“Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laidsGod-dam! Moi, j’aime les AnglaisIls ont un si bon caractère!”
“Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laidsGod-dam! Moi, j’aime les AnglaisIls ont un si bon caractère!”
“Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laidsGod-dam! Moi, j’aime les AnglaisIls ont un si bon caractère!”
but interrupted himself suddenly to hail Scevola:
“Hé! Citoyen!” and then remarked confidentially to Réal: “He isn’t asleep, you know, but he isn’t like the English, he has a sacré mauvais caractère. He got into his head,” continued Peyrol, in a loud and innocent tone, “that you locked him up in this cabin last night. Did you notice the venomous glance he gave you just now?”
Both Lieutenant Réal and the innocent Michel appeared surprised at his boisterousness; but all the time Peyrol was thinking: “I wish to goodness I knew how that thunderstorm is getting on and what course it is shaping. I can’t find that out unless I go up to the farm and get a view to the westward. It may be as far as the Rhône Valley; no doubt it is and it will come out of it too, curses on it. One won’t be able to reckon on half an hour of steady wind from any quarter.” He directed a look of ironic gaiety at all the faces in turn. Michel met it with a faithful-dog gaze and innocently open mouth. Scevola kept his chin buried on his chest. Lieutenant Réal was insensible to outward impressions, and his absent stare made nothing of Peyrol. The rover himself presently fell into thought. The last stir of air died out in the little basin, and the sun clearing Porquerolles inundated it with a sudden light, in which Michel blinked like an owl.
“It’s hot early,” he announced aloud, but only because he had formed the habit of talking to himself. He would not have presumed to offer an opinion unless asked by Peyrol.
His voice having recalled Peyrol to himself, he proposed to masthead the yards, and even asked Lieutenant Réal to help in that operation, which was accomplished in silence, except for the faint squeaking of the blocks. The sails, however, were kept hauled up in the gear.
“Like this,” said Peyrol, “you have only to let go the ropes and you will be under canvas at once.”
Without answering Réal returned to his position by the rudder-head. He was saying to himself: “I am sneaking off. No, there is honour, duty. And of course I will return. But when? They will forget all about me and I shall never be exchanged. This war may last for years,—” and illogically he wished he could have had a God to whom he could pray for relief in his anguish. “She will be in despair,” he thought, writhing inwardly at the mental picture of adistracted Arlette. Life, however, had embittered his spirit early, and he said to himself: “But in a month’s time will she even give me a thought?” Instantly he felt remorseful with a remorse strong enough to lift him to his feet as if he were morally obliged to go up again and confess to Arlette this sacrilegious cynicism of thought. “I am mad,” he muttered, perching himself on the low rail. His lapse from faith plunged him into such a depth of unhappiness that he felt all his strength of will go out of him. He sat there apathetic and suffering. He meditated dully: “Young men have been known to die suddenly; why should not I? I am, as a matter of fact, at the end of my endurance. I am half dead already. Yes! but what is left of that life does not belong to me now.”
“Peyrol,” he said, in such a piercing tone that even Scevola jerked his head up; but he made an effort to reduce his shrillness and went on speaking very carefully: “I have left a letter for the Secretary-General at the Majorité to pay twenty-five hundred francs to Jean—you are Jean, are you not?—Peyrol, price of the tartane in which I sail. Is that right?”
“What did you do that for?” asked Peyrol with an extremely stony face. “To get me into trouble?”
“Don’t be a fool, gunner, nobody remembers your name. It is buried under a stack of blackened paper. I must ask you to go there and tell them that you have seen with your own eyes Lieutenant Réal sail away on his mission.”
The stoniness of Peyrol persisted, but his eyes were full of fury. “Oh yes, I see myself going there. Twenty-five hundred francs! Twenty-five hundred fiddlesticks.” His tone changed suddenly. “I heardsomeone say that you were an honest man, and I suppose this is a proof of it. Well, to the devil with your honesty.” He glared at the lieutenant, and then thought: “He doesn’t even pretend to listen to what I say”—and another sort of anger, partly contemptuous and with something of dim sympathy in it, replaced his downright fury. “Pah!” he said, spat over the side, and walking up to Réal with great deliberation, slapped him on the shoulder. The only effect of this proceeding was to make Réal look up at him without any expression whatever.
Peyrol then picked up the lieutenant’s valise and carried it down into the cuddy. As he passed by, Citizen Scevola uttered the word “Citoyen,” but it was only when he came back again that Peyrol condescended to say “Well?”
“What are you going to do with me?” asked Scevola.
“You would not give me an account of how you came on board this tartane,” said Peyrol in a tone that sounded almost friendly, “therefore I need not tell you what I will do with you.”
A low muttering of thunder followed so close upon his words that it might have come out of Peyrol’s own lips. The rover gazed uneasily at the sky. It was still clear overhead, and at the bottom of that little basin surrounded by rocks there was no view in any other direction; but even as he gazed there was a sort of flicker in the sunshine, succeeded by a mighty but distant clap of thunder. For the next half-hour Peyrol and Michel were busy ashore taking a long line from the tartane to the entrance of the little basin, where they fastened the end of it to a bush. This wasfor the purpose of hauling the tartane out into the cove. Then they came aboard again. The bit of sky above their heads was still clear, but while walking with the hauling line near the cove Peyrol had got a glimpse of the edge of the cloud. The sun grew scorching all of a sudden, and in the stagnating air a mysterious change seemed to come over the quality and the colour of the light. Peyrol flung his cap on the deck, baring his head to the subtle menace of the breathless stillness of the air.
“Phew! Ca chauffe,” he muttered, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket. He wiped his forehead with his mighty forearm upon which a mermaid with an immensely long fishtail was tattooed. Perceiving the lieutenant’s belted sword lying on the deck, he picked it up and without any ceremony threw it down the cabin stairs. As he was passing again near Scevola, the sans-culotte raised his voice.
“I believe you are one of those wretches corrupted by English gold,” he cried like one inspired. His shining eyes, his red cheeks, testified to the fire of patriotism burning in his breast, and he used that conventional phrase of revolutionary time, a time when, intoxicated with oratory, he used to run about dealing death to traitors of both sexes and all ages. But his denunciation was received in such profound silence that his own belief in it wavered. His words had sunk into an abysmal stillness and the next sound was Peyrol speaking to Réal.
“I am afraid you will get very wet, lieutenant, before long,” and then, looking at Réal, he thought with great conviction: “Wet! He wouldn’t mind getting drowned.” Standing stock still, he fretted and fumedinwardly, wondering where precisely the English ship was by this time and where the devil that thunderstorm had got to: for the sky had become as mute as the oppressed earth. Réal asked:
“Is it not time to haul out, gunner?”
And Peyrol said:
“There is not a breath of wind anywhere for miles.” He was gratified by the fairly loud mutter rolling apparently along the inland hills. Over the pool a little ragged cloud torn from the purple robe of the storm floated, arrested and thin like a bit of dark gauze.
