ABSTRACT
After a tedious procrastination occasioned by several calms, on the evening of the tenth day from the one in which Helen had embarked on board the little ship of Dundee, it entered on the broad bosom of the Nore. While she sat on the deck watching the progress of the vessel with an eager spirit which would gladly have taken wings to have flown to the object of her voyage, she first saw the majestic waters of the Thames. But it was a tyrannous flood to her, and she marked not the diverging shores crowned with palaces, for her eyes looked over every marbled dome to seek the black summits of the Tower. At a certain point the captain of the vessel spoke through his trumpet to summon a pilot from the land. - In a few minutes he was obeyed: and the Englishman taking the helm, Helen reclined on a coil of ropes near him, and listened in wordless attention to a recital which bound up her every sense in that of hearing. The captain, who declared himself a Norwegian by birth and in consequence of his seafaring life a Scot by appellation only, jested on the present troubles of his adoptive country, and added, that he thought any ruler the right one who gave him a free course for traffick. - In answer to this remark the Englishman, with an observation not very flattering to the Norwegian's estimation of right and wrong, mentioned the capture of the once renowned champion of Scotland, and narrated its consequence. Even the enemy, who recounted the particulars, shewed a ruth in the recital which shamed the man who had benefitted by the patriotism he affected to despise, and for which Sir William Wallace was imprisoned and now likely to shed his blood.
