"Because," said he, "I am sad when I think that you must go to hell, sir."
"I go to hell!" Sir Philip exclaimed, with a good deal of rather unpleasant surprise; "why should I do that, Jack? I never thought that you entertained so bad an opinion of me."
"Your Honour," said Jack, having picked up some of my correct expressions, "it is not me; it is God Almighty. I was told afore ever I learned to read, or ever heard of reading, how it was. And so it is in the Bible now. Poor men go to heaven, rich men go to hell. It must be so to be fair for both."
The General had too much sense to attempt to prove the opposite, and would have thought no more about it, if Jack had dropped the subject. But to do this at the proper moment requires great civilisation; while on the other hand Jack sought comfort, needless to men of refinement.
"Your Honour must go there," he said, with a nod of his head which was meant to settle it; "but there is one of your race, or family"—or whatever word of that sort he employed, for he scarce could have come to any knowledge of things hereditary—"who will go to heaven."
"Many are gone there already—too many," answered Sir Philip, devoutly; "but tell me whom you mean, Jack. Do you mean my son the Captain?"
"Him! no, no. I know better than that. It is plain where he must go to."
"Your Captain! you disloyal fellow. Why, you ought to be lashed to the triangles. But who is it you are thinking of?"
"I know, I know," said Jack, nodding his head; and no more could Sir Philip get out of him. And whenever he tried to begin again, Jack Wildman was more than a match for him, by feigning not to understand, or by some other of the many tricks which nature supplies, for self-defence, to the savage against the civilised. If I had been well, I must have shelled this poor Jack's meaning out of him; whereas, on the other hand, but for my illness he might never have spoken. So it came to pass that he was sent, entirely at Sir Philip's cost, and with a handsome gratuity, to rejoin our Captain in Plymouth Sound, and to carry back Cannibals Dick and Joe, who had scoured away at great speed upon hearing of my sudden misfortune.
Now I will tell you a very strange thing, and quite out of my experience: even after small-pox, which enlarged and filled me with charity, as well as what I had scarcely room for—increase of humility. This is, that though Captain Bampfylde had some little spare time at Plymouth, he had such command of himself that he never went near his beloved Isabel. Nothing could have so checked a man of heartiness and bravery, except the strongest power of honour, and a long time of chastisement. There was a lovely young woman, and here a fine though middle-aged man, her husband; they loved one another with heart and soul, and they never met, but through a telescope! It may have been right, or it may have been wrong—I should have thought it wrong, perhaps, if the case had been my own—but they pledged their honour and kept it. Drake Bampfylde (like his father) had a strength of trust in Providence. But this trust has no landed security, now that the Lord has found the world so clever, that He need not interfere with it.