All the doors being shut and the company seated, a profound silence ensued, together with a face of dreadful expectation, encouraged by the blue flame of the candles, which were tipped with sulphur for that purpose, and heightened by the dismal sound of a large bell, which Hadgi tolled in the ante-chamber. Cadwallader having thus practised upon their ignorance and fear, desired them to name the person to be produced. After some whispers among themselves, one of them took the pen, and, writing the name of Commodore Trunnion upon a slip of paper, put it into the hands of the magician, who rose from his seat, and, opening the door of his closet, displayed to their view a skull, with thigh bones crossed, upon a table covered with black cloth.
This melancholy spectacle made a remarkable impression upon the imaginations of the company, already prepossessed by the previous ceremony; and they began to survey one another with looks of consternation, while Cadwallader, shutting himself in the closet, that was contiguous to the chamber in which his friend Peregrine was stationed, thrust the label with his uncle's name through a small chink in the partition according to agreement, muttering at the time a sort of gibberish, that increased the panic of his audience; then returning to his chair, the knell was tolled again, and Pickle called aloud, “D—n your mummery: why don't you despatch?”
This was a signal to Crabtree, who thus certified of his having received the paper, stood up and waved his wand in the figure of an S. The motion being thrice performed, their ears were all of a sudden invaded by a terrible noise in the next room, accompanied with the voice of Peregrine, who exclaimed, in a tone of horror and amazement, “Guard me, Heaven! my Uncle Trunnion!” This ejaculation had such an effect upon the hearers, that two of them swooned with fear, a third fell upon his knees and prayed aloud, while the other three, in a transport of dismay and distraction, burst open the door, and rushed into the haunted chamber, where they found the table and chair overturned, and Peregrine extended, in all appearance without sense or motion, upon the floor.
They immediately began to chafe his temples, and the first symptom of his recovery which they perceived was a hollow groan; after which he pronounced these words: “Merciful powers! if I live I saw the commodore with his black patch, in the very clothes he wore at my sister's wedding.” This declaration completed their astonishment and terror; they observed a wildness in his looks, which he seemed to bend on something concealed from their view; and were infected by his appearance to such a pitch of superstition, that it would have been an easy matter to persuade them that the chair and table were apparitions of their forefathers. However, they conducted Peregrine into the council chamber, where the conjurer and Hadgi were employed in ministering to those who had fainted.
The patients having retrieved the use of their faculties, Cadwallader, assuming a double portion of severity in his aspect, asked if they were not ashamed of their former incredulity; declaring, that he was ready to give them more convincing proofs of his art upon the spot, and would immediately recall three generations of their progenitors from the dead, if they were disposed to relish such company. Then turning to one of them, whose grandfather had been hanged, “Are you,” said he, “ambitious of seeing the first remarkable personage of your family? Say the word and he shall appear.”
This youth, who had been the most insolent and obstreperous in the whole society, and was now depressed with the same proportion of fear, alarmed at the proposal, assured the magician he had no curiosity of that sort remaining; and that what he had already seen would, he hoped, have a good effect upon his future life and conversation. Every one of these heroes made an acknowledgment and profession of the same kind, some of which were attended with tears; and Hadgi having provided chairs for the whole company, they departed exceedingly crest-fallen. Two of the number actually sickened with the agitation they had undergone, while our hero and his associate made themselves merry with the success of their enterprise.
But this scheme of fortune-telling did not engross his whole attention; he still continued to maintain his appearance in the beau monde; and, as his expense far exceeded his income, strove to contract intimacies with people of interest and power; he showed himself regularly at court, paid his respects to them in all places of public diversion, and frequently entered into their parties, either of pleasure or cards. In the course of this cultivation, he happened one evening, at a certain chocolate-house, to overlook a match of piquet, in which he perceived a couple of sharpers making a prey of a young nobleman, who had neither temper nor skill sufficient to cope with such antagonists.
Our hero, being a professed enemy to all knights of industry, could not bear to see them cheat in public with such insolent audacity. Under pretence of communicating some business of importance, he begged the favour of speaking to the young gentleman in another corner of the room, and in a friendly manner cautioned him against his opponents. This hot-headed representative, far from thinking or owning himself obliged to Pickle for his good counsel, looked upon his advice as an insult upon his understanding; and replied, with an air of ferocious displeasure, that he knew how to take care of his own concerns, and would not suffer either him or them to bubble him out of a shilling.
Peregrine, offended at the association, as well as at the ingratitude and folly of this conceited coxcomb, expressed his resentment, by telling him, that he expected at least an acknowledgment for his candid intention; but he found his intellects too much warped by his vanity to perceive his own want of capacity and experience. Inflamed by this reproof, the young nobleman challenged him to play for five hundred pounds, with many opprobrious, or at least contemptuous terms of defiance, which provoked our hero to accept the proposal. After the other had disengaged himself from the old rooks, who were extremely mortified at the interruption, the two young champions sat down, and fortune acting with uncommon impartiality, Pickle, by the superiority of his talents, in two hours won to the amount of as many thousand pounds, for which he was obliged to take his antagonist's note, the sharpers having previously secured his ready money.
Frantic with his loss, the rash young man would have continued the game, and doubled stakes every time; so that Peregrine might have increased his acquisition to ten times the sum he had gained; but he thought he had already sufficiently chastised the presumption of the challenger, and was unwilling to empower fortune to ravish from him the fruits of his success; he therefore declined my lord's proposal, unless he would play for ready money; and his lordship having in vain tried his credit among the company, our adventurer withdrew, leaving him in an ecstasy of rage and disappointment.