Salute to Adventurers

, 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 sce

ver against the Court-house. Late in the afternoon, just befo

ry young, and hot on the quest of new sights and doings. As I walked down the unpaven street an

th 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 l

houses, in a path which ran among tobacco-sheds and little gardens, with the river lapping

d shoulders and the lean head brought back to me the rainy moorlands about the Cauldstaneslap and the mad fellow whose prison I

, and ran down

did not want company,

s, and I was determined not to be thus balked. So I do

hen 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 clea

t corner I ran

the race. The collision had cracked my temper, and I had a mind to give Muckle John a lesson in civil

ides had created. Here I saw him more clearly, and I began to doubt. I might be c

on. There was a flat-bottomed wherry tied up by the bank, and for this h

my hesitation vanished. For those pent-house brows and

s borne in on me that at all costs I must have speech with him. The

arved wolf, with great weals as of old wounds on cheek and brow. But only for a, second, for as I balanced myse

e I could clamber back he had shipped his oar

r a second was on the verge of murder, for I could have shot him like a rabbit. But God mercifull

the mud to the shore. I was wearing my best clothes in ho

had run into me and hindered my catching Muckle

be laughed at. In this fellow I saw a confederate of Gib's, and if I had lost on

in leather breeches and a frieze coat. Long grey woollen stockings we

's a free country, and there

ied. "You tripped me up when I was on th

of rogues. Was it a runaway redemptioner, maybe?

and I stuck it to his ear. "March, my friend," I said. "You'll walk be

e lesson. A hand shot out, caught my wrist, and forced it upwards in a grip of steel. And when I

al eyes look

a word in season. Never hold a pistol to a man unless you mean t

nd he caught my pistol in his teeth. With a quick m

's trying to the temper to have gunpowder so near a man's brain. But you're

e to a little shanty almost on the wateredge. The place was some kind of inn, for a negro brought us t

re clapped eyes on the long piece of rascality you were s

new in Scotland,"

ather was settled in the Antrim Glens. There's wild devils among them, and your friend looked as if he had given the slip

in; my tongue was loosened, my ill-temper mellowed, and I fo

t trade, but we could be doing with fewer merchants in these parts. The

Garvald, but you'll find it a stiff task to compete with the lads from Br

f them, and that I could hold my

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 l

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

. "You've told me the very thing to encourage me

'you think the proud English corporations are going to let you inside? Not them. The most you'll get will be

and he leaned on the table and

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

ed my arm, and his dark, lean

es 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 n

owadays," I put in. "They say they've settl

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 l

the queer thing was that I was not ill-pleased. I had come out to seek for trade, a

I know on the Rappahannock passed the word that the Long House was stirring.

"and see for myself. Ask me

he cried. "See for yourself, travel the country, a

e road back. "These alleys are not very healthy at

just below the Court-house. It struck me that my new friend was not a popular personage in the to

e finished your travels come west to the South Fork River

ld begin a new life in a world of wonders, and I rejoiced t