III

Nevertheless, though Barnaby was thus confirmed in his opinion as to the nature of the communication he had received, he yet determined in his own mind that he would see the business through to the end and so be at Pratt’s Ordinary, as the note demanded, upon the day and at the time appointed therein.

Pratt’s Ordinary was at that time a very fine and famous place of its sort, with good tobacco and the best rum in the West Indies, and had a garden behind it that, sloping down to the harbor front, was planted pretty thick with palms and ferns, grouped into clusters with flowers and plants.  Here were a number of tables, some in little grottos, like our Vauxhall in New York, with red and blue and white paper lanterns hung among the foliage.  Thither gentlemen and ladies used sometimes to go of an evening to sit and drink lime-juice and sugar and water (and sometimes a taste of something stronger), and to look out across the water at the shipping and so to enjoy the cool of the day.

Thither, accordingly, our hero went a little before the time appointed in the note, and, passing directly through the Ordinary and to the garden beyond, chose a table at the lower end and close to the water’s edge, where he could not readily be seen by any one coming into the place, and yet where he could easily view whoever should approach.  Then, ordering some rum and water and a pipe of tobacco, he composed himself to watch for the arrival of those witty fellows whom he suspected would presently come thither to see the end of their prank and to enjoy his confusion.

The spot was pleasant enough, for the land breeze, blowing strong and cool, set the leaves of the palm-tree above his head to rattling and clattering continually against the darkness of the sky, where, the moon then being half full, they shone every now and then like blades of steel.  The waves, also, were splashing up against the little landing-place at the foot of the garden, sounding mightily pleasant in the dusk of the evening, and sparkling all over the harbor where the moon caught the edges of the water.  A great many vessels were lying at anchor in their ridings, with the dark, prodigious form of a man-of-war looming up above them in the moonlight.

There our hero sat for the best part of an hour, smoking his pipe of tobacco and sipping his rum and water, yet seeing nothing of those whom he suspected might presently come thither to laugh at him.

It was not far from half after the hour when a row-boat came suddenly out of the night and pulled up to the landing-place at the foot of the garden, and three or four men came ashore in the darkness.  They landed very silently and walked up the garden pathway without saying a word, and, sitting down at an adjacent table, ordered rum and water and began drinking among themselves, speaking every now and then a word or two in a tongue that Barnaby did not well understand,