We were well into the summer by the time Le Marchant was fully fit to travel, and we had planned and pondered over that outer stockade till our brains ached with such unusual exercise, and still we did not see our way. For the outer sentries were too thickly posted to offer any hopes of overcoming them, and even if we succeeded in getting past any certain one, the time occupied in scaling the outer palisades would be fatal to us.
Then our chance came without a moment's warning, and we took it on the wing.
It was a black oppressive night after a dull hot day. We had been duly counted into our long sleeping-room, and were lying panting in our hammocks, when the storm broke right above us. There came a blinding blue glare which lit up every corner of the room, and then a crash so close and awful that some of us, I trow, thought it the last crash of all. For myself, I know, I lay dazed and breathless, wondering what the next minute would bring.
It brought wild shouts from outside and the rush of many feet, the hurriedclanging of a bell, the beating of a drum, and then everything was drowned in a furious downpour of rain which beat on the roof like whips and flails.
What was happening I could not tell, but there was confusion without, and confusion meant chances.
I slipped out of my hammock, unhitched it, and stole across to Le Marchant.
"Come! Bring your hammock!" I whispered, and within a minute we were outside in the storm, drenched to the skin but full of hope.
One of the long wooden houses on the other side of the enclosure was ablaze, but whether from the lightning or as cover to some larger attempt at escape we could not tell. Very likely the latter, I have since thought, for the soldiers were gathering there in numbers, and the bell still rang and the drum still beat.
Without a word, for all this we had discussed and arranged long since, we crept to the palisade nearest to us. I took my place solidly against it. Le Marchant climbed up onto my shoulders, flung the end of his hammock over the spiked top till it caught with its cordage, and in a moment he was sitting among the teeth up above. Another moment, and I was alongside him, peering down into the danger ring below, while the rain thrashed down upon us so furiously that it was all we could do to see or hear. We could, indeed, see nothing save what was right under our hands, for the dead blackness of the night was a thing to be felt.
There was no sound or sign of wardership. It seemed as though what I had hardly dared to hope had come to pass,—as though, in a word, that urgent call to the other side of the enclosure, to forestall an escape or assist at the fire, had bared this side of guards.
We crouched there among the sharp points, listening intently; then, taking our lives in our hands, we dropped the hammock on the outside of the palisade and slipped gently down.
My heart was beating a tattoo as loud as that in the soldiers' quarters, as we sped across the black space which had baffled us so long, and not another sound did we hear save the splashing of the rain.
My hammock helped us over the outer palisade in the same way as the other, and we stood for a moment in the rain and darkness, panting and shaking,—free men.
We made for the void in front, with no thought but of placing the greatest possible distance between ourselves and the prison in the shortest possible time. We plunged into bogs and scrambled through to the farther side, eager bundles of dripping slime, and sped on and on through the rain and darkness—free men, and where we went we knew not, only that it was from prison.
For a time the flicker of the burning house showed us where the prison lay, and directed us from it. But this soon died down, and we were left to make our own course, with no guide but the drenching rain. We had headed into it when we loosed from the palisade, and we continued to breast it.
No smaller prize than freedom, no weaker spur than the prison behind would have carried men through what we underwent that night. We ran till our breath came sorely, and then we trudged doggedly, with set teeth, and hands clenched,as though by them we clung to desperate hope. Twice when we plunged into black waters we had to swim, and Le Marchant was not much of a swimmer. But there I was able to help him, and when we touched ground we scrambled straight up high banks and went on. And the darkness, if it gave us many a fall, was still our friend.
But my recollections of that night are confused and shadowy. It was one long plunge through stormy blackness, water above, water below, with tightened breath and shaking limbs, and the one great glowing thought inside that we were free of the cramping prison, and that now everything depended on ourselves.
Scarce one word did we speak, every breath was of consequence. Hand in hand we went, lest in that blackness of darkness we should lose one another and never come together again. For the thick streaming blackness of that night was a thing to be felt and not to be forgotten. Never had I felt so like a lost soul condemned to endless struggle for it knew not what. For whether we were keeping a straight course, or were wandering round and round, we had no smallest idea, and we had not a single star to guide us.
It was terribly hard travelling. When we struck on tussocks of the wiry grass we were grateful, but for the most part we were falling with bone-breaking jerks into miry pitfalls, or tumbling into space as we ran, and coming up with a splash and a struggle in some deep pool or wide-flowing ditch.
There is a limit, however, to human endurance, even where liberty is at stake. We trod air one time, in that disconcerting way which jarred one more than many a mile of travel, and landed heavily in the slime below, and Le Marchant lay and made no attempt to rise. I groped till I found him, and hauled him to solider ground, and he lay there coughing and choking, and at last sobbing angrily, not with weakness of soul but from sheer lack of strength to move.
"Go on! Go on!" he gasped, as soon as he could speak. "I'm done. Get you along!"
"I'm done too," I said, and in truth I could not have gone much farther. "We'll rest here till daybreak, then we can see where we are."
He had no breath for argument, and we lay in the muddy sedge till our hearts had settled to a more reasonable beat, and we had breath for speech.
"How far have we come, do you think?" Le Marchant asked.
"It felt like fifty miles, but it was such rough work that it's probably nearer five. But it can't be long to daylight. Then we shall know better."
