He begged for a look at it, and examined it long and carefully.
"Will ye sell, friend?" he asked. "I'll give ye ten golden guineas and the best filly that ever came out o' Strathendrick for that pistol."
But I told him that the offer of Strathendrick itself would not buy it.
"No?" said he. "Well, I won't say ye're wrong. A man should cherish his weapon like his wife, for it carries his honour."
Presently, having drunk the wager, they went indoors again, all but a tall fellow who had been a looker-on, but had not been of the Lennox company. I had remarked him during the contest, a long, lean man with a bright, humorous blue eye and a fiery red head. He was maybe ten years older than me, and though he was finely dressed in town clothes, there was about his whole appearance a smack of the sea. He came forward, and, in a very Highland voice, asked my name.
"Why should I tell you?" I said, a little nettled.
"Just that I might carry it in my head. I have seen some pretty shooting in my day, but none like yours, young one. What's your trade that ye've learned the pistol game so cleverly?"
Now I was flushed with pride, and in no mood for a stranger's patronage. So I told him roundly that it was none of his business, and pushed by him to Parlane's back-door. But my brusqueness gave no offence to this odd being. He only laughed and cried after me that, if my manners were the equal of my marksmanship, I would be the best lad he had seen since his home-coming.
I had dinner with my uncle in the Candleriggs, and sat with him late afterwards casting up accounts, so it was not till nine o'clock that I set out on my way to my lodgings. These were in the Saltmarket, close on the river front, and to reach them I went by the short road through the Friar's Vennel. It was an ill-reputed quarter of the town, and not long before had been noted as a haunt of coiners; but I had gone through it often, and met with no hindrance.
In the vennel stood a tall dark bit of masonry called Gilmour's Lordship, which was pierced by long closes from which twisting stairways led to the upper landings. I was noting its gloomy aspect under the dim February moon, when a man came towards me and turned into one of the closes. He swung along with a free, careless gait that marked him as no townsman, and ere he plunged into the darkness I had a glimpse of fiery hair. It was the stranger who had accosted me in Parlane's alley, and he was either drunk or in wild spirits, for he was singing:—
"We're a' dry wi' the drinkin' o't,We're a' dry wi' the drinkin' o't.The minister kissed the fiddler's wife,And he couldna preach for thinkin' o't."
The ribald chorus echoed from the close mouth.
Then I saw that he was followed by three others, bent, slinking fellows, who slipped across the patches of moonlight, and eagerly scanned the empty vennel. They could not see me, for I was in shadow, and presently they too entered the close.
The thing looked ugly, and, while I had no love for the red-haired man, I did not wish to see murder or robbery committed and stand idly by. The match of the afternoon had given me a fine notion of my prowess, though. Had I reflected, my pistol was in its case at home, and I had no weapon but a hazel staff. Happily in youth the blood is quicker than the brain, and without a thought I ran into the close and up the long stairway.
The chorus was still being sung ahead of me, and then it suddenly ceased. In dead silence and in pitchy darkness I struggled up the stone steps, wondering what I should find at the next turning. The place was black as night, the steps were uneven, and the stairs corkscrewed most wonderfully. I wished with all my heart that I had not come, as I groped upwards hugging the wall.
Then a cry came and a noise of hard breathing. At the same moment a door opened somewhere above my head, and a faint glow came down the stairs. Presently with a great rumble a heavy man came rolling past me, butting with his head at the stair-side. He came to anchor on a landing below me, and finding his feet plunged downwards as if the devil were at his heels. He left behind him a short Highland knife, which I picked up and put in my pocket.
On his heels came another with his hand clapped to his side, and he moaned as he slithered past me. Something dripped from him on the stone steps.
The light grew stronger, and as I rounded the last turning a third came bounding down, stumbling from wall to wall like a drunk man. I saw his face clearly, and if ever mortal eyes held baffled murder it was that fellow's. There was a dark mark on his shoulder.
Above me as I blinked stood my red-haired friend on the top landing. He had his sword drawn, and was whistling softly through his teeth, while on the right hand was an open door and an old man holding a lamp.
"Ho!" he cried. "Here comes a fourth. God's help, it's my friend the marksman!"
I did not like that naked bit of steel, but there was nothing for it but to see the thing through. When he saw that I was unarmed he returned his weapon to its sheath, and smiled broadly down on me.
"What brings my proud gentleman up these long stairs?" he asked.
"I saw you entering the close and three men following you. It looked bad, so I came up to see fair play."
"Did ye so? And a very pretty intention, Mr. What's-your-name. But ye needna have fashed yourself. Did ye see any of our friends on the stairs?"
"I met a big man rolling down like a football," I said.
"Ay, that would be Angus. He's a clumsy stot, and never had much sense."
"And I met another with his hand on his side," I said.
"That would be little James. He's a fine lad with a skean-dhu on a dark night, but there was maybe too much light here for his trade."
"And I met a third who reeled like a drunk man," I said.
"Ay," said he meditatively, "that was Long Colin. He's the flower o' the flock, and I had to pink him. At another time and in a better place I would have liked a bout with him, for he has some notion of sword-play."
"Who were the men?" I asked, in much confusion, for this laughing warrior perplexed me.
"Who but just my cousins from Glengyle. There has long been a sort of bicker between us, and they thought they had got a fine chance of ending it."
"And who, in Heaven's name, are you," I said, "that treats murder so lightly?"
"Me?" he repeated. "Well, I might give ye the answer you gave me this very day when I speired the same question. But I am frank by nature, and I see you wish me well. Come in bye, and we'll discuss the matter."
He led me into a room where a cheerful fire crackled, and got out from a press a bottle and glasses. He produced tobacco from a brass box and filled a long pipe.
"Now," said he, "we'll understand each other better. Ye see before you a poor gentleman of fortune, whom poverty and a roving spirit have driven to outland bits o' the earth to ply his lawful trade of sea-captain. They call me by different names. I have passed for a Dutch skipper, and a Maryland planter, and a French trader, and, in spite of my colour, I have been a Spanish don in the Main. At Tortuga you will hear one name, and another at Port o' Spain, and a third at Cartagena. But, seeing we are in the city o' Glasgow in the kindly kingdom o' Scotland, I'll be honest with you. My father called me Ninian Campbell, and there's no better blood in Breadalbane."
