“What are the two of you doing here locking arms at midnight?”
I told him our adventure and all about the brawl at the tavern, and where I intended to take Ruth to.
“It will never do,” he said. “It will never do to rouse decent folk up at this time o' night. Odds man, they’ve been in bed this three hours past, and it’s a warm welcome you’d get at one o’clock. No, no, it will never do. Come with me to the ship and I’ll make stowaways of ye both till morning.” The three of us set out together along the quiet[quiet] streets to the dock. Now that the distracting noise of traffic was all spent, I found the vague roof of ship fronts under which we picked our way silently far different from what it was by day. Every vessel creaked and groaned in a thousand joints; the air fairly reeked with the smell of tar and cordage; the heaving hulks and the tall figureheads looming upon the prows were ghostly in their slow rise and fall. I was glad to get away from the lonely neighborhood and reach the Royal Lion; Ruth no less so, for she was a timid child when the excitement of the moment was passed.
Captain Donaldson offered to provide for us, but we had so much to talk about that we were quite content to huddle upon the deck with a pair of shawls to shield us from the wind.
Ruth told me that she had escaped from La Rochelle in safety ten years before and had found a good home in England, where she had wearied through the years waiting for me. Her experience had not been wholly unlike my own. After many years her mistress had died and, about the same time that my good master was sent to the Tower, Ruth was cast upon her own resources. Before this event occurred, however, she had given up all hope of my coming. Upon her mistress’ death she made up her mind to go to one of the Huguenot settlements in America. With this intent she had set out for Bristol. Footpads and highwaymen on land were then as likely to be met with as buccaneers upon the sea. The van which brought her to Bristol was waylaid and Ruth, as well as the other passengers, robbed of all they had. She arrived in Bristol penniless and had to take what employment came to hand in order to earn a living. Thus it happened that she was compelled to such base labor at the Mariner’s Rest.
“Oh, Vincie,” she sobbed. “It was so hard.”
An angry tremble shook me as I thought of her harsh treatment; then I recalled the threat the landlord had made in my hearing.
“What did he mean when he said that you knew what he could do when he was in earnest?”
“Do not think of that,” she answered softly. She was always so forgiving. “It is all past now.”
“Tell me what he meant,” I continued fiercely. “Did he ever dare to—”