The other turned and was about to walk away down the street; but he paused and said slowly and distinctly:
“London, I think, is the place for you.”
Then he wheeled about on his heel and walked, with military erectness, down along the prison wall, which he turned and so disappeared from view.
“What could he have meant by that?” thought Ethan, astonished. “‘London, I think, is the place for you.’” He remained silent a moment, and then resumed, “And I think he is right. London is the place for me. There I can lose myself in the throngs; and perhaps I can somehow get a ship for France.”
He gave up all hope of Longsword and McHale; bitter as was the thought he made up his mind that it would be useless to linger about Plymouth in the hope of helping them; he began to think, also, that it was dangerous for him, in his sailor’s dress, to be seen upon the streets; at any time a press-gang might happen along, for the king’s ships were badly in need of men for the American war. So before the city was well astir he had laid it behind him. On the road he met many wagons in from the farms with loads of fresh butter and eggs and other things for the town.
“Oh, lad,” cried one old man pointing at the young tar with his whip, and speaking in a broad dialect, “hast left thy ship? It’s main queer, so it is, that first I should meet with a soldier, and now with a sailor, upon the road to town.”
“A soldier,” thought Ethan, as he trudged along. “I wonder if it could be the same one?”
Many times during the day he inquired his way of simple country folk along the way. They stared when they heard that he was going up to London; it was a very large place and very far away. That night he stopped at a small wayside inn; he saw the young soldier whom he had noticed coming out of the prison at Plymouth, and who had spoken to him. But the youth studiously avoided him, and as Ethan was not at all anxious to form the acquaintance of king’s men, he did not force himself upon him.
When he arose next morning the soldier was not to be seen. The boy breakfasted at his leisure; the landlord and his wife, who took the young American to be a seaman of a British ship, off, perhaps, upon a visit to his old home in some inland town, began to question him about the progress of the war.
“And have you seen any of these American privateers that we hear so much about?” asked the landlord. Ethan nodded, and the man went on, “Ah, they must be very desperate fellows, indeed; and stubborn fighters, too, I have heard tell.”