The Pirate
"In the Council-house," answered the other.
"Then make way for us, gentlemen, if you please, for my people and I are
going there."
There was a whisper among the townspeople; but several were unresolved
upon engaging in a desperate, and perhaps an unnecessary conflict, with
desperate men; and the more determined citizens formed the hasty
reflection that the strangers might be more easily mastered in the
house, or perhaps in the narrow streets which they had to traverse, than
when they stood drawn up and prepared for battle upon the quay. They
suffered them, therefore, to proceed unmolested; and Cleveland, moving
very slowly, keeping his people close together, suffering no one to
press upon the flanks of his little detachment, and making four men, who
constituted his rear-guard, turn round and face to the rear from time to
time, rendered it, by his caution, a very dangerous task to make any
attempt upon them.
In this manner they ascended the narrow street and reached the
Council-house, where the Magistrates were actually sitting, as the
citizen had informed Cleveland. Here the inhabitants began to press
forward, with the purpose of mingling with the pirates, and availing
themselves of the crowd in the narrow entrance, to secure as many as
they could, without allowing them room for the free use of their
weapons. But this also had Cleveland foreseen, and, ere entering the
council-room, he caused the entrance to be cleared and secured,
commanding four of his men to face down the street, and as many to
confront the crowd who were thrusting each other from above. The
burghers recoiled back from the ferocious, swarthy, and sunburnt
countenances, as well as the levelled arms of these desperadoes, and
Cleveland, with the rest of his party, entered the council-room, where
the Magistrates were sitting in council, with very little attendance.
These gentlemen were thus separated effectually from the citizens, who
looked to them for orders, and were perhaps more completely at the mercy
of Cleveland, than he, with his little handful of men, could be said to
be at that of the multitude by whom they were surrounded.
The Magistrates seemed sensible of their danger; for they looked upon
each other in some confusion, when Cleveland thus addressed them:--
"Good morrow, gentlemen,--I hope there is no unkindness betwixt us. I am
come to talk with you about getting supplies for my ship yonder in the
roadstead--we cannot sail without them."
"Your ship, sir?" said the Provost, who was a man of sense and
spirit,--"how do we know that you are her Captain?"
"Look at me," said Cleveland, "and you will, I think, scarce ask the
question again."
The Magistrate looked at Kim, and accordingly did not think proper to
pursue that part of the enquiry, but proceeded to say--"And if you are
her Captain, whence comes she, and where is she bound for? You look too
much like a man-of-war's man to be master of a trader, and we know that
you do not belong to the British navy."
"There are more men-of-war on the sea than sail under the British flag,"
replied Cleveland; "but say that I were commander of a free-trader here,
willing to exchange tobacco, brandy, gin, and such like, for cured fish
and hides, why, I do not think I deserve so very bad usage from the
merchants of Kirkwall as to deny me provisions for my money?"
"Look you, Captain," said the Town-clerk, "it is not that we are so very
strait-laced neither--for, when gentlemen of your cloth come this way,
it is as weel, as I tauld the Provost, just to do as the collier did
when he met the devil,--and that is, to have naething to say to them, if
they have naething to say to us;--and there is the gentleman," pointing
to Goffe, "that was Captain before you, and may be Captain after
you,"--("The cuckold speaks truth in that," muttered Goffe,)--"he knows
well how handsomely we entertained him, till he and his men took upon
them to run through the town like hellicat devils.--I see one of them
there!--that was the very fellow that stopped my servant-wench on the
street, as she carried the lantern home before me, and insulted her
before my face!"
"If it please your noble Mayorship's honour and glory," said Derrick,
the fellow at whom the Town-clerk pointed, "it was not I that brought
to the bit of a tender that carried the lantern in the poop--it was
quite a different sort of a person."
"Who was it, then, sir?" said the Provost.
"Why, please your majesty's worship," said Derrick, making several sea
bows, and describing as nearly as he could, the exterior of the worthy
Magistrate himself, "he was an elderly gentleman,--Dutch-built, round in
the stern, with a white wig and a red nose--very like your majesty, I
think;" then, turning to a comrade, he added, "Jack, don't you think the
fellow that wanted to kiss the pretty girl with the lantern t'other
night, was very like his worship?"
"By G--, Tom Derrick," answered the party appealed to, "I believe it is
the very man!"
"This is insolence which we can make you repent of, gentlemen!" said the
Magistrate, justly irritated at their effrontery; "you have behaved in
this town, as if you were in an Indian village at Madagascar. You
yourself, Captain, if captain you be, were at the head of another riot,
no longer since than yesterday. We will give you no provisions till we
know better whom we are supplying. And do not think to bully us; when I
shake this handkerchief out at the window, which is at my elbow, your
ship goes to the bottom. Remember she lies under the guns of our
battery."
"And how many of these guns are honeycombed, Mr. Mayor?" said Cleveland.
He put the question by chance; but instantly perceived, from a sort of
confusion which the Provost in vain endeavoured to hide, that the
artillery of Kirkwall was not in the best order. "Come, come, Mr.
