“I know this fop in satin and lace,” said Hodge. “I have seen him in Paris, but I can not recollect where. He’s not a Frenchman, but a German or a Pole.”
“Methinks I know him too,” returned Conyngham. “He’s talking English to that beggar. Well, well—by the great gun!—it comes to me.”
Conyngham lowered his voice almost to a whisper and spoke without turning his head or scarcely moving his lips.
“I know both of them now,” he said. “The fop is our friend the English spy, and the other is one of the stool-pigeons. What do you suppose he said just then? Hush! here he comes in our direction. It is his intention to get near to us and listen to our conversation.”
“Let us move then,” suggested Mr. Hodge, “for there is a good deal about me that I would not wish to have known; besides,” he added, “I think you are mistaken, for I now remember where I have seen this coxcomb, and at the house of no one less than good Dr. Bancroft, the geographer and scientist, the friend of Franklin, and one who had kept us well informed of the British plans.”
“Then keep an eye on Dr. Bancroft, is my advice,” rejoined Conyngham. “Hush! let me speak to this fellow.”
The drunken sailor lurched up and leant with both elbows against a big pine-wood box, but apparently he paid no attention to the proximity of the others, for he began emptying his pockets of their contents, which included the silver piece which had just been given him, and searching for some bits of tobacco he jammed them into the bowl of his black heavy pipe.
“What you say about the moon may be true,” observed the captain as if carrying on some deep subject, “but still the influence of the orb upon the tides has been acknowledged for centuries.”
The sailor by this time had found a bit of flint and steel and was trying to ignite a bit of pocket tinder.
All at once Conyngham turned toward him, and at the same time taking the copy of the Times out of his pocket, he spread it out on the top of the box and began to read aloud.