What could I do after that but make him a present of the trivial facts about myself and my doings? There was a look of friendly humour about this dare-devil which captured my fancy. I saw in him the stuff of which adventurers are made, and though I was a sober merchant, I was also young. For days I had been dreaming of foreign parts and an Odyssey of strange fortunes, and here on a Glasgow stairhead I had found Ulysses himself.
"Is it not the pity," he cried, "that such talents as yours should rust in a dark room in the Candleriggs? Believe me, Mr. Garvald, I have seen some pretty shots, but I have never seen your better."
Then I told him that I was sailing within a month for Virginia, and he suddenly grew solemn.
"It looks like Providence," he said, "that we two should come together.I, too, will soon be back in the Western Seas, and belike we'll meet.I'm something of a rover, and I never bide long in the same place, butI whiles pay a visit to James Town, and they ken me well on the EasternShore and the Accomac beaches."
He fell to giving me such advice as a traveller gives to a novice. It was strange hearing for an honest merchant, for much of it was concerned with divers ways of outwitting the law. By and by he was determined to convoy me to my lodgings, for he pointed out that I was unarmed; and I think, too, he had still hopes of another meeting with Long Colin, his cousin.
"I leave Glasgow the morrow's morn," he said, "and it's no likely we'll meet again in Scotland. Out in Virginia, no doubt, you'll soon be a great man, and sit in Council, and hob-nob with the Governor. But a midge can help an elephant, and I would gladly help you, for you had the goodwill to help me. If ye need aid you will go to Mercer's Tavern at James Town down on the water front, and you will ask news of Ninian Campbell. The man will say that he never heard tell of the name, and then you will speak these words to him. You will say 'The lymphads are on the loch, and the horn of Diarmaid has sounded.' Keep them well in mind, for some way or other they will bring you and me together."
Without another word he was off, and as I committed the gibberish to memory I could hear his song going up the Saltmarket:—
"The minister kissed the fiddler's wife,And he couldna preach for thinkin' o't."
There are few moments in life to compare with a traveller's first sight of a new land which is destined to be for short or long his home. When, after a fair and speedy voyage, we passed Point Comfort, and had rid ourselves of the revenue men, and the tides bore us up the estuary of a noble river, I stood on deck and drank in the heady foreign scents with a boyish ecstasy. Presently we had opened the capital city, which seemed to me no more than a village set amid gardens, and Mr. Lambie had come aboard and greeted me. He conveyed me to the best ordinary in the town which stood over against the Court-house. Late in the afternoon, just before the dark fell, I walked out to drink my fill of the place.
You are to remember that I was a country lad who had never set foot forth of Scotland. I was very young, and hot on the quest of new sights and doings. As I walked down the unpaven street and through the narrow tobacco-grown lanes, the strange smell of it all intoxicated me like wine.
There was a great red sunset burning over the blue river and kindling the far forests till they glowed like jewels. The frogs were croaking among the reeds, and the wild duck squattered in the dusk. I passed an Indian, the first I had seen, with cock's feathers on his head, and a curiously tattooed chest, moving as light as a sleep-walker. One or two townsfolk took the air, smoking their long pipes, and down by the water a negro girl was singing a wild melody. The whole place was like a mad, sweet-scented dream to one just come from the unfeatured ocean, and with a memory only of grim Scots cities and dour Scots hills. I felt as if I had come into a large and generous land, and I thanked God that I was but twenty-three.
But as I was mooning along there came a sudden interruption on my dreams. I was beyond the houses, in a path which ran among tobacco-sheds and little gardens, with the river lapping a stone's-throw off. Down a side alley I caught a glimpse of a figure that seemed familiar.
'Twas that of a tall, hulking man, moving quickly among the tobacco plants, with something stealthy in his air. The broad, bowed shoulders and the lean head brought back to me the rainy moorlands about the Cauldstaneslap and the mad fellow whose prison I had shared. Muckle John had gone to the Plantations, and 'twas Muckle John or the devil that was moving there in the half light.
I cried on him, and ran down the side alley.
But it seemed that he did not want company, for he broke into a run.
Now in those days I rejoiced in the strength of my legs, and I was determined not to be thus balked. So I doubled after him into a maze of tobacco and melon beds.
But it seemed he knew how to run. I caught a glimpse of his hairy legs round the corner of a shed, and then lost him in a patch of cane. Then I came out on a sort of causeway floored with boards which covered a marshy sluice, and there I made great strides on him. He was clear against the sky now, and I could see that he was clad only in shirt and cotton breeches, while at his waist flapped an ugly sheath-knife.
Rounding the hut corner I ran full into a man.
"Hold you," cried the stranger, and laid hands on my arm; but I shook him off violently, and continued the race. The collision had cracked my temper, and I had a mind to give Muckle John a lesson in civility. For Muckle John it was beyond doubt; not two men in the broad earth had that ungainly bend of neck.
The next I knew we were out on the river bank on a shore of hard clay which the tides had created. Here I saw him more clearly, and I began to doubt. I might be chasing some river-side ruffian, who would give me a knife in my belly for my pains.
The doubt slackened my pace, and he gained on me. Then I saw his intention. There was a flat-bottomed wherry tied up by the bank, and for this he made. He flung off the rope, seized a long pole, and began to push away.
The last rays of the westering sun fell on his face, and my hesitation vanished. For those pent-house brows and deep-set, wild-cat eyes were fixed for ever in my memory.
I cried to him as I ran, but he never looked my road. Somehow it was borne in on me that at all costs I must have speech with him. The wherry was a yard or two from the shore when I jumped for its stern.
I lighted firm on the wood, and for a moment looked Muckle John in the face. I saw a countenance lean like a starved wolf, with great weals as of old wounds on cheek and brow. But only for a, second, for as I balanced myself to step forward he rammed the butt of the pole in my chest, so that I staggered and fell plump in the river.
The water was only up to my middle, but before I could clamber back he had shipped his oars, and was well into the centre of the stream.
I stood staring like a zany, while black anger filled my heart. I plucked my pistol forth, and for a second was on the verge of murder, for I could have shot him like a rabbit. But God mercifully restrained my foolish passion, and presently the boat and the rower vanished in the evening haze.
"This is a bonny beginning!" thought I, as I waded through the mud to the shore. I was wearing my best clothes in honour of my arrival, and they were all fouled and plashing.
Then on the bank above me I saw the fellow who had run into me and hindered my catching Muckle John on dry land. He was shaking with laughter.
