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Updated: June 8, 2025
Our party assemble, and we find the little steamer Cygnet at her wharf, looking as neat and trim as the graceful bird after which she is named. Newly painted, she was about to start on the first trip of the season. Half-past six was the hour of departure, but a heavy wet fog hung over this city by the sea, and we were obliged to await its disappearance.
My Mother, indeed, would hardly have been human if she had not occasionally entertained herself with the delusion that her solitary duckling was a cygnet.
Here it is: Suppose that Susan and little Cygnet, when both are three years old, are playing in your front-yard some morning, and a cruel slave-trader should look over the fence, and say to your husband, "Fine little thing there, sir; take a hunderd and a ha'f for her?"
We returned to our ship at Plata, where we remained for some time unresolved what course to pursue. On the 2d of October, the Cygnet of London, Captain Swan, came to anchor in the same road.
What persuasion the Captain of the Cygnet used, what bribe or promise or threat, what confidence that there was more to tell thereby like a magnet compelling any wandering information, is not known; nor is known what hatred of his conqueror, of a gallant form and a stainless name, may have uncoiled itself to poisonous ends in the soul of the small, smug, innocent-seeming man to whom he spoke; but at the end of a half-hour the Captain of the Cygnet left his prisoner of the San José, moved swiftly and lightly down the corridor to his own apartment, where he crossed to the window and stood there with his eyes upon the fortress of Nueva Cordoba, rising shadowy upon its shadowy hill.
The little church was somewhat poorly attended on this fine autumn evening, when the hunter's moon hung like a big golden shield above the river, glorifying the dipping willows, the narrow eyots, haunts of swan and cygnet, and the distant woodlands of Surrey. It was a night which tempted the free to wander in the cool shadowy river-side paths, rather than to worship in the warm little temple.
"Tall men, swingers in Brazil-beds, parcel-gilt with the Emperor of Manoa, and playfellows to the nymphs of Don Juan Ponce de Leon his fountain, in plain words, my master, Sir Mortimer Ferne, Captain of the Cygnet, and his guests to dinner, to wit, Sir John Nevil, Admiral of our fleet, with sundry of us captains and gentlemen adventurers to the Indies, and, for seasoning, a handful of my master's poor friends, such as courtiers and great lords and poets."
And Spaniards coming down the river took the Cygnet because they knew the word of the night?" A spasm distorted the masklike features, but in a moment it was gone. "I should be a madman," he said, "for once I walked before you with a high head and a proud heart. It seems that I knew not myself.... Now, John Nevil, enact Drake and send me to join Thomas Doughty!"
'Tis not the Cygnet that sings, but upon her sing my mariners and soldiers, for that they go forth to victory!" He put his hands behind his head, and with a light in his eyes looked back to the dwindling ships. "Victory!" he repeated beneath his breath. "Such fame, such service, as that earthworm, that same Detraction, shall raise no more her lying head!"
Your little slave-babe, Kate's child, you named Cygnet, because Mammy's name is Cygnet, and she and your mother grew up together, and she has been your kind, faithful servant and friend, as much friend as servant, during all your youth till you were married. And you seek to perpetuate her name in your own household, and to have a little Cygnet grow up with your own little Susan.
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