"I see no impossibility," said Nigel, "in your landing me where I desire to be landed; but very little possibility of your carrying me anywhere I am not desirous of going."
"Why, whether do you manage the wherry, or we, master?" asked Green- jacket, in a tone betwixt jest and earnest; "I take it she will go the way we row her."
"Ay," retorted Nigel, "but I take it you will row her on the course I direct you, otherwise your chance of payment is but a poor one."
"Suppose we are content to risk that," said the undaunted waterman, "I wish to know how you, who talk so big—I mean no offence, master, but you do talk big—would help yourself in such a case?"
"Simply thus," answered Lord Glenvarloch—"You saw me, an hour since, bring down to the boat a trunk that neither of you could lift. If we are to contest the destination of our voyage, the same strength which tossed that chest into the wherry, will suffice to fling you out of it; wherefore, before we begin the scuffle, I pray you to remember, that, whither I would go, there I will oblige you to carry me."
"Gramercy for your kindness," said Green-jacket; "and now mark me in return. My comrade and I are two men—and you, were you as stout as George-a-Green, can pass but for one; and two, you will allow, are more than a match for one. You mistake in your reckoning, my friend."
"It is you who mistake," answered Nigel, who began to grow warm; "it is I who am three to two, sirrah—I carry two men's lives at my girdle."
So saying, he opened his cloak and showed the two pistols which he had disposed at his girdle. Green-jacket was unmoved at the display.
"I have got," said he, "a pair of barkers that will match yours," and he showed that he also was armed with pistols; "so you may begin as soon as you list."
"Then," said Lord Glenvarloch, drawing forth and cocking a pistol, "the sooner the better. Take notice, I hold you as a ruffian, who have declared you will put force on my person; and that I will shoot you through the head if you do not instantly put me ashore at Greenwich."
The other waterman, alarmed at Nigel's gesture, lay upon his oar; but Green-jacket replied coolly—"Look you, master, I should not care a tester to venture a life with you on this matter; but the truth is, I am employed to do you good, and not to do you harm."
"By whom are you employed?" said the Lord Glenvarloch; "or who dare concern themselves in me, or my affairs, without my authority?"
"As to that," answered the waterman, in the same tone of indifference, "I shall not show my commission. For myself, I care not, as I said, whether you land at Greenwich to get yourself hanged, or go down to get aboard the Royal Thistle, to make your escape to your own country; you will be equally out of my reach either way. But it is fair to put the choice before you."
"My choice is made," said Nigel. "I have told you thrice already it is my pleasure to be landed at Greenwich."
"Write it on a piece of paper," said the waterman, "that such is your positive will; I must have something to show to my employers, that the transgression of their orders lies with yourself, not with me."
"I choose to hold this trinket in my hand for the present," said Nigel, showing his pistol, "and will write you the acquittance when I go ashore."
"I would not go ashore with you for a hundred pieces," said the waterman. "111 luck has ever attended you, except in small gaming; do me fair justice, and give me the testimony I desire. If you are afraid of foul play while you write it, you may hold my pistols, if you will." He offered the weapons to Nigel accordingly, who, while they were under his control, and all possibility of his being taken at disadvantage was excluded, no longer hesitated to give the waterman an acknowledgment, in the following terms:—
"Jack in the Green, with his mate, belonging to the wherry called the Jolly Raven, have done their duty faithfully by me, landing me at Greenwich by my express command; and being themselves willing and desirous to carry me on board the Royal Thistle, presently lying at Gravesend." Having finished this acknowledgment, which he signed with the letters, N. O. G. as indicating his name and title, he again requested to know of the waterman, to whom he delivered it, the name of his employers.
"Sir," replied Jack in the Green, "I have respected your secret, do not you seek to pry into mine. It would do you no good to know for whom I am taking this present trouble; and, to be brief, you shall not know it—and, if you will fight in the quarrel, as you said even now, the sooner we begin the better. Only this you may be cock-sure of, that we designed you no harm, and that, if you fall into any, it will be of your own wilful seeking." As he spoke, they approached the landing-place, where Nigel instantly jumped ashore. The waterman placed his small mail-trunk on the stairs, observing that there were plenty of spare hands about, to carry it where he would.
"We part friends, I hope, my lads," said the young nobleman, offering at the same time a piece of money more than double the usual fare, to the boatmen.
"We part as we met," answered Green-jacket; "and, for your money, I am paid sufficiently with this bit of paper. Only, if you owe me any love for the cast I have given you, I pray you not to dive so deep into the pockets of the next apprentice that you find fool enough to play the cavalier.—And you, you greedy swine," said he to his companion, who still had a longing eye fixed on the money which Nigel continued to offer, "push off, or, if I take a stretcher in hand, I'll break the knave's pate of thee." The fellow pushed off, as he was commanded, but still could not help muttering, "This was entirely out of waterman's rules."
Glenvarloch, though without the devotion of the "injured Thales" of the moralist, to the memory of that great princess, had now attained
"The hallow'd soil which gave Eliza birth,"
whose halls were now less respectably occupied by her successor. It was not, as has been well shown by a late author, that James was void either of parts or of good intentions; and his predecessor was at least as arbitrary in effect as he was in theory. But, while Elizabeth possessed a sternness of masculine sense and determination which rendered even her weaknesses, some of which were in themselves sufficiently ridiculous, in a certain degree respectable, James, on the other hand, was so utterly devoid of "firm resolve," so well called by the Scottish bard,
"The stalk of carle-hemp in man,"
that even his virtues and his good meaning became laughable, from the whimsical uncertainty of his conduct; so that the wisest things he ever said, and the best actions he ever did, were often touched with a strain of the ludicrous and fidgety character of the man. Accordingly, though at different periods of his reign he contrived to acquire with his people a certain degree of temporary popularity, it never long outlived the occasion which produced it; so true it is, that the mass of mankind will respect a monarch stained with actual guilt, more than one whose foibles render him only ridiculous.
To return from this digression, Lord Glenvarloch soon received, as Green-jacket had assured him, the offer of an idle bargeman to transport his baggage where he listed; but that where was a question of momentary doubt. At length, recollecting the necessity that his hair and beard should be properly arranged before he attempted to enter the royal presence, and desirous, at the same time, of obtaining some information of the motions of the Sovereign and of the Court, he desired to be guided to the next barber's shop, which we have already mentioned as the place where news of every kind circled and centred. He was speedily shown the way to such an emporium of intelligence, and soon found he was likely to hear all he desired to know, and much more, while his head was subjected to the art of a nimble tonsor, the glibness of whose tongue kept pace with the nimbleness of his fingers while he ran on, without stint or stop, in the following excursive manner:—