Part 4

She plied us with questions as we ate, demonstrating a keenness of mind that continually amazed me.

"So Master Murray hath engaged three berths on his own behalf, aside from the Frenchman," she commented. "Who could he have with him?"

"The negro servant," I hazarded.

"That is true," assented Juggins. "He is Tom, Murray's body-guard. An evil brute, by all accounts."

"But still there is a third place," insisted granny.

"Another servant!" I suggested.

Juggins shook his head.

"I have had our men watched as well as may be, but never have we seen a trace of any other follower or servant."

"Have you done aught towards securing Master Harry's equipment?" she inquired.

"No," he answered. "The less he is cumbered with the better. All he needs for forest work he can find to better advantage in New York."

"But arms!" she pressed.

"There I have somewhat will be of aid to him," he agreed.

And he went to a cupboard, from which he produced a bundle of rolled cloths. Layer after layer was unwound, and finally he drew from the wrappings a gun such as I had never seen before. It was long in the barrel, well-stocked, yet very light and handy.

"You may exclaim over it, Master Harry," remarked Juggins as he surrendered it into my admiring hands; "but you can have no idea of its value until you have seen it tested in the great forests, where a man's life depends upon the swiftness and accuracy with which he can shoot. I learned that in my own youth, and so when I returned to London I had this gun made for me by the King's own gunsmith, after plans I drew for him. There is none other like it."

"And it is for me?" I asked, delighted as a child with a new toy.

"What better use could it have?" he replied. "Oh, yes, and these go with it."

He brought from the same cupboard a shot-pouch of beaded deerskin and a powder-horn, ornamented with dull silver that would not catch the light. Also a belt of hide from which there hung in sheaths a delicately balanced hatchet and a long, broad-bladed knife.

"These you will discover no less useful than the gun," he explained, drawing the weapons from their coverings. "This which you call a hatchet is the tomahawk of the Indians, used for fighting at close quarters and for throwing. This other is the scalping-knife, and a deadly blade it is, too. You will feel them strange at first, but among my friends in New York there is a Dutchman named Corlaer who will instruct you in the ways of the wilderness."

"You will not be letting Master Harry go upon his adventures without smoothing the path for him, will you, Robert?" interposed granny, looking up from the work-table by which she sat.

"No, indeed; he shall have letters to Governor Burnet himself, whom I met before he went overseas, and to Master Cadwalader Colden, the Governor's surveyor-general and a member of his Council, a fine, loyal gentleman with whom I have had some correspondence. They will see to him, more especially because he brings news of value to their plans; and he may be used to thwart the intrigues they struggle against."

V

THE FIFTH PASSENGER

Granny Juggins drew my face down to a level with her puckered old lips.

"God preserve you, Master Harry. No, I am not weeping. 'Tis-- No matter. Remember always that so long as my heart beats there is room in it for you--and forget not that your mother would be hungry for pride in you if she were but with us."

She drew away anxiously.

"You do not mind that I say that, who was her servant?"

I swept her into my arms.

"I love you for it, granny. Never shall I forget your kindness and the welcome you gave to the stranger from the night."

She kissed me tenderly.

"I am an old woman, Master Harry," she said, "and I may not live to see it; but the day will come when you will be no longer a fugitive from justice. So be not disheartened."

"And how could I be disheartened," I demanded, as I set her down, "with two friends such as I may boast of?"

There was a mist before my eyes, and I was not sorry when Juggins broke in upon our farewells.

"Come, come," says he. "You will be unmanning the lad, granny----"

"'Tis to his credit he hath so much sentiment," she returned, wiping clear her eyes with a shaky hand. "But 'tis time he went, Robert."

"Aye, John Waterman will be waiting us at the Temple Stairs, and we have little time to spare if we are to get aboard before the other passengers. This de Veulle would recognize him, I fear, even in his disguise."

I could not forbear a grimace at the reference to my get-up, a linsey-woolsey shirt, with homespun jacket and breeches and a bobbed scratch-wig, the whole designed to give me a rustic appearance, which there can be no doubt that it did.

