"Why, this is fortunate," said the officer, turning to the motionless gentleman. "General Carleton, this man says he has a verbal message for you."
Dick stood, for a moment, speechless and staring; then, yielding all at once to the fatigues of the night, sank in a senseless heap to the deck.
CHAPTER X.
"BY FLOOD AND FIELD."
The silent officer was indeed Sir Guy Carleton, governor of Canada, who had eluded the captors of Montreal by disguising himself as a Canadian voyager and helping six peasants to row him in a small boat with muffled oars to Three Rivers, where he had boarded the vessel for Quebec. He now ordered Dick held below, while the vessel proceeded to a mooring-place.
The captain of the vessel, on being hailed by a guard-boat from the Lizard frigate, announced the arrival of General Carleton, and, in the ensuing exchange of news, spoke of the man just found in the river. The guard-boat officer replied that the man must be a Virginia rifleman who had escaped that evening from the Adamant, on which vessel this rifleman and another, both captured in the suburbs of Quebec, had been placed with the rebels taken September 24th while attempting a night attack on Montreal. Dick fulfilled, in his attire, the description of the escaped Virginian, and was held on Carleton's vessel when the governor landed, the captain being ordered to hold him for identification by Mr. Brooke Watson, in whose charge the rebel prisoners now on the Adamant had been put. As the governor intended that the Adamant should sail the next day with its prisoners, he caused Mr. Watson to be summoned from his tavern for the purpose of viewing the new captive that night. The governor then hastened to the upper town, to confer with his lieutenant and with Colonel Maclean, and, in the discussion of important affairs, forgot about Dick; while Maclean, on his side, had now other matters for thought than the fugitive spy.
Meanwhile, Mr. Watson, the same eminent merchant who afterwards became lord mayor of London, going rather grumpily from inn comforts to the vessel, in the snow-storm, stumbled down the hatchway, and beheld Dick while the latter lay unconscious in a hammock, the whole upper side of his face concealed by straggling hair. Desirous of getting speedily back to his lodgings, and glad that his quota of prisoners might be restored to its full number, the honest merchant cast a brief glance at Dick in the dim light, unhesitatingly pronounced him to be the missing rascal, and stumbled back up the stairs to the deck.
Thus, through no kindness of intention on the part of his enemies, Dick escaped the fate of a spy, and was assigned to that of a rebel under arms. The next day, having slept well and having had his new wound cared for by a surgeon, who pronounced it trivial, Dick was put aboard the Adamant, handcuffed, by a guard of soldiers that had in the meantime received Mr. Watson's orders concerning him, and thrust into a dark apartment, which was already crowded with shackled prisoners, whose recumbent bodies took up most of the floor. Dick knew not what disposition was to be made of him, nor that the Adamant, already about to set sail with its prisoners and with Governor Carleton's despatches, was bound for England.
"So the minions of tyranny have dragged you back to the den!" rang out a bold, virile voice, from the inner darkness, and presently a stalwart, erect figure strode forth, stepping easily over the legs of the reclining prisoners and planting each foot firmly as it fell. The speaker was evidently able, from recent habit, to see fairly well in the darkness. Coming close to Dick, he suddenly stopped and exclaimed, "By the everlasting, 'tis another man! Brother, I took you first for a comrade who broke the tyrant's chain yesterday. They removed him from this cage, to doctor him, for the filthy air had made him sick; but he broke away and plunged into the river, in the snow-storm. Or else the guard who brought our supper is a liar. Have you heard anything of his fate?"