We struggled to a drier hummock and lay down again. The rain had ceased, and presently, while we lay watching for the first flicker of dawn in front or on our left, an exclamation from Le Marchant brought me round with a jerk, to find the sky softening and lightening right behind us. The ditches and the darkness and our many falls had led us astray. Instead of going due east we had fetched a compass and bent round to the north; instead of leaving our prison we had circled round it. And as the shadows lightened on the long dim flats, we saw in the distance the black ring of the stockade on its little elevation.
"Let us get on," said Le Marchant, with a groan at the wasted energies of the night.
"I believe we're safer here. If they seek us it will be farther away. They'd never think we'd be such fools as to stop within a couple of miles of the prison."
And, indeed, before I had done speaking, we could make out the tiny black figures of patrols setting off along the various roads that led through the swamps, and so we lay still, and watched the black figures disappear to the east and south and north.
So long as we kept hidden I had no great fear of them, for the swamps were honeycombed with hiding-places, and to beat them thoroughly would have required one hundred men to every one they could spare.
"I'm not at all sure it's us they're after," I said, by way of cheer for us both. "All that turmoil last night and the fire makes me think some of the others in Number Three were on the same job."
"Like enough, but I don't see that it helps us much. Can we find anything to eat?"
But we had come away too hurriedly to make any provision, and we knew too little of the roots among which we lay to venture any of them. So we lay, hungry and sodden, in spite of the sun which presently set the flats steaming, and did not dare to move lest some sharp eye should spy us. We could only hope for night and stars, and then sooner or later to come across some place where food could be got, if it was only green grain out of a field, for our stomachs were calling uneasily.
Twice during the day we heard guns at a distance, and that confirmed my idea that others besides ourselves had escaped, and by widening the chase it gave me greater hopes. But it was weary work lying there, and more and more painful as regards our stomachs, which from crying came to clamour, and from clamour to painful groanings, and a hollow clapping together of their empty linings.
Not till nightfall did we dare to move, and very grateful we were that the night was fine with a glorious show of stars. By them we steered due east, but still had to keep to the marsh-lands and away from the roads. And now, from lack of food, our hearts were not so stout, and the going seemed heavier and more trying. It brought back to me the times we had in the Everglades of Florida, and I told Le Marchant the story, but it did not greatly cheer him.
Once that night, in our blind travelling, we stumbled out into a road, and while we stood doubtful whether we might not dare to use it for the easement of our bodies, there came along it the tramp of men and the click of arms, and we were barely in the ditch, with only our noses above water, when they went noisily past us in the direction of the prison.
We made a better course that night, in the matter of direction at all events, but our progress was slow, for we were both feeling sorely the lack of food, and our way across the flats was still full of pitfalls, into which we fell dully and dragged ourselves out doggedly. We had been thirty hours without a bite, and suffered severe pains, probably from the marsh water we had drunk and had to drink.
"Two hundred kegs of fine French cognac we dropped overboard outside Poole Harbour," groaned Le Marchant one time, "and a mouthful of it now—!" Ay, a mouthful of it just then would have been new life to us. We stumbled on like machines because our spirits willed it so, but truly at times the weariness of the body was like to master the spirit.
"We must come across something in time," I tried to cheer him with—feeling little cheer myself.
"If it's only the hole they'll find our bodies in," he said down-heartedly.
And a very short while after that, as though to point his words, we fell together into a slimy ditch, and it seemed to me that Le Marchant lay unable to rise.
I put my arms under him, and strove to lift him, and felt a shock of horror as another man's arms round him on the other side touched mine, and I found another man trying to lift him also.
"Bon Dieu!" I gasped in my fright, and let the body go, as the other jerked out the same words, and released his hold also, and the body fell between us.
"Dieu-de-dieu, Carré! But I thought this was you," panted Le Marchant in a shaky voice.
"And I thought it was you."
We bent together and lifted the fallen one to solid ground, but it was too dark to see his face.
"Is he dead?"
"He is dead," I said, for I had laid my hand against his heart, and it was still, and his flesh was clammy cold, and when we found him he was lying face down in the mud.
"He escaped as we did, and wandered till he fell in here and was too weak to rise. Let us go on;" and we joined hands, for the comfort of the living touch, and went on our way more heavily than before.
We kept anxious look-out for lights or any sign of humanity. And lights indeed we saw at times that night, and cowered shivering in ditches and mudholes as they flitted to and fro about the marshes. For these, we knew, were no earthly lights, but ghost flarestempting us to destruction—stealthy pale flames of greenish-blue which hovered like ghostly butterflies, and danced on the darkness, and fluttered from place to place as though blown by unfelt winds. And one time, after we had left the dead man behind, one such came dancing straight towards us, and we turned and ran for our lives till we fell into a hole. For Le Marchant vowed it was the dead man's spirit, and that the others were the spirits of those who had died in similar fashion. But for myself I was not sure, for I had seen similar lights on our masts at sea in the West Indies, though indeed there was nothing to prove that they also were not the spirits of drowned mariners.
But—"pas de rue sans but!" as we say in Sercq—there is no road but has an ending. And, just as the dawn was softening the east, and when we were nigh our last effort, we stumbled by sheerest accident on shelter, warmth, and food,—and so upon life, for I do not think either of us could have carried on much longer, and to have sunk down there in the marsh, with no hope of food, must soon have brought us to an end.