"Never mind, Master Harry," admonished Juggins as he clapped an ugly beaver of ancient style upon my head. "In New York you will rig yourself in forest-runner's garb, and forget that you ever played the bumpkin. Give granny a last kiss, and----"

She flew at me, light as a bird; her arms clasped momentarily about my neck; I felt her kiss on my cheek; and then she was gone from the room. I may as well say here that I never saw her again, although many a night as I lay under the stars I was to remember her quaint ways, her sweet, shrill voice and loving smile.

But I had no opportunity for such thoughts as Juggins and I hurried through the streets toward the river, where a wherry was awaiting us. All the way he kept up a running fire of last-minute advice and instructions.

"Guard well the letters I have given you, the one to Corlaer no less than those to Governor Burnet and Master Colden. Corlaer, though he be only a rude, unlettered woodsman, is none the less of importance in the wilderness country. He hath the confidence of the Indians of the Six Nations, a mighty tribe, or rather confederacy of tribes, Master Harry. They were recently but five nations in their league, but the Tuscaroras, after troubles with the colonists in the Carolinas, came north several years ago and were accepted at the Council-Fire at Onondaga."

"Are they friendly to Murray?" I asked as we reached the river and climbed aboard the wherry.

"Nay, I think not. But you will learn beyond question in New York. I have writ as strongly as a man may to Governor Burnet, but I would have you say to him all that you can think of to urge him to a vigorous course. 'Tis no hour for half-way measures. We must crush Murray once and for all. If legal measures may not suffice, then let us go without the bounds of the law."

We came presently to Greenwich reach, and steered a passage through the river traffic to the side of the _New Venture_, a slovenly craft of fair burthen, whose loose rope-ends and frazzled rigging emphasized the confusion on her decks.

Master Abbot, her captain, a melancholy man in a tar-stained coat, met us at the rail.

"The young man is not sure of himself afloat, and would seek his berth," said Master Juggins, after the preliminaries had been passed.

"As he pleases," agreed Captain Abbot indifferently "Y'are the first aboard, lad, and may choose your quarters."

"What choice have I?"

"Why, you may bunk with the second mate or one of the other passengers. But no," he corrected himself; "I should have said with one of two of the other passengers. The lady hath a cabin to herself."

"The lady!" I exclaimed.

Master Juggins pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

"So you carry a lady," he commented.

"Aye," replied Abbot, lapsing into his customary manner of indifference, "and a sore nuisance it is, too, although it makes but one in the cabin."

"Who is she?"

"I know not."

He turned to me.

"And now, young sir, what do you say? Will it be the second mate or a passenger for companion!"

"The second mate," I said.

He nodded his head, called a seaman to carry my luggage below and point the way, and walked off.

Master Juggins drew me back to the rail.

"'Tis best I should not wait," he said. "Stay below till you be safe out of Thames mouth, Master Harry. You should be safe enough now, but care is a sure precaution."

"I will not forget," I promised.

"And one thing more, lad. Do not stint your wants for money. Governor Burnet will aid you to draw whatever you may desire through the bankers in New York. Remember, you spend on my behalf. I would willingly use all I have to thwart Murray. You will require trade-goods for the savages, and perhaps equipment for yourself. Purchase the best. Spend--and spare not."

"You are too kind," I mumbled.

"Say rather your father was too kind. 'Tis little enough I have been able to do for you--sending you away, an exile, on a mission of danger. Yet I would have you look upon it as a privilege, if you will, Master Harry. When all is said and done, we are at war with France. 'Tis no war of generals and armies and admirals and fleets, I grant you. But war it is.

"True, there is the Peace of Utrecht, with all its ponderous provisions sullying so many square inches of white parchment. It proclaims peace. And nevertheless I say to you that we are at war."

He smote the rail with his hand by way of emphasis.

"What kind of a war?" I asked.

"Why, a war for the right to grow and to flourish, a war for trade. At other times, mark you, nations clash over questions of honor or territory. So their statesmen say. Actually there is a question of trade or merchantry at the bottom of every war that has been fought since the world began.

"The Romans crushed the Carthaginians--because they wanted another corner of Africa? Never! Because only by so doing could they make the Mediterranean a Roman lake and insure its control by their shipping.

