The
commander, however, replied:
"There is a show of reason in your question, Mr. Griffith--and yet you
are not the man to be told that implicit obedience is what I have a
right to expect. I have not your pretensions, sir, by birth or
education, and yet Congress have not seen proper to overlook my years
and services. I command this frigate----"
"Say no more," interrupted the pilot "There is reason in his doubts, and
they shall be appeased. I like the proud and fearless eye of the young
man, and while he dreads a gibbet from my hands, I will show him how to
repose a noble confidence. Read this, sir, and tell me if you distrust
me now?"
While the stranger spoke, he thrust his hand into the bosom of his
dress, and drew forth a parchment, decorated with ribands, and bearing a
massive seal, which he opened, and laid on the table before the youth.
As he pointed with his finger impressively to different parts of the
writing, his eye kindled with a look of unusual fire, and there was a
faint tinge discernible on his pallid features when he spoke.
"See!" he said, "royalty itself does not hesitate to bear witness in my
favor, and that is not a name to occasion dread to an American."
Griffith gazed with wonder at the fair signature of the unfortunate
Louis, which graced the bottom of the parchment; but when his eye obeyed
the signal of the stranger, and rested on the body of the instrument, he
started back from the table, and fixing his animated eyes on the pilot,
he cried, while a glow of fiery courage flitted across his countenance:
"Lead on! I'll follow you to death!"
A smile of gratified exultation struggled around the lips of the
stranger, who took the arm of the young man and led him into a
stateroom, leaving the commander of the frigate standing, in his unmoved
and quiet manner, a spectator of, but hardly an actor in, the scene.
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