“Your father,” said he, “would be gey an little pleased if we was to break a leg to ye, Miss Drummond, let-a-be drowning of you. Take my way of it,” says he, “and come on-by with the rest of us here to Rotterdam. Ye can get a passage down the Maes in a sailing scoot as far as to the Brill, and thence on again, by a place in a rattel- waggon, back to Helvoet.”
But Catriona would hear of no change. She looked white-like as she beheld the bursting of the sprays, the green seas that sometimes poured upon the fore-castle, and the perpetual bounding and swooping of the boat among the billows; but she stood firmly by her father’s orders. “My father, James More, will have arranged it so,” was her first word and her last. I thought it very idle and indeed wanton in the girl to be so literal and stand opposite to so much kind advice; but the fact is she had a very good reason, if she would have told us. Sailing scoots and rattel-waggons are excellent things; only the use of them must first be paid for, and all she was possessed of in the world was just two shillings and a penny halfpenny sterling. So it fell out that captain and passengers, not knowing of her destitution – and she being too proud to tell them – spoke in vain.
“But you ken nae French and nae Dutch neither,” said one.
“It is very true,” says she, “but since the year ’46 there are so many of the honest Scotch abroad that I will be doing very well. I thank you.”
There was a pretty country simplicity in this that made some laugh, others looked the more sorry, and Mr. Gebbie fall outright in a passion. I believe he knew it was his duty (his wife having accepted charge of the girl) to have gone ashore with her and seen her safe: nothing would have induced him to have done so, since it must have involved the lose of his conveyance; and I think he made it up to his conscience by the loudness of his voice. At least he broke out upon Captain Sang, raging and saying the thing was a disgrace; that it was mere death to try to leave the ship, and at any event we could not cast down an innocent maid in a boatful of nasty Holland fishers, and leave her to her fate. I was thinking something of the same; took the mate upon one side, arranged with him to send on my chests by track-scoot to an address I had in Leyden, and stood up and signalled to the fishers.
“I will go ashore with the young lady, Captain Sang,” said I. “It is all one what way I go to Leyden;” and leaped at the same time into the boat, which I managed not so elegantly but what I fell with two of the fishers in the bilge.
From the boat the business appeared yet more precarious than from the ship, she stood so high over us, swung down so swift, and menaced us so perpetually with her plunging and passaging upon the anchor cable. I began to think I had made a fool’s bargain, that it was merely impossible Catriona should be got on board to me, and that I stood to be set ashore at Helvoet all by myself and with no hope of any reward but the pleasure of embracing James More, if I should want to. But this was to reckon without the lass’s courage. She had seen me leap with very little appearance (however much reality) of hesitation; to be sure, she was not to be beat by her discarded friend. Up she stood on the bulwarks and held by a stay, the wind blowing in her petticoats, which made the enterprise more dangerous, and gave us rather more of a view of her stockings than would be thought genteel in cities. There was no minute lost, and scarce time given for any to interfere if they had wished the same. I stood up on the other side and spread my arms; the ship swung down on us, the patroon humoured his boat nearer in than was perhaps wholly safe, and Catriona leaped into the air. I was so happy as to catch her, and the fishers readily supporting us, escaped a fall. She held to me a moment very tight, breathing quick and deep; thence (she still clinging to me with both hands) we were passed aft to our places by the steersman; and Captain Sang and all the crew and passengers cheering and crying farewell, the boat was put about for shore.
As soon as Catriona came a little to herself she unhanded me suddenly, but said no word. No more did I; and indeed the whistling of the wind and the breaching of the sprays made it no time for speech; and our crew not only toiled excessively but made extremely little way, so that the ROSE had got her anchor and was off again before we had approached the harbour mouth.
We were no sooner in smooth water than the patroon, according to their beastly Hollands custom, stopped his boat and required of us our fares. Two guilders was the man’s demand – between three and four shillings English money – for each passenger. But at this Catriona began to cry out with a vast deal of agitation. She had asked of Captain Sang, she said, and the fare was but an English shilling. “Do you think I will have come on board and not ask first?” cries she. The patroon scolded back upon her in a lingo where the oaths were English and the rest right Hollands; till at last (seeing her near tears) I privately slipped in the rogue’s hand six shillings, whereupon he was obliging enough to receive from her the other shilling without more complaint. No doubt I was a good deal nettled and ashamed. I like to see folk thrifty, but not with so much passion; and I daresay it would be rather coldly that I asked her, as the boat moved on again for shore, where it was that she was trysted with her father.
“He is to be inquired of at the house of one Sprott, an honest Scotch merchant,” says she; and then with the same breath, “I am wishing to thank you very much – you are a brave friend to me.”
“It will be time enough when I get you to your father,” said I, little thinking that I spoke so true. “I can tell him a fine tale of a loyal daughter.”
“O, I do not think I will be a loyal girl, at all events,” she cried, with a great deal of painfulness in the expression. “I do not think my heart is true.”
“Yet there are very few that would have made that leap, and all to obey a father’s orders,” I observed.
“I cannot have you to be thinking of me so,” she cried again. “When you had done that same, how would I stop behind? And at all events that was not all the reasons.” Whereupon, with a burning face, she told me the plain truth upon her poverty.
“Good guide us!” cried I, “what kind of daft-like proceeding is this, to let yourself be launched on the continent of Europe with an empty purse – I count it hardly decent – scant decent!” I cried.
“You forget James More, my father, is a poor gentleman,” said she. “He is a hunted exile.”
“But I think not all your friends are hunted exiles,” I exclaimed. “And was this fair to them that care for you? Was it fair to me? was it fair to Miss Grant that counselled you to go, and would be driven fair horn-mad if she could hear of it? Was it even fair to these Gregory folk that you were living with, and used you lovingly? It’s a blessing you have fallen in my hands! Suppose your father hindered by an accident, what would become of you here, and you your lee-lone in a strange place? The thought of the thing frightens me,” I said.
“I will have lied to all of them,” she replied. “I will have told them all that I had plenty. I told HER too. I could not be lowering James More to them.”
I found out later on that she must have lowered him in the very dust, for the lie was originally the father’s, not the daughter’s, and she thus obliged to persevere in it for the man’s reputation. But at the time I was ignorant of this, and the mere thought of her destitution and the perils in which see must have fallen, had ruffled me almost beyond reason.
“Well, well, well,” said I, “you will have to learn more sense.”