Above at the farm Catherine had heard, too, the ominous mutter and came to the door of the salle. From there she could see the purple cloud itself, convoluted and solid, and its sinister shadow lying over the hills. The oncoming of the storm added to her sense of uneasiness at finding herself all alone in the house. Michel had not come up. She would have welcomed Michel, to whom she hardly ever spoke, simply as a person belonging to the usual order of things. She was not talkative, but somehow she would have liked somebody to speak to just for a moment. This cessation of all sound, voices or footsteps, around the buildings was not welcome; but looking at the cloud, she thought that there would be noise enough presently. However, stepping back into the kitchen, she was met by a sound that made her regret the oppressive silence, by its piercing and terrifying character; it was a shriek in the upper part of the house, where, as far as she knew, there was only Arlette asleep. In her attempt to cross the kitchen to the foot of the stairs the weight of her accumulatedyears fell upon the old woman. She felt suddenly very feeble and hardly able to breathe. And all at once the thought “Scevola! Was he murdering her up there?” paralysed the last remnant of her physical powers. What else could it be? She fell, as if shot, into a chair under the first shock and found herself unable to move. Only her brain remained active, and she raised her hands to her eyes as if to shut out the image of the horrors upstairs. She heard nothing more from above. Arlette was dead. She thought that now it was her turn. While her body quailed before the brutal violence, her weary spirit longed ardently for the end. Let him come! Let all this be over at last, with a blow on the head or a stab in the breast. She had not the courage to uncover her eyes. She waited. But after about a minute—it seemed to her interminable—she heard rapid footsteps overhead. Arlette was running here and there. Catherine uncovered her eyes and was about to rise when she heard at the top of the stairs the name of Peyrol shouted with a desperate accent. Then again, after the shortest of pauses, the cry of “Peyrol, Peyrol!” and then the sound of feet running downstairs. There was another shriek, “Peyrol!” just outside the door before it flew open. Who was pursuing her? Catherine managed to stand up. Steadying herself with one hand on the table, she presented an undaunted front to her niece, who ran into the kitchen with loose hair flying and the appearance of wildest distraction in her eyes.
The staircase door had slammed to behind her. Nobody was pursuing her; and Catherine, putting forth her lean brown arm, arrested Arlette’s flightwith such a jerk that the two women swung against each other. She seized her niece by the shoulders.
“What is this, in Heaven’s name? Where are you rushing to?” she cried, and the other, as if suddenly exhausted, whispered:
“I woke up from an awful dream.”
The kitchen grew dark under the cloud that hung over the house now. There was a feeble flicker of lightning and a faint crash, far away.
The old woman gave her niece a little shake. “Dreams are nothing,” she said. “You are awake now....” And indeed Catherine thought that no dream could be so bad as the realities which kept hold of one through the long waking hours.
“They were killing him,” moaned Arlette, beginning to tremble and struggle in her aunt’s arms. “I tell you they were killing him.”
“Be quiet. Were you dreaming of Peyrol?”
She became still in a moment and then whispered: “No, Eugène.”
She had seen Réal set upon by a mob of men and women, all dripping with blood, in a livid cold light, in front of a stretch of mere shells of houses with cracked walls and broken windows, and going down in the midst of a forest of raised arms brandishing sabres, clubs, knives, axes. There was also a man flourishing a red rag on a stick, while another was beating a drum which boomed above the sickening sound of broken glass falling like rain on the pavement. And away round the corner of an empty street came Peyrol, whom she recognized by his white head, walking without haste, swinging his cudgel regularly. The terrible thing was that Peyrol looked straight at her, not noticing anything,composed, without a frown or a smile, unseeing and deaf, while she waved her arms and shrieked desperately to him for help. She woke up with the piercing sound of his name in her ears and with the impression of the dream so powerful that even now, looking distractedly into her aunt’s face, she could see the bare arms of that murderous crowd raised above Réal’s sinking head. Yet the name that had sprung to her lips on waking was the name of Peyrol. She pushed her aunt away with such force that the old woman staggered backwards, and to save herself had to catch hold of the overmantel above her head. Arlette ran to the door of the salle, looked in, came back to her aunt and shouted: “Where is he?”
Catherine really did not know which path the lieutenant had taken. She understood very well that “he” meant Réal.
She said: “He went away a long time ago”; grasped her niece’s arm and added with an effort to steady her voice: “He is coming back, Arlette—for nothing will keep him away from you.”
Arlette, as if mechanically, was whispering to herself the magic name, “Peyrol, Peyrol!” then cried: “I want Eugène now. This moment.”
Catherine’s face wore a look of unflinching patience. “He has departed on service,” she said. Her niece looked at her with enormous eyes, coal-black, profound, and immovable, while in a forcible and distracted tone she said: “You and Peyrol have been plotting to rob me of my reason. But I will know how to make that old man give him up. He is mine!” She spun round wildly, like a person looking for a way of escape from a deadly peril, and rushed out blindly.
About Escampobar the air was murky but calm and the silence was so profound that it was possible to hear the first heavy drops of rain striking the ground. In the intimidating shadow of the storm-cloud, Arlette stood irresolute for a moment, but it was to Peyrol, the man of mystery and power, that her thoughts turned. She was ready to embrace his knees, to entreat and to scold. “Peyrol, Peyrol!” she cried twice, and lent her ear as if expecting an answer. Then she shouted: “I want him back.”
Catherine, alone in the kitchen, moving with dignity, sat down in the armchair with the tall back, like a senator in his curule chair awaiting the blow of a barbarous fate.
Arlette flew down the slope. The first sign of her coming was a faint thin scream which really the rover alone heard and understood. He pressed his lips in a particular way, showing his appreciation of the coming difficulty. The next moment he saw, poised on a detached boulder and thinly veiled by the first perpendicular shower, Arlette, who, catching sight of the tartane with the men on board of her, let out a prolonged shriek of mingled triumph and despair: “Peyrol! Help! Pey——rol!”
Réal jumped to his feet with an extremely scared face, but Peyrol extended an arresting arm. “She is calling to me,” he said, gazing at the figure poised on the rock. “Well leaped! Sacré nom!... Well leaped!” And he muttered to himself soberly: “She will break her legs or her neck.”
“I see you, Peyrol,” screamed Arlette, who seemed to be flying through the air. “Don’t you dare.”
“Yes, here I am,” shouted the rover, striking his breast with his fist.
Lieutenant Réal put both his hands over his face. Michel looked on open-mouthed, very much as if watching a performance in a circus; but Scevola cast his eyes down. Arlette came on board with such an impetus that Peyrol had to step forward and save her from a fall which would have stunned her. She struggled in his arms with extreme violence. The heiress of Escampobar, with her loose black hair, seemed the incarnation of pale fury. “Misérable! Don’t you dare!” A roll of thunder covered her voice, but when it had passed away she was heard again in suppliant tones. “Peyrol, my friend, my dear old friend. Give him back to me,” and all the time her body writhed in the arms of the old seaman. “You used to love me, Peyrol,” she cried without ceasing to struggle, and suddenly struck the rover twice in the face with her clenched fist. Peyrol’s head received the two blows as if it had been made of marble, but he felt with fear her body become still, grow rigid in his arms. A heavy squall enveloped the group of people on board the tartane. Peyrol laid Arlette gently on the deck. Her eyes were closed, her hands remained clenched; every sign of life had left her white face. Peyrol stood up and looked at the tall rocks streaming with water. The rain swept over the tartane with an angry swishing roar to which was added the sound of water rushing violently down the folds and seams of the precipitous shore, vanishing gradually from his sight, as if this had been the beginning of a destroying and universal deluge—the end of all things.
