“Mr. Griffith,” he said, when they were quite alone with the commander of the frigate, “the occurrences of the last night should teach us confidence in each other; without it, we go on a dangerous and fruitless errand.”
“Is the hazard equal?” returned the youth. “I am known to all to be the man I seem—am in the service of my country—belong to a family, and enjoy a name, that is a pledge for my loyalty to the cause of America—and yet I trust myself on hostile ground, in the midst of enemies, with a weak arm, and under circumstances where treachery would prove my ruin. Who and what is the man who thus enjoys your confidence, Captain Munson? I ask the question less for myself than for the gallant men who will fearlessly follow wherever I lead.”
A shade of dark displeasure crossed the features of the stranger, at one part of this speech, and at its close he sank into deep thought. The commander, however, replied:
“There is a show of reason in your question, Mr. Griffith—and yet you are not the man to be told that implicit obedience is what I have a right to expect. I have not your pretensions, sir, by birth or education, and yet Congress have not seen proper to overlook my years and services. I command this frigate——”
“Say no more,” interrupted the pilot “There is reason in his doubts, and they shall be appeased. I like the proud and fearless eye of the young man, and while he dreads a gibbet from my hands, I will show him how to repose a noble confidence. Read this, sir, and tell me if you distrust me now?”
While the stranger spoke, he thrust his hand into the bosom of his dress, and drew forth a parchment, decorated with ribands, and bearing a massive seal, which he opened, and laid on the table before the youth. As he pointed with his finger impressively to different parts of the writing, his eye kindled with a look of unusual fire, and there was a faint tinge discernible on his pallid features when he spoke.
“See!” he said, “royalty itself does not hesitate to bear witness in my favor, and that is not a name to occasion dread to an American.”
Griffith gazed with wonder at the fair signature of the unfortunate Louis, which graced the bottom of the parchment; but when his eye obeyed the signal of the stranger, and rested on the body of the instrument, he started back from the table, and fixing his animated eyes on the pilot, he cried, while a glow of fiery courage flitted across his countenance:
“Lead on! I'll follow you to death!”
A smile of gratified exultation struggled around the lips of the stranger, who took the arm of the young man and led him into a stateroom, leaving the commander of the frigate standing, in his unmoved and quiet manner, a spectator of, but hardly an actor in, the scene.