It is a mortal sin to believe otherwise."
"Humph!" ejaculated Cap; "especially the women! As if they were in any particular danger.
Never mind, young man; we shall understand each other by talking like two plain seamen.
Do you know of any port under our lee?"
"None.
There is a large bay at this end of the lake; but it is unknown to us all, and not easy of entrance."
"And this coast to leeward -- it has nothing particular to recommend it, I suppose?"
"It is a wilderness until you reach the mouth of the Niagara in one direction, and Frontenac in the other.
North and west, they tell me, there is nothing but forest and prairies for a thousand miles."
"Thank God! then, there can be no French.
Are there many savages, hereaway, on the land?"
"The Indians are to be found in all directions; though they are nowhere very numerous.
By accident, we might find a party at any point on the shore; or we might pass months there without seeing one."
"We must take our chauce, then, as to the blackguards; but, to be frank with you, Master Western, if this little unpleasant matter about the French had not come to pass, what would you now do with the cutter?"
"I am a much younger sailor than yourself, Master Cap," said Jasper modestly, "and am hardly fitted to advise you."
"Ay, ay, we all know that.
In a common case, perhaps not.
But this is an uncommon case, and a circumstance; and on this bit of fresh water it has what may be called its peculiarities; and so, everything considered, you may be fitted to advise even your own father.
At all events, you can speak, and I can judge of your opinions, agreeably to my own experience."
"I think, sir, before two hours are over, the cutter will have to anchor."
"Anchor! -- not out here in the lake?"
"No, sir; but in yonder, near the land."
"You do not mean to say, Master Eau-douce, you would anchor on a lee shore in a gale of wind?"
"If I would save my vessel, that is exactly what I would do, Master Cap."
"Whe-e-e-w! -- this is fresh water, with a vengeance!
Hark'e, young man, I've been a seafaring animal, boy and man, forty-one years, and I never yet heard of such a thing.
I'd throw my ground-tackle overboard before I would be guilty of so lubberly an act!"
"That is what we do on this lake," modestly replied Jasper, "when we are hard pressed.
I daresay we might do better, had we been better taught."
"That you might, indeed!
No; no man induces me to commit such a sin against my own bringing up.
I should never dare show my face inside of Sandy Hook again, had I committed so know-nothing an exploit.
Why, Pathfinder, here, has more seamanship in him than that comes to.
You can go below again, Master Eau-douce."
Jasper quietly bowed and withdrew; still, as he passed down the ladder, the spectators observed that he cast a lingering anxious look at the horizon to windward and the land to leeward, and then disappeared with concern strongly expressed in every lineament of his face.
CHAPTER XVII.
His still refuted quirks he still repeats;
New-raised objections with new quibbles meets,
Till sinking in the quicksand he defends,
He dies disputing, and the contest ends.
COWPER.
As the soldier's wife was sick in her berth, Mabel Dunhham was the only person in the outer cabin when Jasper returned to it; for, by an act of grace in the Sergeant, he had been permitted to resume his proper place in this part of the vessel.
We should be ascribing too much simplicity of character to our heroine, if we said that she had felt no distrust of the young man in consequence of his arrest; but we should also be doing injustice to her warmth of feeling and generosity of disposition, if we did not add, that this distrust was insignificant and transient.
As he now took his seat near her, his whole countenance clouded with the uneasiness he felt concerning the situation of the cutter, everything like suspicion was banished from her mind, and she saw in him only an injured man.
"You let this affair weigh too heavily on your mind, Jasper," said she eagerly, or with that forgetfulness of self with which the youthful of her sex are wont to betray their feelings when a strong and generous interest has attained the ascendency; "no one who knows you can, or does, believe you guilty.
Pathfinder says he will pledge his life for you."
"Then you, Mabel," returned the youth, his eyes flashing fire, "do not look upon me as the traitor your father seems to believe me to be?"
"My dear father is a soldier, and is obliged to act as one.
My father's daughter is not, and will think of you as she ought to think of a man who has done so much to serve her already."
"Mabel, I'm not used to talking with one like you, or saying all I think and feel with any. I never had a sister, and my mother died when I was a child, so that I know little what your sex most likes to hear -- "