John Ozanne made us all lie down, save when a change of course was necessary, while he did his utmost to get the weather gauge of the enemy. And he managed it at last by a series of tacks which cost us many men and more spars. Then, throwing prudence to the winds, he drove straight for the Frenchman to board him at any cost. It was our only chance, for his heavier guns would have let him plug us from a distance, till every man on board was down.

We gave a wild cheer as we recognised the success of John Ozanne's manoeuvring, and every man gripped his steel and ground his teeth for a fight to the death.

But it was not to be. Death was there, but no fight. For, as we plunged straight for the Frenchman, following every twist he made, and eager only for the leap at his throat, our little ship began to roll in a sickly fashion as she had never done before, and men looked into one another's faces with fears in their eyes beyond any all the Frenchmen in the world could put there. And the carpenter, who had been on deck with the rest, bursting for the fight, tumbled hastily below, and came up in a moment with a face like putty.

"She's going!" he cried, and it was his last word. One of those devilish six feet of whirling bars scattered him and three others into fragments and then shore its way through the bulwarks behind. And the winged Swallow began to roll under our feet in the way that makes a seaman's heart grow sick.

The Frenchman never ceased firing on us. No matter. It was only a choice of deaths. Not a man among us would have asked his life from him, even if the chance had been given, and it was not.

My last look at the Frenchman showed him coming straight for us. I saw the great forecastle gun belch its cloud of smoke. The water was spouting up in white jets through our scuppers. It came foaming green and white through our gun ports. Then, in solid green sheets, it leaped up over the bulwarks, and for a moment the long flush deck was a boiling cauldron with a bloody scum, in which twirled and twisted dead men and living, and fragments of the ship and rigging.

When I came up through the roaring green water I found myself within arm's length of the foretopsailyard, to which a strip of ragged sail still hung. I hooked my arm over it and looked round for my comrades. About a score of heads floated in the belching bubbles of the sunken ship, but even as I looked the number lessened, for the Island men of those days were no swimmers. A burly body swung past me. I grabbed it, dragged it to the spar and hoisted its arm over it. It was John Ozanne, and presently he recovered sufficiently to get his other arm up and draw himself chest-high to look about him. The light spar would not support us both, and I let myself sink into the water, with only a grip on a hanging rope's end to keep in tow with it.

John Ozanne gazed wildly round for a minute, and then raised his right arm and volubly cursed the Frenchman, who was coming right down on us.

"Oh, you devils! You devils! May—" and then to my horror, for with the wash of the waves in my ears I could hear nothing, a small round hole bored itself suddenly in his broad forehead, just where the brown and the white met, and he threw up his arms and dropped back into the water.

I made a grab for him, but he was gone, and even as I did so the meaning of that hideous little round hole in his forehead came plain to me. The Frenchman was shooting at every head he could see.

I dragged the spar over me, and floated under the strip of sail with no more than my nose showing between it and the wood, and the long black hull, with its red streak glistening as though but just new dipped in blood, swept past me so close that I could have touched it. Through the opening between my sail and the spar I could see grim faces looking over the side, and the flash and smoke of muskets as the poor strugglers beyond were shot down one by one.

I lay there—in fear and trembling, I confess, for against cold-blooded brutality such as this no man's courage may avail—till the last shots had long died away. And when at last I ventured to raise my head and look about me, the Frenchman was stretching away to the north-east and the Indiaman was pressing to the north, and both were far away. The sun sank like a ball of fire dipped in blood as I watched. The long red trail faded off the waters, and the soft colours out of the sky. The sea was a chill waste of tumbling waves. The sky was a cast-iron shutter. The manhood went out of me, and I sank with a sob on to my frail spar, for of all our company which had sailed so gallantly out of Peter Port five days before, I was the only one left, and the rest had all been done to death in most foul and cruel fashion.



