They selected the garments which they preferred, and a few moments later they had donned them.
“We’ll leave the others,” said Ethan, as he paid the bill. “You can do what you like with them.”
“You are very kind,” smirked the hook-nosed man. “And I thank you much.”
He followed them outside and stood watching them as they went down the street.
“A knave, or I never saw one,” remarked Dale with a backward glance over his shoulder.
“I think you are right,” said Ethan. “I suppose most of these water-side characters are alike; they’d sell any one if the price were high enough.”
They turned a corner, out, as they supposed, of the man’s view; a little further on Ethan suddenly grasped Dale’s arm.
“Look there,” he whispered, his face paling with sudden excitement.
“What is it?” asked the ex-master’s mate of the Lexington.
“Under the shed, there by the pastry cook’s. The horse, I mean.”
Dale gazed at the large, coal-black beast hitched to a post and munching a feed of corn out of a small tub.
“Dirk Hatfield’s horse,” cried the sailor.
“The same,” said Ethan. “And where the horse is the master cannot be far away.”
“In the cook’s shop,” said Dale, eagerly.
They crossed toward the glass fronted shop; through the window they saw a neatly appointed place whose counters were filled with the flaky products of its ovens; a white-capped, round faced man presided over it; and at a table, knife and fork in hand and napkin tucked under his shirt collar, sat the worthy Master Hatfield, attacking with gusto a smoking dish of pigeon stew. As the two Americans stalked in, he gave them a glance; but their change of dress saved them from recognition. They took seats, and the white-capped man served them with food, all the time continuing the conversation which he had been holding with the highwayman.
“Yes,” he was saying, “the king’s ships are in a bad way indeed for lack of men. They say the frigate Serapis is almost unmanned.”
“Too bad,” growled the gentleman of the road, who though his hand was constantly raised against the law and its officers was a stout Briton at heart. “How do we expect to beat the French and the Yankees if our ships can’t put to sea?”
“You speak truth,” said the pastry cook. “And the impudent Yankees need a beating badly. Their insolence in crossing the ocean in their cockle-shells and attacking English ports is more than can be borne.”