"Well, then," said Barecolt, "you go and see when she is ready, and in the mean time I'll finish my supper."
[CHAPTER XIX.]
"Come, sir, you must get up!" said an officer of the garrison, standing beside the Earl of Beverley, to whom we must now return, as he lay on the floor of the little cabin, affecting to be still suffering from sickness: "you must get up and come with me, for we've got a lodging prepared for you hard by here."
The earl pretended scarcely to understand him, and made some answer in broken English, which, though it was not quite so well assumed as the jargon of Captain Barecolt, was sufficiently like the language of a foreigner to keep up the character he had taken upon himself.
"Come, come; you must get up!" reiterated the officer, taking him by the arm; and slowly, and apparently feebly, the earl arose and suffered the other to lead him upon deck.
It was by this time dark, but several persons with lanterns in their hands were waiting at the top of the hatchway; and, guarded and lighted by them, the earl was led from the vessel into the town, and thence to a small building near the city wall, pierced for musketry, and having a little platform at the top, on which was mounted a single cannon. On the side next to the town appeared a door and three windows, and before the block-house, as it was termed, a sentinel was already marching up and down in expectation of the arrival of the prisoner; but it was with some difficulty that the door was opened to give entrance to the party which now approached.
The aspect of the place to which the earl was to be consigned was certainly not very inviting, especially seen by the light of lanterns in a dark night; and the inner room to which the guard led him afforded but little means of rendering himself comfortable within those damp and narrow walls. A bed was there, a table, and a chair, but nothing else; and Lord Beverley, still maintaining his character, made various exclamations in French upon the treatment to which the people of Hull thought fit to subject an officer and a gentleman.
"You shall have some meat and beer presently," replied the officer, who understood a few words only of the language the prisoner spoke; "but as to a fire, mounseer, that you can't have, because there is no fireplace, you see."
The earl shrugged his shoulders with a look of discontent, but prepared to make the best of his situation; and as soon as the meat and beer which they had promised was brought, the key turned in the lock, and he was left alone, he sat down by the light of the lantern, which they had provided him, to meditate over his present condition and his future plans, with the peculiar turn of mind which we have attempted to depict in some of the preceding pages.
"This is not a pleasant consummation," he said to himself, "either as regards the king's service or my safety. However, out of the cloud comes lightning--from the depths of night bursts forth the sun; all bright things are preceded by darkness; and the shadow that is upon me may give place to light. Even here, perhaps, I may be enabled to do more for the cause I have undertaken than if I had reached France. It must be tried, at all events. There is nothing like boldness, though one cannot well be bold within these walls;" and he glanced his eyes over the narrow space in which he was confined, thinking, with a somewhat sad smile, that there was but little room for the exercise of any of those energies which may be called the life of life.