The father, however, did the son injustice; for towards half-past three, the good youth appeared lumbering over the hill, and entered the cottage, wiping his brow, indeed, but with a sober pace. In answer to Beauchamp's enquiries--which were made with more eager haste than he generally indulged in--the young man replied, that all the horses in the town, and for many miles round it, were engaged in the 'lection, so that not one was to be got for love or money.
Now, Beauchamp found himself so strongly inclined to be cross, that--instead of either sending all elections to that distinguished personage who has gained more by them and their consequences than any one else--I mean the devil--or vituperating the post-horses, or any of the other things concerned, as some persons would have done when put out of temper by similar mischances--he acted, of course, in a way of his own, and laughed outright, merely exclaiming, "Well, I must buy a shirt of you, Small, if you will sell me one; for at present I certainly do not come within the old beau's definition of a gentleman!"
As Beauchamp now determined to send no more to a town in which the election of a fit and proper person to represent his Majesty's lieges in Parliament was going on, his next questions related to the boat, or rather to the boats. The smaller of the two, old Small assured him, though it served well enough to catch mackerel in the little sheltered bay before the house, would never do to go any distance; but he promised Beauchamp that the other boat should be ready to carry him to the next coast town by three o'clock on the following day.
Beauchamp, from what he had seen in the morning, imagined that the old man's promise might very well be fulfilled; but he little knew what mending an old boat is. Father and son set to work upon it at once, and went on as long as they could see; and, when the young stranger rose next morning, he found them already occupied in the same manner. His ancle being now greatly better, though not well, he walked out to watch their proceedings; and, sitting beside them, and occasionally giving some slight assistance, he saw hour after hour of the fourth day since his arrival wear away, in performing what he had imagined would have been completed in half the time; till at length, while several small things still remained to be done, he beheld the purple mingling with the blue in the sky, and telling that the daystar was going down to the dark pavilion of his rest. "Oh! Seged, Seged, emperor of Ethiopia!" cried Beauchamp, as he returned into the cottage, "I will this night, at all events, resolve upon doing nothing at all to-morrow, in order to see whether fate will for once disappoint me the right way!"
The morrow, however, dawned bright and clear--the boat was at length ready and launched; and Beauchamp--shaved as usual with the smuggler's one universal razor, and covered with the best specimen of his check-shirts--gladly stepped into the yawl, and saw her pushed off from the land by the united efforts of father and son, both of whom accompanied him on his voyage.
The boat was clinker-built, somewhat broad over the beam, and in all respects the very reverse of a long, thin, shadowy thing that was lying high and dry a little farther up the beach, looking both in form and colour just like the shell of a razor-fish.
Old Willy Small, however, shook his head at mention of that craft, saying, "No, no! The preventive had knocked up all that stuff." So that Beauchamp, well content to get off at all, was obliged to rest satisfied with the slow and sure means of progression which the yawl afforded, though, the wind being light and rather baffling, it appeared very plainly that they were not destined to reach their port much before nightfall.
To increase the tediousness of a day's voyage in an open boat, to a man who had the utmost abhorrence of every sort of water-carriage, the fine morning waxed more and more dim; and first a drizzle, and then a deluge, continued to pour from the sky during the whole of the rest of the day. It was five o'clock before they reached the small town, whose white houses, ranged along with their large goggling windows directly opposite the sea, like a score or two of unsophisticated girls, with white frocks and large black eyes, ranged along the side of a country ball-room, afforded a most welcome sight to the eyes of the weary voyager.
The custom-house officers satisfied themselves with wonderful ease that there was nothing in the boat which they could count as lawful prey, though the appearance of their well-known acquaintance, Willy Small, excited many a shrewd suspicion; and they looked after Beauchamp, as he was borne off to the inn, with the same prying glance with which the merchants, in the Arabian Nights, might be supposed to have examined the pieces of beef brought up by the eagles from the valley of diamonds. At the inn the dripping traveller, who limped along, leaning on the shoulder of the old smuggler, was examined with scarcely less attention, as soon as it was ascertained that he had no baggage; but, somehow, there was--to use a most fearful periphrasis--an air of, right to respect, and of, the habit of being obeyed, which instantly commanded obedience and attention.
Old Billy Small was immediately rewarded and dismissed; and, with many thanks, he hustled rapidly away, like a hunted hippopotamus, to his own element again; perhaps purposing, as he passed by the quay, to have some short conversation, concerning various professional matters, with some of the sailors of a ship which was lying in the harbour, and about to sail for Cherbourg the next morning.