I was silly and hot-headed in those days, and my wetting had not disposed me to be laughed at. In this fellow I saw a confederate of Gib's, and if I had lost one I had the other. So I marched up to him and very roundly damned his insolence.
He was a stern, lantern-jawed man of forty or so, dressed very roughly in leather breeches and a frieze coat. Long grey woollen stockings were rolled above his knees, and slung on his back was an ancient musket.
"Easy, my lad," he said. "It's a free country, and there's no statute against mirth."
"I'll have you before the sheriff," I cried. "You tripped me up when I was on the track of the biggest rogue in America."
"So!" said he, mocking me. "You'll be a good judge of rogues. Was it a runaway redemptioner, maybe? You'd be looking for the twenty hogsheads reward."
This was more than I could stand. I was carrying a pistol in my hand, and I stuck it to his ear. "March, my friend," I said. "You'll walk before me to a Justice of the Peace, and explain your doings this night."
I had never threatened a man with a deadly weapon before, and I was to learn a most unforgettable lesson. A hand shot out, caught my wrist, and forced it upwards in a grip of steel. And when I would have used my right fist in his face another hand seized that, and my arms were padlocked.
Cool, ironical eyes looked into mine.
"You're very free with your little gun, my lad. Let me give you a word in season. Never hold a pistol to a man unless you mean to shoot. If your eyes waver you had better had a porridge stick."
He pressed my wrist back till my fingers relaxed, and he caught my pistol in his teeth. With a quick movement of the head he dropped it inside his shirt.
"There's some would have killed you for that trick, young sir," he said. "It's trying to the temper to have gunpowder so near a man's brain. But you're young, and, by your speech, a new-comer. So instead I'll offer you a drink."
He dropped my wrists, and motioned me to follow him. Very crestfallen and ashamed, I walked in his wake to a little shanty almost on the wateredge. The place was some kind of inn, for a negro brought us two tankards of apple-jack, and tobacco pipes, and lit a foul-smelling lantern, which he set between us.
"First," says the man, "let me tell you that I never before clapped eyes on the long piece of rascality you were seeking. He looked like one that had cheated the gallows."
"He was a man I knew in Scotland," I said grumpily.
"Likely enough. There's a heap of Scots redemptioners hereaways. I'm out of Scotland myself, or my forbears were, but my father was settled in the Antrim Glens. There's wild devils among them, and your friend looked as if he had given the slip to the hounds in the marshes. There was little left of his breeches…. Drink, man, or you'll get fever from your wet duds."
I drank, and the strong stuff mounted to my unaccustomed brain; my tongue was loosened, my ill-temper mellowed, and I found myself telling this grim fellow much that was in my heart.
"So you're a merchant," he said. "It's not for me to call down an honest trade, but we could be doing with fewer merchants in these parts. They're so many leeches that suck our blood. Are you here to make siller?"
I said I was, and he laughed. "I never heard of your uncle's business, Mr. Garvald, but you'll find it a stiff task to compete with the lads from Bristol and London. They've got the whole dominion by the scruff of the neck."
I replied that I was not in awe of them, and that I could hold my own with anybody in a fair trade.
"Fair trade!" he cried scornfully. "That's just what you won't get. That's a thing unkenned in Virginia. Look you here, my lad. The Parliament in London treats us Virginians like so many puling bairns. We cannot sell our tobacco except to English merchants, and we cannot buy a horn spoon except it comes in an English ship. What's the result of that? You, as a merchant, can tell me fine. The English fix what price they like for our goods, and it's the lowest conceivable, and they make their own price for what they sell us, and that's as high as a Jew's. There's a fine profit there for the gentlemen-venturers of Bristol, but it's starvation and damnation for us poor Virginians."
"What's the result?" he cried again. "Why, that there's nothing to be had in the land except what the merchants bring. There's scarcely a smith or a wright or a cobbler between the James and the Potomac. If I want a bed to lie in, I have to wait till the coming of the tobacco convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty shillings. How, in God's name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay usury for every plough and spade and yard of dimity!"
"Remember you're speaking to a merchant," I said. "You've told me the very thing to encourage me. If prices are high, it's all the better for me."
"It would be," he said grimly, "if your name werena what it is, and you came from elsewhere than the Clyde. D'you think the proud English corporations are going to let you inside? Not them. The most you'll get will be the scraps that fall from their table, my poor Lazarus, and for these you'll have to go hat in hand to Dives."
His face grew suddenly earnest, and he leaned on the table and looked me straight in the eyes.
"You're a young lad and a new-comer, and the accursed scales of Virginia are not yet on your eyes. Forbye, I think you've spirit, though it's maybe mixed with a deal of folly. You've your choice before you, Mr. Garvald. You can become a lickspittle like the rest of them, and no doubt you'll gather a wheen bawbees, but it will be a poor shivering soul will meet its Maker in the hinder end. Or you can play the man and be a good Virginian. I'll not say it's an easy part. You'll find plenty to cry you down, and there will be hard knocks going; but by your face I judge you're not afraid of that. Let me tell you this land is on the edge of hell, and there's sore need for stout men. They'll declare in this town that there's no Indians on this side the mountains that would dare to lift a tomahawk. Little they ken!"
In his eagerness he had gripped my arm, and his dark, lean face was thrust close to mine.
"I was with Bacon in '76, in the fray with the Susquehannocks. I speak the Indian tongues, and there's few alive that ken the tribes like me. The folk here live snug in the Tidewater, which is maybe a hundred miles wide from the sea, but of the West they ken nothing. There might be an army thousands strong concealed a day's journey from the manors, and never a word would be heard of it."
"But they tell me the Indians are changed nowadays," I put in. "They say they've settled down to peaceful ways like any Christian."
"Put your head into a catamount's mouth, if you please," he said grimly, "but never trust an Indian. The only good kind is the dead kind. I tell you we're living on the edge of hell. It may come this year or next year or five years hence, but come it will. I hear we are fighting the French, and that means that the tribes of the Canadas will be on the move. Little you know the speed of a war-party. They would cut my throat one morning, and be hammering at the doors of James Town before sundown. There should be a line of forts in the West from the Roanoke to the Potomac, and every man within fifty miles should keep a gun loaded and a horse saddled. But, think you the Council will move? It costs money, say the wiseacres, as if money were not cheaper than a slit wizzand!"
