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

“You can follow us to the drawing-room, child, where we can make our purchases, without exposing the mystery of our toilets.”

“Miss Plowden has forgotten my hornbook, I believe,” said Borroughcliffe, advancing from the standing group who surrounded the table; “possibly I can find some work in the basket of the boy, better fitted for the improvement of a grown-up young gentleman than this elementary treatise.”

Cecilia, observing him to take the basket from the lad, resumed her seat, and her example was necessarily followed by Katherine; though not without some manifest indications of vexation.

“Come hither, boy, and explain the uses of your wares. This is soap, and this a penknife, I know; but what name do you affix to this?”

“That? that is tape,” returned the lad, with an impatience that might very naturally be attributed to the interruption that was thus given to his trade.

“And this?”

“That?” repeated the stripling, pausing, with a hesitation between sulkiness and doubt; “that?—”

“Come, this is a little ungallant!” cried Katherine; “to keep three ladies dying with impatience to possess themselves of their finery, while you detain the boy, to ask the name of a tambouring-needle!”

“I should apologize for asking questions that are so easily answered; but perhaps he will find the next more difficult to solve,” returned Borroughcliffe, placing the subject of his inquiries in the palm of his hand, in such a manner as to conceal it from all but the boy and himself, “This has a name too; what is it?”

“That?—that—is sometimes called—white-line.”

“Perhaps you mean a white lie?”

“How, sir!” exclaimed the lad, a little fiercely, “a lie!”

“Only a white one,” returned the captain. “What do you call this. Miss Dunscombe?”

“We call it bobbin, sir, generally, in the north,” said the placid Alice.

“Ay, bobbin, or white-line; they are the same thing,” added the young trader.

“They are? I think, now, for a professional man, you know but little of the terms of your art,” observed Borroughcliffe, with an affectation of irony; “I never have seen a youth of your years who knew less. What names, now, would you affix to this, and this, and this?”

While the captain was speaking he drew from his pockets the several instruments that the cockswain had made use of the preceding night to secure his prisoner.

“That,” exclaimed the lad, with the eagerness of one who would vindicate his reputation, “is rattlin-stuff; and this is marline; and that is sennit.”

“Enough, enough,” said Borroughcliffe; “you have exhibited sufficient knowledge to convince me that you do know something of your trade, and nothing of these articles. Mr. Griffith, do you claim this boy?”

“I believe I must, sir,” said the young sea-officer, who had been intently listening to the examination. “On whatever errand you have now ventured here, Mr. Merry, it is useless to affect further concealment.”

“Merry!” exclaimed Cecilia Howard; “is it you, then, my cousin? Are you, too, fallen into the power of your enemies! was it not enough that—”

The young lady recovered her recollection in time to suppress the remainder of the sentence, though the grateful expression of Griffith's eye sufficiently indicated that he had, in his thoughts, filled the sentence with expressions abundantly flattering to his own feelings.

“How's this, again!” cried the colonel; “my two wards embracing and fondling a vagrant, vagabond peddler, before my eyes! Is this treason, Mr. Griffith? Or what means the extraordinary visit of this young gentleman?”

“Is it extraordinary, sir,” said Merry himself, losing his assumed awkwardness in the ease and confidence of one whose faculties had been early exercised, “that a boy like myself, destitute of mother and sisters, should take a like risk on himself, to visit the only two female relatives he has in the world?”

“Why this disguise, then? surely, young gentleman, it was unnecessary to enter the dwelling of old George Howard on such an errand clandestinely, even though your tender years have been practised on, to lead you astray from your allegiance. Mr. Griffith and Captain Manual must pardon me, if I express sentiments, at my own table, that they may find unpleasant; but this business requires us to be explicit.”

“The hospitality of Colonel Howard is unquestionable,” returned the boy; “but he has a great reputation for his loyalty to the crown.”

“Ay, young gentleman; and, I trust, with some justice.”

“Would it, then, be safe, to entrust my person in the hands of one who might think it his duty to detain me?”

“This is plausible enough, Captain Borroughcliffe, and I doubt not the boy speaks with candor. I would, now, that my kinsman, Mr. Christopher Dillon, were here, that I might learn if it would be misprision of treason to permit this youth to depart, unmolested, and without exchange?”

“Inquire of the young gentleman, after the Cacique,” returned the recruiting officer, who, apparently satisfied in producing the exposure of Merry, had resumed his seat at the table; “perhaps he is, in verity, an ambassador, empowered to treat on behalf of his highness.”

“How say you?” demanded the colonel; “do you know anything of my kinsman?”

The anxious eyes of the whole party were fastened on the boy for many moments, witnessing the sudden change from careless freedom to deep horror expressed in his countenance. At length he uttered in an undertone the secret of Dillon's fate.

“He is dead.”

“Dead!” repeated every voice in the room.

“Yes, dead!” said the boy, gazing at the pallid faces of those who surrounded him.

A long and fearful silence succeeded the announcement of this intelligence, which was only interrupted by Griffith, who said:

“Explain the manner of his death, sir, and where his body lies.”

“His body lies interred in the sands,” returned Merry, with a deliberation that proceeded from an opening perception that, if he uttered too much, he might betray the loss of the Ariel, and, consequently, endanger the liberty of Barnstable.

“In the sands?” was echoed from every part of the room.

“Ay, in the sands; but how he died, I cannot explain.”

“He has been murdered!” exclaimed Colonel Howard, whose command of utterance was now amply restored to him; “he has been treacherously, and dastardly, and basely murdered!”

“He has not been murdered,” said the boy, firmly; “nor did he meet his death among those who deserve the name either of traitors or of dastards.”

“Said you not that he was dead? that my kinsman was buried in the sands of the seashore?”