There was a simple seriousness in the countenance of Natty, that showed he was much in earnest; but it was also evident that he was reluctant to shed human blood. He answered the taunt of the wood-chopper, by saying:
“I know you drop a tree where you will, Billy Kirby; but if you show a hand, or an arm, in doing it, there'll be bones to be set, and blood to staunch. If it's only to get into the cave that ye want, wait till a two hours' sun, and you may enter it in welcome; but come in now you shall not. There's one dead body already, lying on the cold rocks, and there's another in which the life can hardly be said to stay. If you will come in, there'll be dead with out as well as within.”
The wood-chopper stepped out fearlessly from his cover, and cried:
“That's fair; and what's fair is right. He wants you to stop till it's two hours to sundown; and I see reason in the thing. A man can give up when he's wrong, if you don't crowd him too hard; but you crowd a man, and he gets to be like a stubborn ox—the more you beat, the worse he kicks.”
The sturdy notions of independence maintained by Billy neither suited the emergency nor the impatience of Mr. Jones, who was burning with a desire to examine the hid den mysteries of the cave. He therefore interrupted this amicable dialogue with his own voice;
“I command you Nathaniel Bumppo, by my authority, to surrender your person to the law,” he cried. “And I command you, gentlemen, to aid me in performing my duty. Benjamin Penguillan I arrest you, and order you to follow me to the jail of the county, by virtue of this warrant.”
“I'd follow ye, Squire Dickens,” said Benjamin, removing the pipe from his month (for during the whole scene the ex-major-domo had been very composedly smoking); “ay! I'd sail in your wake, to the end of the world, if-so—be that there was such a place, where there isn't, seeing that it's round. Now mayhap, Master Hollister, having lived all your life on shore, you isn't acquainted that the world, d'ye see.”
“Surrender!” interrupted the veteran, in a voice that startled his hearers, and which actually caused his own forces to recoil several paces; “surrender, Benjamin Pengullan, or expect no quarter.'”
“Damn your quarter!” said Benjamin, rising from the log on which he was seated, and taking a squint along the barrel of the swivel, which had been brought on the hill during the night, and now formed the means of defence on his side of the works. “Look you, master or captain, thof I questions if ye know the name of a rope, except the one that's to hang ye, there's no need of singing out, as if ye was hailing a deaf man on a topgallant yard. May-hap you think you've got my true name in your sheep skin; but what British sailor finds it worth while to sail in these seas, without a sham on his stern, in case of need, d'ye see. If you call me Penguillan, you calls me by the name of the man on whose hand, d'ye see, I hove into daylight; and he was a gentleman; and that's more than my worst enemy will say of any of the family of Benjamin Stubbs.”
“Send the warrant round to me, and I'll put in an alias,” cried Hiram, from behind his cover.