“Hang the traps!” said I, affecting a bold carelessness; “I've a few things there I left out loose, that will do. When shall we be there?” This was a leading question, for I did not yet know whither we were bound.
“At Galveston? Well, to-morrow evening or by nightfall, I guess, if the wind hold. Sit down there and make yourself snug; there's always a little splash of a sea in this river. And now, lads, pull away,—all together!”
A second shot from the smack announced that her anchor was tripped, and we saw her now lurch over as her foresail filled.
The men pulled vigorously, and in about twenty minutes I stood upon the deck of the “Christobal,” making sundry excuses to her skipper for being late, and assuring him, on the faith of a gentleman, that I had utterly forgotten all about my voyage till the last moment.
“They only sent me the number from the office late last night,” said he, “and told me to look out for the gemman about the docks. But I war n't goin' to do that, I said. He's got a passage and grub to Galveston,—as good as ere a gemman can desire; he's won a nag they says is worth seven or eight hundred dollars, with furniture and arms for the new expedition; and I take it them things is worth a-looking arter,—so darn me blue if I gives myself no trouble about 'em.”
These scattered hints were all I wanted. The sea-breeze had restored me to my wonted clearness, and I now saw that “438” meant that I had won a free passage to Texas, a horse and a rifle when I got there; so far, the “exchange of coats” was “with a difference.” It was with an unspeakable satisfaction that I learned I was the only passenger on board the “Christobal.” The other “gentlemen” of the expedition had either already set out or abandoned the project, so that I had not to undergo any unpleasant scrutiny into my past life, or any impertinent inquiry regarding my future.
Old Kit Turrel, the skipper, did not play the grand inquisitor on me. His life had been for the most part passed in making the voyage to and from New Orleans and Galveston, where he had doubtless seen sufficient of character to have satisfied a glutton in eccentricity. There was not a runaway rogue or abandoned vagabond that had left the coast for years back, with whose history he was not familiar. You had but to give him a name, and out came the catalogue of his misdeeds on the instant.
These revelations had a prodigious interest for me. They opened the book of human adventure at the very chapter I wanted. It was putting a keen edge upon the razor to give me the “last fashions in knavery,”—not to speak of the greater advantage of learning the success attendant on each, since “Kit” could tell precisely how it fared with every one who had passed through his hands.
He enlightened me also as to these Texan expeditions, which, to use his own phrase, had never been anything better than “almighty swindles,” planted to catch young flats from the north country, the Southerns being all too “crank” to be done.
“And is there no expedition in reality?” said I, with all the horror of a man who had been seduced from home, and family, and friends, under false pretences.