Chapter 8 - Page 2

landing on the eastern coast of
England till the sea goes down. But this Kate was made for a sailor's
wife! See, Griffith, what a set of signals she has formed, out of her
own cunning head."

"I hope your opinion may prove true, and that you may be the happy
sailor who is to wed her," returned the other. "The girl has indeed
discovered surprising art in this business! Where could she have learnt
the method and system so well?"

"Where! why, where she learnt better things; how to prize a whole-
hearted seaman, for instance. Do you think that my tongue was jammed in
my mouth, all the time we used to sit by the side of the river in
Carolina, and that we found nothing to talk about!"

"Did you amuse your mistress with treatises on the art of navigation,
and the science of signals?" said Griffith, smiling.

"I answered her questions, Mr. Griffith, as any civil man would to a
woman he loved. The girl has as much curiosity as one of my own
townswomen who has weathered cape forty without a husband, and her
tongue goes like a dog-vane in a calm, first one way and then another.
But here is her dictionary. Now own, Griff, in spite of your college
learning and sentimentals, that a woman of ingenuity and cleverness is a
very good sort of a helpmate."

"I never doubted the merits of Miss Plowden," said the other, with a
droll gravity that often mingled with his deeper feelings, the result of
a sailor's habits, blended with native character. "But this indeed
surpasses all my expectations! Why, she has, in truth, made a most
judicious selection of phrases. 'No. 168. **** indelible;' '169. ****
end only with life;' '170. **** I fear yours misleads me;' '171. ----'"

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Barnstable, snatching the book from before the
laughing eyes of Griffith; "what folly, to throw away our time now on
such nonsense! What think you of this expedition to the land?"

"That it may be the means of rescuing the ladies, though it fail in
making the prisoners we anticipate."

"But this pilot! you remember that he holds us by our necks, and can run
us all up to the yard-arm of some English ship, whenever he chooses to
open his throat at their threats or bribes."

"It would have been better that he should have cast the ship ashore,
when he had her entangled in the shoals; it would have been our last
thought to suspect him of treachery then," returned Griffith, "I follow
him with confidence, and must believe that we are safer with him than we
should be without him."

"Let him lead to the dwelling of his fox-hunting ministers of state,"
cried