It was Le Marchant who smelt it first.
"Carré," he said suddenly, "there is smoke," and he stood and sniffed like a starving dog. Then I smelt it also, a sweet pleasant smell of burning, and we sniffed together.
Since it came to us on the wind we followed up the wind in search of it, and nosed about hither and thither, losing it, finding it, but getting hotter and hotter on the scent till we came at last to a little mound, and out of the mound the smoke came.
A voice also as we drew close,muffled and monotonous, but human beyond doubt. We crept round the mound till we came on a doorway all covered with furze and grasses till it looked no more than a part of the mound. We pulled open the door, and the voice inside said, "Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and we crept in on our hands and knees.
There was a small fire of brown sods burning on the ground, and the place was full of a sweet pungent smoke. A little old man sat crouched with his chin on his knees staring into the fire, and said, "Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" without ceasing. There was no more than room for the three of us, and we elbowed one another as we crouched by the fire.
He turned a rambling eye on us, but showed no surprise.
"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" said the little old man.
"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" said I, deeming it well to fall in with his humour.
"Ay—who?" he asked.
"The one you mean."
"Ay,—Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and he lifted a bottle from the ground between his knees, and took a pull at it, and passed it on to me. I drank and passed it to Le Marchant, and the fiery spirit ran through my veins like new hot life.
"We are starving. Give us to eat," I said, and the old man pointed to a hole in the side of the hut. I thrust in my hand and found bread, dark coloured and coarse, but amazingly sweet and strengthening, and a lump of fat bacon. We divided it without a word, and ate like famished dogs. And all the time the old man chaunted "Blight him!" with fervour, and drank every now and then from the bottle. We drank too as we ate, but sparingly, lest our heads should go completely, though we could not believe such hospitality a trap.
It was a nightmare ending to a nightmare journey, but for the moment we had food and shelter and we asked no more. When we had eaten we curled ourselves up on the floor and slept, with "Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" dying in our ears.
I must have slept a long time, for when I woke I felt almost myself again. I had dim remembrances of half-wakings, in which I had seen the old man still crouching over his smouldering fire muttering his usual curse. But now he was gone, and Le Marchant and I had the place to ourselves, and presently Le Marchant stretched and yawned, and sat up blinking at the smoke.
"Where is the old one?" he asked. "Or was he only a dream?"
"Real enough, and so was his bread and bacon. I'm hungry again," and we routed about for food, but found only a bottle with spirits in it, which we drank.
We sat there in the careless sloth that follows too great a strain, but feeling the strength grow as we sat.
"Is he safe?" asked Le Marchant at last. "Or has he gone to bring the soldiers on us? And is it night or day?" and he felt round with his foot till it came on the door and let in a bright gleam of daylight.
We crawled out into the sunshine and sat with our backs against the sods of the house, looking out over the great sweep of the flats. It was like a sea whose tumbling waves had turned suddenly into earth and become fixed. Here and there great green breakers stood up above the rest with bristling crests of wire grass, and the darker patches of tiny tangled shrubs and heather and the long black pools and ditches were like the shadows that dapple the sea. The sky was almost as clear a blue as we get in Sercq, and was so full of singing larks that it set us thinking of home.
Away on the margin of the flats we saw the steeples of churches, and between us and them a small black object came flitting like a jumping beetle. We sat and watched it, and it turned into a man, who overcame the black ditches, and picked his way from tussock to tussock, by means of a long pole, which brought him to us at length in a series of flying leaps.
"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" he said as he landed. "So you are awake at last."
"Awake and hungry," I said.
He loosed a bundle from his back and opened it, and showed us bread and bacon.
"Blight him! Eat!" he said, and we needed no second bidding.
"You are from the cage?" he asked as be sat and watched us.
I nodded.
"All the birds that come my way I feed," he said. "For once I was caged myself. Blight him!"
"Whom do you blight?" I asked.
"Whom?" he cried angrily, and turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover rat,—George!... And the blight works—oh, it works, and the brain rots in his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an effectual fervent curse!—Oh, it works! Foryears and years I've cursed him night and day and—you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man speak to him for a twelvemonth and a day, they said. And no man spoke, but I myself, and all day long and all night I cursed him out loud for the sound of my own voice, since no other might speak to me. For the silence and the darkness pressed upon me like the churchyard mould, and I kept my wits only by cursing. Blight him! Blight him! And now they say—But they may say what they will so they leave me in peace, for I know—and you know"—and he bent forward confidentially—"it's the King that's mad, and soon everyone will know it. Blight him! Blight him! Oh—an effectual fervent curse indeed!"
"We are grateful to you," I said, "for food and shelter. We have money, we will pay."
"As you will. Those who can, pay. Those who can't, don't. All caged birds, I help. Blight him! Blight him!"
"We would rest till night, then you can put us on our way to the coast. This is an ill land to wander in in the dark. Last night we came on one who had strayed and died."
"Where away?" he asked quickly.
"In the marshes—over yonder—about a mile away, I should say."
"Was he clothed?" he snapped.
"Yes, he was clothed."