I was deeply solemnized, though I scarce understood the full drift of his words, and the queer thing was that I was not ill-pleased. I had come out to seek for trade, and it looked as if I were to find war. And all this when I was not four hours landed.
"What think you of that?" he asked, as I kept silent, "I've been warned. A man I know on the Rappahannock passed the word that the Long House was stirring. Tell that to the gentry in James Town. What side are you going for, young sir?"
"I'll take my time," I said, "and see for myself. Ask me again this day six months."
He laughed loud. "A very proper answer for a Scot," he cried. "See for yourself, travel the country, and use the wits God gave you to form your judgment."
He paid the lawing, and said he would put me on the road back. "These alleys are not very healthy at this hour for a young gentleman in braw clothes."
Once outside the tavern he led me by many curious by-paths till I found myself on the river-side just below the Court-house. It struck me that my new friend was not a popular personage in the town, for he would stop and reconnoitre at every turning, and he chose the darkest side of the road.
"Good-night to you," he said at length. "And when you have finished your travels come west to the South Fork River and ask for Simon Frew, and I'll complete your education."
I went to bed in a glow of excitement. On the morrow I should begin a new life in a world of wonders, and I rejoiced to think that there was more than merchandise in the prospect.
I had not been a week in the place before I saw one thing very clear— that I should never get on with Mr. Lambie. His notion of business was to walk down the street in a fine coat, and to sleep with a kerchief over his face in some shady veranda. There was no vice in the creature, but there was mighty little sense. He lived in awe of the great and rich, and a nod from a big planter would make him happy for a week. He used to deafen me with tales of Colonel Randolph, and worshipful Mr. Carew, and Colonel Byrd's new house at Westover, and the rare fashion in cravats that young Mr. Mason showed at the last Surrey horse-racing. Now when a Scot chooses to be a sycophant, he is more whole-hearted in the job than any one else on the globe, and I grew very weary of Mr. Lambie. He was no better than an old wife, and as timid as a hare forbye. When I spoke of fighting the English merchants, he held up his hands as if I had uttered blasphemy. So, being determined to find out for myself the truth about this wonderful new land, I left him the business in the town, bought two good horses, hired a servant, by name John Faulkner, who had worked out his time as a redemptioner, and set out on my travels.
This is a history of doings, not of thoughts, or I would have much to tell of what I saw during those months, when, lean as a bone, and brown as a hazelnut, I tracked the course of the great rivers. The roads were rough, where roads there were, but the land smiled under the sun, and the Virginians, high and low, kept open house for the chance traveller. One night I would eat pork and hominy with a rough fellow who was carving a farm out of the forest; and the next I would sit in a fine panelled hall and listen to gentlefolks' speech, and dine off damask and silver. I could not tire of the green forests, or the marshes alive with wild fowl, or the noble orchards and gardens, or even the salty dunes of the Chesapeake shore. My one complaint was that the land was desperate flat to a hill-bred soul like mine. But one evening, away north in Stafford county, I cast my eyes to the west, and saw, blue and sharp against the sunset, a great line of mountains. It was all I sought. Somewhere in the west Virginia had her high lands, and one day, I promised myself, I would ride the road of the sun and find their secret.
In these months my thoughts were chiefly of trade, and I saw enough to prove the truth of what the man Frew had told me. This richest land on earth was held prisoner in the bonds of a foolish tyranny. The rich were less rich than their estates warranted, and the poor were ground down by bitter poverty. There was little corn in the land, tobacco being the sole means of payment, and this meant no trade in the common meaning of the word. The place was slowly bleeding to death, and I had a mind to try and stanch its wounds. The firm of Andrew Sempill was looked on jealously, in spite of all the bowings and protestations of Mr. Lambie. If we were to increase our trade, it must be at the Englishman's expense, and that could only be done by offering the people a better way of business.
When the harvest came and the tobacco fleet arrived, I could see how the thing worked out. Our two ships, theBlackcockof Ayr and theDuncan Davidsonof Glasgow, had some trouble getting their cargoes. We could only deal with the smaller planters, who were not thirled to the big merchants, and it took us three weary weeks up and down the river-side wharves to get our holds filled. There was a madness in the place for things from England, and unless a man could label his wares "London-made," he could not hope to catch a buyer's fancy. Why, I have seen a fellow at a fair at Henricus selling common Virginian mocking-birds as the "best English mocking-birds". My uncle had sent out a quantity of Ayrshire cheeses, mutton hams, pickled salmon, Dunfermline linens, Paisley dimity, Alloa worsted, sweet ale from Tranent, Kilmarnock cowls, and a lot of fine feather-beds from the Clydeside. There was nothing common or trashy in the whole consignment; but the planters preferred some gewgaws from Cheapside or some worthless London furs which they could have bettered any day by taking a gun and hunting their own woods. When my own business was over, I would look on at some of the other ladings. There on the wharf would be the planter with his wife and family, and every servant about the place. And there was the merchant skipper, showing off his goods, and quoting for each a weight of tobacco. The planter wanted to get rid of his crop, and knew that this was his only chance, while the merchant could very well sell his leavings elsewhere. So the dice were cogged from the start, and I have seen a plain kitchen chair sold for fifty pounds of sweet-scented, or something like the price at which a joiner in Glasgow would make a score and leave himself a handsome profit.
* * * * *
The upshot was that I paid a visit to the Governor, Mr. Francis Nicholson, whom my lord Howard had left as his deputy. Governor Nicholson had come from New York not many months before with a great repute for ill-temper and harsh dealing; but I liked the look of his hard-set face and soldierly bearing, and I never mind choler in a man if he have also honesty and good sense. So I waited upon him at his house close by Middle Plantation, on the road between James Town and York River.
I had a very dusty reception. His Excellency sat in his long parlour among a mass of books and papers and saddle-bags, and glared at me from beneath lowering brows. The man was sore harassed by the King's Government on one side and the Virginian Council on the other, and he treated every stranger as a foe.
"What do you seek from me?" he shouted. "If it is some merchants' squabble, you can save your breath, for I am sick of the Shylocks."
I said, very politely, that I was a stranger not half a year arrived in the country, but that I had been using my eyes, and wished to submit my views to his consideration.
"Go to the Council," he rasped; "go to that silken fool, His Majesty's Attorney. My politics are not those of the leather-jaws that prate in this land."
"That is why I came to you," I said.