Lieutenant Réal, kneeling on one knee, contemplatedthe pale face of Arlette. Distinct, yet mingling with the faint growl of distant thunder, Peyrol’s voice was heard saying:
“We can’t put her ashore and leave her lying in the rain. She must be taken up to the house.” Arlette’s soaked clothes clung to her limbs while the lieutenant, his bare head dripping with rainwater, looked as if he had just saved her from drowning. Peyrol gazed down inscrutably at the woman stretched on the deck and at the kneeling man. “She has fainted from rage at her old Peyrol,” he went on rather dreamily. “Strange things do happen. However, lieutenant, you had better take her under the arms and step ashore first. I will help you. Ready? Lift.”
The movements of the two men had to be careful and their progress was slow on the lower, steep part of the slope. After going up more than two-thirds of the way, they rested their insensible burden on a flat stone. Réal continued to sustain the shoulders, but Peyrol lowered the feet gently.
“Ha!” he said. “You will be able to carry her yourself the rest of the way and give her up to old Catherine. Get a firm footing and I will lift her and place her in your arms. You can walk the distance quite easily. There.... Hold her a little higher, or her feet will be catching on the stones.”
Arlette’s hair was hanging far below the lieutenant’s arm in an inert and heavy mass. The thunderstorm was passing away, leaving a cloudy sky. And Peyrol thought with a profound sigh: “I am tired.”
“She is light,” said Réal.
“Parbleu, she is light. If she were dead you would find her heavy enough. Allons, mon lieutenant. No!I am not coming. What’s the good? I’ll stay down here. I have no mind to listen to Catherine’s scolding.”
The lieutenant, looking absorbed into the face resting in the hollow of his arm, never averted his gaze—not even when Peyrol, stooping over Arlette, kissed the white forehead near the roots of the hair, black as a raven’s wing.
“What am I to do?” muttered Réal.
“Do? Why, give her up to old Catherine. And you may just as well tell her that I will be coming along directly. That will cheer her up. I used to count for something in that house. Allez! For our time is very short.”
With these words he turned away and walked slowly down to the tartane. A breeze had sprung up. He felt it on his wet neck and was grateful for the cool touch which recalled him to himself, to his old wandering self which had known no softness and no hesitation in the face of any risk offered by life.
As he stepped on board, the shower passed away, Michel, wet to the skin, was still in the very same attitude gazing up the slope. Citizen Scevola had drawn his knees up and was holding his head in his hands; whether because of rain or cold or for some other reason, his teeth were chattering audibly with a continuous and distressing rattle. Peyrol flung off his jacket, heavy with water, with a strange air as if it was of no more use to his mortal envelope, squared his broad shoulders, and directed Michel, in a deep, quiet voice, to let go the lines holding the tartane to the shore. The faithful henchman was taken aback and required one of Peyrol’s authoritative “Allez!” to put him in motion. Meantime the rover cast off the tiller lines and laid his handwith an air of mastery on the stout piece of wood projecting horizontally from the rudder-head about the level of his hip. The voices and the movements of his companions caused Citizen Scevola to master the desperate trembling of his jaw. He wriggled a little in his bonds, and the question that had been on his lips for a good many hours was uttered again.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“What do you think of a little promenade at sea?” Peyrol asked in a tone that was not unkindly.
Citizen Scevola, who had seemed totally and completely cast down and subdued, let out a most unexpected screech.
“Unbind me. Put me ashore.”
Michel, busy forward, was moved to smile as though he had possessed a cultivated sense of incongruity. Peyrol remained serious.
“You shall be untied presently,” he assured the blood-drinking patriot, who had been for so many years the reputed possessor not only of Escampobar but of the Escampobar heiress that, living on appearances, he had almost come to believe in that ownership himself. No wonder he screeched at this rude awakening. Peyrol raised his voice: “Haul on the line, Michel.”
As, directly the ropes had been let go, the tartane had swung clear of the shore, the movement given her by Michel carried her towards the entrance by which the basin communicated with the cove. Peyrol attended to the helm, and in a moment, gliding through the narrow gap, the tartane carrying her way, shot out almost into the middle of the cove.
A little wind could be felt, running light wrinklesover the water, but outside the overshadowed sea was already speckled with white caps. Peyrol helped Michel to haul aft the sheets and then went back to the tiller. The pretty spick-and-span craft that had been lying idle for so long began to glide into the wide world. Michel gazed at the shore as if lost in admiration. Citizen Scevola’s head had fallen on his knees while his nerveless hands clasped his legs loosely. He was the very image of dejection.
“Hé, Michel! Come here and cast loose the citizen. It is only fair that he should be untied for a little excursion at sea.”
When his order had been executed, Peyrol addressed himself to the desolate figure on the deck.
“Like this, should the tartane get capsized in a squall, you will have an equal chance with us to swim for your life.”
Scevola disdained to answer. He was engaged in biting his knee with rage in a stealthy fashion.
“You came on board for some murderous purpose. Who you were after, unless it was myself, God only knows. I feel quite justified in giving you a little outing at sea. I won’t conceal from you, citizen, that it may not be without risk to life or limb. But you have only yourself to thank for being here.”
As the tartane drew clear of the cove, she felt more the weight of the breeze and darted forward with a lively motion. A vaguely contented smile lighted up Michel’s hairy countenance.
“She feels the sea,” said Peyrol, who enjoyed the swift movement of his vessel. “This is different from your lagoon, Michel.”
“To be sure,” said Michel with becoming gravity.
“Doesn’t it seem funny to you, as you look back at the shore, to think that you have left nothing and nobody behind?”
Michel assumed the aspect of a man confronted by an intellectual problem. Since he had become Peyrol’s henchman he had lost the habit of thinking altogether. Directions and orders were easy things to apprehend; but a conversation with him whom he called “notre maître” was a serious matter demanding great and concentrated attention.
“Possibly,” he murmured, looking strangely selfconscious.
“Well, you are lucky, take my word for it,” said the rover, watching the course of his little vessel along the head of the peninsula. “You have not even a dog to miss you.”
“I have only you, Maître Peyrol.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Peyrol half to himself, while Michel, who had good sea-legs, kept his balance to the movements of the craft without taking his eyes from the rover’s face.
“No,” Peyrol exclaimed suddenly, after a moment of meditation, “I could not leave you behind.” He extended his open palm towards Michel.
“Put your hand in there,” he said.
Michel hesitated for a moment before this extraordinary proposal. At last he did so, and Peyrol, holding the bereaved fisherman’s hand in a powerful grip, said:
“If I had gone away by myself, I would have left you marooned on this earth like a man thrown out to die on a desert island.” Some dim perception of the solemnity of the occasion seemed to enter Michel’s primitive brain. He connected Peyrol’s words with the sense of his own insignificant position at the tail of all mankind, and, timidly, he murmured with his clear, innocent glance unclouded, the fundamental axiom of his philosophy:
“Somebody must be last in this world.”
