The Pilot: A Tale of the SeaCooper, James Fenimore
History
The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea
Cooper, James Fenimore
Historical fiction; Sea stories; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Naval operations -- Fiction; War stories
Soon after the events of the revolution had involved the kingdoms of
France and Spain, and the republics of Holland, in our quarrel, a group
of laborers was collected in a field that lay exposed to the winds
of the ocean, on the north-eastern coast of England. These men were
lightening their toil, and cheering the gloom of a day in December, by
uttering their crude opinions on the political aspects of the times. The
fact that England was engaged in a war with some of her dependencies on
the other side of the Atlantic had long been known to them, after the
manner that faint rumors of distant and uninteresting events gain on the
ear; but now that nations, with whom she had been used to battle, were
armed against her in the quarrel, the din of war had disturbed the quiet
even of these secluded and illiterate rustics. The principal speakers,
on the occasion, were a Scotch drover, who was waiting the leisure of
the occupant of the fields, and an Irish laborer, who had found his
way across the Channel, and thus far over the island, in quest of
employment.
“The Nagurs wouldn't have been a job at all for ould England, letting
alone Ireland,” said the latter, “if these French and Spanishers hadn't
been troubling themselves in the matter. I'm sure its but little reason
I have for thanking them, if a man is to kape as sober as a praist at
mass, for fear he should find himself a souldier, and he knowing nothing
about the same.”
“Hoot! mon! ye ken but little of raising an airmy in Ireland, if ye mak'
a drum o' a whiskey keg,” said the drover, winking to the listeners.
“Noo, in the north, they ca' a gathering of the folk, and follow the
pipes as graciously as ye wad journey kirkward o' a Sabbath morn. I've
seen a' the names o' a Heeland raj'ment on a sma' bit paper, that ye
might cover wi' a leddy's hand. They war' a' Camerons and M'Donalds,
though they paraded sax hundred men! But what ha' ye gotten here! That
chield has an ow'r liking to the land for a seafaring body; an' if the
bottom o' the sea be onything like the top o't, he's in gr'at danger o'
a shipwreck!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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