It was a beautiful autumnal morning when the schooner weighed anchor from Detroit. Several of the officers of the garrison had accompanied the ladies on board, and having made fast their sailing boat to the stern, loitered on deck with the intention of descending the river a few miles, and then beating up against the current. The whole party were thus assembled, conversing together and watching the movements of the sailors, when a boat, in which were several armed men encircling a huge, raw-boned individual, habited in the fashion of an American backwoodsman, approached the vessel. This was no other than the traitor Desborough, who, it will be recollected, was detained and confined in prison at the surrender of Detroit. He had been put upon his trial for the murder of Major Grantham, but had been acquitted through want of evidence to convict, his own original admission being negatived by a subsequent declaration that he had only made it through a spirit of bravado and revenge. Still, as the charges of desertion and treason had been substantiated against him, he was, by order of the commandant of Amherstburgh, destined for Fort Erie, in the schooner conveying the American party to Buffalo, with a view to his being sent on to the Lower Province, there to be disposed of as the General Commanding in Chief should deem fit.
The mien of the settler, as he now stepped over the vessel's side, partook of the mingled cunning and ferocity by which he had formerly been distinguished. While preparations were being made for his reception and security below deck, he bent his sinister yet bold glance on each of the little group in succession, as if he would have read in their countenances the probable fate that awaited himself. The last who fell under his scrutiny was Miss Montgomerie, on whom his eye had scarcely rested when the insolent indifference of his manner seemed to give place at once to a new feeling. There was intelligence enough in the glance of both to show that an insensible interest had been created, and yet neither gave the slightest indication by word of what was passing in the mind.
"Well, Mister Jeremiah Desborough," said Middlemore, first breaking the silence, and in the taunting mode of address he usually adopted towards the settler, "I reckon as how you'll shoot no wild ducks this season, on the Sandusky river—not likely to be much troubled with your small bores now."
The ruffian gazed at him a moment in silence, evidently ransacking his brain for something sufficiently insolent to offer in return. At length he drew his hat slouchingly over one side of his head, folded his arms across his chest, and squirting a torrent of tobacco juice from his capacious jaws, exclaimed in his drawling voice:
"I guess, Mister Officer, as how you're mighty cute upon a fallen man—but tarnation seize me if I don't expect you'll find some one cuter still afore long. The sogers all say," he continued, with a low cunning laugh, "as how you're a bit of a wit, and fond of a play upon words like. If so, I'll jist try you a little at your own game, and tell you that I had a thousand to one rather be troubled with my small bores, than with such a confounded great bore as you are; and now, you may pit that down as something good in your pun book when you please, and ax me no more questions."
Long and fitful was the laughter which burst from Villiers and Molineux at this bitter retort upon their companion, which they vowed should be repeated at the mess-table of either garrison, whenever he again attempted one of his execrables.
Desborough took courage at the license conveyed by this pleasantry, and pursued, winking familiarly to Captain Molineux, while he, at the same time, nodded to Middlemore.
"Mighty little time, I calculate, had he to think of aggravatin', when I gripped him down at Hartley's pint that day. If it hadn't been for that old heathen scoundrel, Girtie, my poor boy Phil, as the Injuns killed, and me, I reckon, would have sent him and young Grantham to crack their puns upon the fishes of the lake. How scared they were, surely."
"Silence, fellow!" thundered Gerald Grantham, who now came up from the hold, whither he had been to examine the fastenings prepared for his prisoner. "How dare you open your lips here?"—then pointing towards the steps he had just quitted—"descend, sir!"