Afloat and Ashore

by James Fenimore Cooper

  The land and light were now close aboard us, and I expected every moment to hear the brig's keel grinding on the bottom. At this instant I caught a faint glimpse of a vessel at anchor to the eastward of the point, and apparently distant about a quarter of a mile. The thought struck me that she might be an English cruiser, for they frequently anchored in such places; and I called out, as it might be instinctively, "luff!" Neb was at the helm, and I knew by his cheerful answer that the fellow was delighted. It was lucky we luffed as we did, for, in coming to the wind, the vessel gave a scrape that was a fearful admonisher of what would have happened in another minute. The Amanda minded her helm beautifully, however, and we went past the nearest land without any further hints, heading up just high enough to fetch a little to windward of the vessel at anchor. At the next moment, the lugger, then about a cable's length from as, was shut in by the land. I was now in great hopes the Frenchman would be obliged to tack; but he had measured his distance well, and felt certain, it would seem, that he could lay past. He reasoned, probably, as Nelson is said to have reasoned at the Nile, and as some of his captains unquestionably did reason; that is, if there was water enough for us, there was water enough for him. In another minute I saw him, jammed nearly into the wind's eye, luffing past the point, and falling as easily into our wake as if drawn by attraction.

  All this time, the night was unbroken by any sound. Not a hail, nor a call, our own orders excepted, and they had been given in low tones, had been audible on board the Amanda. As regards the vessel at anchor, she appeared to give herself no concern. There she lay, a fine ship, and, as I thought, a vessel-of-war, like a marine bird asleep on its proper element. We were directly between her and the lugger, and it is possible her anchor-watch did not see the latter. The three vessels were not more than half a cable's length asunder; that is, we were about that distance from the ship, and the lugger was a very little farther from us. Five minutes must determine the matter. I was on the brig's forecastle, anxiously examining all I could make out on board the ship, as her size, and shape, and rig, became slowly more and more distinct; and I hailed—

  "Ship ahoy!"

  "Hilloa! What brig's that?"

  "An American, with a French privateer-lugger close on board me, directly in my wake. You had better be stirring!"

  I heard the quick exclamation of "The devil there is!" "Bloody Yankees!" came next. Then followed the call of "All hands." It was plain enough my notice had set everything in motion in that quarter. Talcott now came running forward to say he thought, from some movements on board the lugger, that her people were now first apprised of the vicinity of the ship. I had been sadly disappointed at the call for all hands on board the ship, for it was in the manner of a merchantman, instead of that of a vessel-of-war. But we were getting too near to remain much longer in doubt. The Amanda was already sweeping up on the Englishman's bows, not more than forty yards distant.

  "She is an English West-Indiaman, Mr. Wallingford," said one of my oldest seamen; "and a running ship; some vessel that has deserted or lost her convoy."

  "Do you know anything of the lugger?" demanded an officer from on board the ship, in a voice that was not very amicable.

  "No more than you see; she has chased me, close aboard, for the last twenty minutes."

  There was no reply to this for a moment, and then I was asked—"To tack, and give us a little chance, by drawing him away for a few minutes. We are armed, and will come out to your assistance."

  Had I been ten years older, experience in the faith of men, and especially of men engaged in the pursuit of gain, would have prevented me from complying with this request; but, at eighteen, one views these things differently. It did appear to me ungenerous to lead an enemy in upon a man in his sleep, and not endeavour to do something to aid the surprised party. I answered "ay, ay!" therefore, and tacked directly alongside of the ship. But the manoeuvre was too late, the lugger coming in between the ship and the brig, just as we began to draw ahead again, leaving him room, and getting a good look at us both. The Englishman appeared the most inviting, I suppose, for she up helm and went on board of him on his quarter. Neither party used their guns. We were so near, however, as plainly to understand the whole, to distinguish the orders, and even to hear the blows that were struck by hand. It was an awful minute to us in the brig. The cries of the hurt reached us in the stillness of that gloomy morning, and oaths mingled with the clamour. Though taken by surprise, John Bull fought well; though we could perceive that he was overpowered, however, just as the distance, and the haze that was beginning to gather thick around the land, shut in the two vessels from our view.