And he was off with his pole across the flats, in great bounds, while we sat wondering. We could see his uncouth hops as he went to and fro at a distance, and in time he came back with a bundle of clothes tied to his back.
"Food one can always get for the herbs of the marshes," he said, "and drink comes easy when you know where to get it. But clothes cost money and the dead need them not. Blight him!"
Le Marchant begged me to ask if he had any tobacco and a pipe, and I did so. He went inside and came out with a clay pipe and some dried brown herb.
"It is not what you smoke, but such as it is it is there," he said; and Le Marchant tried a whiff or two, but laid the pipe aside with a grunt.
"He speaks as do the others from the cage. How come you to speak as we do?"
"I am from Sercq. It is part of England."
"I never heard of it. Why did they cage you?"
"I was prisoner on a French ship which they captured. I let them believe me French rather than be pressed on board a King's ship."
"Right! Blight him!"
That long rest made men of us again. Our host had little to say to us except that the King was mad, and we concluded that on that subject he was none too sane himself, though in other matters we had no fault to find with him.
We got directions for our guidance out of him during the day, and as soon as it was dark he set off with us across the marshes, and led us at last on to more trustworthy ground and told us how to go. We gave him money and hearty thanks, and shook him by the hand and went on our way. The last words we heard from him, out of the darkness, were the same as we heard first in the darkness—"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and if they did another old man no harm they certainly seemed to afford great satisfaction to this one.
All that night we walked steadily eastward, passing through sleeping villages and by sleeping farmhouses, and meeting none who showed any desire to question us. In the early morning I bought bread and cheese from a sleepy wife at a little shop in a village that was just waking up, and we ate as we walked, and slept in a haystack till late in the afternoon. We tramped again all night, and long before daylight we smelt salt water, and when the sun rose we were sitting on a cliff watching it come up out of the sea.
We wandered a great way down that lonely coast before a fishing village hove in sight. At regular intervals we came upon watchmen on the look-out for invaders or smugglers, and to all such we gave wide berth, by a circuit in the country or by dodging them on their beats. It was only towns we feared, and of those there were fortunately not many. In the villages we had no difficulty in buying food, and to all who questioned we were on our way to the Nore to join a King's ship and fight the Frenchmen. To cover Le Marchant's lack of speech, we muffled his face in flannel and gave him a toothache which rendered him bearish and disinclined for talk. And so we came slowly down the coast, with eyes and ears alert for chance of crossing, and wondered at the lack of enterprise on the part of the dwellers there which rendered the chances so few.
Many recollections crowd my mind of that long tramp along the edge of the sea. But greater matters press, and I may not linger on these. We had many a close shave from officious village busybodies, whose patriotism flew no higher than thought of the reward which hung to an escaped prisoner of war or to any likely subject for the pressgang.
One such is burnt in on my mind, because thought of him has done more to make me suspicious of my fellows, especially of such as make parade of their piety, than any man I ever met.
He was a kindly-looking old man with white hair and a cheerful brown face, and his clothes were white with flour dust which had a homely, honest flavour about it. He was in a small shop, where I went for food one evening, engaged in talk with the woman who kept it, and he began to question me as soon as I opened my mouth.
I told him our usual story, and he seemed much interested in it.
"And you're going to the fleet! Well, well! A dreadful thing is war, but if it has to be it's better on sea than on the land here, and the fleet must have sailors, I suppose. But every night I pray for wars to cease and the good times of universal peace to come."
"Yes," I said, "peace is very much the best for everyone. It is those who have seen war who know it best."
"Surely! Yet one hears enough to know how terrible it is. You have seen service then?"
"In the West Indies, both battle and shipwreck," I said, having no wish to come nearer home.
"A wonderful land, I'm told, and very different from this country."
"Very different."
"Where do you rest to-night?" he asked, in the kindest way possible.
"We are pushing on to lose no time. The fleet wants men."
"Brave men are always wanted, and should be well treated. A few hours will not hurt the fleet. You shall sup and sleep with me, and to-morrow I will put you on your way in my gig. It is but a step to the mill."
He seemed so gentle and straightforward, and the prospects of a bed and an ample meal were so attractive, that we went with him without a thought of ill.
The mill stood on rising ground just off the village street. I have never passed under the gaunt arms of a mill since without a feeling of discomfort.
The miller's house, however, was not in the mill itself, but just alongside, under its great bony wings. There was a light in the window, and a sweet wholesome smell all about.
He introduced us to his wife, a very quiet woman, and much less cheerful and hospitable than himself, and bade her hasten the supper and prepare a bed, and we sat and talked while they were getting ready. He showed great concern, too, on Le Marchant's account, and insisted on his wife applying a boiling lotion of herbs, which very soon made his face look as bad as anyone could have wished; and, in consequence of some hasty words the sufferer dropped during this infliction, I found it necessary to explain that we were from the Channel Islands, but good Englishmen, although our native speech was more akin to French. The old miller was very much interested, and asked many questions about the Islands and the land and crops there.
We had an excellent hot supper, with home-brewed ale to drink, and then theold man read a chapter out of the Bible, and prayed at length—for us, and for peace and prosperity, and much more besides.
Then we had a smoke, and he showed us to the most comfortable bed I had seen since I left home.
