This gave Barnaby True a moment or two to look at him. He was a tall, lean man with a red handkerchief tied around his neck, with a queue of red hair hanging down his back, and with copper buckles on his shoes, so that Barnaby True could not but suspect that he was the very same man who had given the note to Miss Eliza Bolles at the door of his lodging-house.
"'Tis all right and straight and as it should be," the other said, after he had so examined the note. "And now that the paper is read" (suiting his action to his words), "I'll just burn it for safety's sake."
And so he did, twisting it up and setting it to the flame of the candle. "And now," he said, continuing his address, "I'll tell you what I am here for. I was sent to ask if you're man enough to take your life in your hands and to go with me in that boat down yonder at the foot of the garden. Say 'Yes,' and we'll start away without wasting more time, for the devil is ashore here at Jamaica—though you don't know what that means—and if he gets ahead of us, why then we may whistle for what we are after, for all the good 'twill do us. Say 'No,' and I go away, and I promise you you shall never be troubled more in this sort of a way. So now speak up plain, young gentleman, and tell us what is your wish in this business, and whether you will adventure any further or no."
If our hero hesitated it was not for long, and when he spoke up it was with a voice as steady as could be.
"To be sure I'm man enough to go with you," says he; "and if you mean me any harm I can look out for myself; and if I can't, then here is something can look out for me." And therewith he lifted up the flap of his pocket and showed the butt of a pistol he had fetched with him when he had set out from his lodging-house that evening.
At this the other burst out a-laughing for a second time. "Come," says he; "you are indeed of right mettle, and I like your spirit. All the same, no one in all the world means you less ill than I, and so, if you have to use that barker, 'twill not be upon us who are your friends, but only upon one who is more wicked than the devil himself. So now if you are prepared and have made up your mind and are determined to see this affair through to the end, 'tis time for us to be away." Whereupon, our hero indicating his acquiescence, his interlocutor and the others (who had not spoken a single word for all this time), rose together from the table, and the stranger having paid the scores of all, they went down together to the boat that lay plainly awaiting their coming at the bottom of the garden.
Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it was a large yawl-boat manned by half a score of black men for rowers, and that there were two lanterns in the stern-sheets, and three or four shovels.
The man who had conducted the conversation with Barnaby True for all this time, and who was, as has been said, plainly the captain of the expedition, stepped immediately down into the boat; our hero followed, and the others followed after him; and instantly they were seated the boat shoved off and the black men began pulling straight out into the harbor, and so, at some distance away, around under the stern of the man-of-war.
Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and they might all have been so many spirits for the silence of the party. Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk (and serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan a man at every turn, and press-gangs to carry him off so that he might never be heard of again). As for the others, they did not seem to choose to say anything now that they had been fairly embarked upon their enterprise, and so the crew pulled away for the best part of an hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat straight across the harbor, as though towards the mouth of the Cobra River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could after a while see for himself, by the low point of land with a great, long row of cocoanut-palms growing upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which by-and-by began to loom up from the dimness of the moonlight. As they approached the river they found the tide was running very violently, so that it gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the crew of black men pulled strongly against it. Thus rowing slowly against the stream they came around what appeared to be either a point of land or an islet covered with a thick growth of mangrove-trees; though still no one spoke a single word as to their destination, or what was the business they had in hand.
The night, now that they had come close to the shore, appeared to be full of the noises of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of mud and marsh. And over all was the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few stars pricking out here and there in the sky; and everything was so strange and mysterious and so different from anything that he had experienced before that Barnaby could not divest himself of the feeling that it was all a dream from which at any moment he might awaken. As for the town and the Ordinary he had quitted such a short time before, so different were they from this present experience, it was as though they might have concerned another life than that which he was then enjoying.