The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1.: Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage ManuscriptsCooper, James Fenimore
History
The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1.: Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts
Cooper, James Fenimore
Indians of North America -- Fiction; New York (State) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Hugh," cried my uncle, who was a good deal
of a boy in some things, for the reason, I suppose, that he was an old
bachelor; "I'll just have wrong names entered on board the packet, and
we'll surprise all our friends. Neither Jacob nor your man will betray
us, we know; and, for that matter, we can send them both home by the way
of England. Each of us has trunks in London to be looked after, and let
the two fellows go by the way of Liverpool. That is a good thought, and
occurred most happily."
"With all my heart, sir. My fellow is of no more use to me at sea than
an automaton would be, and I shall be glad to get rid of his rueful
countenance. He is a capital servant on terra firma, but a perfect Niobe
on the briny main."
The thing was agreed on; and, a day or two afterwards, both our
body-servants, that is to say, Jacob the black and Hubert the German,
were on their way to England. My uncle let his apartment again, for he
always maintained I should wish to bring my bride to pass a winter in
it; and we proceeded to Havre in a sort of incognito. There was little
danger of our being known on board the packet, and we had previously
ascertained that there was not an acquaintance of either in the ship.
There was a strong family resemblance between my uncle and myself, and
we passed for father and son in the ship, as old Mr. Davidson and young
Mr. Davidson, of Maryland--or Myr-r-land, as it is Doric to call that
state. We had no concern in this part of the deception, unless
abstaining from calling my supposed father "uncle," as one would
naturally do in strange society, can be so considered.
The passage itself--by the way, I wish all landsmen would be as accurate
as I am here, and understand that a "voyage" means "out" and "home," or
"thence" and "back again," while a "passage" means from place to
place--but our passage was pregnant with no events worth recording. We
had the usual amount of good and bad weather, the usual amount of eating
and drinking, and the usual amount of ennui. The latter circumstance,
perhaps, contributed to the digesting of a further scheme of my uncle's,
which it is now necessary to state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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