Le Marchant was not in the best of humours. He chose to regard the old man's hospitality with suspicion, and even went the length of casting doubts upon his piety. But I put it down to the heat of the herb lotion, which had made his face like a full-blown red rose, and had doubtless got into his blood.
I was very sound asleep when a violent shaking of the arm woke me, and Le Marchant's whisper in my ear—"Carré, there's something wrong. Don't speak! Listen!"—brought me all to myself in a moment, and I heard what he heard,—the hushed movement of people in the outer room off which our bedroom opened, the soft creak of a loose board in the flooring.
"Outside the window a minute ago," he murmured in my ear.
Then a sound reached us that there was no mistaking, the tiny click of the strap-ring of a musket against the barrel, and a peaceful miller has no need of muskets.
We had but a moment for thought. I feared greatly that we were trapped, and felt the blame to myself. There would be men outside the window, but more in the room, for they looked to catch us sleeping. I had no doubt, in my own mind, that it was a pressgang, in which case their object was to take us, not to kill us. And, thinking it over since, I have thought it possible that the treacherous old miller may have signalled them by a light in the top of the mill, whichwould be seen a very long way.
I peeped out of the window. Three men with muskets and cutlasses stood there watching it. We were trapped of a surety. Carette and Sercq seemed to swing away out of sight, and visions of the routine and brutality of the King's service loomed up very close in front.
We had no weapons except my sailor's knife, which would be little use against muskets and cutlasses. But there was a stout oak chair by the bedside, and at a pinch its legs might serve.
We could do nothing but wait to see what their move would be, and that waiting, with the gloomiest of prospects in front, was as long and dismal a time as any I have known.
It was just beginning to get light when a tap came on the door, and the voice of the villainous old miller—
"Your breakfast is ready. We should start in half an hour."
"Hel-lo?" I asked, in as sleepy a fashion as I could make it.
He repeated his message, and Le Marchant, with his ear against the door, nodded confirmation of our fears. The breakfast we were invited to consisted of muskets and cutlasses and hard blows.
It was Le Marchant's very reasonable anger at this treacherous usage that saved us in a way we had not looked for. But possibly there was in him some dim idea of chances of escape in what might follow. Chance there was none if we walked into the next room or tried the window.
Our comfortable bed consisted of sweet soft hay inside the usual covering. He suddenly ripped this open, tore out the hay in handfuls and flung it under the bedstead, then pulled out his flint and steel and set it ablaze. The room was full of smoke in a moment, and we heard startled cries from the outer room. Taking the stout oak chair by opposite legs we pulled till they parted, and we were armed.
The door burst open and the miller went down headlong under Le Marchant's savage blow.
"Next!" he cried, swinging his club athwart the doorway. But, though there were many voices, no head was offered for his blow.
The flames burned fiercely behind us. With a crack of my chair leg I broke both windows, and the smoke poured out and relieved us somewhat, and the fire blazed up more fiercely still. The flooring was all on fire and the dry old walls behind the bed, and we stood waiting for the next man to appear.
"Better give in, boys," cried someone in the outer room. "You'll only make things worse for yourselves." But we answered never a word, and stood the more cautiously on our guard.
Then they began throwing buckets of water in at the door, and we heard it splashing also on the outer walls, but none came near the fire, since the bed was not opposite the door.
We were scorched and half smothered, but the draught through the door and out at the window still gave us chance to breathe.
The bedstead fell in a blazing heap, the flames crept round the walls. We could not stand it much longer. We would have to lay down our chair legs and surrender.
Then a very strange thing happened.
Le Marchant saw it first and grabbed my arm.
The portion of the blazing bedstead nearest the wall sank down through thefloor and disappeared, and at a glance we saw our way, though how far it might lead us we could not tell.
"Allons!" said Le Marchant, and without a moment's hesitation leaped down into the smoke that came rolling up out of the hole, and I followed.
We landed on barrels and kegs covered with blazing embers. Le Marchant gave a laugh at sight of their familiar faces, and, by way of further payment to the miller, dashed his heel through the head of a keg and sped on, while the flames roared out afresh behind us.
For a short way we had the light of the blaze, but soon we were past it and groping in darkness down a narrow tunnel way. It seemed endless, but fresh blowing air came puffing up to us at last, and of a sudden we crept out into the night through a clump of gorse on the side of a cliff. Below us was the sea, and on the shingle lay a six-oared galley such as the preventive men use.
"Devil's luck!" laughed Le Marchant, and we slipped and rolled down the cliff to the shore, with never a doubt as to our next move. We set our shoulders to the black galley, ran it gaily down the shingle, and took to the oars. As we got out from under the land we saw the house blazing fiercely on the cliff. There was a keg in the boat and a mast with a leg-of-mutton sail. We stepped the mast and set the sail and drew swiftly out to sea.
I do not think either of us ever found a voyage so much to our liking as this. Our craft was but a Customs' galley, twenty feet long and four feet in beam, it is true, and we were heading straight out into the North Sea. We had not a scrap of food, but we had fared well the night before, and thekeg in the bows suggested hopes. But we were homeward bound, and we had just come through dire peril by the sheer mercy of Providence.
"The old one is well punished for his roguery," said Le Marchant with a relish. "And after his prayers too! Diable, but he stinks!"
"He gave us a good supper, however."
