“Bah!” cried his lordship. “I love you, Tony, and all the other boys, but your Prince is a madman—a sotted madman tied to the petticoat tails of a trollope. This Walkinshaw—saving your presence, Paul Greig, for she's your countrywoman and by way of being your friend, I hear—has ruined Charles and the Cause. We have done what we could to make him send madame back to the place she came from, but he'll do nothing of the kind. 'She has stuck by me through thick and thin, and lost all for me, and now I shall stick by her,' says foolish Master Sentiment.”
“Bravo!” cried Thurot. “'Tis these things make us love the Prince and have faith in his ultimate success.”
“You were ever the hopeful ass, Tony,” said his lordship coolly. “Il riest pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre, and you must shut your ears against a tale that all the world is shouting at the pitch of its voice. Who knows better than Tony Thurot how his Royal Highness has declined? Why! 'tis manifest in the fellow's nose; I declare he drinks like a fish—another vice he brought back from your mountain land, M. Greig, along with Miss Walkinshaw——”
“There is far too much of Miss Walkinshaw about your lordship's remarks,” I cried in an uncontrollable heat that the lady should be the subject of implications so unkind.
He stared, and then kissed his hand to me with laughter and a bow, “Ha!” he cried, “here's another young gentleman of sentiment. Stap me if I say a word against the lady for your sake, Andy Greig's nephew.” And back he went to his bottle.
In this light fashion we spent a day that by rights should have been more profitably and soberly occupied. The frigate lay well out from the quays from which Thurot had conveyed me with none of the indignities that might be expected by a prisoner. There was, as I have said, none of her crew on board save a watch of two men. Beside her quarter there hung a small smuggling cutter that had been captured some days previously. As I sat in the cabin, yawning at the hinder-end over Clancarty's sallies, I could hear now and then the soft thudding of the smuggler's craft against the fenders as the sea rocked us lightly, and it put a mad fancy into my head.
How good it would be, I thought, to be free on board such a vessel and speeding before a light wind to Britain! Was it wholly impossible? The notion so possessed me that I took an occasion to go on deck and see how things lay.
The smuggler's boat had her mast stepped, but no sails in her. Over the bulwark of the frigate leaned one of the watch idly looking at sea-gulls that cried like bairns upon the smuggler's thwarts and gunnels. He was a tarry Dutchman (by his build and colour); I fancy that at the time he never suspected I was a prisoner, for he saluted me with deference.
The harbour was emptier than usual of shipping. Dusk was falling on the town; some lights were twinkling wanly and bells rang in the cordage of the quays. I asked the seaman if he knew where the hoy Vrijster of Helvoetsluys lay.
At that his face brightened and he promptly pointed to her yellow hull on the opposite side of the harbour.