Mayor," he said, "bullying will go down with us as little as with you.
Your guns yonder will do more harm to the poor old sailors who are to
work them than to our sloop; and if we bring a broadside to bear on the
town, why, your wives' crockery will be in some danger. And then to talk
to us of seamen being a little frolicsome ashore, why, when are they
otherwise? You have the Greenland whalers playing the devil among you
every now and then; and the very Dutchmen cut capers in the streets of
Kirkwall, like porpoises before a gale of wind. I am told you are a man
of sense, and I am sure you and I could settle this matter in the course
of a five-minutes' palaver."
"Well, sir," said the Provost, "I will hear what you have to say, if you
will walk this way."
Cleveland accordingly followed him into a small interior apartment, and,
when there, addressed the Provost thus: "I will lay aside my pistols,
sir, if you are afraid of them."
"D----n your pistols!" answered the Provost, "I have served the King,
and fear the smell of powder as little as you do!"
"So much the better," said Cleveland, "for you will hear me the more
coolly.--Now, sir, let us be what perhaps you suspect us, or let us be
any thing else, what, in the name of Heaven, can you get by keeping us
here, but blows and bloodshed? For which, believe me, we are much better
provided than you can pretend to be. The point is a plain one--you are
desirous to be rid of us--we are desirous to be gone. Let us have the
means of departure, and we leave you instantly."
"Look ye, Captain," said the Provost, "I thirst for no man's blood. You
are a pretty fellow, as there were many among the buccaniers in my
time--but there is no harm in wishing you a better trade. You should
have the stores and welcome, for your money, so you would make these
seas clear of you. But then, here lies the rub. The Halcyon frigate is
expected here in these parts immediately; when she hears of you she will
be at you; for there is nothing the white lapelle loves better than a
rover--you are seldom without a cargo of dollars. Well, he comes down,
gets you under his stern"----
"Blows us into the air, if you please," said Cleveland.
"Nay, that must be as _you_ please, Captain," said the Provost; "but
then, what is to come of the good town of Kirkwall, that has been
packing and peeling with the King's enemies? The burgh will be laid
under a round fine, and it may be that the Provost may not come off so
easily."
"Well, then," said Cleveland, "I see where your pinch lies. Now, suppose
that I run round this island of yours, and get into the roadstead at
Stromness? We could get what we want put on board there, without
Kirkwall or the Provost seeming to have any hand in it; or, if it should
be ever questioned, your want of force, and our superior strength, will
make a sufficient apology."
"That may be," said the Provost; "but if I suffer you to leave your
present station, and go elsewhere, I must have some security that you
will not do harm to the country."
"And we," said Cleveland, "must have some security on our side, that you
will not detain us, by dribbling out our time till the Halcyon is on the
coast. Now, I am myself perfectly willing to continue on shore as a
hostage, on the one side, provided you will give me your word not to
betray me, and send some magistrate, or person of consequence, aboard
the sloop, where his safety will be a guarantee for mine."
The Provost shook his head, and intimated it would be difficult to find
a person willing to place himself as hostage in such a perilous
condition; but said he would propose the arrangement to such of the
council as were fit to be trusted with a matter of such weight.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] This was really an exploit of the celebrated Avery the pirate, who
suddenly, and without provocation, fired his pistols under the table
where he sat drinking with his messmates, wounded one man severely, and
thought the matter a good jest. What is still more extraordinary, his
crew regarded it in the same light.
[36] A ship going fast through the sea is said to cut a feather,
alluding to the ripple which she throws off from her bows.
CHAPTER XV.
"I left my poor plough to go ploughing the deep!"
DIBDIN.
When the Provost and Cleveland had returned into the public
council-room, the former retired a second time with such of his brethren
as he thought proper to advise with; and, while they were engaged in
discussing Cleveland's proposal, refreshments were offered to him and
his party. These the Captain permitted his people to partake of, but
with the greatest precaution against surprisal, one party relieving the
guard, whilst the others were at their food.
He himself, in the meanwhile, walked up and down the apartment, and
conversed upon indifferent subjects with those present, like a person
quite at his ease.
Amongst these individuals he saw, somewhat to his surprise, Triptolemus
Yellowley, who, chancing to be at Kirkwall, had been summoned by the
Magistrates, as representative, in a certain degree, of the Lord
Chamberlain, to attend council on this occasion. Cleveland immediately
renewed the acquaintance which he had formed with the agriculturist at
Burgh-Westra, and asked him his present business in Orkney.
"Just to look after some of my little plans, Captain Cleveland. I am
weary of fighting with wild beasts at Ephesus yonder, and I just cam
ower to see how my orchard was thriving, whilk I had planted four or
five miles from Kirkwall, it may be a year bygane, and how the bees were
thriving, whereof I had imported nine skeps, for the improvement of the
country, and for the turning of the heather-bloom into wax and honey."
"And they thrive, I hope?" said Cleveland, who, however little
interested in the matter, sustained the conversation, as if to break the