Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/158

154 on a wild sea-coast, far from here, full of woods and caverns, the haunt of a banditti of smugglers—those fierce and vulgar and intractable spirits who find subsistence in fraud and violence, and from a continued perseverance in hostility to human law, become daily more hardened of heart and fierce of nature. I was young and romantic; and, though I did not approve of the course of these men's lives, there appeared glimpses of generosity and courage and fortitude about them, which shed a halo over a life of immorality and crime. I protected them not, neither did I associate with them; but they soon saw in the passive manner in which I regarded their nocturnal intercourse with the coast, and the ready and delighted ear which I lent to the narratives of their adventures by sea and land, that they had nothing to fear and much to hope. Their confidence increased, and their numbers augmented; and they soon found a leader capable of giving an aim to all their movements, and who brought something like regular craft and ability to their counsels.

"I was reputed rich, and was rich; my treasures were mostly of gold and silver plate, and bars of the former metal, the gain of a relative who had shared with the Buccaneers in the plunder of Panama. I had also been wedded for a number of years, my wife was young and beautiful, and our daughter, an only child, my own May Colvine, here where she sits, was in her thirteenth year, with a frame that seemed much too delicate to survive the disasters she has since been doomed to meet. We were counselled to carry her to warmer climates, and were preparing for our voyage, and my wife was ready to accompany me, when a large smuggling cutter cast anchor in a deep woody bay which belonged to my estate, and, as I sat on the top of my house, looking towards the sea, a person in a naval dress came and accosted me. He was, he said, the captain of the freetrader lying in the bay, with a cargo of choice wine, and his mariners, bold lads and true, had periled themselves freely by land and water, and often experienced the protection of Miles Colvine's bay and the hospitality of his menials. They had heard of my intention to carry my wife and daughter to a more genial climate; and, if we wished to touch at Lisbon, or to go to any of the islands where Europeans seek for health, they would give us a passage, for they honoured us next to commerce without law or restraint.