“Who was the second pilot?” asked Henry.
“Charpantier. I have always three or four fellows, regular sworn port-pilots.”
“And did you really mean to run the ship aground?” again asked Henry.
“Most certainly!” replied his companion, in a tone indicating neither doubt nor compunction. “Why,” he continued, “I could have run her high and dry without danger to our lives, when she must have gone to pieces; and I had hands enough on the rock to do the rest.”
“Men whom you could depend upon?” demanded Henry.
“A more determined set of fellows never hauled a boat up the Bass since the time of good King James,” replied the stranger. “And our men would not have been the last,” he added with a sneer, “to have rendered their timely assistance to the distressed crew of the Euphrasia; nor should Lady Julia L⸺ have been the last of the passengers their praiseworthy exertions would have rescued from a watery grave.” Henry laughed.
“Fool!” uttered in no very persuasive tone, was the courteous rejoinder of his companion, who, now that he happened to turn while passing a lamp, displayed the same fierce features which we have seen bending over the title-deeds of the Craigs, by the light of the colliery lantern. “And, as for Fitz-Ullin,” he continued, “if he did not know his way to the bottom, he might have been shown it! Confound him! If he had not given the order to let go the anchor, in less than two minutes no power could have saved the ship!” Both personages now proceeded in silence along the street, till their figures were lost in the gloom of its further extremity. Not long after the same two figures became visible on the verge of the Salisbury Craigs, and finally disappeared around the brow of the hill, a little below Arthur’s Seat, leaving the calm serenity of the scene unbroken by any living or moving object; while the distant villages, the bare hills, the waters of the Frith, the shipping in the roads, the deserted palace and ruined chapel, all slumbered silently in the clear moonshine of a summer night. And the city itself, so full of human life, where so many hearts and so many pulses at the very moment beat, presented an image as still and cold as though its piles of building, reflecting partial lights, and casting from their singularly irregular site gigantic shadows, were but the steep sides of so many masses of solid rock.