“Well, then, you will have to forgive me all that may happen between this and the hour of sunset.”
The tartane, obeying the helm, fell off before the wind, with her head to the eastward.
Peyrol murmured: “She has not forgotten how to walk the seas.” His unsubdued heart, heavy for so many days, had a moment of buoyancy—the illusion of immense freedom.
At that moment Réal, amazed at finding no tartane in the basin, was running madly towards the cove, where he was sure Peyrol must be waiting to give her up to him. He ran out on to the very rock on which Peyrol’s late prisoner had sat after his escape, too tired to care, yet cheered by the hope of liberty. But Réal was in a worse plight. He could see no shadowy form through the thin veil of rain which pitted the sheltered piece of water framed in the rocks. The little craft had been spirited away. Impossible! There must be something wrong with his eyes! Again the barren hillsides echoed the name of “Peyrol,” shouted with all the force of Réal’s lungs. He shouted it only once, and about five minutes afterwards appeared at the kitchen door, panting, streaming with water as if he had fought his way up from the bottom of the sea. In the tall-backed armchair Arlette lay, with her limbs relaxed, her head on Catherine’s arm, her face white as death. He saw her open her black eyes, enormousand as if not of this world; he saw old Catherine turn her head, heard a cry of surprise, and saw a sort of struggle beginning between the two women. He screamed at them like a madman: “Peyrol has betrayed me!” and in an instant, with a bang of the door, he was gone.
The rain had ceased. Above his head the unbroken mass of clouds moved to the eastward, and he moved in the same direction, as if he too were driven by the wind up the hillside, towards the lookout. When he reached the spot and, gasping, flung one arm round the trunk of the leaning tree, the only thing he was aware of during the sombre pause in the unrest of the elements was the distracting turmoil of his thoughts. After a moment he perceived through the rain the English ship with her topsails lowered on the caps, forging ahead slowly across the northern entrance of the Petite Passe. His distress fastened insanely on the notion of there being a connection between that enemy ship and Peyrol’s inexplicable conduct. That old man had always meant to go himself! And when a moment after, looking to the southward, he made out the shadow of the tartane coming round the land in the midst of another squall, he muttered to himself a bitter “Of course!” She had both her sails set. Peyrol was indeed pressing her to the utmost in his shameful haste to traffic with the enemy. The truth was that from the position in which Réal first saw him, Peyrol could not yet see the English ship, and held confidently on his course up the middle of the strait. The man-of-war and the little tartane saw each other quite unexpectedly at a distance that was very little over a mile. Peyrol’s heart flew into his mouth at finding himself so closeto the enemy. On board theAmeliaat first no notice was taken. It was simply a tartane making for shelter on the north side of Porquerolles. But when Peyrol suddenly altered his course, the master of the man-of-war noticing the manœuvre, took up the long glass for a look. Captain Vincent was on deck and agreed with the master’s remark that “there was a craft acting suspiciously.” Before theAmeliacould come round in the heavy squall, Peyrol was already under the battery of Porquerolles and, so far, safe from capture. Captain Vincent had no mind to bring his ship within reach of the battery and risk damage in his rigging or hull for the sake of a small coaster. However, the tale brought on board by Symons of his discovery of a hidden craft, of his capture, and his wonderful escape, had made every tartane an object of interest to the whole ship’s company. TheAmeliaremained hove to in the strait while her officers watched the lateen sails gliding to and fro under the protecting muzzles of the guns. Captain Vincent himself had been impressed by Peyrol’s manœuvre. Coasting craft, as a rule, were not afraid of theAmelia. After taking a few turns on the quarter-deck he ordered Symons to be called aft.
The hero of a unique and mysterious adventure, which had been the only subject of talk on board the corvette for the last twenty-four hours, came along rolling, hat in hand, and enjoying a secret sense of his importance.
“Take the glass,” said the captain, “and have a look at that vessel under the land. Is she anything like the tartane that you say you have been aboard of?”
Symons was very positive. “I think I can swear to those painted mastheads, your honour. It is the last thing I remember before that murderous ruffian knocked me senseless. The moon shone on them. I can make them out now with the glass.” As to the fellow boasting to him that the tartane was a dispatch-boat and had already made some trips, well, Symons begged his honour to believe that the beggar was not sober at the time. He did not care what he blurted out. The best proof of his condition was that he went away to fetch the soldiers and forgot to come back. The murderous old ruffian! “You see, you honour,” continued Symons, “he thought I was not likely to escape after getting a blow that would have killed nine out of any ten men. So he went away to boast of what he had done before the people ashore; because one of his chums, worse than himself, came down thinking he would kill me with a dam’ big manure fork, saving your honour’s presence. A regular savage he was.”
Symons paused, staring, as if astonished at the marvels of his own tale. The old master, standing at his captain’s elbow, observed in a dispassionate tone that, anyway, that peninsula was not a bad jumping-off place for a craft intending to slip through the blockade. Symons, not being dismissed, waited, hat in hand, while Captain Vincent directed the master to fill on the ship and stand a little nearer to the battery. It was done, and presently there was a flash of a gun low down on the water’s edge and a shot came skipping in the direction of theAmelia. It fell very short, but Captain Vincent judged the ship was close enough, and ordered her to be hove to again. Then Symonswas told to take a look through the glass once more. After a long interval he lowered it and spoke impressively to his captain:
“I can make out three heads aboard, your honour, and one is white. I would swear to that white head anywhere.”
Captain Vincent made no answer. All this seemed very odd to him; but after all it was possible. The craft had certainly acted suspiciously. He spoke to the first lieutenant in a half-vexed tone.
“He has done a rather smart thing. He will dodge here till dark and then get away. It is perfectly absurd. I don’t want to send the boats too close to the battery. And if I do he may simply sail away from them and be round the land long before we are ready to give him chase. Darkness will be his best friend. However, we will keep a watch on him in case he is tempted to give us the slip late in the afternoon. In that case we will have a good try to catch him. If he has anything aboard, I should like to get hold of it. It may be of some importance, after all.”
On board the tartane Peyrol put his own interpretation on the ship’s movements. His object had been attained. The corvette had marked him for her prey. Satisfied as to that, Peyrol watched his opportunity and taking advantage of a long squall, with rain thick enough to blur the form of the English ship, he left the shelter of the battery to lead the Englishman a dance and keep up his character of a man anxious to avoid capture.
Réal, from his position on the lookout, saw in thethinning downpour the pointed lateen sails glide round the north end of Porquerolles and vanish behind the land. Some time afterwards theAmeliamade sail in a manner that put it beyond doubt that she meant to chase. Her lofty canvas was shut off too presently by the land of Porquerolles. When she had disappeared Réal turned to Arlette.
“Let us go,” he said.
