eyes as indelible blots upon your attainted name. As for your associates, I have heard of them; and it seemeth that a queen might be better employed than encouraging by her smiles the disloyal subjects of other monarchs, though even her enemies. God only knows when His pleasure may suffer a spirit of disaffection to