The ear of Fancy, it is said, can discover the voice of sea-nymphs and tritons amid the bursting murmurs of the ocean; would that Icould do so, and that some siren or Proteus would arise from these billows, to unriddle for me the strange maze of fate in which I am so deeply entangled!--Happy friend!" he said, looking at the bed where Dinmont had deposited his bulky person, "thy cares are confined to the narrow round of a healthy and thriving occupation!
Thou canst lay them aside at pleasure, and enjoy the deep repose of body and mind which wholesome labour has prepared for thee!"At this moment his rejections were broken by little Wasp, who, attempting to spring up against the window,--began to yelp and bark most furiously. The sound reached Dinmont's ears, but without dissipating the illusion which had transported him from this wretched apartment to the free air of his own green hills. "Hoy, Yarrow, man!--far yaud--far yaud!" he muttered between his teeth, imagining, doubtless, that he was calling to his sheep-dog, and hounding him in shepherds' phrase, against some intruders on the grazing. The continued barking of the terrier within was answered by the angry challenge of the mastiff in the courtyard, which had for a long time been silent, excepting only an occasional short and deep note, uttered when the moon shone suddenly from among the clouds. Now, his clamour was continued and furious, and seemed to he excited by some disturbance distinct from the barking of Wasp, which had first given him the alarm, and which, with much trouble, his master had contrived to still into an angry note of low growling.
At last Bertram, whose attention was now fully awakened, conceived that he saw a boat upon the sea, and heard in good earnest the sound of oars and of human voices, mingling with the dash of the billows. Some benighted fishermen, he thought, or perhaps some of the desperate traders from the Isle of Man. They are very hardy, however, to approach so near to the Custom-house, where there must be sentinels. It is a large boat, like a longboat, and full of people; perhaps it belongs to the revenue service.--Bertram was confirmed in this last opinion, by observing that the boat made for a little quay which ran into the sea behind the Custom-house, and 'jumping ashore one after another, the crew, to the number of twenty hands, glided secretly up a small lane which divided the Custom-house from the Bridewell, and disappeared from his sight, leaving only two persons to take care of the boat.
The dash of these men's oars at first, and latterly the suppressed sounds of their voices, had excited the wrath of the wakeful sentinel in the courtyard, who now exalted his deep voice into such a horrid and continuous din, that it awakened his brute master, as savage a ban-dog as himself. His cry from a window, of "How now, Tearum, what's the matter, sir?--down, d-n ye, down!" produced no abatement of Tearum's vociferation, which in part prevented his master from bearing the sounds of alarm which his ferocious vigilance was in the act of challenging. But the mate of the two-legged Cerberus was gifted with sharper ears than her husband.
She also was now at the window; "B-t ye, gae down and let loose the dog," she said, "they're sporting the door of the Custom-house, and the auld sap at Hazlewood House has ordered off the guard. But ye hae nae mair heart, than a cat." And down the Amazon sallied to perform the task herself, while her helpmate, more jealous of insurrection within doors, than of storm from without, went from cell to cell to see that the inhabitants of each were carefully secured.