Arlette, stimulated by the short glimpse of Réal at the kitchen door, whom she had taken for a vision of a lost man calling her to follow him to the end of the world, had torn herself out of the old woman’s thin, bony arms which could not cope with the struggles of her body and the fierceness of her spirit. She had run straight to the lookout, though there was nothing to guide her there except a blind impulse to seek Réal wherever he might be. He was not aware of her having found him until she seized hold of his arm with a suddenness, energy and determination of which no one with a clouded mind could have been capable. He felt himself being taken possession of in a way that tore all his scruples out of his breast. Holding on to the trunk of the tree, he threw his other arm round her waist, and when she confessed to him that she did not know why she had run up there, but that if she had not found him she would have thrown herself over the cliff, he tightened his clasp with sudden exultation, as though she had been a gift prayed for instead of a stumbling-block for his pedantic conscience. Together they walked back. In the failing light the buildings awaited them, lifeless, the walls darkened by rain and the big slopes of the roofs glistening and sinister under the flying desolation of the clouds. Inthe kitchen Catherine heard their mingled footsteps, and rigid in the tall arm-chair awaited their coming. Arlette threw her arms round the old woman’s neck, while Réal stood on one side, looking on. Thought after thought flew through his mind and vanished in the strong feeling of the irrevocable nature of the event handing him to the woman whom, in the revulsion of his feelings, he was inclined to think more sane than himself. Arlette, with one arm over the old woman’s shoulders, kissed the wrinkled forehead under the white band of linen that, on the erect head, had the effect of a rustic diadem.
“To-morrow you and I will have to walk down to the church.”
The austere dignity of Catherine’s pose seemed to be shaken by this proposal to lead before the God with whom she had made her peace long ago that unhappy girl chosen to share in the guilt of impious and unspeakable horrors which had darkened her mind.
Arlette, still stooping over her aunt’s face, extended a hand towards Réal, who, making a step forward, took it silently into his grasp.
“Oh yes, you will, Aunt,” insisted Arlette. “You will have to come with me to pray for Peyrol, whom you and I shall never see any more.”
Catherine’s head dropped, whether in assent or grief; and Réal felt an unexpected and profound emotion, for he, too, was convinced that none of the three persons in the farm would ever see Peyrol again. It was as though the rover of the wide seas had left them to themselves on a sudden impulse of scorn, of magnanimity, of a passion weary of itself. Howevercome by, Réal was ready to clasp for ever to his breast that woman touched by the red hand of the Revolution; for she, whose little feet had run ankle-deep through the terrors of death, had brought to him the sense of triumphant life.
Asternof the tartane, the sun, about to set, kindled a streak of dull crimson glow between the darkening sea and the overcast sky. The peninsula of Giens and the islands of Hyères formed one mass of land detaching itself very black against the fiery girdle of the horizon; but to the north the long stretch of the Alpine coast continued beyond sight its endless sinuosities under the stooping clouds.
The tartane seemed to be rushing together with the run of the waves into the arms of the oncoming night. A little more than a mile away on her lee quarter, theAmelia, under all plain sail, pressed to the end of the chase. It had lasted now for a good many hours, for Peyrol, when slipping away, had managed to get the advantage of theAmeliafrom the very start. While still within the large sheet of smooth water which is called the Hyères Roadstead, the tartane, which was really a craft of extraordinary speed, managed to gain positively on the sloop. Afterwards, by suddenly darting down the eastern passage between the two last islands of the group, Peyrol actually got out of sight of the chasing ship, being hidden by the Ile du Levant for a time. TheAmelia, having to tack twice in order to follow, lost ground once more. Emerging into the open sea, she had to tack again, and then the position became that of a stern chase, which proverbially is knownas a long chase. Peyrol’s skilful seamanship had twice extracted from Captain Vincent a low murmur accompanied by a significant compression of lips. At one time theAmeliahad been near enough the tartane to send a shot ahead of her. That one was followed by another, which whizzed extraordinarily close to the mastheads, but then Captain Vincent ordered the gun to be secured again. He said to his first lieutenant, who, his speaking-trumpet in hand, kept at his elbow: “We must not sink that craft on any account. If we could get only an hour’s calm, we would carry her with the boats.”
The lieutenant remarked that there was no hope of a calm for the next twenty-four hours at least.
“No,” said Captain Vincent, “and in about an hour it will be dark, and then he may very well give us the slip. The coast is not very far off and there are batteries on both sides of Fréjus, under any of which he will be as safe from capture as though he were hove up on the beach. And look,” he exclaimed after a moment’s pause, “this is what the fellow means to do.”
“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant, keeping his eyes on the white speck ahead, dancing lightly on the short Mediterranean waves, “he is keeping off the wind.”
“We will have him in less than an hour,” said Captain Vincent, and made as if he meant to rub his hands, but suddenly leaned his elbow on the rail. “After all,” he went on, “properly speaking, it is a race between theAmeliaand the night.”
“And it will be dark early to-day,” said the first lieutenant, swinging the speaking-trumpet by its lanyard. “Shall we take the yards off the backstays, sir?”
“No,” said Captain Vincent. “There is a clever seaman aboard that tartane. He is running off now, but at any time he may haul up again. We must not follow him too closely, or we shall lose the advantage which we have now. That man is determined on making his escape.”
If those words by some miracle could have been carried to the ears of Peyrol, they would have brought to his lips a smile of malicious and triumphant exultation. Ever since he had laid his hand on the tiller of the tartane every faculty of his resourcefulness and seamanship had been bent on deceiving the English captain, that enemy whom he had never seen, the man whose mind he had constructed for himself from the evolutions of his ship. Leaning against the heavy tiller he addressed Michel, breaking the silence of the strenuous afternoon.
“This is the moment,” his deep voice uttered quietly. “Ease off the mainsheet, Michel. A little now, only.”
When Michel returned to the place where he had been sitting to windward, the rover noticed his eyes fixed on his face wonderingly. Some vague thoughts had been forming themselves slowly, incompletely, in Michel’s brain. Peyrol met the utter innocence of the unspoken inquiry with a smile that, beginning sardonically on his manly and sensitive mouth, ended in something resembling tenderness.
“That’s so, camarade,” he said with particular stress and intonation, as if those words contained a full and sufficient answer. Most unexpectedly Michel’s round and generally staring eyes blinked, as if dazzled. He too produced from somewhere in the depths of hisbeing a queer, misty smile from which Peyrol averted his gaze.
“Where is the citizen?” he asked, bearing hard against the tiller and staring straight ahead. “He isn’t gone overboard, is he? I don’t seem to have seen him since we rounded the land near Porquerolles Castle.”
Michel, after craning his head forward to look over the edge of the deck, announced that Scevola was sitting on the keelson.
“Go forward,” said Peyrol, “and ease off the foresheet now a little. This tartane has wings,” he added to himself.
Alone on the after-deck Peyrol turned his head to look at theAmelia. That ship, in consequence of holding her wind, was now crossing obliquely the wake of the tartane. At the same time she had diminished the distance. Nevertheless, Peyrol considered that had he really meant to escape, his chances were as eight to ten—practically an assured success. For a long time he had been contemplating the lofty pyramid of canvas towering against the fading red belt on the sky, when a lamentable groan made him look round. It was Scevola. The citizen had adopted the mode of progression on all fours, and while Peyrol looked at him he rolled to leeward, saved himself rather cleverly from going overboard, and holding on desperately to a cleat, shouted in a hollow voice, pointing with the other hand as if he had made a tremendous discovery: “La terre! La terre!”
