“Canʼt take you that way, young Boss, and donʼt want your legal writings. How come you here, to begin with?”
Cradock told him all his story, while the men were busy; and the keen American saw at once that every word was true.
“Strikes me,” he said, with a serious drawl, which the fun in his eyes contradicted, “that yoo, after the way of the British, have made a trifle free, young man, with some of my goods and chattels he–ar; and even yoor encro–aching country canʼt prove tittle to them.”
“Yes,” replied Cradock; “and I will pay you, if I have not done so already. I will give you the thing which has saved the whole from plunder, and perhaps fire afterwards.”
Then he fetched the little machine, which the Yankee recognised at once as an American invention, and he laughed till his yellow cheeks were reeking at the description of the “darned naygursʼ retreat.”
“Rip me up, young man,” he said, “but yooʼd be a credit to us aʼmost. Darnʼd if I thought as any Britisher wud ever be up to so cute a dodge. Shake hands agin, young chap, I likes yoo. And yooʼve airned your ticket anywhor, and a hunderd dollars to back of it. Weʼll take yoo to the centre of the univarsal world, and make yoo open your eyes a bit. Ship aboard of us for Noo Yerk, and if that donʼt make a man of yoo, call me small pumpkins arterwards.”
“But I want to get to England,” said Cradock, looking very black; “and I have no money for passage from New York to Southampton.”
“Thur now, yoo be all over a Britisher agin, and reck–wirin enlightʼment. Yoo allays spies out fifty raisons agin a thin’ smarter than one in itʼs favior. Harken, now, Iʼll have yoo sot down in the docks of Suthanton, free, and with fifty dollars to trade upon, sure as my name is Recklesome Young. Thur, now! Bet, I donʼt, will yoo, and pay me out o’ my spisshy?”
Not to dwell too long upon these little side–paths, it is enough to record that Captain Recklesome Young, of New York, and the schooner, Donʼt you wish you may catch me, made sail two days afterwards, with half of his best cabin allotted to Cradock and to Wena. And, keen as he was to the shave of a girlʼs lip, in striking a contract or cutting it, upon a large scale, he came down as nobly as the angels on Jacobʼs ladder. No English duke or prince of the blood could or would have behaved to Cradock more grandly than Recklesome Young did, when once he understood him. In such things the Yankees are far ahead of us. Keen as they are, and for that same reason, they have far more trust than we have, in large and good human nature. Of the best of them I have heard many a true tale, such as I never could hope to hear of our noblest London merchants. Proofs of grand faith, and Godlike confidence in a man once approved, which enlarge the heart of him who hears them, and makes him hate small satire.