"And so today we are fighting with France for control of the trade of the Atlantic--and control of the Atlantic trade means control of the Western Plantations, America. We are fighting, Master Harry, with laws and tariffs and manufacturing skill and shipping instead of with men and deadly weapons."

"What is the immediate stake for which we fight?" I questioned, interested as always when this extraordinary man unloosed himself in conversation.

"The fur-trade. The country which wins the fur-trade will win control over the greatest number of savages. And the country which is so placed, especially if it be England, will win the military struggle which some day will have to be fought for dominion in America. So I would have you feel yourself a soldier, a general of trade, sent out upon a venture of great danger and importance. It may be, Master Harry, that you carry on your shoulders the future of England and of nations yet unborn."

He fired me so that I forgot my clumsy garments and outward character. I felt, I think, as any young knight who rides forth upon a deed of errantry and adventure.

"All that I can, I will do!" I exclaimed.

"Good. I can not ask more."

He clasped my hand in a wringing grip.

"I see a wherry approaching from up-river. I had best be gone. Good luck to you, lad, and write as occasion serves."

He went over the side with his lips pursed as if to whistle and a look of doleful pleasure on his face. Him, too, as it happened, I was never to see again. In fact, I wonder whether I should not have leaped over the vessel's side at that moment had I realized how complete was to be the severance of my life from all that I had known before.

But I did not know. I walked away from the rail with a light heart, inspired by Master Juggins' parting words and the vision he had called up before my eyes. I cast only a casual glance at the approaching wherry, which was still too far for me to observe whom she contained.

By the cabin entrance under the poop I found the seaman who had collected my scanty baggage, and he escorted me down the shallow stairs into a dark passage, which led to the main cabin, a room at the stern which ran the width of the ship and was lighted by three windows. It was mainly occupied by a table and four benches clamped to the deck. Off the passage itself, opened four doors, two on either side.

"Where do you berth?" the seaman asked me, pausing at the foot of the ladder-stairs.

"With the second mate."

He opened the first door on the right-hand, or starboard, side, revealing a space so tiny that I marveled how two men could force themselves into it at once. It was so low that I could not stand upright, so cramped that there was room only for one person outside the two short, shallow bunks which occupied two-thirds of its area.

"Do all the passengers lodge aft here?" I asked him carelessly as he disposed of my trappings.

"All save the negro; he is to sleep in the galley behind the companionway."

When he had gone I curled up in the lower bunk, which the second mate obviously had surrendered to me, and spent the remainder of the day in dozing and finishing off the shore-food Granny Juggins had prepared for my hours of seclusion. I listened long for the other passengers, but they kept the deck, probably watching the work of getting under way and taking a last look at the shores of England--as I should have liked to do myself.

I had not known my country much in recent years, and truth to tell, she did not seem to care for me. None the less I loved the emerald-green countryside, the soft sunshine through low-hanging clouds, even the turgid reek of smoky, crowded old London.

At last I must have dozed, for I was awakened suddenly by the strangest of sounds--a woman's voice singing. Clear and true, the soprano notes came through the bulkhead at the foot of my bunk. It was a song I had never heard before, with a Scots accent to the words and a wonderful lilting melody that was somehow very sad all the while it was pretending to merriment. I had never been in Scotland--except for the sad venture of the '19; and that had left no pleasant memories, God knows--but the song set me to mourning for the heather-clad moors and the gray bens and the black lochs which its words lamented.

I rose from my bunk, and, stealing to the door, set it open, so that I might hear the better. The passage outside was empty, and the salt sea-air blew down the open companionway an occasional gust of talk. But I paid no attention to that.

I was so interested in the song and the singer's voice that I forgot even to watch the door of the cabin next to mine where she was singing. And judge to my surprize, as I leaned with my head bowed by the low lintel and my eyes fixed on the gently heaving deck, when the singer's door swung open and she stepped into the passage, almost at my side.

Her surprize, as was but natural, was greater than mine. So we stood there a moment within a long yard of each other, gazing mutely into each other's eyes. She was a slim, willowy lass, in a sea-green cloak that clung to her figure in the slight draft that eddied through the passage.

