“D—n me,” said Bunce, who easily conjectured what was passing in the mind of his prisoner—“that pause would have told well on the stage—it would have brought down pit, box, and gallery, egad, as Bayes has it.”
“I will hear nothing of Bayes,” said Claud Halcro, (himself a little elevated,) “it is an impudent satire on glorious John; but he tickled Buckingham off for it—
‘In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various’”——
“Hold your peace!” said Bunce, drowning the voice of the admirer of Dryden in louder and more vehement asseveration, “the Rehearsal is the best farce ever was written—and I’ll make him kiss the gunner’s daughter that denies it. D—n me, I was the best Prince Prettyman ever walked the boards—
‘Sometimes a fisher’s son, sometimes a prince.’
But let us to business.—Hark ye, old gentleman,” (to Magnus,) “you have a sort of sulkiness about you, for which some of my profession would cut your ears out of your head, and broil them for your dinner with red pepper. I have known Goffe do so to a poor devil, for looking sour and dangerous when he saw his sloop go to Davy Jones’s locker with his only son on board. But I’m a spirit of another sort; and if you or the ladies are ill used, it shall be the Kirkwall people’s fault, and not mine, and that’s fair; and so you had better let them know your condition, and your circumstances, and so forth,—and that’s fair, too.”
Magnus, thus exhorted, took up the pen, and attempted to write; but his high spirit so struggled with his paternal anxiety, that his hand refused its office. “I cannot help it,” he said, after one or two illegible attempts to write—“I cannot form a letter, if all our lives depended upon it.”
And he could not, with his utmost efforts, so suppress the convulsive emotions which he experienced, but that they agitated his whole frame. The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so, in great calamities, it sometimes happens, that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character. In the present case, Claud Halcro was fortunately able to perform the task which the deeper feelings of his friend and patron refused. He took the pen, and, in as few words as possible, explained the situation in which they were placed, and the cruel risks to which they were exposed, insinuating at the same time, as delicately as he could express it, that, to the magistrates of the country, the life and honour of its citizens should be a dearer object than even the apprehension or punishment of the guilty; taking care, however, to qualify the last expression as much as possible, for fear of giving umbrage to the pirates.
Bunce read over the letter, which fortunately met his approbation; and, on seeing the name of Claud Halcro at the bottom, he exclaimed, in great surprise, and with more energetic expressions of asseveration than we choose to record—“Why, you are the little fellow that played the fiddle to old Manager Gadabout’s company, at Hogs Norton, the first season I came out there! I thought I knew your catchword of glorious John.”
At another time this recognition might not have been very grateful to Halcro’s minstrel pride; but, as matters stood with him, the discovery of a golden mine could not have made him more happy. He instantly remembered the very hopeful young performer who came out in Don Sebastian, and judiciously added, that the muse of glorious John had never received such excellent support during the time that he was first (he might have added, and only) violin to Mr. Gadabout’s company.