  The disappearance of the two combatants furnished me with a hint how to proceed. I stood out three or four minutes longer, or a sufficient distance to make certain we should not be seen, and tacked again. In order to draw as fast as possible out of the line of sight, we kept the brig off a little, and then ran in towards the English coast, which was sufficiently distant to enable us to stand on in that direction some little time longer. This expedient succeeded perfectly; for, when we found it necessary to tack again, day began to dawn. Shortly after, we could just discern the West-Indiaman and the lugger standing off the land, making the best of their way towards the French coast. In 1799, it is possible that this bold Frenchman got his prize into some of his own ports, though three or four years later it would have been a nearly hopeless experiment. As for the Amanda, she was safe; and Nelson did not feel happier, after his great achievement at the Nile, than I felt at the success of my own expedient. Talcott congratulated me and applauded me; and I believe all of us were a little too much disposed to ascribe to our own steadiness and address, much that ought fairly to have been imputed to chance.

  Off Dover we got a pilot, and learned that the ship captured was the Dorothea, a valuable West-Indiaman that had stolen away from her convoy, and come in alone, the previous evening. She anchored under Dungeness at the first of the ebb, and, it seems, had preferred taking a good night's rest to venturing out in the dark, when the flood made. Her berth was a perfectly snug one, and the lugger would probably never have found her, had we not led her directly in upon her prey.

  I was now relieved from all charge of the brig; and a relief I found it, between shoals, enemies, and the tides, of which I knew nothing. That day we got into the Downs, and came-to. Here I saw a fleet at anchor; and a pretty stir it made among the man-of-war's-men, when our story was repeated among them. I do think twenty of their boats were alongside of us, to get the facts from the original source. Among others who thus appeared, to question me, was one old gentleman, whom I suspected of being an admiral. He was in shore-dress, and came in a plain way; the men in his boat declining to answer any questions; but they paid him unusual respect. This gentleman asked me a great many particulars, and I told him the whole story frankly, concealing or colouring nothing. He was evidently much interested. When he went away, he shook me cordially by the hand, and said—"Young gentleman, you have acted prudently and well. Never mind the grumbling of some of our lads; they think only of themselves. It was your right and your duty to save your own vessel, if you could, without doing anything dishonourable; and I see nothing wrong in your conduct. But it's a sad disgrace to us, to let these French rascals be picking up their crumbs in this fashion, right under our hawse-holes."

  Chapter X

  *

  "How pleasant and how sad the turning tide

  Of human life, when side by side

  The child and youth begin to glide

  Along the vale of years:

  The pure twin-being for a little space,

  With lightsome heart, and yet a graver face.

  Too young for woe, though not for tears."

  ALLSTON.

  With what interest and deference most Americans of any education regarded England, her history, laws and institutions, in 1799! There were a few exceptions—warm political partisans, and here and there an individual whose feelings had become embittered b
y some particular incident of the revolution—but surprisingly few, when it is recollected that the country was only fifteen years from the peace. I question if there ever existed another instance of as strong provincial admiration for the capital, as independent America manifested for the mother country, in spite of a thousand just grievances, down to the period of the war of 1812. I was no exception to the rule, nor was Talcott. Neither of us had ever seen England before we made the Lizard on this voyage, except through our minds' eyes; and these had presented quantities of beauties and excellencies that certainly vanished on a nearer approach. By this I merely mean that we had painted in too high colours, as is apt to be the case when the imagination holds the pencil; not that there was any unusual absence of things worthy to be commended. On the contrary, even at this late, hour, I consider England as a model for a thousand advantages, even to our own inappreciable selves. Nevertheless, much delusion was blended with our admiration.

