Thence Captain Sang turned, very troubled-like, to Catriona; and
the rest of us crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was
made plain to all. The Rose was bound to the port of Rotterdam,
whither the other passengers were in a great impatience to arrive,
in view of a conveyance due to leave that very evening in the
direction of the Upper Germany. This, with the present half-gale
of wind, the captain (if no time were lost) declared himself still
capable to save. Now James More had trysted in Helvoet with his
daughter, and the captain had engaged to call before the port and
place her (according to the custom) in a shore boat. There was the
boat, to be sure, and here was Catriona ready: but both our master
and the patroon of the boat scrupled at the risk, and the first was
in no humour to delay.
"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.