Then without more ado I gave him my notions on the defence of the colony, for from what I had learned I judged that would interest him most. He heard me with unexpected patience.
"Well, now, supposing you are right? I don't deny it. Virginia is a treasure house with two of the sides open to wind and weather. I told the Council that, and they would not believe me. Here are we at war with France, and Frontenac is hammering at the gates of New York. If that falls, it will soon be the turn of Maryland and next of Virginia. England's possessions in the West are indivisible, and what threatens one endangers all. But think you our Virginians can see it? When I presented my scheme for setting forts along the northern line, I could not screw a guinea out of the miscreants. The colony was poor, they cried, and could not afford it, and then the worshipful councillors rode home to swill Madeira and loll on their London beds. God's truth! were I not a patriot, I would welcome M. Frontenac to teach them decency."
Now I did not think much of the French danger being far more concerned with the peril in the West; but I held my peace on that subject. It was not my cue to cross his Excellency in his present humour.
"What makes the colony poor?" I asked. "The planters are rich enough, but the richest man will grow tired of bearing the whole burden of the government. I submit that His Majesty and the English laws are chiefly to blame. When the Hollanders were suffered to trade here, they paid five shillings on every anker of brandy they brought hither, and ten shillings on every hogshead of tobacco they carried hence. Now every penny that is raised must come out of the Virginians, and the Englishmen who bleed the land go scot free."
"That's true," said he, "and it's a damned disgrace. But how am I to better it?"
"Clap a tax on every ship that passes Point Comfort outward bound," I said. "The merchants can well afford to pay it."
"Listen to him!" he laughed. "And what kind of answer would I get from my lord Howard and His Majesty? Every greasy member would be on his feet in Parliament in defence of what he called English rights. Then there would come a dispatch from the Government telling the poor Deputy-Governor of Virginia to go to the devil!"
He looked at me curiously, screwing up his eyes.
"By the way, Mr. Garvald, what is your trade?"
"I am a merchant like the others," I said; "only my ships run fromGlasgow instead of Bristol."
"A very pretty merchant," he said quizzically. "I have heard that hawks should not pick out hawks' eyes. What do you propose to gain, Mr. Garvald?"
"Better business," I said. "To be honest with you, sir, I am suffering from the close monopoly of the Englishman, and I think the country is suffering worse. I have a notion that things can be remedied. If you cannot put on a levy, good and well; that is your business. But I mean to make an effort on my own account."
Then I told him something of my scheme, and he heard me out with a puzzled face.
"Of all the brazen Scots—" he cried.
"Scot yourself," I laughed, for his face and speech betrayed him.
"I'll not deny that there's glimmerings of sense in you, Mr. Garvald. But how do you, a lad with no backing, propose to beat a strong monopoly buttressed by the whole stupidity and idleness of Virginia? You'll be stripped of your last farthing, and you'll be lucky if it ends there. Don't think I'm against you. I'm with you in your principles, but the job is too big for you."
"We will see," said I. "But I can take it that, provided I keep within the law, His Majesty's Governor will not stand in my way?"
"I can promise you that. I'll do more, for I'll drink success to your enterprise." He filled me a great silver tankard of spiced sack, and I emptied it to the toast of "Honest Men."
* * * * *
All the time at the back of my head were other thoughts than merchandise. The picture which Frew had drawn of Virginia as a smiling garden on the edge of a burning pit was stamped on my memory. I had seen on my travels the Indians that dwelled in the Tidewater, remnants of the old great clans of Doeg and Powhatan and Pamunkey. They were civil enough fellows, following their own ways, and not molesting their scanty white neighbours, for the country was wide enough for all. But so far as I could learn, these clanlets of the Algonquin house were no more comparable to the fighting tribes of the West than a Highland caddie in an Edinburgh close is to a hill Macdonald with a claymore. But the common Virginian would admit no peril, though now and then some rough landward fellow would lay down his spade, spit moodily, and tell me a grim tale. I had ever the notion to visit Frew and finish my education.
It was not till the tobacco ships had gone and the autumn had grown late that I got the chance. The trees were flaming scarlet and saffron as I rode west through the forests to his house on the South Fork River. There, by a wood fire in the October dusk, he fed me on wild turkey and barley bread, and listened silently to my tale.
He said nothing when I spoke of my schemes for getting the better of the Englishman and winning Virginia to my side. Profits interested him little, for he grew his patch of corn and pumpkins, and hunted the deer for his own slender needs. Once he broke in on my rigmarole with a piece of news that fluttered me.
"You mind the big man you were chasing that night you and me first forgathered? Well, I've seen him."
"Where?" I cried, all else forgotten.
"Here, in this very place, six weeks syne. He stalked in about ten o' the night, and lifted half my plenishing. When I got up in my bed to face him he felled me. See, there's the mark of it," and he showed a long scar on his forehead. "He went off with my best axe, a gill of brandy, and a good coat. He was looking for my gun, too, but that was in a hidy-hole. I got up next morning with a dizzy head, and followed him nigh ten miles. I had a shot at him, but I missed, and his legs were too long for me. Yon's the dangerous lad."
"Where did he go, think you?" I asked.
"To the hills. To the refuge of every ne'er-do-weel. Belike the Indians have got his scalp, and I'm not regretting it."
I spent three days with Frew, and each day I had the notion that he was putting me to the test. The first day he took me over the river into a great tangle of meadow and woodland beyond which rose the hazy shapes of the western mountains. The man was twenty years my elder, but my youth was of no avail against his iron strength. Though I was hard and spare from my travels in the summer heat, 'twas all I could do to keep up with him, and only my pride kept me from crying halt. Often when he stopped I could have wept with fatigue, and had no breath for a word, but his taciturnity saved me from shame.
In a hollow among the woods we came to a place which sent him on his knees, peering and sniffing like a wild-cat.
"What make you of that?" he asked.
I saw nothing but a bare patch in the grass, some broken twigs, and a few ashes.
"It's an old camp," I said.
"Ay," said he. "Nothing more? Use your wits, man."
I used them, but they gave me no help.
"This is the way I read it, then," he said. "Three men camped here before midday. They were Cherokees, of the Matabaw tribe, and one was a maker of arrows. They were not hunting, and they were in a mighty hurry. Just now they're maybe ten miles off, or maybe they're watching us. This is no healthy country for you and me."
