第98章

"Cold? Snow-wasser and hagel! it's perdition--I could only keep myself alive by rambling up and down this d-d vault, and thinking about the merry rouses we have had in it."The flame then began to blaze brightly, and Hatteraick hung his bronzed visage, and expanded his hard and sinewy hands over it, with an avidity resembling that of a famished wretch to whom food is exposed. The light showed his savage and stern features, and the smoke, which in his agony of cold he seemed to endure almost to suffocation, after circling round his head, rose to the dim and rugged roof of the cave, through which it escaped by some secret rents or clefts in the rock; the same doubtless that afforded air to the cavern when the tide was in, at which time the aperture to the sea was filled with water.

"And now I have brought you some breakfast," said Glossin, producing some cold meat and a flask of spirits. The latter Hatteraick eagerly seized upon, and applied to his mouth; and, after a hearty draught, he exclaimed with great rapture, "Das schmeckt! That is good--that warms the liver!"--Then broke into the fragment of a High-Dutch song,"Saufen Bier, und Brante-wein, Schmeissens alle die Fenstern ein; lch ben liederlich, Du bist liederlich; Sind wir nicht liederlich Leute a!""Well said, my hearty Captain!" cried Glossin, endeavouring to catch the tone of revelry--"Gin by pailfuls, wine in rivers, Dash the window-glass to shivers!

For three wild lads were we, brave boys, And three wild lads were we;Thou on the land, and I on the sand, And jack on the gallows-tree!"That's it, my bully-boy! Why, you're alive again now!--And now let us talk about our business.""Your business, if you please," said Hatteraick; hagel and donner!--mine was done when I got out of the bilboes.""Have patience, my good friend;--I'll convince you our interests are just the same."Hatteraick gave a short dry cough, and Glossin, after a pause, proceeded. "How came you to let the boy escape?""Why, fluch and blitzen! he was no charge of mine. Lieutenant Brown gave him to his cousin that's in the Middleburgh house of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, and told him some goose's gazette about his being taken in a skirmish with the land-sharks--he gave him for a foot-boy. Me let him escape!--the bastard kinchin should have walked the plank ere I troubled myself about him.""Well, and was he bred a foot-boy then?""Nein, nein; the kinchin got about the old man's heart, and he gave him his own name, and bred him up in the office, and then sent him to India--I believe he would have packed him back here, but his nephew told him it would do up the free trade for many a day, if the youngster got back to Scotland.""Do you think the younker knows much of his own origin now?""Deyvil!" replied Hatteraick, "how should I tell what he knows now?

But he remembered something of it long. When he was but ten years old, he persuaded another Satan's limb of an English bastard like himself to steal my lugger's khan--boat--what do you call it--to return to his country, as he called it--fire him! Before we could overtake them, they had the skiff out of channel as far as the Deurloo--the boat might have been lost.""I wish to Heaven she had--with him in her" ejaculated Glossin.

"Why, I was so angry myself, that, sapperment! I did give him a tip over the side--but split him--the comical little devil swam like a duck; so I made him swim astern for a mile to teach him manners, and then took him in when he was sinking.--By the knocking Nicholas! he'll plague you, now he's come over the herring-pond!

When he was so high, he had the spirit of thunder and lightning.""How did he get back from India?""Why, how should I know?--the house there was done up, and that gave us a shake at Middleburgh, I think--so they sent me again to see what could be done among my old acquaintances here--for we held old stories were done away and forgotten. So I had got a pretty trade on foot within the last two trips; but that stupid houndsfoot schelm, Brown, has knocked it on the head again, I suppose, with getting himself shot by the colonel-man.

"Why were you not with them?"

"Why, you see--sapperment! I fear nothing--but it was too far within land, and I might have been scented.""True. But to return to this youngster--""Ay, ay, donner and blitzen! he's your affair," said the Captain.

"--How do you really know that he is in this country?""Why, Gabriel saw him up among the hills.""Gabriel! who is he?"

A fellow from the gipsies, that, about eighteen years since, was pressed on board that d-d fellow Pritchard's sloop-of-war. It was he came off and gave us warning that the Shark was coming round upon us the day Kennedy was done; and he told us how Kennedy had given the information. The gipsies and Kennedy had some quarrel besides. This Gab went to the East Indies in the same ship with your younker, and, sapperment! knew him well, though the other did not remember him. Gab kept out of his eye though, as he had served the States against England, and was a deserter to boot; and he sent us word directly, that we might know of his being here--though it does not concern us a rope's end.""So, then, really, and in sober earnest, he is actually in this country, Hatteraick, between friend and friend?" asked Glossin seriously.