Miles Wallingford / Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore"

by James Fenimore Cooper

"You carry it off well, sir; and I hope you will maintain the same appearance of innocence to the end. The lives of the king's subjects are not to be taken with impunity, nevertheless."

"Nor is the property of an American citizen, I trust, my lord. Had I used force to regain my ship, and had I thrown the prize-crew into the sea, I conceive I would have been doing no more than was my duty."

"This is well, sir; and I hope, for your sake, that an English jury will view the affair in the same light. At present, prepare to go on board the Speedy--for you must not be separated from the important testimony we can find in that ship. As for the citizens you mention, they are bound to submit to the decision of the admiralty courts, and not to take the law into their own hands."

"We shall see, my lord. When this case reaches my own country, we shall probably hear more of it."

I uttered this in a sufficiently magnificent manner; and, to own the truth, I felt a little magnificently at the time. I was then young, not three-and-twenty; and I thought of my country, her independence, her justice, her disposition to do right, her determination to submit to no wrongs, and her disregard of the expedient when principles were concerned,--much as young people think of the immaculate qualities of their own parents. According to the decisions of judges of this latter class, there would not be a liar, a swindler, a cheat, or a mercenary scoundrel living; but the earth would be filled with so many suffering saints that are persecuted for their virtues. According to the notions of most American citizens of my age, the very name they bore ought to be a protection to them in any part of the world, under the penalty of incurring the republic's just indignation. How far my anticipations were realized, will be seen in the sequel;--and I beg the American reader, in particular, to restrain his natural impatience, until he can learn the facts in the regular order of the narrative. I can safely promise him, that should he receive them in the proper spirit, with a desire to ascertain truth only and not to uphold bloated and untenable theories, he will be a wiser, and probably a more modest man, for the instruction that is to be thus gleaned from the incidents it will be my painful office to record. As for Lord Harry Dermond, the threatened indignation of the great American nation gave him very little concern. He probably cared a vast deal more for one frown from the admiral who commanded at Plymouth, than for the virtuous resentment of the President and Congress of the United States of America. I am writing of the close of the year 1803, it will be remembered;--a remote period in the history of the great republic; though I will not take it on myself to say things have materially altered, except it be in the newspapers, in this particular interest. The order to prepare to quit the Briton was repeated, and I was dismissed to the outer cabin, where was Marble, while Mr. Clements attempted to shut the door that separated us, though, from some cause or other, he did not exactly effect his object. In consequence of this neglect, I overheard the following dialogue:

"I hope, my lord," said Clements, "you will not think of taking away the mate and the black. They are both first-rate men, and both well affected to his Majesty's service. The negro was of great use aloft, during the late action, while the mate fought at a gun, like a tiger, for the better part of an hour. We are somewhat short of hands, and I have counted on inducing both these men to enter. There is the prize-money for the Frenchman under our lee, you know, my lord; and I have little doubt of succeeding."

"I'm sorry duty compels me to take all three, Clements, but I'll bear what you say in mind; perhaps we can get them to enter on board the Speedy. You know it--"

Here Mr. Clements discovered that the door was not shut, and he closed it tight, preventing my hearing any more. I now turned to Marble, whose countenance betrayed the self-reproach he endured, at ascertaining the injury he had done, by his ill-judged artifice. I made no reproaches, however, but squeezed his hand in token of my forgiveness. The poor fellow, I plainly saw, had great difficulty in forgiving himself; though he said nothing at the moment.

The conference between Lord Harry Dermond and Mr. Clements, lasted half an hour. At the end of that time, both appeared in the forward cabin, and I saw by the countenance of the last, that he had failed in his object. As for us, we were transferred, with the few articles we possessed, to the Speedy, on board which ship our arrival made as much of a sensation as the discipline of a man-of-war would permit. I was put in irons, the moment we reached the quarter-deck, and placed under the charge of a sentinel near the cabin-door. Some little attention was paid to my comfort, it is true, and a canvass screen was fitted for me, behind which I ate and slept, with some sort of retirement. My irons were of so large a sort, that I found means to take them off, and to put them on, at pleasure. I was disposed to think that the officers were aware of the fact, and that the things were used as much for the sake of appearance as for anything else. Apart from the confinement, and the injury done my affairs, I had no especial causes of complaint, though this imprisonment lasted until the month of April 1804, or quite five months. During this time, the Speedy arrived as far south as the line; then she hovered about the Canaries and the Azores, on her way homeward, looking in vain for another Frenchman. I was permitted to take exercise, twice a day, once in the gangway, and once on the gun-deck, and my table was actually supplied from the cabin. On no head, had I any other cause to complain, than the fact that my ship had been wrongfully seized in the first place, and that I was now suffering imprisonment for a crime--if crime indeed it would have been--that I certainly had not been obliged to commit.

During the five months I thus remained a prisoner on the gun-deck of the Speedy, I never exchanged a syllable with either Marble or Neb. I saw them both occasionally, employed on duty, like the crew, and we often exchanged significant looks, but never any words. Occasionally I had a visit from an officer; these gentlemen sitting down and conversing with me, on general topics, evidently to relieve the tedium of my confinement, without making any allusion to its cause. I cannot say that my health suffered, a circumstance that was probably owing to the cleanliness of the ship, and the admirable manner in which she was ventilated.