Captain Seccombe stared at me, and I at Captain Seccombe. Reuben Colenso stood wringing his cap.
At length the American found breath enough to whistle. “I’ll have to put back to Boston about this, though it’s money out of pocket. This here’s a matter for Commodore Bainbridge. Take a seat, Mr. Colenso.”
“I was going to ask,” said the prisoner simply, “if, before you put me in irons, I might go on deck and look at father. It’ll be only a moment, sir.”
“Yes, sir, you may. And if you can get the ladies to excuse me, I will follow in a few minutes. I wish to pay him my respects. It’s my opinion,” he added pensively, as the prisoner left the cabin—“it’s my opinion that the man’s story is genu-wine.”
He repeated the word, five minutes later, as we stood on the quarter-deck beside the body. “A genu-wine man, sir, unless I am mistaken.”
Well, the question is one for casuists. In my travels I have learnt this, that men are greater than governments; wiser sometimes, honester always. Heaven deliver me from any such problem as killed this old packet-captain! Between loyalty to his king and loyalty to his conscience he had to choose, and it is likely enough that he erred. But I believe that he fought it out, and found on his country’s side a limit of shame to which he could not stoop. A man so placed, perhaps, may even betray his country to her honour. In this hope at least the flag which he had hauled down covered his body still as we committed it to the sea, its service or disservice done.
Two days later we anchored in the great harbour at Boston, where Captain Seccombe went with his story and his prisoners to Commodore Bainbridge, who kept them pending news of Commodore Rodgers. They were sent, a few weeks later, to Newport, Rhode Island, to be interrogated by that commander; and, to the honour of the Republic, were released on a liberal parole; but whether, when the war ended, they returned to England or took oath as American citizens, I have not learned. I was luckier. The Commodore allowed Captain Seccombe to detain me while the French consul made inquiry into my story; and during the two months which the consul thought fit to take over it, I was a guest in the captain’s house. And here I made my bow to Miss Amelia Seccombe, an accomplished young lady, “who,” said her doating father, “has acquired a considerable proficiency in French, and will be glad to swap ideas with you in that language.” Miss Seccombe and I did not hold our communications in French; and, observing her disposition to substitute the warmer language of the glances, I took the bull by the horns, told her my secret, and rhapsodised on Flora. Consequently no Nausicaa figures in this Odyssey of mine. Nay, the excellent girl flung herself into my cause, and bombarded her father and the consular office with such effect that on 2nd February 1814, I waved farewell to her from the deck of the barque Shawmut, bound from Boston to Bordeaux.