“We sank the mails.”
“You did, my man. Notwithstanding which, that lion-hearted hero treated you with the forbearance of a true-born son of freedom.” Captain Seccombe’s voice took an oratorical roll. “He saw that you were bleeding from your fray. He fed you at his hospitable board; he would not suffer you to be de-nuded of the least trifle. Nay, what did he promise?—but to send your father and his crew and passengers back to England in their own ship, on their swearing, upon their sacred honour, that she should return to Boston harbour with an equal number of American prisoners from England. Your father swore to that upon the Old and New Testaments, severally and conjointly; and the Lady Nepean sailed home for all the world like a lamb from the wolf’s jaws, with a single American officer inside of her. And how did your dog-damned Government respect this noble confidence? In a way, sir, that would have brought a blush to the cheek of a low-down attorney’s clerk. They re-pudiated. Under shelter of a notification that no exchange of prisoners on the high seas would count as valid, this perjured tyrant and his myrmidons went back on their captain’s oath, and kept the brig; and the American officer came home empty-handed. Your father was told to resume his duties, immortal souls being cheap in a country where they press seamen’s bodies. And now, Mister First Officer Colenso, perhaps you’ll explain how he had the impudence to come within two hundred miles of a coast where his name smelt worse than vermin.”
“He was coming back, sir.”
“Hey?”
“Back to Boston, sir. You see, Cap’n, father wasn’t a rich man, but he had saved a trifle. He didn’t go back to the service, though told that he might. It preyed on his mind. We was all very fond of father; being all one family, as you might say, though some of us had wives and families, and some were over to Redruth, to the mines.”
“Stick to the point.”
“But this is the point, Cap’n. He was coming back, you see. The Lady Nepean wasn’t fit for much after the handling she’d had. She was going for twelve hundred pounds: the Post Office didn’t look for more. We got her for eleven hundred, with the guns, and the repairs may have cost a hundred and fifty; but you’ll find the account-books in the cupboard there. Father had a matter of five hundred laid by, and a little over.”
Captain Seccombe removed his legs from the cabin-table, tilted his chair forward and half rose in his seat.
“You bought her?”
“That’s what I’m telling you, sir; though father’d have put it much clearer. You see, he laid it before the Lord; and then he laid it before all of us. It preyed on his mind. My sister Susannah stood up and she said, ‘I reckon I’m the most respectably married of all of you, having a farm of my own; but we can sell up, and all the world’s a home to them that fears the Lord. We can’t stock up with American prisoners, but we can go ourselves instead; and judging by the prisoners I’ve a-seen brought in, Commodore Rodgers’ll be glad to take us. What he does to us is the Lord’s affair.’ That’s what she said, sir. Of course, we kept it quiet: we put it about that the Lady Nepean was for Canada, and the whole family going out for emigrants. This here gentleman we picked up outside Falmouth; perhaps he’ve told you.”