Guy Mannering by Walter Scott (good beach reads TXT) 📖

was covered with the purest sand. Ere Glossin had got upon his feet, the hoarse yet suppressed voice of Hatteraick growled through the recesses of the cave.

"Hagel and donner!—be'st du?"

"Are you in the dark?"

"Dark? der deyvil! ay," said Dirk Hatteraick; "where should I have a glim?"

"I have brought light;" and Glossin accordingly produced a tinder-box, and lighted a small lantern.

"You must kindle some fire too, for hold mich der deyvil, lch bin ganz gefrorne!"

"It is a cold place to be sure," said Glossin, gathering together some decayed staves of barrels and pieces of wood, which had perhaps lain in the cavern since Hatteraick was there last.

"Cold? Snow-wasser and hagel! it's perdition—I could only keep myself alive by rambling up and down this d-d vault, and thinking about the merry rouses we have had in it."

The flame then began to blaze brightly, and Hatteraick hung his bronzed visage, and expanded his hard and sinewy hands over it, with an avidity resembling that of a famished wretch to whom food is exposed. The light showed his savage and stern features, and the smoke, which in his agony of cold he seemed to endure almost to suffocation, after circling round his head, rose to the dim and rugged roof of the cave, through which it escaped by some secret rents or clefts in the rock; the same doubtless that afforded air to the cavern when the tide was in, at which time the aperture to the sea was filled with water.

"And now I have brought you some breakfast," said Glossin, producing some cold meat and a flask of spirits. The latter Hatteraick eagerly seized upon, and applied to his mouth; and, after a hearty draught, he exclaimed with great rapture, "Das schmeckt! That is good—that warms the liver!"—Then broke into the fragment of a High-Dutch song,

"Saufen Bier, und Brante-wein, Schmeissens alle die Fenstern ein; lch ben liederlich, Du bist liederlich; Sind wir nicht liederlich Leute a!"

"Well said, my hearty Captain!" cried Glossin, endeavouring to catch the tone of revelry—

  "Gin by pailfuls, wine in rivers,
  Dash the window-glass to shivers!
  For three wild lads were we, brave boys,
  And three wild lads were we;
  Thou on the land, and I on the sand,
  And jack on the gallows-tree!"

That's it, my bully-boy! Why, you're alive again now!—And now let us talk about our business."

"Your business, if you please," said Hatteraick; hagel and donner!—mine was done when I got out of the bilboes."

"Have patience, my good friend;—I'll convince you our interests are just the same."

Hatteraick gave a short dry cough, and Glossin, after a pause, proceeded. "How came you to let the boy escape?"

"Why, fluch and blitzen! he was no charge of mine. Lieutenant Brown gave him to his cousin that's in the Middleburgh house of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, and told him some goose's gazette about his being taken in a skirmish with the land-sharks—he gave him for a foot-boy. Me let him escape!—the bastard kinchin should have walked the plank ere I troubled myself about him."

"Well, and was he bred a foot-boy then?"

"Nein, nein; the kinchin got about the old man's heart, and he gave him his own name, and bred him up in the office, and then sent him to India—I believe he would have packed him back here, but his nephew told him it would do up the free trade for many a day, if the youngster got back to Scotland."

"Do you think the younker knows much of his own origin now?"

"Deyvil!" replied Hatteraick, "how should I tell what he knows now? But he remembered something of it long. When he was but ten years old, he persuaded another Satan's limb of an English bastard like himself to steal my lugger's khan—boat—what do you call it—to return to his country, as he called it—fire him! Before we could overtake them, they had the skiff out of channel as far as the Deurloo—the boat might have been lost."

"I wish to Heaven she had—with him in her" ejaculated Glossin.

"Why, I was so angry myself, that, sapperment! I did give him a tip over the side—but split him—the comical little devil swam like a duck; so I made him swim astern for a mile to teach him manners, and then took him in when he was sinking.—By the knocking Nicholas! he'll plague you, now he's come over the herring-pond! When he was so high, he had the spirit of thunder and lightning."

"How did he get back from India?"

"Why, how should I know?—the house there was done up, and that gave us a shake at Middleburgh, I think—so they sent me again to see what could be done among my old acquaintances here—for we held old stories were done away and forgotten. So I had got a pretty trade on foot within the last two trips; but that stupid houndsfoot schelm, Brown, has knocked it on the head again, I suppose, with getting himself shot by the colonel-man.

"Why were you not with them?"

"Why, you see—sapperment! I fear nothing—but it was too far within land, and I might have been scented."

"True. But to return to this youngster—"

"Ay, ay, donner and blitzen! he's your affair," said the Captain.

"—How do you really know that he is in this country?"

"Why, Gabriel saw him up among the hills."

"Gabriel! who is he?"

A fellow from the gipsies, that, about eighteen years since, was pressed on board that d-d fellow Pritchard's sloop-of-war. It was he came off and gave us warning that the Shark was coming round upon us the day Kennedy was done; and he told us how Kennedy had given the information. The gipsies and Kennedy had some quarrel besides. This Gab went to the East Indies in the same ship with your younker, and, sapperment! knew him well, though the other did not remember him. Gab kept out of his eye though, as he had served the States against England, and was a deserter to boot; and he sent us word directly, that we might know of his being here—though it does not concern us a rope's end."

"So, then, really, and in sober earnest, he is actually in this country, Hatteraick, between friend and friend?" asked Glossin seriously.

"Wetter and donner, yawl What do you take me for?"

"For a bloodthirsty, fearless miscreant!" thought Glossin internally; but said aloud, "And which of your people was it that shot young Hazlewood?"