"So that we might breakfast en route for a King's ship! Non, merci! No more mealy mouths for me." And to me also it was a lesson I have never forgotten.
Our first idea had been to run due east till we struck the coast of Holland, which we knew must be something less than one hundred and fifty miles away. But Le Marchant, who knew the smuggling ports better than I, presently suggested that we should run boldly south by east for Dunkerque or Boulogne, and he affirmed that it was little if any farther away than the Dutch coast, and even if it was, we should land among friends and save time and trouble in the end. So, as the weather and wind seemed like to hold, we turned to the south, and kept as straight a course as we could, and met with no interference. The setting sun trued our reckoning and we ran on by the stars.
The keg in the bows contained good Dutch rum, and we drank sparingly at times for lack of other food. Once during the night we heard guns, and our course carried us close enough to see the flashes, but we were content therewith, and went on about our business, glad to be of small account and unseen.
When the sun rose, there stole out of the shadows on our right white cliffs and a smiling green land, which Le Marchant said was the coast of Kent, so we ran east by south and presently raised a great stretch of sandy dunes,along which we coasted till the ramparts and spires of Dunkerque rose slowly before us.
Le Marchant knew his way here, and took us gaily over the bar into the harbour, where many vessels of all shapes and sizes were lying, and he told me what I had heard spoken of on theJoséphine, that Bonaparte was said to be gathering a great fleet for the invasion of England.
We landed in a quiet corner without attracting observation, and Le Marchant led the way to a quarter of the town which he said was given up entirely to the smuggling community, and where we should meet with a warm welcome. But we found, on arriving there, that the free-traders had been moved in a body down the coast to Gravelines, half-way to Calais, all but a stray family or two of the better behaved class. These, however, treated us well on hearing our story, and we rested there that day, and left again as soon as it was dark with all the provisions we could carry. We crept quietly out of the harbour and coasted along past the lights of Gravelines, and Calais, and weathered with some difficulty the great gray head of Gris Nez, and were off the sands of Boulogne soon after sunrise.
We kept well out, having no desire for forced service, but only to get home and attend to our own affairs. But even at that distance, and to our inexperienced eyes, the sight we saw was an extraordinary one. The heights behind the town were white with tents as though a snowstorm had come down in the night, and for miles each way the level sand-flats flashed and twinkled with the arms of vast bodies of men, marching to and fro at their drill, we supposed.
We dropped our sail to avoid notice and rowed slowly past, but time and again found ourselves floating idly, as we gazed at that great spectacle and wondered what the upshot would be.
Then we were evidently sighted by some sharp look-out on one of the round towers, for presently a white sail came heading for us, and we hastily ran up our own and turned and sped out to sea, believing that they would not dare to follow us far. They chased us till the coast sank out of our sight, and could have caught us if they had kept on, but they doubtless feared a trap and so were satisfied to have got rid of us. When they gave it up we turned and ran south for Dieppe, and sighted the coast a little to the north of that small fishing port just before sunset.
Here Le Marchant was among friends, having visited the place many times in the way of business, and we were welcomed and made much of. We were anxious to get on, but the wind blew up so strongly from the south-west that we could have made no headway without ratching all the time to windward, and the sea was over high for our small boat. So we lay there three days, much against our will, though doubtless to the benefit of our bodies. And I have wondered at times, in thinking back over all these things, whether matters might not have worked out otherwise if the wind had been in a different quarter. Work out to their fully appointed end I knew they had to do, of course. But that three days' delay at Dieppe brought us straight into the direst peril conceivable, and an hour either way—ay, or ten minutes for that matter—might have avoided it. But, as my grandfather used to say, and as I know he fervently believed, a man's times and courses are ordered by a wisdom higher than his own, and the properthing for him to do is to take things as they come, and make the best of them.
After three days the wind shifted to the north-west, and we said good-bye to our hosts and loosed for Cherbourg, well-provisioned and in the best of spirits, for Cherbourg was but round the corner from home.
We made a comfortable, though not very quick, passage, the wind falling slack and fitful at times, so that it was the evening of the next day before we slipped in under the eastern end of the great digue they were building for the protection of the shipping in the harbour. It was at that time but a few feet above water level, and its immense length gave it a very curious appearance, like a huge water-snake lying flat on the surface of the sea.
We pulled in under an island which held a fort, and keeping along that side of the roadstead, ran quietly ashore, drew our boat up, and went up into the town.
Cherbourg was at that time a town of mean-looking houses and narrow streets, ill-paved, ill-lighted, a rookery for blackbirds of every breed. It was a great centre for smuggling and privateering, the fleet brought many hangers-on, and the building of the great digue drew thither rough toilers who could find, or were fitted for, no other employment.
Low-class wine-shops, and their spawn of quarrellings and sudden deaths, abounded. Crime, in fact, attracted little attention so long as it held no menace to the public peace. Life had been so very cheap, and blood had flowed so freely, that the public ear had dulled to its cry.
Le Marchant led the way through the dark, ill-smelling streets to a café in the outskirts.
The Café au Diable Boiteux looked all its name and more. It was as ill-looking a place as ever I had seen. But here it was that the free-traders made their headquarters, and here, said Le Marchant, we might find men from the Islands, and possibly even from Sercq itself, and so get news from home.