He took me homeward at a speed which well-nigh foundered me, and, whenI questioned him, he told me where he got his knowledge.
They were three men, for there were three different footmarks in the ashes' edge, and they were Cherokees because they made their fire in the Cherokee way, so that the smoke ran in a tunnel into the scrub. They were Matabaws from the pattern of their moccasins. They were in a hurry, for they did not wait to scatter the ashes and clear up the place; and they were not hunting, for they cooked no flesh. One was an arrow-maker, for he had been hardening arrow-points in the fire, and left behind him the arrow-maker's thong.
"But how could you know how long back this had happened?" I asked.
"The sap was still wet in the twigs, so it could not have been much above an hour since they left. Besides, the smoke had blown south, for the grass smelt of it that side. Now the wind was more to the east when we left, and, if you remember, it changed to the north about midday."
I said it was a marvel, and he grunted. "The marvel is what they've been doing in the Tidewater, for from the Tidewater I'll swear they came."
Next day he led me eastward, away back in the direction of the manors. This was an easier day, for he went slow, as if seeking for something. He picked up some kind of a trail, which we followed through the long afternoon. Then he found something, which he pocketed with a cry of satisfaction. We were then on the edge of a ridge, whence we looked south to the orchards of Henricus.
"That is my arrow-maker," he cried, showing me a round stone whorl. "He's a careless lad, and he'll lose half his belongings ere he wins to the hills."
I was prepared for the wild Cherokees on our journey of yesterday, but it amazed me that the savages should come scouting into the Tidewater itself. He smiled grimly when I said this, and took from his pocket a crumpled feather.
"That's a Cherokee badge," he said. "I found that a fortnight back on the river-side an hour's ride out of James Town. And it wasna there when I had passed the same place the day before. The Tidewater thinks it has put the fear of God on the hill tribes, and here's a red Cherokee snowking about its back doors."
The last day he took me north up a stream called the North Fork, which joined with his own river. I had left my musket behind, for this heavy travel made me crave to go light, and I had no use for it. But that day it seemed we were to go hunting.
He carried an old gun, and slew with it a deer in a marshy hollow—a pretty shot, for the animal was ill-placed. We broiled a steak for our midday meal, and presently clambered up a high woody ridge which looked down on a stream and a piece of green meadow.
Suddenly he stopped. "A buck," he whispered. "See what you can do, you that were so ready with your pistol." And he thrust his gun into my hand.
The beast was some thirty paces off in the dusk of the thicket. It nettled me to have to shoot with a strange weapon, and I thought too lightly of the mark. I fired, and the bullet whistled over its back. He laughed scornfully.
I handed it back to him. "It throws high, and you did not warn me. Load quick, and I'll try again."
I heard the deer crashing through the hill-side thicket, and guessed that presently it would come out in the meadow. I was right, and before the gun was in my hands again the beast was over the stream.
It was a long range and a difficult mark, but I had to take the risk, for I was on my trial. I allowed for the throw of the musket and the steepness of the hill, and pulled the trigger. The shot might have been better, for I had aimed for the shoulder, and hit the neck. The buck leaped into the air, ran three yards, and toppled over. By the grace of God, I had found the single chance in a hundred.
Frew looked at me with sincere respect. "That's braw shooting," he said. "I can't say I ever saw its equal."
That night in the smoky cabin he talked freely for once. "I never had a wife or bairn, and I lean on no man. I can fend for myself, and cook my dinner, and mend my coat when it's wanting it. When Bacon died I saw what was coming to this land, and I came here to await it. I've had some sudden calls from the red gentry, but they havena got me yet, and they'll no get me before my time. I'm in the Lord's hands, and He has a job for Simon Frew. Go back to your money-bags, Mr. Garvald. Beat the English merchants, my lad, and take my blessing with you. But keep that gun of yours by your bedside, for the time is coming when a man's hands will have to keep his head."
I did not waste time in getting to work. I had already written to my uncle, telling him my plans, and presently I received his consent. I arranged that cargoes of such goods as I thought most suitable for Virginian sales should arrive at regular seasons independent of the tobacco harvest. Then I set about equipping a store. On the high land north of James Town, by the road to Middle Plantation, I bought some acres of cleared soil, and had built for me a modest dwelling. Beside it stood a large brick building, one half fitted as a tobacco shed, where the leaf could lie for months, if need be, without taking harm, and the other arranged as a merchant's store with roomy cellars and wide garrets. I relinquished the warehouse by the James Town quay, and to my joy I was able to relinquish Mr. Lambie. That timid soul had been on thorns ever since I mooted my new projects. He implored me to put them from me; he drew such pictures of the power of the English traders, you would have thought them the prince merchants of Venice; he saw all his hard-won gentility gone at a blow, and himself an outcast precluded for ever from great men's recognition. He could not bear it, and though he was loyal to my uncle's firm in his own way, he sought a change. One day he announced that he had been offered a post as steward to a big planter at Henricus, and when I warmly bade him accept it, he smiled wanly, and said he had done so a week agone. We parted very civilly, and I chose as manager my servant, John Faulkner.
This is not a history of my trading ventures, or I would tell at length the steps I took to found a new way of business. I went among the planters, offering to buy tobacco from the coming harvest, and to pay for it in bonds which could be exchanged for goods at my store. I also offered to provide shipment in the autumn for tobacco and other wares, and I fixed the charge for freight—a very moderate one—in advance. My plan was to clear out my store before the return of the ships, and to have thereby a large quantity of tobacco mortgaged to me. I hoped that thus I would win the friendship and custom of the planters, since I offered them a more convenient way of sale and higher profits. I hoped by breaking down the English monopoly to induce a continual and wholesome commerce in the land. For this purpose it was necessary to get coin into the people's hands, so, using my uncle's credit, I had a parcel of English money from the New York goldsmiths.
In a week I found myself the most-talked-of man in the dominion, and soon I saw the troubles that credit brings. I had picked up a very correct notion of the fortunes of most of the planters, and the men who were most eager to sell to me were just those I could least trust. Some fellow who was near bankrupt from dice and cock-fighting would offer me five hundred hogsheads, when I knew that his ill-guided estate could scarce produce half. I was not a merchant out of charity, and I had to decline many offers, and so made many foes. Still, one way and another, I was not long in clearing out my store, and I found myself with some three times the amount of tobacco in prospect that I had sent home at the last harvest.
