One other bit of news the barman gave me that was also disconcerting. The night gale, which had blown too hard for our enterprise, Champe’s and mine, had blown the war-ships back to New York from whatever port they had been calling at; and now, my news-vendor told me, the sailing of the fleet waited only on a favorable shift of the wind.
“Two chances against us—Castner and the fleet-sailing,” I said to myself, faring back to my prison cell in Arnold’s house, and breakfast, “both of them more than likely to ripen before we see another night. Truly, the devil fights for his own!”
It was Arnold himself who gave me leave to go out again after the morning meal had been despatched, coming down to us in one of his kindly moods, and saying that we need not confine ourselves so closely to the house during the day. I hated him most cordially when he gave himself the air of a simple-hearted, kindly gentleman, as he very well could. It seemed unfair that he should so often remind me of the thorn of reluctance that was pricking me; a hurt that went deeper with every gentlemanly thing that he did, and every fresh trust he reposed in me.
For, charge it to what account of self-love, or pride, or vanity, I would in the man, he had assuredly been indulgent to us and had unquestionably saved our two lives; and while he was a traitor and false to his oath and his soldier honor, a vague and disquieting wonder was beginning to stir in me, asking if I supposed that, with all his oath-breakings, he would consent to do what I was doing.
So, when he told me I was free to go abroad in the town, I replied, rather churlishly, as I remember, that I knew my duty and would try to do it; after which I spent the better part of the day before the fire in the orderly-room, going to the windows now and again to see if there were any signs of Castner coming to hang me, and behaving so sourly to Champe that the sergeant finally took the privilege Arnold had given us, and went out.
He had been gone something over an hour when he returned with a piece of news. Hanging about the waterside, and keeping an eye out for anything that might bring grist to our mill, Champe had been accosted by a man, a stranger and a sailor, as the sergeant described him, and a New Englander by his speech. This man had asked for me by name, and had pitched upon the first soldier he saw wearing the Loyal Americans’ uniform for information of me. He claimed to have urgent business, going so far as to say to Champe that I would rue it smartly if I denied him an interview.
“Where did you leave him?” I asked, when the sergeant had finished his tale.
“In the tap-room of the tavern. And I made sure he had no following.”
“Damn his following!” I growled, well-nigh desperate from the day-long grinding of the mill of reflection; “I’ll fight him, or any dozen of him, at the dropping of a handkerchief, if that is what he wants!” And with that snappish word of thanks for Champe’s loyal forethought, I strode off to the tavern.
For once in a way, Champe’s description personal had been accurate enough. The man who was awaiting me was a sailor, and he hailed from Massachusetts. What the sergeant had omitted to mention was that he was as curst and crabbed by nature as I was at that moment by my mood.