“Certainly,” said Peyrol, steering with extreme nicety. “What of that?”
“I don’t want to be drowned!” cried the citizenin his new hollow voice. Peyrol reflected a bit before he spoke in a serious tone:
“If you stay where you are, I assure you that you will ...” he glanced rapidly over his shoulder at theAmelia... “not die by drowning.” He jerked his head sideways. “I know that man’s mind.”
“What man? Whose mind?” yelled Scevola with intense eagerness and bewilderment. “We are only three on board.”
But Peyrol’s mind was contemplating maliciously the figure of a man with long teeth, in a wig and with large buckles to his shoes. Such was his ideal conception of what the captain of theAmeliaought to look like. That officer, whose naturally good-humoured face wore then a look of severe resolution, had beckoned his first lieutenant to his side again.
“We are gaining,” he said quietly. “I intend to close with him to windward. We won’t risk any of his tricks. It is very difficult to outmanœuvre a Frenchman, as you know. Send a few armed marines on the forecastle ahead. I am afraid the only way to get hold of this tartane is to disable the men on board of her. I wish to goodness I could think of some other. When we close with her, let the marines fire a well-aimed volley. You must get some marines to stand by aft as well. I hope we may shoot away his halliards; once his sails are down on his deck he is ours for the trouble of putting a boat over the side.”
For more than half an hour Captain Vincent stood silent, elbow on rail, keeping his eye on the tartane, while on board the latter Peyrol steered silent and watchful but intensely conscious of the enemy ship holding on in her relentless pursuit. The narrowred band was dying out of the sky. The French coast, black against the fading light, merged into the shadows gathering in the eastern board. Citizen Scevola, somewhat soothed by the assurance that he would not die by drowning, had elected to remain quiet where he had fallen, not daring to trust himself to move on the lively deck. Michel, squatting to windward, gazed intently at Peyrol in expectation of some order at any minute. But Peyrol uttered no word and made no sign. From time to time a burst of foam flew over the tartane, or a splash of water would come aboard with a scurrying noise.
It was not till the corvette had got within a long gunshot from the tartane that Peyrol opened his mouth.
“No!” he burst out, loud in the wind, as if giving vent to long anxious thinking, “no! I could not have left you behind with not even a dog for company. Devil take me if I don’t think you would not have thanked me for it either. What do you say to that, Michel?”
A half-puzzled smile dwelt persistently on the guileless countenance of the ex-fisherman. He stated what he had always thought in respect of Peyrol’s every remark: “I think you are right, maître.”
“Listen then, Michel. That ship will be alongside of us in less than half an hour. As she comes up they will open on us with musketry.”
“They will open on us ...” repeated Michel, looking quite interested. “But how do you know they will do that, maître?”
“Because her captain has got to obey what is in my mind,” said Peyrol, in a tone of positive andsolemn conviction. “He will do it as sure as if I were at his ear telling him what to do. He will do it because he is a first-rate seaman, but I, Michel, I am just a little bit cleverer than he.” He glanced over his shoulder at theAmeliarushing after the tartane with swelling sails, and raised his voice suddenly. “He will do it because no more than half a mile ahead of us is the spot where Peyrol will die!”
Michel did not start. He only shut his eyes for a time, and the rover continued in a lower tone:
“I may be shot through the heart at once,” he said; “and in that case you have my permission to let go the halliards if you are alive yourself. But if I live I mean to put the helm down. When I do that you will let go the foresheet to help the tartane to fly into the wind’s eye. This is my last order to you. Now go forward and fear nothing. Adieu.” Michel obeyed without a word.
Half a dozen of theAmelia’smarines stood ranged on the forecastle-head ready with their muskets. Captain Vincent walked into the lee waist to watch his chase. When he thought that the jibboom of theAmeliahad drawn level with the stern of the tartane he waved his hat and the marines discharged their muskets. Apparently no gear was cut. Captain Vincent observed the white-headed man, who was steering, clap his hand to his left side, while he hove the tiller to leeward and brought the tartane sharply into the wind. The marines on the poop fired in their turn, all the reports merging into one. Voices were heard on the decks crying that they “had hit the white-haired chap.” Captain Vincent shouted to the master:
“Get the ship round on the other tack.”
The elderly seaman who was the master of theAmeliatook a critical look before he gave the necessary orders; and theAmeliaclosed on her chase with her decks resounding to the piping of boatswain’s mates and the hoarse shout: “Hands shorten sail. About ship.”
Peyrol, lying on his back under the swinging tiller, heard the calls shrilling and dying away; he heard the ominous rush of theAmelia’sbow wave as the sloop foamed within ten yards of the tartane’s stern; he even saw her upper yards coming down, and then everything vanished out of the clouded sky. There was nothing in his ears but the sound of the wind, the wash of the waves buffeting the little craft left without guidance, and the continuous thrashing of its foresail the sheet of which Michel had let go according to orders. The tartane began to roll heavily, but Peyrol’s right arm was sound and he managed to put it round a bollard to prevent himself from being flung about. A feeling of peace sank into him, not unmingled with pride. Everything he had planned had come to pass. He had meant to play that man a trick, and now the trick had been played. Played by him better than by any other old man on whom age had stolen, unnoticed, till the veil of peace was torn down by the touch of a sentiment unexpected like an intruder and cruel like an enemy.
Peyrol rolled his head to the left. All he could see were the legs of Citizen Scevola sliding nervelessly to and fro to the rolling of the vessel as if his body had been jammed somewhere. Dead, or only scared to death? And Michel? Was he dead or dying, that man without friends whom his pity had refused to leave behind marooned on the earth without even a dog for company. As to that, Peyrol felt no compunction;but he thought he would have liked to see Michel once more. He tried to utter his name, but his throat refused him even a whisper. He felt himself removed far away from that world of human sounds, in which Arlette had screamed at him: “Peyrol, don’t you dare!” He would never hear anybody’s voice again! Under that grey sky there was nothing for him but the swish of breaking seas and the ceaseless furious beating of the tartane’s foresail. His plaything was knocking about terribly under him, with her tiller flying madly to and fro just clear of his head, and solid lumps of water coming on board over his prostrate body. Suddenly, in a desperate lurch which brought the whole Mediterranean with a ferocious snarl level with the slope of the little deck, Peyrol saw theAmeliabearing right down upon the tartane. The fear, not of death, but of failure, gripped his slowing-down heart. Was this blind Englishman going to run him down and sink the dispatches together with the craft? With a mighty effort of his ebbing strength Peyrol sat up and flung his arm round the shroud of the mainmast.
TheAmelia, whose way had carried her past the tartane for a quarter of a mile before sail could be shortened and her yards swung on the other tack, was coming back to take possession of her chase. In the deepening dusk and amongst the foaming seas it was a matter of difficulty to make out the little craft. At the very moment when the master of the man-of-war, looking out anxiously from the forecastle-head, thought that she might perhaps have filled and gone down, he caught sight of her rolling in the trough of the sea, and so close that she seemed to be at the end of theAmelia’sjibboom. His heart flew in his mouth. “Hard a starboard!” he yelled, his order being passed along the decks.