  English history was virtually American history; and everything on the land, as we made our way towards town, which the pilot could point out, was a source of amusement and delight. We had to tide it up to London, and had plenty of leisure to see all there was to be seen. The Thames is neither a handsome, nor a very magnificent river; but it was amazing to witness the number of vessels that then ascended or descended it. There was scarce a sort of craft known to Christendom, a few of the Mediterranean excepted, that was not to be seen there; and as for the colliers, we drifted through a forest of them that seemed large enough to keep the town a twelvemonth in fire-wood, by simply burning their spars. The manner in which the pilot handled our brig, too, among the thousand ships that lay in tiers on each side of the narrow passage we had to thread, was perfectly surprising to me; resembling the management of a coachman in a crowded thoroughfare, more than the ordinary working of a ship. I can safely say I learned more in the Thames, in the way of keeping a vessel in command, and in doing what I pleased with her, than in the whole of my voyage to Canton and back again. As for Neb, he rolled his dark eyes about in wonder, and took an occasion to say to me—"He'll make her talk, Masser Miles, afore he have done." I make no doubt the navigation from the Forelands to the bridges, as it was conducted thirty years since, had a great influence on the seamanship of the English. Steamers are doing away with much of this practice, though the colliers still have to rely on themselves. Coals will scarcely pay for tugging.

  I had been directed by Captain Williams to deliver the brig to her original consignee, an American merchant established in the modern Babylon, reserving the usual claim for salvage. This I did, and that gentleman sent hands on board to take charge of the vessel, relieving me entirely from all farther responsibility. As the captain in his letter had, inadvertently I trust, mentioned that he had put "Mr. Wallingford, his third mate," in charge, I got no invitation to dinner from the consignee; though the affair of the capture under Dungeness found its way into the papers, viâ Deal, I have always thought, with the usual caption of "Yankee Trick." Yankee trick! This phrase, so often carelessly used, has probably done a great deal of harm in this country. The young and ambitious—there are all sorts of ambition, and, among others, that of being a rogue; as a proof of which, one daily hears people call envy, jealousy, covetousness, avarice, and half of the meaner vices, ambition—the young and ambitious, then, of this country, too often think to do a good thing, that shall have some of the peculiar merit of a certain other good thing that they have heard laughed at and applauded, under this designation. I can account in no other manner for the great and increasing number of "Yankee tricks" that are of daily occurrence among us. Among other improvements in taste, not to say in morals, that might be introduced into the American press, would be the omission of the histories of these rare inventions. As two-thirds of the editors of the whole country, however, are Yankees, I suppose they must be permitted to go on exulting in the cleverness of their race. We are indebted to the Puritan stock for most of our instructors—editors and school-masters—and when one coolly regards the prodigious progress of the people in morals, public and private virtue, honesty, and other estimable qualities, he must indeed rejoice in the fact that our masters so early discovered "a church without a bishop."

  I had an opportunity, while in London, however, of ascertaining that the land of our fathers, which by the way has archbishops, contains something besides an unalloyed virtue in its bosom. At Gravesend we took on board two customhouse officers, (they always set a rogue to watch a rogue, in the English revenue system,) and they remained in the brig until she was discharged. One of these men had been a gentleman's servant, and he owed his place to his former master's interest. He was a miracle of custom-house integrity and disinterestedness, as I discovered in the first hour of our intercourse. Perceiving a lad of eighteen in charge of the prize, and ignorant that this lad had read a good deal of Latin and Greek under excellent Mr. Hardinge, besides being the heir of Clawbonny, I suppose he fancied he would have an easy time with him. This man's name was Sweeney. Perceiving in me an eager desire to see everything, the brig was no sooner at her moorings, than he proposed a cruise ashore. It was Sweeney who showed me the way to the consignee's, and, that business accomplished, he proposed that we should proceed on and take a look at St. Paul's, the Monument, and, as he gradually found my tastes more intellectual than he had at first supposed, the wonders of the West End. I was nearly a week under the pilotage of the "Admirable Sweeney." After showing me the exteriors of all the things of mark about the town, and the interiors of a few that I was disposed to pay for, he descended in his tastes, and carried me through Wapping, its purlieus and its scenes of atrocities. I have always thought Sweeney was sounding me, and hoping to ascertain my true character, by the course he took; and that he betrayed his motives in a proposition which he finally made, and which brought our intimacy to a sudden close. The result, however, was to let me into secrets I should probably have never learned in any other manner. Still, I had read and heard too much to be easily duped; and I kept myself not only out of the power of my tempter, but out of the power of all that could injure me, remaining simply a curious observer of what was placed before my eyes. Good Mr. Hardinge's lessons were not wholly forgotten; I could run away from him, much easier than from his precepts.