CHAPTER XIX

HOW I FELL INTO THE RED HAND

I must have fallen into a stupor, as the effect of the terrible strain on mind and body of all I had gone through. For I remember nothing of that first night on the spar, and only came slowly back to sense of sodden pain and hunger when the sun was up. Some sailorly instinct, of which I have no recollection whatever, had taken a turn of the rope under my arms and round the yard, and so kept me from slipping away. But I woke up to agonies of cold—a sodden deadness of the limbs which set me wondering numbly if I had any legs left—and a gnawing hunger and emptiness. I felt no thirst; perhaps because my body was so soaked with water. In the same dull way the horrors of the previous day came back on me, and I wondered heavily if my dead comrades had not the better lot.

But the bright sun warmed the upper part of me, and I essayed to drag my dead legs out of the water, if perchance they might be warmed back to life also. They came back in time, with horrible pricking pains and cramps which I could only suffer, lest I should roll off into the water. And if I had, I am not at all sure that I would have struggled further, so weary and broken had the night left me.

All that day I lay on my spar, warmed into meagre life by the sun, and tortured at first with the angry clamour of an empty stomach, for it was full twenty hours since I had eaten, and the wear and tear alone would have needed very full supplies to make good. But in time the bitter hunger gave place to a sick emptiness which I essayed to stay by chewing bits of floating seaweed. And this, and the drying of my body by the sun, brought on a furious thirst, to which the sparkling water that broke against my spar proved a most horrible temptation. So torturing was it in the afternoon that the sodden cold of the night now seemed as nothing in comparison, and to relieve it I dropped my body into the water to soak again.

Not a sail did I see that whole day, but being so low in the water my range was of course very limited. In the times when I could get away for a moment or two from my hunger and thirst, my thoughts ran horribly on the previous day's happenings—those hurtling iron flails against which we were powerless—that little round hole that bored itself in John Ozanne's forehead—that cold-blooded shooting of drowning men—the monstrous brutality of it all! What little blood was in me, and cold as that was, surged up into my head at the recollection, and set me swaying on my perch.

And then my thoughts wandered off to the poor souls in Peter Port, hopefully speculating on the luck we were like to have, counting on the return of those whose broken bodies were dredging the bottom below me,—to the shocking completeness of our disasters. Truly when it all came back on me like that I felt inclined at times to loose my hold and have done with life. And then the thought of Carette, and my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, would brace me to further precarious clinging with a warming of the heart, but chiefly the thought of Carette, and the good-bye she had waved to me from the point of Brecqhou.

I might, perhaps, with reason have remembered that what had happened to us was but one of the natural results of warfare—barring, of course, the murderous treatment of which no British seaman ever would be guilty. But I did not. My thoughts ran wholly on the actual facts, and, as I have said, faintly at times, but to my salvation, on Carette and home.

While the sun shone, and the masses of soft white cloud floated slowly against the blue, hope still held me, if precariously at times. At midday, indeed, the fierce bite of his rays on my bare back—for we had stripped for the fight and I had on only my breeches and belt—combined with the salting of the previous night and the dazzle of the dancing waves added greatly to my discomfort. I felt like an insect under a burning glass, and suffered much until I had the sense to slice a piece off my sail with my knife and pull it over my raw shoulder bones. But when night fell again, the chill waste of waters washed in on my soul and left me desolate and hopeless, and I hardly hoped to see the dawn.

I remember little of the night, except that it was full of long-drawn agony and seemed as if it would never end. But for the rope under my arms and the loop of the sail, into which some time during the night I slipped, I must have gone, and been lost.

In the morning the sun again woke what life was left in me. I had been nearly forty-eight hours without food or drink, and strained on the edge of death every moment of that time. It was but the remnant of a man that lay like a rag across the spar, and he looked only for death, and yet by instinct clung to life.

And when my weary eyes lifted themselves to look dully round, there, like a white cloud of hope, came life pressing gloriously towards me—a pyramid of snowy canvas, dazzling in the sunshine, the upper courses of a very large ship.

She was still a great way off, but I could see down to her lower foretop-gallant sail, and to my starting eyes she seemed to grow as I watched her. She was coming my way, and I have little doubt that, in the weakness of the moment and the sudden leap of hope when hope seemed dead, I laughed and cried and behaved like a witless man. I know that I prayed God, as I had never prayed in my life before, that she might keep her course and come close enough for some sharp eye to see me.

