He had made an appointment
to spend the night, as usual, with Mrs. Hornbeck; and about nine
o'clock hastened to her lodgings, when he was accosted in the
street by his old discarded friend Thomas Pipes, who, without any
other preamble, told him, that for all he had turned him adrift, he
did not choose to see him run full sail into his enemy's harbour,
without giving him timely notice of the danger. "I'll tell you
what," said he; "mayhap you think I want to curry favour, that I
may be taken in tow again; if you do, you have made a mistake in
your reckoning. I am old enough to be laid up, and have to keep my
planks from the weather. But this here is the affair: I have known
you since you were no higher than a marlinspike, and shouldn't care
to see you deprived of your rigging at these years; whereby I am
informed by Hornbeck's man, whom I this afternoon fell in with by
chance, as how his master has got intelligence of your boarding
his wife, and has steered privately into this port with a large
complement of hands, in order, d'ye see, to secure you while you
are under the hatches.
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