  I shall never forget a visit I made to a house called the Black Horse, in St. Catherine's Lane. This last was a narrow street that ran across the site of the docks that now bear the same name; and it was the resort of all the local infamy of Wapping. I say local infamy; for there were portions of the West End that were even worse than anything which a mere port could produce. Commerce, that parent of so much that is useful to man, has its dark side as everything else of earth; and, among its other evils, it drags after it a long train of low vice; but this train is neither so long nor so broad as that which is chained to the chariot-wheels of the great. Appearances excepted, and they are far less than might be expected, I think the West End could beat Wapping out and out, in every essential vice; and, if St. Giles be taken into the account, I know of no salvo in favour of the land over the sea.

  Our visit to the Black Horse was paid of a Sunday, that being the leisure moment of all classes of labourers, and the day when, being attired in their best, they fancied themselves best prepared to appear in the world. I will here remark, that I have never been in any portion of Christendom that keeps the Sabbath precisely as it is kept in America. In all other countries, even the most rigorously severe in their practices, it is kept as a day of recreation and rest, as well as of public devotion. Even in the American towns, the old observances are giving way before the longings or weaknesses of human nature; and Sunday is no longer what it was. I have witnessed scenes of brawling, blasphemy and rude tumult, in the suburbs of New York, on Sundays, within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of the world on similar occasions; and serious doubts of the expediency of the high-pressure principle have beset me, whatever may be the just constructions of doctrine. With the
last I pretend not to meddle; but, in a worldly point of view, it would seem wise, if you cannot make men all that they ought to be, to aim at such social regulations as shall make them as little vile as possible. But, to return to the Black Horse in St. Catherine's Lane—a place whose very name was associated with vileness.

  It is unnecessary to speak of the characters of its female visiters. Most of them were young, many of them were still blooming and handsome, but all of them were abandoned. "I need tell you nothing of these girls," said Sweeney, who was a bit of a philosopher in his way, ordering a pot of beer, and motioning me to take a seat at a vacant table—"but, as for the men you see here, half are house-breakers and pickpockets, come to pass the day genteelly among you gentlemen-sailors. There are two or three faces here that I have seen at the Old Bailey, myself; and how they have remained in the country, is more than I can tell you. You perceive these fellows are just as much at their ease, and the landlord who receives and entertains them is just as much at his ease, as if the whole party were merely honest men."

  "How happens it," I asked, "that such known rogues are allowed to go at large, or that this inn-keeper dares receive them?"

  "Oh! you're a child yet, or you would not ask such a question! You must know, Master Wallingford, that the law protects rogues as well as honest men. To convict a pickpocket, you must have witnesses and jurors to agree, and prosecutors, and a sight of things that are not as plenty as pocket-handkerchiefs, or even wallets and Bank of England notes. Besides, these fellows can prove an alibi any day in the week. An alibi, you must know—"

  "I know very well what an alibi means, Mr. Sweeney."

  "The deuce you do!" exclaimed the protector of the king's revenue, eyeing me a little distrustfully. "And pray how should one as young as you, and coming from a new country like America, know that?"