Now I could see her fore and main courses, and presently the black dot of her hull, and at last the white curl at her forefoot, as she came pressing gallantly on, just as though she knew my need and was speeding her best to answer it.

While she was still far away, I raised myself as high as I could on my spar and waved my rag of sail desperately. I tried to shout, but could not bring out so much as a whisper. I waved and waved. She was coming—coming. She was abreast of me, and showed no sign of having seen me. She was passing—passing. I remember scrambling up onto the spar and waving—waving—waving—

* * * * *

I came to myself in the comforting confinement of a bunk. I could touch the side and the roof. They were real and solid. I rubbed my hand on them. There was mighty comfort and assurance of safety in the very feel of them.

I lay between white sheets, and there was a pillow under my head. I tried to raise my head to look about me, but it swam like oil in a pitching lamp, and I was glad to drop it on the pillow again. The place was full of creakings, a sound I knew right well.

A door opened. I turned my head on the pillow and saw a stout little man looking at me with much interest.

"Ah ha!" he said, with a friendly nod. "That's all right. Come back at last, have you? Narrow squeak you made of it. How long had you been on that spar?"

"I remember—a night and a day—and a night—and the beginning of a day," I said, and my voice sounded harsh and odd to me.

"And nothing to eat or drink?"

"I chewed some seaweed, I think."

"Must have been in excellent condition or you'd never have stood it."

"What ship?"

"Plinlimmon Castle, East Indiaman, homeward bound. This is sick-bay. You're in my charge. Hungry?"

"No," and I felt surprised at myself for not being.

"I should think not," he laughed. "Been dropping soup and brandy into you every chance we got for twenty-four hours past. Head swimmy?"

"Yes," and I tried to raise it, but dropped back onto the pillow.

"Another bit of sleep and you shall tell us all about it." And he went out, and I fell asleep again.

I woke next time to my wits, and could sit up in the bunk without my head going round. The little doctor came in presently with another whom I took to be the captain of the Indiaman. He was elderly and jovial-looking, face like brown leather, with a fringe of white whisker all round it.

In answer to his questions I told him who I was, and where from, and how I came to be on the spar.

"But, by ——!" he swore lustily, when I came to the flying flails and the shooting of the drowning men, "that was sheer bloody murder!"

"Murder as cruel as ever was done," I said, and told him further of the round hole that bored itself in John Ozanne's forehead right before my eyes.

"By ——!" he said again, and more lustily than ever. "I hope to God we don't run across him! Which way did he go, did you say?"

"He went off nor'-east, but his prowling-ground is hereabouts. What guns do you carry, sir?"

"Ten eighteen-pound carronades."

I shook my head. "He could play with you as he did with us, and you could never hit back."

"—— him!" said the old man, and went out much disturbed.

The cheery little doctor chatted with me for a few minutes, and told me that both they and the Indiaman we saw Red Hand looting belonged to the convoy we had seen pass three days before, but, having sprung some of their upper gear in the storm, they had had to put into Lisbon for repairs, and the rest could not wait for the two lame ducks.

"Think he'll come across us?" he asked anxiously.

"I'll pray God he doesn't. For I don't see what you can do if he does."

"I'm inclined to think that the best thing would be to let him take what he wants and go. He let the Mary Jane go, you say?"

"She went one way and he the other, when he'd sunk us, and we were told he rarely makes prizes. Just helps himself to the best, like a pirate. He's just a pirate, and nothing else."

"Discretion is sometimes the better part of valour," he said musingly. "When you can't fight it's no good pretending you can, and this old hooker can't do more than seven knots, and not often that. We've been last dog all the way round. The frigates used to pepper us till they got tired of it;" and he went out, and I knew what his advice would be if he should be asked for it.

About midday I felt so much myself again—until I got onto my feet, when I learned what forty-eight hours starving on a spar can take out of a man—that I got up and dressed myself, by degrees, in some things I found waiting for me in one of the other bunks.

I hauled myself along a passage till I came to a gangway down which the sweet salt air poured like new life, and the first big breath of it set my head spinning again for a moment.

I was hanging on to the handrail when a man came tumbling down in haste.

