It would be, I knew, impossible to prove complicity on the part of the owner of the boat with the escaped felon, and I preferred to digest the venom of my spleen in silence, rather than by a useless display of it to add to the chuckling delight of the old rascal of a boatman.
We had passed some distance along the quay when one of the local officers, addressing a youngish sailor, who, with folded arms and a short pipe in his mouth was standing in philosophical contemplation of the sea and weather, said, “I suppose there is no chance of the emigrant ship that sailed a while ago putting in at any other port along the coast?”
The man took the pipe from his mouth, regarded the questioner for a few moments with an expression of contemptuous curiosity anything but flattering to its object, and bawled out, addressing himself to a weather-beaten seaman a few yards off, “I say, Tom Davis, here’s a Blue Bottle as wants to know the name and bearins of the port off the Land’s End which the barkey that sailed awhile agone for Ameriker with a north-easter kicking her endways is likely to bring up in: I’m not acquainted with it myself or else I’d tell the gentleman.”
The laugh from two or three bystanders which followed this sally greatly irritated the officer, and he would have indulged in an angry reply had not his more prudent comrade taken him by the arm and urged him away.
“Ay, ay,” said the veteran addressed as Tom Davis, as we were passing him, “Jim there has always got plenty of jawing tackle aboard; but, Lord love ye, he’s a poor dumb cretur at understanding the signs of the weather! He’s talkin’ about north-easters, and don’t see that the wind’s beginning to chop about like a bumbo at womanwith a dozen customers round her. It’s my opinion, and Tom Davis ought by this time to be summut of a judge, that, instead of a north-easter, it’s a precious sight more likely to be blowing a sou’-wester before two hours are past, and a sneezer too; and then the Columby, if she ha’nt made a good offin’, which she is not likely to have done, will be back again in a brace of shakes.”
“Do you think it probable,” I eagerly asked, “that the Columbia will be obliged to put back into Plymouth?”
“I don’t know about probable. It’s not so sure as death or quarter-day, but it’s upon the cards for all that.”
“Will it be early in the night, think you, that she will run in, if at all?”
“Ah! there now you wants to know too much;” said the old seaman turning on his heel. “All I can say is, that if you find in an hour or so’s time that the wind has chopped round to the sou’-west, or within a p’int or two, and that it’s blowin’ the buttons off your coat one after another, the Columby, if she’s lucky, wont be far off.”
The half-bantering prediction of the old seaman was confirmed by others whom we consulted, and measures for preventing our quarry from landing, and again giving us the slip, were at once discussed and resolved upon. We then separated, and I proceeded to the tavern at which I had put up to get some dinner. I had not gone far when my eye fell upon two persons whose presence there surprised as well as somewhat grieved me. One was the young wife of the criminal on board the Columbia. I had seen her once in London, and I knew, as before intimated, that she was of respectable parentage. There was no exultation in her countenance. She had no doubt followed or accompanied her husband to Plymouth for the purpose of furthering his escape, and now feared that the capricious elements would render all the ingenuity and boldness that had been brought into play vain and profitless. She was a mild-looking, pretty woman—very much so, I doubt not, till trouble fell upon her, and wonderfully resembled the female in the “Momentous Question;” so remarkably indeed, that when, years afterwards, I first saw that print, I felt an instantaneous conviction that I had somewhere met with the original of the portrait; and after much puzzlement of brain remembered when and where. The resemblance was doubtless purely accidental; but it was not the less extraordinary and complete. She was accompanied by a gray-haired man of grave, respectable exterior, whom I at once concluded to be her father. As I passed close by them, he appeared about to address me, and I half-paused to hear what he had to say; but his partly-formed purpose was not persisted in, and I proceeded on my way.