Her face, flower-white in the dim light that came down the companionway, had a sweetness of expression that belied the proud carriage of her head and an air of hauteur such as I had seen about the great ladies of King Louis' Court. Her hair was black and all blown in little wisps that curled at her forehead and neck. Her eyes were dark, too. Afterward I learned that they were of a dark brown that became black in moments of anger or excitement.

"I heard you singing," I said.

She turned and made to reënter her cabin. But I raised my hand involuntarily in a gesture of appeal.

"I am sorry," I went on quickly. "I did not mean to be rude. I--I could not help it."

She regarded me gravely, evidently puzzled by the incongruousness of my voice and my plowboy garments.

"You are never Scots, sir!" she answered finally.

"No, but I know Scotland."

A light dawned in her eyes with the words.

"Ah, then you will be knowing the song that I sang! 'Lochaber No More' 'tis called, and a bitter lament of exiles out of their own homeland."

"No, I never heard it before--but I have a brother buried on a hillside far north of Lochaber, in the Clan Donald country."

The sorrow that came into her face was beautiful to see. None but a person who had Gaelic blood could have sympathized so instantly and so generously with a stranger's grief.

"That will have been the great sadness upon you," she cried in the odd way that the Highland Scots have of using English. "Oh, sir, your woe will have been deep! So far from his own home!"

"Yes," I assented; "and he an exile, too."

In that moment I felt for the last time all the old raging hatred of the Hanoverian usurper, the hatred that springs from blood spilled and unavenged; and even though the reason within me stilled the tempest that memory had stirred, I knew, or something within me knew, that I never could be happy under the immediate rule of King George.

"An exile!"

She leaned toward me, her eyes like stars.

"You will be one of the Good People!"

I did not answer her, too confused in my wits to know what to say; and suddenly my confusion spread to her.

"It is wild I am talking, sir!" she exclaimed. "Never heed my words. Sure, who would be trusting his heart's blood to the stranger that stepped in his path!"

"I think I would trust mine to you," I answered boldly.

She smiled faintly

"From your manner you would be no Englishman, sir, saying such pretty things without consideration."

"I have been long out of England."

"Then your sorrow will not be so great for parting with all you have held dear. Lucky is your lot."

"You have never been to America?" I asked.

"I had never been out of Scotland until I came south to take ship today. Ah, sir, there is a great sorrow at my heart for the country I love."

We said nothing while you might have counted ten, and in the silence she looked away from me.

"I hope you will sing often," I said fatuously.

"I sing as the feeling comes to me," she retorted.

She gathered her cloak around her, and shut her cabin door.

"And you go with us to New York?" I asked--no less fatuously.

Her eyes danced with a glint of humor.

"Pray, sir, will there be any other stopping-place in the ocean!"

I laughed.

"My name," I began--and then I stopped abruptly.

My name at present was William Juggins, and I had a feeling of reluctance at practising deceit upon this girl at our first meeting. But she saved me from my quandary.

"You will not be what you might seem, sir," she said gravely. "That I can see, and perhaps you will not think me indiscreet if I say so much."

"'Tis true," I assented eagerly. "Indeed----"

"But you will be meeting my--" she hesitated ever so little--"my father presently, no doubt, and he will make us known to one another. Now I must go on deck."

And she walked by me with a faint swish of skirts that sounded like an echo of far-off fairy music.

Her father! Who could he be? And then realization smote me.

Plainly, she could not be de Veulle's daughter--nor Captain Abbot's. She was Murray's.

I went back into my cabin and shut the door, feeling not altogether satisfied, despite the fragrance of her person which still lingered in my nostrils, the recollection of her dainty charm, the indefinable tone of high breeding which had emanated from her.

Murray's daughter! I rebelled against the idea. It could not be. It ought not to be. What right had he to a daughter--and such a maid as this? 'Twas absurd! Manifestly absurd!

Why, I must hate the man. I had no other recourse. And he had a daughter! And above all this daughter!

