THE ESCAPE OF ETHELSTON FROM GUADALOUPE, AND THE CONSEQUENCES WHICH ENSUED FROM THAT EXPEDITION.
We left Ethelston on the deck of the little schooner, which was bearing him rapidly from the shores of Guadaloupe, under the influence of an easterly wind, so strong that all his attention was absorbed in the management of the vessel. During the night the gale increased, and blew with unabated violence for forty–eight hours. The Seagull, for so she was called, scudded lightly before it; and on the third day, Ethelston had made by his log upwards of five hundred miles of westerly course.
Having only two hands on board, and the weather being so uncommonly boisterous, he had been kept in constant employment, and had only been able to snatch a few brief intervals for sleep and refreshment: he found Jacques the coxswain an active able seaman, but extremely silent and reserved, obeying exactly the orders he received, but scarcely uttering a word, even to Cupid; it was he alone who attended upon the invalid and the nurse in the after–cabin; and the weather having now moderated, Ethelston asked how the youth had borne the pitching and tossing of the vessel during the late gale. Jacques replied, that he was not worse, and seemed not to suffer from the sea. The captain was satisfied, and retired to his cabin; he had not been there long before Cupid entered; and carefully shutting the door behind him, stood before his master, with a peculiar expression of countenance, which the latter well knew to intimate some unexpected intelligence.
“Well, Cupid, what is it?” said Ethelston, “is there a suspicious sail in sight?”
“Very suspicious, Massa Ethelston,” replied the black, grinning and lowering his voice to a whisper, “and suspicious goods aboard the schooner.”
“What mean you, Cupid?”
“There is some trick aboard. I not like that Jacques that never speak, and I not like that sick boy and his nurse, that nobody never see.”
“But why should you be angry, Cupid, with the poor boy because he is sick? I have promised to deliver him safe to his friends at New Orleans, and I hope soon, with this breeze, to perform my promise.”
“Massa Ethelston, I believe it all one damn trick—I not believe there is one sick boy: when Jacques come in and go out of that cabin he creep, and look, and listen, and watch like the Colonel’s grey cat at the cheese cupboard. Cupid no pretend to much learnin’, but he no be made fool of by damn French nigger, and he no tell Massa Ethelston a lie.” So saying, the African withdrew as quietly as he had entered.
After musing some time on his follower’s communication and suspicions, he resolved to unravel whatever mystery might be attached to the matter, by visiting the invalid immediately. On his knocking gently at the door for admission, he was answered from within by the nurse that her patient was asleep, and ought not now to be disturbed; but being determined not to allow another day to pass in uncertainty, he went on deck, and summoning Jacques, told him to go down presently and inform the nurse that in the evening, as soon as her patient was awake, he should pay him a visit.