That was very well, but there was the devil to pay besides. Every wastrel I sent off empty-handed was my enemy; the agents of the Englishmen looked sourly at me; and many a man who was swindled grossly by the Bristol buyers saw me as a marauder instead of a benefactor. For this I was prepared; but what staggered me was the way that some of the better sort of the gentry came to regard me. It was not that they did not give me their custom; that I did not expect, for gunpowder alone would change the habits of a Virginian Tory. But my new business seemed to them such a downcome that they passed me by with a cock of the chin. Before they had treated me hospitably, and made me welcome at their houses. I had hunted the fox with them—very little to my credit; and shot wildfowl in their company with better success. I had dined with them, and danced in their halls at Christmas. Then I had been a gentleman; now I was a shopkeeper, a creature about the level of a redemptioner. The thing was so childish that it made me angry. It was right for one of them to sell his tobacco on his own wharf to a tarry skipper who cheated him grossly, but wrong for me to sell kebbucks and linsey-woolsey at an even bargain. I gave up the puzzle. Some folks' notions of gentility are beyond my wits.
I had taken to going to the church in James Town, first at Mr. Lambie's desire, and then because I liked the sermons. There on a Sunday you would see the fashion of the neighbourhood, for the planters' ladies rode in on pillions, and the planters themselves, in gold-embroidered waistcoats and plush breeches and new-powdered wigs, leaned on the tombstones, and exchanged snuffmulls and gossip. In the old ramshackle graveyard you would see such a parade of satin bodices and tabby petticoats and lace headgear as made it blossom like the rose. I went to church one Sunday in my second summer, and, being late, went up the aisle looking for a place. The men at the seat-ends would not stir to accommodate me, and I had to find rest in the cock-loft. I thought nothing of it, but the close of the service was to enlighten me. As I went down the churchyard not a man or woman gave me greeting, and when I spoke to any I was not answered. These were men with whom I had been on the friendliest terms; women, too, who only a week before had chaffered with me at the store. It was clear that the little society had marooned me to an isle by myself. I was a leper, unfit for gentlefolks' company, because, forsooth, I had sold goods, which every one of them did also, and had tried to sell them fair.
The thing made me very bitter. I sat in my house during the hot noons when no one stirred, and black anger filled my heart. I grew as peevish as a slighted girl, and would no doubt have fretted myself into some signal folly, had not an event occurred which braced my soul again. This was the arrival of the English convoy.
When I heard that the ships were sighted, I made certain of trouble. I had meantime added to my staff two other young men, who, like Faulkner, lived with me at the store. Also I had got four stalwart negro slaves who slept in a hut in my garden. 'Twas a strong enough force to repel a drunken posse from the plantations, and I had a fancy that it would be needed in the coming weeks.
Two days later, going down the street of James Town, I met one of theEnglish skippers, a redfaced, bottle-nosed old ruffian calledBullivant. He was full of apple-jack, and strutted across the way toaccost me.
"What's this I hear, Sawney?" he cried. "You're setting up as a pedlar, and trying to cut in on our trade. Od twist me, but we'll put an end to that, my bully-boy. D'you think the King, God bless him, made the laws for a red-haired, flea-bitten Sawney to diddle true-born Englishmen? What'll the King's Bench say to that, think ye?"
He was very abusive, but very uncertain on his legs. I said good-humouredly that I welcomed process of law, and would defend my action. He shook his head, and said something about law not being everything, and England being a long road off. He had clearly some great threat to be delivered of, but just then he sat down so heavily that he had no breath for anything but curses.
But the drunkard had given me a notion. I hurried home and gave instructions to my men to keep a special guard on the store. Then I set off in a pinnace to find my three ships, which were now lading up and down among the creeks.
That was the beginning of a fortnight's struggle, when every man's hand was against me, and I enjoyed myself surprisingly. I was never at rest by land or water. The ships were the least of the business, for the dour Scots seamen were a match for all comers. I made them anchor at twilight in mid-stream for safety's sake, for in that drouthy clime a firebrand might play havoc with them. The worst that happened was that one moonless night a band of rascals, rigged out as Indian braves, came yelling down to the quay where some tobacco was waiting to be shipped, and before my men were warned had tipped a couple of hogsheads into the water. They got no further, for we fell upon them with marling-spikes and hatchets, stripped them of their feathers, and sent them to cool their heads in the muddy river. The ring-leader I haled to James Town, and had the pleasure of seeing him grinning through a collar in the common stocks.
Then I hied me back to my store, which was my worst anxiety, I was followed by ill names as I went down the street, and one day in a tavern, a young fool drew his shabble on me. But I would quarrel with no man, for that was a luxury beyond a trader. There had been an attack on my tobacco shed by some of the English seamen, and in the mellay one of my blacks got an ugly wound from a cutlass. It was only a foretaste, and I set my house in order.
One afternoon John Faulkner brought me word that mischief would be afoot at the darkening. I put each man to his station, and I had the sense to picket them a little distance from the house. The Englishmen were clumsy conspirators. We watched them arrive, let them pass, and followed silently on their heels. Their business was wreckage, and they fixed a charge of powder by the tobacco shed, laid and lit a fuse, and retired discreetly into the bushes to watch their handiwork.
Then we fell upon them, and the hindquarters of all bore witness to our greeting.
I caught the fellow who had laid the fuse, tied the whole thing round his neck, clapped a pistol to his ear, and marched him before me into the town. "If you are minded to bolt," I said, "remember you have a charge of gunpowder lobbing below your chin. I have but to flash my pistol into it, and they will be picking the bits of you off the high trees."
I took the rascal, his knees knocking under him, straight to the ordinary where the English merchants chiefly forgathered. A dozen of them sat over a bowl of punch, when the door was opened and I kicked my Guy Fawkes inside. I may have misjudged them, but I thought every eye looked furtive as they saw my prisoner.
"Gentlemen," said I, "I restore you your property. This is a penitent thief who desires to make a confession."
My pistol was at his temple, the powder was round his neck, and he must have seen a certain resolution in my face. Anyhow, sweating and quaking, he blurted out his story, and when he offered to halt I made rings with the barrel on the flesh of his neck.
"It is a damned lie," cried one of them, a handsome, over-dressed fellow who had been conspicuous for his public insolence towards me.