The café itself opened not directly off the road, but off a large courtyard surrounded by a wall, which tended to privacy and freedom from observation.
It was quite dark when we turned in through a narrow slit of a door, in a larger door which was chained and bolted with a great cross-beam. There were doubtless other outlets known to the frequenters.
Le Marchant led the way across the dark courtyard, which was lighted only by the red-draped windows of the café, and opened a door out of which poured a volume of smoke and the hot reek of spirits, and a great clash of talk and laughter.
The room was so thick with smoke that, coming in out of the darkness, I could only blink, though there was no lack of lamps, and the walls were lined with mirrors in gilt frames which made the room look almost as large as the noise that filled it, and multiplied the lights and the smoke and the people in a bewildering fashion.
Three or four men had risen in a corner and were slowly working their way out, with back-thrown jests to those they were leaving. Following close on Le Marchant's heels, I stepped aside to let them pass, and in doing so bumped against the back of a burly man who was leaning over the table in close confidential talk with one opposite him.
"Pardon!" I said, and, looking up, saw two grim eyes scowling at me, through the smoke, out of the looking-glass in front.
I gave but one glance, and felt as if I had run my head against a wall or had received a blow over the heart. For those fierce black eyes were full of menace. They had leaped to mine as blade leaps to blade, touches lightly, slides along, and holds your own with the compelling pressure that presages assault. They were like thunderclouds charged with blasting lightnings. They were full of understanding and dreadful intention, and all this I saw in one single glance.
I gripped Le Marchant's jacket.
"Out quick!" I whispered, and turned and went.
"What—?" he began.
"Torode of Herm is there."
"The devil! Did he see you?"
"I think so. Yes, he looked at me through the looking-glass."
"No time to lose then!" and he sped down the yard, and through the slit of a door, and down the dark road, and I was not a foot behind him.
"You are quite sure, Carré?" he panted, as we ran.
"Quite sure. His eyes drew mine, and I knew him as he knew me."
"Never knew him to go there before. Devil's luck he should be there to-night."
I think it no shame to confess to a very great fear, for of a surety, now, the earth was not large enough for this man and me. I held his life in my hand as surely as though he were but a grasshopper, and he knew it. And he was strong with the strength of many purposeful men behind him, every man as heartless as himself, and Le Marchant and I were but two. My head swam at thought of the odds between us, and hope grew sick in me.
My sole idea of escape, under the spurof that great fear, had been to get to the boat and make for home. But Le Marchant, having less at stake,—so far as he knew at all events,—had his wits more in hand, and used them to better purpose. For, supposing we got away all right in the dark, Torode's schooner could sail four feet to our one, and if he sighted us we should be completely at his mercy, a most evil and cruel thing to trust to. Then, too, there was La Hague, with its fierce waves, and beyond it the wild Race of Alderney with its contrarieties and treacheries,—ill things to tackle even in a ship of size. Le Marchant thought on these things, and before we were into the town he panted them out, and turned off suddenly to the left and made for the open country.
"We'll strike right through to Carteret," he jerked. "The boat must go.... He'll look for us in the town and the wind's against him for La Hague.... We must get across before he can get round."
"How far across?"
"Less than twenty miles.... There soon after midnight.... Steal a boat if necessary."
We settled down into a steady walk and got our wind back, and my spirits rose, and hope showed head once more. If we could get across to Sercq before Torode could lay us by the heels, we would be safe among our own folks, and, unless I was very much mistaken, he would no more than visit Herm and away before I could raise Peter Port against him.
Neither of us had travelled that land before, but we knew the direction we had to take, and the stars kept us to our course.
We pressed on without a halt, for every moment was of importance, and for the most part we went in silence. For myself, I was already, in my thoughts, clasping my mother and Carette in my arms once more, and thenspeeding across to Peter Port to rouse them there with the news of Torode's murderous treachery.
Le Marchant was the more practical man of the two. As we passed some windmills, and came swinging down towards the western coast, soon after midnight, he gave a cheerful "Hourra!" and in reply to my stare, cried, "The wind, man! It's as dead as St. Magloire. Monsieur Torode will never get round La Hague like this."
"It will come again with the sun, maybe," I said.
"Then the quicker we get home the better," and we hurried on.
When we came out at last on the cliffs the sea lay below us as smooth as a clouded mirror. It would mean a toilsome passage, but toil was nothing compared with Torode. We walked rapidly along till we came to a village, which we learned, afterwards, was not Carteret but Surtainville. There were boats lying on the shore, and we slipped down the cliff before we reached the first house, and made our way towards them. One of those boats we had to use if we had to fight for it, but we had no desire to fight, only to get away at once without dispute and without delay.
We fixed on the one that seemed the least heavy and clumsy, though none were much to our liking, and while Le Marchant hunted up a pair of spare oars in case of accident, I found a piece of soft white stone and scrawled on a board, "Boat will be returned in two days, keep this money for hire"—and emptied all I possessed onto it. Then we ran the clumsy craft into the water and settled down to a long seven hours' pull.
But labour was nothing when so much—everything—waited at the other end of the course. We went to it with a will, and I do not suppose that old boat had ever moved so rapidly since she was built.