VI

THE OPENING OF HOSTILITIES

When I came on deck the next morning we were driving down-channel before a smart northwest wind. The sky was blue overhead; the low rollers were just capped with foam; the air was clean and tangy; the brownish, salt-stained canvas shone in the sunlight; the cordage hummed and droned.

Murray stood by the weather rail with the negro, Tom, at his elbow. As I emerged from the companionway Tom leaned forward and whispered something to his master. Murray walked straight across the deck to my side, his eyes fastened upon my face.

"How now, Master Juggins," he said heartily, his hand outstretched, "and did you leave your good uncle--or is it cousin?--well!"

I perceived that he took me for the lout I was dressed to represent, and strove to play up to the disguise.

"Well enough, sir," I answered sullenly, shifting clownishly from foot to foot.

"'Tis good!" he exclaimed. "Faith I am vastly relieved. I have a warm regard for honest Robert Juggins. He has spoken of me, perhaps?"

The question, designed to catch my simple mentality unawares, gave me considerable amusement.

"Oh, aye," I muttered.

"We have been rivals in our ventures, as you doubtless know," continued Murray, taking a pinch of snuff in a manner which the Duc d'Orleans might have envied.

"But he doesn't take it seriously, sir," I assured him gravely.

"Eh! What's that?"

"He laughs about it, sir."

And I goggled at him stupidly. After a moment's inspection of my countenance he seemed constrained to accept the remark as witless innocence, for a grim light of humor appeared in his eyes.

"Laughs, does he! Zooks, I might have known it. He is a merry soul, Robert Juggins, and I should like to see him footing a morris to a right merry tune. Mayhap we shall see it some day. Who knows?"

"Who knows, sir?" I repeated vacantly.

"And you are to cast your fortunes in America, lad!" he resumed.

"Oh, aye, sir."

"What I might have expected from a fine, upstanding young fellow," he applauded me. "We need many of your like. You may count upon my good offices in New York. Faith, I shall be glad to do a favor if I can, for Robert Juggins' nephew--or did you say cousin?"

"I am----"

But he saved me from the lie.

"Ah, here is come one of our fellow passengers," he interrupted.

I turned to see de Veulle approaching us.

"'Tis a French gentleman," pursued Murray, bent upon winning my confidence with his easy manners and glib tongue, "on his way to Canada. He can tell you rare tales of the wilderness and the savages. Ha, _chevalier_, meet a young countryman of mine. Such is the timber we use to exploit the new plantations. Master Juggins--the Chevalier de Veulle."

All unsuspecting, de Veulle made me a slight bow, a look of indifferent disdain in his face at sight of my plebeian figure. The disguise was good, and I hoped I might cozen him for a time at least. But no man forgets another who has toyed with his life, and his indifference was dissipated the instant his eye met mine.

"Juggins?" he exclaimed in bewilderment. "You said Juggins, Monsieur Murray?"

"Sure, 'tis so," returned Murray urbanely. "Not our friend, the doughty trader, you understand, but----"

"_Parbleu!_" swore de Veulle. "This man is no more named Juggins than I am!"

In his excitement his English, which was broken enough at best, became almost incoherent. Murray favored me with a brief glance of suspicion.

"Who then?" he demanded.

"Ormerod! 'Tis Harry Ormerod, the Jacobite refugee!"

Murray snapped his fingers to Tom, the negro, who had been a silent witness to our conversation. In an instant he stood beside us, his baleful yellow eyes glaring at me.

"Is this the man who came with Master Juggins to the hearing before the Lords of Trade?" snapped Murray.

"He de man, massa," Tom answered in a husky voice that had a snarl in it.

"You are sure!"

"Yes, massa."

"Tom doesn't make mistakes," remarked Murray with a gesture of dismissal to the negro. "May I ask who you are, sir?" he addressed me.

"I suppose you may," I replied coolly; and with a sense of relief I ripped the bobbed scratch-wig off my head and tossed it into the sea. "Does that help you at all?" I inquired of de Veulle.

He stared back at me, his face all drawn with hatred.

"I knew you with it on," he said savagely. "It became you. Why should a deserter wear the clothes of a gentleman?"

I laughed at him, but Murray intervened quickly.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.