"Sturm-wetter!" said the Captain, "do ye think we were mad?-none of us, man—Gott! the country was too hot for the trade already with that d-d frolic of Brown's, attacking what you call Woodbourne House."

"Why, I am told," said Glossin, "it was Brown who shot Hazlewood?"

"Not our lieutenant, I promise you; for he was laid six feet deep at Derncleugh the day before the thing happened.—Tausend deyvils, man I do ye think that he could rise out of the earth to shoot another man?"

A light here began to break upon Glossin's confusion of ideas. "Did you not say that the younker, as you call him, goes by the name of Brown

"Of Brown? yaw-Vanbeest Brown; old Vanbeest Brown, of our Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, gave him his own name—he did."

"Then," said Glossin, rubbing his hands, "it is he, by Heaven, who has committed this crime!"

"And what have we to do with that?" demanded Hatteraick.

Glossin paused, and, fertile in expedients, hastily ran over his project in his own mind, and then drew near the smuggler with a confidential air. "You know, my dear Hatteraick, it is our principal business to get rid of this young man?"

"Umph!" answered Dirk Hatteraick-.

"Not," continued Glossin—"not that I would wish any personal harm to him—if—if—if we can do without. Now, he is liable to be seized upon by justice, both as bearing the same name with your lieutenant, who was engaged in that affair at Woodbourne, and for firing at young Hazlewood with intent to kill or wound."

"Ay, ay," said Dirk Hatteraick; "but what good will that do you? He'll be loose again as soon as he shows himself to carry other colours."

"True, my dear Dirk; well noticed, my friend Hatteraick! But there is ground enough for a temporary imprisonment till he fetch his proofs from England or elsewhere, my good friend. I understand the law, Captain Hatteraick, and I'll take it upon me, simple Gilbert Glossin of Ellangowan, justice of peace for the county of—, to refuse his bail, if he should offer the best in the country, until he is brought up for a second examination—now where d'ye think I'll incarcerate him?

"Hagel and wetter! what do I care?"

"Stay, my friend—you do care a great deal. Do you know your goods, that were seized and carried to Woodbourne, are now lying in the Custom-house at Portanferry?" (a small fishing-town).—"Now I will commit this younker—"

"When you have caught him?"

"Ay, ay, when I have caught him; I shall not be long about that—I will commit him to the Workhouse, or Bridewell, which you know is beside the Custom-house."

"Yaw, the Rasp-house; I know it very well."

"I will take care that the red-coats are dispersed through the country; you land at night with the crew of your lugger, receive your own goods, and carry the younker Brown with you back to Flushing. Won't that do?"

"Ay, carry him to Flushing," said the Captain, "or—to America?"

"Ay, ay, my friend."

"Or—to Jericho?"

"Psha! Wherever you have a mind."

"Ay, or—pitch him overboard?"

"Nay, I advise no violence."

"Nein, nein—you leave that to me. Sturm-wetter! I know you of old. But, hark ye, what am I, Dirk Hatteraick, to be the better of this?"

"Why, is it not your interest as well as mine?" said Glossin; "besides, I set you free this morning."

"You set me free!—Donner and deyvil! I set myself free. Besides, it was all in the way of your profession, and happened a long time ago, ha, ha, ha!"

"Pshaw! pshaw! don't let us jest; I am not against making a handsome compliment—but it's your affair as well as mine."

"What do you talk of my affair? is it not you that keep the bouncer's whole estate from him? Dirk Hatteraick never touched a stiver of his rents."

"Hush-hush—I tell you it shall be a joint business."

"Why, will ye give me half the kit?"

"What, half the estate?—d'ye mean . Ye should set up house together at Ellangowan, and take the barony, ridge about?"

"Sturm-wetter, no! but you might give me half the value—half the gelt. Live with you? Nein—I would have a lusthaus of mine own on the Middleburgh dyke, and a blumengarten like a burgomaster's."

"Ay, and a wooden lion at the door, and a painted sentinel in the garden, with a pipe in his mouth!—But, hark ye, Hatteraick; what will all the tulips, and flower-gardens, and pleasure-houses in the Netherlands do for you, if you are hanged here in Scotland?"

Hatteraick's countenance fell. "Der deyvil! hanged?"

"Ay, hanged, meinheer Captain. The devil can scarce save Dirk Hatteraick from being hanged for a murderer and kidnapper, if the younker of Ellangowan should settle in this country, and if the gallant Captain chances to be caught here re-establishing his fair trade! And I won't say, but, as peace is now so much talked of, their High Mightinesses may not hand him over to oblige their new allies, even if he remained in faderiand."

"Poz bagel blitzen and donner! I—I doubt you say true."

"Not," said Glossin, perceiving he had made the desired impression, "not that I am against being civil;" and he slid into Hatteraick's passive hand a bank-note of some value.

"Is this all?" said the smuggler; "you had the price of half a cargo for winking at our job, and made us do your business too."

"But, my good friend, you forget—in this case you will recover all your own goods."

"Ay, at the risk of all our own necks—we could do that without you."

"I doubt that, Captain Hatteraick," said Glossin dryly, "because you would probably find a dozen red-coats at the Custom-house, whom it must be my business, if we agree about this matter, to have removed. Come, come, I will be as liberal as I can, but you should have a conscience."

"Now strafe mich der deyfel!—this provokes me more than all the rest.—You rob and you murder, and you want me to rob and murder, and play the silver-cooper, or kidnapper, as you call it, a dozen times over, and then, hagel and wind-sturm! you speak to me of conscience!—Can you think of no fairer way of getting rid of this unlucky lad?"

"No, meinheer;