Peyrol, sinking back on the deck, in another heavy lurch of his craft, saw for an instant the whole of the English corvette swing up into the clouds as if she meant to fling herself upon his very breast. A blown seatop flicked his face noisily, followed by a smooth interval, a silence of the waters. He beheld in a flash the days of his manhood, of strength and adventure. Suddenly an enormous voice like the roar of an angry sea-lion seemed to fill the whole of the empty sky in a mighty and commanding shout: “Steady!”... And with the sound of that familiar English word ringing in his ears Peyrol smiled to his visions and died.
TheAmelia, stripped down to her topsails and hove to, rose and fell easily, while on her quarter about a cable’s length away Peyrol’s tartane tumbled like a lifeless corpse amongst the seas. Captain Vincent, in his favourite attitude of leaning over the rail, kept his eyes fastened on his prize. Mr. Bolt, who had been sent for, waited patiently till his commander turned round.
“Oh, here you are, Mr. Bolt. I have sent for you to go and take possession. You speak French, and there may still be somebody alive in her. If so, of course you will send him on board at once. I am sure there can be nobody unwounded there. It will anyhow be too dark to see much, but just have a good look round and secure everything in the way of papers you can lay your hands on. Haul aft the foresheet and sail her up to receive a tow-line. I intend to take her along and ransack her thoroughly in the morning; teardown the cuddy linings and so on, should you not find at once what I expect....” Captain Vincent, his white teeth gleaming in the dusk, gave some further orders in a lower tone, and Mr. Bolt departed in a hurry. Half an hour afterwards he was back on board, and theAmelia, with the tartane in tow, made sail to the eastward in search of the blockading fleet.
Mr. Bolt, introduced into a cabin strongly lighted by a swinging lamp, tendered to his captain across the table a sail-cloth package corded and sealed, and a piece of paper folded in four, which, he explained, seemed to be a certificate of registry, strangely enough mentioning no name. Captain Vincent seized the grey canvas package eagerly.
“This looks like the very thing, Bolt,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “What else did you find on board?”
Bolt said that he had found three dead men, two on the after-deck and one lying at the bottom of the open hold with the bare end of the foresheet in his hand—“shot down, I suppose, just as he had let it go,” he commented. He described the appearance of the bodies and reported that he had disposed of them according to orders. In the tartane’s cabin there was half a demijohn of wine and a loaf of bread in a locker; also, on the floor, a leather valise containing an officer’s uniform coat and a change of clothing. He had lighted the lamp and saw that the linen was marked “E. Réal.” An officer’s sword on a broad shoulder-belt was also lying on the floor. These things could not have belonged to the old chap with the white hair, who was a big man. “Looks as if somebody had tumbled overboard,” commented Bolt. Two of thebodies looked nondescript, but there was no doubt about that fine old fellow being a seaman.
“By heavens!” said Captain Vincent, “he was that! Do you know, Bolt, that he nearly managed to escape us. Another twenty minutes would have done it. How many wounds had he?”
“Three I think, sir. I did not look closely,” said Bolt.
“I hated the necessity of shooting brave men like dogs,” said Captain Vincent. “Still, it was the only way; and there may be something here,” he went on, slapping the package with his open palm, “that will justify me in my own eyes. You may go now.”
Captain Vincent did not turn in, but only lay down fully dressed on the couch till the officer of the watch, appearing at the door, told him that a ship of the fleet was in sight away to windward. Captain Vincent ordered the private night signal to be made. When he came on deck the towering shadow of a line-of-battle ship that seemed to reach to the very clouds was well within hail and a voice bellowed from her through a speaking-trumpet:
“What ship is that?”
“His Majesty’s sloopAmelia,” hailed back Captain Vincent. “What ship is that, pray?”
Instead of the usual answer, there was a short pause, and another voice spoke boisterously through the trumpet:
“Is that you, Vincent? Don’t you know theSuperbwhen you see her?”
“Not in the dark, Keats. How are you? I am in a hurry to speak the Admiral.”
“The fleet is lying by,” came the voice, now withpainstaking distinctness, across the murmurs, whispers and splashes of the black lane of water dividing the two ships. “The Admiral bears S.S.E. If you stretch on till daylight as you are, you will fetch him on the other tack in time for breakfast on board theVictory. Is anything up?”
At every slight roll the sails of theAmelia, becalmed by the bulk of the seventy-four, flapped gently against the masts.
“Not much,” hailed Captain Vincent. “I made a prize.”
“Have you been in action?” came the swift inquiry.
“No, no. Piece of luck.”
“Where’s your prize?” roared the speaking-trumpet with interest.
“In my desk,” roared Captain Vincent in reply.... “Enemy dispatches.... I say, Keats, fill on your ship. Fill on her, I say, or you will be falling on board of me.” He stamped his foot impatiently. “Clap some hands at once on the tow-line and run that tartane close under our stern,” he called to the officer of the watch, “or else the oldSuperbwill walk over her without ever knowing anything about it.”
When Captain Vincent presented himself on board theVictoryit was too late for him to be invited to share the Admiral’s breakfast. He was told that Lord Nelson had not been seen on deck yet that morning; and presently word came that he wished to see Captain Vincent at once in his cabin. Being introduced, the captain of theAmelia, in undress uniform, with a sword by his side and his hat under his arm, was received kindly, made his bow and with a few words of explanation laid the packet on the big round table atwhich sat a silent secretary in black clothes, who had been obviously writing a letter from his Lordship’s dictation. The Admiral had been walking up and down, and after he had greeted Captain Vincent he resumed his pacing of a nervous man. His empty sleeve had not yet been pinned on his breast, and swung slightly every time he turned in his walk. His thin locks fell lank against the pale cheeks, and the whole face in repose had an expression of suffering with which the fire of his one eye presented a startling contrast. He stopped short and exclaimed while Captain Vincent towered over him in a respectful attitude:
“A tartane! Captured on board a tartane! How on earth did you pitch upon that one out of the hundreds you must see every month?”
“I must confess that I got hold accidentally of some curious information,” said Captain Vincent. “It was all a piece of luck.”
While the secretary was ripping open with a penknife the cover of the dispatches Lord Nelson took Captain Vincent out into the stern gallery. The quiet and sunshiny morning had the added charm of a cool, light breeze; and theVictory, under her three topsails and lower staysails, was moving slowly to the southward in the midst of the scattered fleet carrying for the most part the same sail as the Admiral. Only far away two or three ships could be seen covered with canvas, trying to close with the flag. Captain Vincent noted with satisfaction that the first lieutenant of theAmeliahad been obliged to brace by his afteryards in order not to overrun the Admiral’s quarter.
“Why!” exclaimed Lord Nelson suddenly, afterlooking at the sloop for a moment, “you have that tartane in tow!”
“I thought that your Lordship would perhaps like to see a 40-ton lateen craft which has led such a chase to, I dare say, the fastest sloop in His Majesty’s service.”
“How did it all begin?” asked the Admiral, continuing to look at theAmelia.
