Story 2--Chapter VII.
On Board the Brig—the Challenge.
Othario. Remove the prisoner; the foe is near.
The Sea Witch.
He manned himself with dauntless air,
Returned the chief his haughty stare.
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Come one, come all!
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Fear nought - nay, that I need not say—
But doubt not aught from mine array.
Thou art my guest.
Lady of the Lake.
More than a week passed, and still John Coe was a prisoner at the old manor house. No chance of escape presented itself; and neither offers of money nor threats affected his guards. Yet, but for the name of captivity, and the thought of what might be in store for him in the future, his time would have passed pleasantly. Miss Ada Revere—as the lady chose to call herself—exerted all her talents and accomplishments to cause his time to pass agreeably. Games at chess and cards, books of poetry and romance, music of the guitar, and songs sung with charming taste, and accompanied by that fascinating instrument, varied her day and evening entertainments for the prisoner.
As great as was the interest which he felt in her who made his captivity pleasant, and as much aroused, therefore, as was his curiosity to know what was meant by her declaration that he and she had known each other in earlier days, he could not induce her to tell him to what she referred; he could only obtain from her the promise that she would at some future time make him acquainted with her history.
Miss Ada Revere had been commissioned by those who held John in captivity, not only to make his imprisonment more bearable, but also to endeavour to persuade him to join Captain Vance’s band. In the former task the reader has seen that she was successful; but the latter seemed to her to be so hopeless, that she did not even attempt it; she contented herself by persuading him to yield so far to circumstances as to pretend to be inclined to join them, that he might by such means have some chance of securing an opportunity to escape. The violent indignation—to call the feeling by a mild name—which young Coe entertained against his pretended friends, Marston and Dempster, he made no secret of to the lady; but the earnest desire which he cherished to have each of them before him at the pistol’s mouth, or at the sword’s point, he kept to himself.
Some ten or twelve days after that upon which young Coe had been so skilfully allured to imprisonment at the old manor house, the brig Sea-bird Captain Henry Marston, dropped anchor off the Eltonhead landing. She had needed no repairs, and her unlading and relading in Baltimore had been executed with the greatest despatch.
Without resistance John allowed himself to be taken from the manor house on board the brig. Where opposition would have been certainly unavailing, the attempt to make it would have been only a compromise of his dignity.
As the moon was in its first quarter, that orb had long since set when the long-boat and jolly-boat belonging to the brig returned from the shore to the vessel, both heavily laden with the men who had been left at the manor house—those in the smaller boat having young Coe among them as prisoner. A single lantern, held by one of the seamen at the gangway, showed but a dim outline of the deck and rigging of the brig, as those newly arrived climbed her sides. John had but a short time to make observations, as he was at once hurried down into the after-cabin, and through that into a small and neat state-room forward of it. He parted with Miss Ada Revere immediately on gaining the deck. There was much expression of pain and uneasiness in the face of the mysterious young girl when she shook hands, on parting with the prisoner at the gangway, and whispered to him “Be firm and hopeful, and do not give way to anger, however just.”