"Nay," said I, "our penitent's tale has the note of truth. One word to you, gentlemen. I am hospitably inclined, and if any one of you will so far honour me as to come himself instead of dispatching his servant, his welcome will be the warmer. I bid you good-night and leave you this fellow in proof of my goodwill. Keep him away from the candle, I pray you, or you will all go to hell before your time."
That was the end of my worst troubles, and presently my lading was finished and my store replenished. Then came the time for the return sailing, and the last enterprise of my friends was to go off without my three vessels. But I got an order from the Governor, delivered readily but with much profanity, to the commander of the frigates to delay till the convoy was complete. I breathed more freely as I saw the last hulls grow small in the estuary. For now, as I reasoned it out, the planters must begin to compare my prices with the Englishmen's, and must come to see where their advantage lay.
But I had counted my chickens too soon, and was to be woefully disappointed. At that time all the coast of America from New England to the Main was infested by pirate vessels. Some sailed under English letters of marque, and preyed only on the shipping of France, with whom we were at war. Some who had formed themselves into a company called the Brethren of the Coast robbed the Spanish treasure-ships and merchantmen in the south waters, and rarely came north to our parts save to careen or provision. They were mostly English and Welsh, with a few Frenchmen, and though I had little to say for their doings, they left British ships in the main unmolested, and were welcomed as a godsend by our coast dwellers, since they smuggled goods to them which would have been twice the cost if bought at the convoy markets. Lastly, there were one or two horrid desperadoes who ravaged the seas like tigers. Such an one was the man Cosh, and that Teach, surnamed Blackbeard, of whom we hear too much to-day. But, on the whole, we of Virginia suffered not at all from these gentlemen of fortune, and piracy, though the common peril of the seas, entered but little into the estimation of the merchants.
Judge, then, of my disgust when I got news a week later that one of my ships, the Ayr brig, had straggled from the convoy, and been seized, rifled, and burned to the water by pirates almost in sight of Cape Charles. The loss was grievous, but what angered me was the mystery of such a happening. I knew the brig was a slow sailer, but how in the name of honesty could she be suffered in broad daylight to fall into such a fate? I remembered the hostility of the Englishmen, and feared she had had foul play. Just after Christmas-tide I expected two ships to replenish the stock in my store. They arrived safe, but only by the skin of their teeth, for both had been chased from their first entrance into American waters, and only their big topsails and a favouring wind brought them off. I examined the captains closely on the matter, and they were positive that their assailant was not Cosh or any one of his kidney, but a ship of the Brethren, who ordinarily were on the best of terms with our merchantmen.
My suspicions now grew into a fever. I had long believed that there was some connivance between the pirates of the coast and the English traders, and small blame to them for it. 'Twas a sensible way to avoid trouble, and I for one would rather pay a modest blackmail every month or two than run the risk of losing a good ship and a twelve-month's cargo. But when it came to using this connivance for private spite, the thing was not to be endured.
In March my doubts became certainties. I had a parcel of gold coin coming to me from New York in one of the coasting vessels—no great sum, but more than I cared to lose. Presently I had news that the ship was aground on a sandspit on Accomac, and had been plundered by a pirate brigantine. I got a sloop and went down the river, and, sure enough, I found the vessel newly refloated, and the captain, an old New Hampshire fellow, in a great taking. Piracy there had been, but of a queer kind, for not a farthing's worth had been touched except my packet of gold. The skipper was honesty itself, and it was plain that the pirate who had chased the ship aground and then come aboard to plunder, had done it to do me hurt, and me alone.
All this made me feel pretty solemn. My uncle was a rich man, but no firm could afford these repeated losses. I was the most unpopular figure in Virginia, hated by many, despised by the genteel, whose only friends were my own servants and a few poverty-stricken landward folk. I had found out a good way of trade, but I had set a hornet's nest buzzing about my ears, and was on the fair way to be extinguished. This alliance between my rivals and the Free Companions was the last straw to my burden. If the sea was to be shut to him, then a merchant might as well put up his shutters.
It made me solemn, but also most mightily angry. If the stars in their courses were going to fight against Andrew Garvald, they should find him ready. I went to the Governor, but he gave me no comfort. Indeed, he laughed at me, and bade me try the same weapon as my adversaries. I left him, very wrathful, and after a night's sleep I began to see reason in his words. Clearly the law of Virginia or of England would give me no redress. I was an alien from the genteel world; why should I not get the benefit of my ungentility? If my rivals went for their weapons into dark places, I could surely do likewise. A line of Virgil came into my head, which seemed to me to contain very good counsel: "Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo", which means that if you cannot get Heaven on your side, you had better try for the Devil.
But how was I to get into touch with the Devil? And then I remembered in a flash my meeting with the sea-captain on the Glasgow stairhead and his promise to help me, I had no notion who he was or how he could aid, but I had a vague memory of his power and briskness. He had looked like the kind of lad who might conduct me into the wild world of the Free Companions.
I sought Mercer's tavern by the water-side, a melancholy place grown up with weeds, with a yard of dark trees at the back of it. Old Mercer was an elder in the little wooden Presbyterian kirk, which I had taken to attending since my quarrels with the gentry. He knew me and greeted me with his doleful smile, shaking his foolish old beard.
"What's your errand this e'en, Mr. Garvald?" he said in broad Scots. "Will you drink a rummer o' toddy, or try some fine auld usquebaugh I hae got frae my cousin in Buchan?"
I sat down on the settle outside the tavern door. "This is my errand. I want you to bring me to a man or bring that man to me. His name is Ninian Campbell."
Mercer looked at me dully.
"There was a lad o' that name was hanged at Inveraray i' '68 for stealin' twae hens and a wether."
"The man I mean is long and lean, and his head is as red as fire. He gave me your name, so you must know him."
His eyes showed no recognition. He repeated the name to himself, mumbling it toothlessly. "It sticks i' my memory," he said, "but when and where I canna tell. Certes, there's no man o' the name in Virginia."
I was beginning to think that my memory had played me false, when suddenly the whole scene in the Saltmarket leaped vividly to my brain. Then I remembered the something else I had been enjoined to say.
"Ninian Campbell," I went on, "bade me ask for him here, and I was to tell you that the lymphads are on the loch and the horn of Diarmaid has sounded."
In a twinkling his face changed from vacancy to shrewdness and from senility to purpose. He glanced uneasily round.
"For God's sake, speak soft," he whispered. "Come inside, man. We'll steek the door, and then I'll hear your business."