The pair had scarcely crawled up among the luggage upon the stage-top, before there was an outcry from the passengers on the box in front—"Uncock your pistols! uncock your pistols!" for the officer had dropped his fire-arms, cocked and capped, upon the top of our coach, with the muzzles pointed towards us. And indeed I may affirm here, that I never saw metallic cylinders with more menacing aspect, than those which lay quietly behind us, ready to explode—unconscious instruments as they were—and carry any of the party into the next world upon the slightest lurch of the stage-coach.
"Uncock your pistols," said the passengers.
But the officer, in the mellifluous dialect of his mother country, replied that "He'd be —— if he would. Me prishner," said he, "me prishner might escape; or, the divil knows but there might be a rescue come to him, for there's a good many of the same hereabouts."
It struck me that no person upon the top of the stage-coach was so particularly interested in this dispute as the member of the Foreign Legion, who was on his way either to the gallows or a perpetual prison. I observed that he nervously twitched at his handcuffs, perhaps—as I thought—to prepare for escape in case of an explosion; or else to be ready for the rescue; or else to take advantage of his captor, the tall policeman—jump from the stage, and run for dear life and liberty. Never was I more mistaken. True to his race, and to tradition, Pat was only striving to free himself from the leather shackles, in order to fight any man who was an enemy to his friend the policeman, and the pistols, that were cocked to shoot himself. But had not poor Paddy made such blunders in all times? The hubbub increased, a terrific contest was impending; the travellers below poked their heads out of the windows; there was every prospect of a catastrophe of some kind, when suddenly Jeangros rose to his feet, and said, in a voice clear and sharp through the tumult as an electric flash through a storm, "Uncock those pistols, or I will throw you from the top of the coach!"
There was a pause instantly, and we heard the sharp click of the cocks, as they were lowered in obedience to the little stage-driver. It had a wonderful power of command, that voice—soft and clear, but brief, decisive, authoritative.
It is quite interesting to ride fellow-passenger with a person who has played a part in the national drama, but more villainous face I never saw. Mr. Crampton, with whom I sailed on the Canada, had a much more amiable expression; indeed I think we should all be obliged to him for ridding us of at least a portion of his fellow-countrymen.
But now we ride by the Shubenacadie lakes, a chain—a bracelet—binding the province from the Basin of Minas to the seaboard. The eye never tires of this lovely feature of Acadia. Lake above lake—the division, the isthmus between, not wider than the breadth of your India shawl, my lady! I must declare that, all in all, the scenery of the province is surpassingly beautiful. As you ride by these sparkling waters, through the flowery, bowery, woods, you feel as if you like to pitch tent here—at least for the summer.
And now we approach a rustic inn by the roadside, rich in shrubbery before it, and green moss from ridge-pole to low drooping eaves, where we change horses. And as we rest here upon the wooden inn-porch, dismounted from our high perch on the stage-coach, we see right above us against the clear evening sky, Her Majesty's ci-devant partisan, now prisoner—by merit raised to that bad eminence. The officer hands him a glass of brandy, to keep up his spirits. The prisoner takes it, and, lifting the glass high in air, shouts out with the exultation of a fiend:
"Here's to the hinges of liberty—may they never want oil,
Nor an Orangeman's bones in a pot for to boil."
Once more upon the stage to Dartmouth, where we deposit our precious fellow-travellers, and then to the ferry, and look you! across the harbor, the twinkling lights of dear old mouldy Halifax. And now we are crossing Chebucto, and the cab carries us again to our former quarters in the Hotel Waverley.