“As I have already hinted to your Lordship, certain information came in my way,” began Captain Vincent, who did not think it necessary to enlarge upon that part of the story. “This tartane, which is not very different to look at from the other tartanes along the coast between Cette and Genoa, had started from a cove on the Giens peninsula. An old man with a white head of hair was entrusted with the service, and really they could have found nobody better. He came round Cape Esterel intending to pass through the Hyères Roadstead. Apparently he did not expect to find theAmeliain his way. And it was there that he made his only mistake. If he had kept on his course, I would probably have taken no more notice of him than of two other craft that were in sight then. But he acted suspiciously by hauling up for the battery on Porquerolles. This manœuvre in connection with the information of which I spoke decided me to overhaul him and see what he had on board.” Captain Vincent then related concisely the episodes of the chase. “I assure your Lordship that I never gave an order with greater reluctance than to open musketry fire on that craft; but the old man had given such proofs of his seamanship and determination that there was nothing else for it. Why! at the very moment he had theAmeliaalongside of him he still made a most cleverattempt to prolong the chase. There were only a few minutes of daylight left, and in the darkness we might very well have lost him. Considering that they all could have saved their lives simply by striking their sails on deck, I cannot refuse them my admiration, and especially to the white-haired man.”
The Admiral, who had been all the time looking absently at theAmeliakeeping her station with the tartane in tow, said:
“You have a very smart little ship, Vincent. Very fit for the work I have given you to do. French built, isn’t she?”
“Yes, my Lord. They are great shipbuilders.”
“You don’t seem to hate the French, Vincent,” said the Admiral, smiling faintly.
“Not that kind, my Lord,” said Captain Vincent, with a bow. “I detest their political principles and the characters of their public men, but your Lordship will admit that for courage and determination we could not have found worthier adversaries anywhere on this globe.”
“I never said that they were to be despised,” said Lord Nelson. “Resource, courage, yes.... If that Toulon fleet gives me the slip, all our squadrons from Gibraltar to Brest will be in jeopardy. Why don’t they come out and be done with it? Don’t I keep far enough out of their way?” he cried.
Vincent remarked the nervous agitation of the frail figure with a concern augmented by a fit of coughing which came on the Admiral. He was quite alarmed by its violence. He watched the Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean choking and gasping so helplessly that he felt compelled to turn his eyes away from thepainful spectacle; but he noticed also how quickly Lord Nelson recovered from the subsequent exhaustion.
“This is anxious work, Vincent,” he said. “It is killing me. I aspire to repose somewhere in the country, in the midst of fields, out of reach of the sea and the Admiralty and dispatches and orders, and responsibility too. I have been just finishing a letter to tell them at home I have hardly enough breath in my body to carry me on from day to day.... But I am like that white-headed man you admire so much, Vincent,” he pursued, with a weary smile, “I will stick to my task till perhaps some shot from the enemy puts an end to everything.... Let us see what there may be in those papers you have brought on board.”
The secretary in the cabin had arranged them in separate piles.
“What is it all about?” asked the Admiral, beginning again to pace restlessly up and down the cabin.
“At the first glance, the most important, my Lord, are the orders for marine authorities in Corsica and Naples to make certain dispositions in view of an expedition to Egypt.”
“I always thought so,” said the Admiral, his eye gleaming at the attentive countenance of Captain Vincent. “This is a smart piece of work on your part, Vincent. I can do no better than send you back to your station. Yes ... Egypt ... the East.... Everything points that way,” he soliloquised under Vincent’s eyes, while the secretary, picking up the papers with care, rose quietly and went out to have them translated and to make an abstract for the Admiral.
“And yet who knows!” exclaimed Lord Nelson,standing still for a moment. “But the blame or the glory must be mine alone. I will seek counsel from no man.” Captain Vincent felt himself forgotten, invisible, less than a shadow in the presence of a nature capable of such vehement feelings. “How long can he last?” he asked himself with sincere concern.
The Admiral, however, soon remembered his presence, and at the end of another ten minutes Captain Vincent left theVictory, feeling, like all officers who approached Lord Nelson, that he had been speaking with a personal friend; and with a renewed devotion for the great sea-officer’s soul dwelling in the frail body of the Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s ships in the Mediterranean. While he was being pulled back to his ship a general signal went up in theVictoryfor the fleet to form line, as convenient, ahead and astern of the Admiral; followed by another to theAmeliato part company. Vincent accordingly gave his orders to make sail, and, directing the master to shape a course for Cape Cicié, went down into his cabin. He had been up nearly the whole of the last three nights, and he wanted to get a little sleep. His slumbers, however, were short and disturbed. Early in the afternoon he found himself broad awake and reviewing in his mind the events of the day before. The order to shoot three brave men in cold blood, terribly distasteful at the time, was lying heavily on him. Perhaps he had been impressed by Peyrol’s white head, his obstinacy to escape him, the determination shown to the very last minute; by something in the whole episode that suggested a more than common devotion to duty and a spirit of daring defiance. With his robust health, simple good nature, and sanguine temperament touchedwith a little irony, Captain Vincent was a man of generous feelings and of easily moved sympathies.
“Yet,” he reflected, “they have been asking for it. There could be only one end to that affair. But the fact remains that they were defenceless and unarmed and particularly harmless-looking, and at the same time as brave as any. That old chap now....” He wondered how much of exact truth there was in Symons’ tale of adventure. He concluded that the facts must have been true but that Symons’ interpretation of them made it extraordinarily difficult to discover what really there was under all that. That craft certainly was fit for blockade running. Lord Nelson had been pleased. Captain Vincent went on deck with the kindliest feelings towards all men, alive and dead.
The afternoon had turned out very fine. The British fleet was just out of sight with the exception of one or two stragglers, under a press of canvas. A light breeze, in which only theAmeliacould travel at five knots, hardly ruffled the profundity of the blue waters basking in the warm tenderness of the cloudless sky. To south and west the horizon was empty except for two specks very far apart, of which one shone white like a bit of silver and the other appeared black like a drop of ink. Captain Vincent, with his purpose firm in his mind, felt at peace with himself. As he was easily accessible to his officers, his first lieutenant ventured a question to which Captain Vincent replied:
“He looks very thin and worn out, but I don’t think he is as ill as he thinks he is. I am sure you all would like to know that his Lordship is pleased with our yesterday’s work—those papers were of some importanceyou know—and generally with theAmelia. It was a queer chase, wasn’t it?” he went on. “That tartane was clearly and unmistakably running away from us. But she never had a chance against theAmelia.”
During the latter part of that speech the first lieutenant glanced astern as if asking himself how long Captain Vincent proposed to drag that tartane behind theAmelia. The two keepers in her wondered also as to when they would be permitted to get back on board their ship. Symons, who was one of them, declared that he was sick and tired of steering the blamed thing. Moreover, the company on board made him uncomfortable; for Symons was aware that in pursuance of Captain Vincent’s orders, Mr. Bolt had had the three dead Frenchmen carried into the cuddy, which he afterwards secured with an enormous padlock that, apparently, belonged to it, and had taken the key on board theAmelia. As to one of them, Symons’ unforgiving verdict was that it would have served him right to be thrown ashore for crows to peck his eyes out. And anyhow, he could not understand why he should have been turned into the coxswain of a floating hearse, and be damned to it.... He grumbled interminably.