Natural sorrow for the loss of his relative, and the native honesty of an American seaman, united to open the heart of the captain to our wanderer, and he agreed to give him a passage in the Ohio to Boston, from whence he could reach Britain more readily than from the coast of France, watched and surrounded as it was by ships and gunboats, troops and gens d'armes, police, spies, passports, &c. Believing all arranged at last, Grant never left the ship, but counted every hour until he should again find himself in Leon, the land of his faithful Juanna, with his comrades of the Black Watch around him, and the eagles of Marmont in front.
At last came the important hour, when the anchor of the Ohio was fished; when her white canvas filled, and the stars and stripes of America swelled proudly from her gaff-peak, as she bore down the sun-lit Loire with the evening tide; but now an unlooked-for misfortune took place. A French privateer, the famous Jean Bart, ran foul of her, and, by carrying away her bowsprit and foremast, brought down her maintop-mast too. Thus she was forced to run back to Paimboeuff and haul into dock.
For our disguised captain of the 42nd Highlanders to remain in the docks, guarded as they were by watchful gens-d'armes, was impossible; thus, on being furnished by the skipper of the Ohio with the coarse clothes of a mariner, and a written character, stating that he was "Nathan Prowse, a native of Nantucket, in want of a ship," he stained his face and hands with tobacco-juice, shaved off his moustache, and repaired to an obscure tavern in the suburbs of Paimboeuff, to find a lodging until an opportunity offered for his escape. Under his peajacket he carried a pair of excellent pistols, which he kept constantly loaded; and a fine dagger or Albacete knife, a gift of poor Domingo de Leon.
As he sat in the kitchen of this humble house of entertainment, his eye was caught by a printed placard above the mantelpiece. It bore the imperial arms, with the cipher of the Emperor, and stated that "the notorious spy Colquhoun Grant, a captain in a Scottish regiment of the British army, who had wrought so much mischief behind the lines of le Maréchal Duc de Raguse, in Leon, and who had been brought prisoner to France, where he had broken his parole, was wandering about, maintaining a system of espionage and Protean disguises; that he had, lastly, assumed the name, character, and passport of an American citizen, named Jonathan Buck, whom he had wickedly and feloniously murdered and robbed in the Rue de Rivoli at Paris; that the sum of 2,000 francs was hereby offered for him dead or alive; and that all prefects, officers, civil and military, gens-d'armes, and loyal subjects of the Emperor, by sea and land, were hereby authorized to seize or kill the said Colquhoun Grant wherever and whenever they found him."
With no small indignation and horror, the Highlander read this obnoxious placard, which contained so much that wore the face of truth, with so much that was unquestionably false.
"So Buck, whose papers I have appropriated, has been murdered—poor devil!" was his first reflection; "what if the honest skipper of the Ohio should see this precious document and suspect me! In that case I should be altogether lost."
He retired from the vicinity of this formidable placard, fearing that some watchful eye might compare his personal appearance with the description it contained; though his costume, accent, and the fashion of his whiskers and beard altered his appearance so entirely that his oldest friends at the mess would not have recognised him. He hastily retired upstairs to a miserable garret, to think and watch, but not to sleep.
When loitering on the beach next evening, he entered into conversation with a venerable boatman, named Raoul Senebier, and an exchange of tobacco pouches at once established their mutual good-will. Grant said that "he was an American seaman out of a berth, and anxious to reach Portsmouth in England, where he had left his wife and children."
The boatman, an honest and unsuspicious old fellow, seemed touched by his story, and offered to row him to a small island at the mouth of the Loire, where British vessels watered unmolested, and in return allowed the poor inhabitants to fish and traffic without interruption.
"I can feel for you, my friend," said old Senebier; "for I was taken prisoner at the battle of Trafalgar, and was seven years in the souterrains of the Château d'Edimbourg, separated from my dear wife and little ones, and when I returned, I found them all lying in the churchyard of Paimboeuff."