We had been rowing hard for, we reckoned, close on three hours when the sun rose. The gray shadows drew slowly off the face of the sea, and we stood up and scanned the northern horizon anxiously. But there was no flaw upon the brimming white rim. Torode had evidently not been able to get round La Hague, and a man must have been blind indeed not to see therein the hand of Providence; for a cap full of wind and he would have been down on us like a wolf on two strayed lambs. But now Sercq lay straight in front of our boat's nose, like a great gray whale nuzzling its young, and every long pull of the oars brought it nearer.
There was time indeed for catastrophe yet, and our anxieties would not be ended till Creux harbour was in sight. For, from Cherbourg to Sercq was but forty miles,—but, fortunately for us, forty miles which included La Hague and the Race,—and if Torode could pick up a fair wind he could do it in four hours—or, with all obstacles, in five, or at most six—whereas, strain as we might, and we were not fresh to begin with, we could not possibly cover the distance in less than seven hours. So, given a wind, the race might prove a tight one, and, as we rowed, our eyes were glued to the northern sky-line, where La Hague was growing dimmer with every lurch of the boat, and our hearts were strong with hope if not entirely free from fear.
We toiled like galley-slaves, for though the danger was not visible as yet, for aught we knew it might appear above the horizon at any moment, and then our chances would be small indeed. Had any eye watched our progress it must have deemed us demented, for we rowed across a lonely sea as though death and destruction followed close in our wake.
For myself, I know my heart was just one dumb prayer for help in this hour of need. We had come through so much. We had escaped so many perils; so very much depended on our winning through to Sercq; and failure at this last moment would be so heart-breaking. Yes, my heart boiled with unspoken prayers and strange vows, which I fear were somewhat in the nature of bargainings,—future conduct for present aid,—but which did not seem to me out of place at the moment, and which, in any case, did me no harm, for a man works better on prayers than on curses, I'll be bound.
Sercq at last grew large in front of us, and our hearts were high. When we jerked our heads over our shoulders we could see the long green slopes of the Eperquerie beckoning us on, and the rugged brown crests of the Grande and Petite Moies bobbing cheerfully above the tumbling waves, and Le Tas on the other side standing like a monument of Sercq's unconquerable stubbornness.
And these things spoke to us, and called to us, and braced us with hope, though our flanks clapped together with the strain of that long pull, and our legs trembled, and our hands were cramped and blistered.
Then, of a sudden, Le Marchant jerked a cry, and I saw what he saw—the topsail of a schooner rising white in the sun above the sky-line, and to our hearts there was menace in the very look of it.
We looked round at Sercq, at the cracks in the headlands, and the green slopes smiling in the sunshine, and the white tongues of the waves as they leaped up the cliffs.
"Five miles!" gasped Le Marchant.
"She must be twelve or more. We'll do it."
"Close work!"
And we bent and rowed as we had never rowed in our lives before.
The schooner had evidently all the wind she wanted. She rose very rapidly. To our anxious eyes she seemed to sweep along like a sun-gleam on a cloudy day.... Both her topsails were clear to us.... We could see her jibs swollen with venom, and past them the great sweep of her mainsails with the booms well out over the side to take the full of the wind.... The sweat poured down us, the veins stood out of us like cords.... Once, in the frenzy of my thoughts, the gleaming white sails on our quarter, and the crisp green waves alongside, and the dingy brown boat, and Le Marchant's fiery crimson neck, all shot with red for a moment, and I loosed one hand and drew it over my brow to see if it was blood or only sweat that trickled there.
On and on she came, a marvel of beauty, though she meant death for us, and showed it in every graceful venomous line, from the sharp white curl at her forefoot to the swelling menace of her sails.
Her long black hull was clear to us now, and still we had a mile to go. The breath whistled through our nostrils. Le Marchant's face when he glanced across his shoulder was twisted like a crumpled mask. We swung up from our seats and slewed half round to get every pound we could out of the thrashing oars.
We rushed in between the Moie des Burons and the Burons themselves, and drove straight for the harbour. For a moment the schooner was hid from us. Then she came racing out again. The tide was running like a fury. We drove swirling through it.
"Ach!" burst out from both of us, as a puff of white smoke whirled from the schooner's bows and a crash behind told us that a point of rock had saved us.... The coils of the current, which runs there like a mill-race, gripped our rounded bottom and dragged at us like very devils.... It was life and death and a question of seconds.... We were level with the remnant of the old breakwater.... As we tore frantically at the oars to round it, the puff of smoke whirled out again, ... a crash behind us and chips of granite came showering into the smooth water inside, and a boat that lay just off the shore in a line with the opening scattered into fragments before our straining eyes.... We lay doubled over our oars, panting and sobbing and laughing. We had escaped—but as by fire.
A moment for breath, and we slipped over the side, grateful for the cold bracing of the water on our sweltering skins, struggled through the few yards to the mouth of the tunnel, and crept through to the road. We lay there prone till our strength came back, and one full heart, at all events,—nay, I will believe two,—thanked God fervently for escape from mighty peril. For no man may look death so closely in the face as that without being stirred to the depths.
"A close thing!" breathed Le Marchant, as we got onto our feet and found the solid earth still rolling beneath us.
"God's mercy!" I said, and we sped up the steep Creux Road, among the ferns and flowers and overhanging trees.