"It's you," he cried, at sight of me. "Cap'n wants you;" and we went up together, and along the deck to the poop, where the captain stood with his officers and a number of ladies and gentlemen. From the look of them they all seemed disturbed and anxious, and they all turned to look at me as if I could help them.

"Carre," said the captain, as I climbed the ladder, "look there! Is that the —— villain?" and pointed over the starboard quarter.

One look was enough for me. I had stared hard enough at that long black hull three days before, while it thrashed us to death with its whirling devilries. And there was no mistaking the splash of red on his foretopsail.

"It's him, captain;" and the ladies wrung their hands, while the men looked deadly grim, and the captain took a black turn along the deck and came back and stood in front of them.

"It's not in an Englishman's heart to give in without a fight," he said gruffly, "and I'm not in the habit of asking any man's advice about my own business, but from what this man says that —— villain over yonder can flay us to pieces at his pleasure and we can't touch him;" and he looked at me.

"That is so," I said.

"If we let him have his way the chances are he'll take all he wants and go. If we fight—My God, how can we fight? We can't reach him. What would you do now? You've been through it once with him," he turned suddenly on me.

"I'd give five years of my life to have a grip of his throat—"

"And how'd you get there under these conditions, my man?"

"You can't do a thing, captain. And anything you try will only make it worse. He'll send you one of his damnable cart-wheels aboard and you'll see the effect. You know how far your carronades will carry."

"Get you below, all of you," he said to his white-faced passengers. "No need to get yourselves killed. He'll probably go for our spars, but when shots are flying you can't tell what'll happen. Stop you with me!" he said to me, and the poop cleared quickly of all outsiders.

The schooner came on like a racehorse. While yet a great way off a puff of smoke balled out on his fore-deck and disappeared before the report reached us.

"That's blank to tell us to stop. I must have more to justify me than that," said the captain, and held on.

Another belch of white smoke on the schooner, and in a minute our foremast was sliced through at the cap, and the foretopmast, with its great square sails, and their hamper, was banging on the deck, while the jibs and staysail fell into the sea to leeward, and the big ship fell off her course and nosed round towards the wind.

"—— him! That's dismantling shot and no mistake about it. There's nothing else for it. Haul down that flag!" cried the captain; and we were captive to Red Hand.

"Sink his —— boats as he comes aboard, sir!" said one of the mates in a black fury. "He's only a —— pirate."

"I would, if we'd gain anything by it," said the captain grimly. "But it'd only end in him sinking us. Our pop-guns are out of it;" and they stood there, with curses in their throats—it was a cursing age, you must remember—and faces full of gloomy anger, as helpless against the Frenchman's long-range guns as seagulls on a rock.

The schooner came racing on, and rounded to with a beautiful sweep just out of reach of our guns. Practice had made him perfect. He knew his damnable business to the last link in the chain.

We could see his deck black with men, and presently a boat dropped neatly and came bounding towards us.

"Depress your carronades and discharge them," ordered a black-bearded young man in her, in excellent English, as they hooked on. "If one is withdrawn, we will blow you out of the water."

The guns were discharged. The schooner gave a coquettish shake and came sweeping down alongside the Indiaman; some of her crew leaped into our main chains, and lashed the two ships together. Then a mob of rough-looking rascals came swarming up our side, and at their head was one at sight of whom my breath caught in my throat, and I rubbed my eyes in startled amazement, lest their forty-eight hours' salting should have set them astray.

But they told true, and a black horror and a cold fear fell upon me. I saw the bloody scum swirling round on the Swallow's deck as she sank. I saw the heads of my struggling shipmates disappearing one by one under those felon shots from the schooner. I saw once more that little round hole bore itself in John Ozanne's forehead on the spar. And I knew that there was not room on earth for this man and me. I knew that if he caught sight of me I was a dead man.

For the last time I had seen that grim black face—which was also the first time—he was leaning over the rock wall of Herm, watching me steadfastly as I pulled away from him towards Peter Port, and his face was stamped clear on my memory for all time.

It was Torode of Herm, and in a flash I saw to the bottom of his treachery and my own great peril. No wonder he was so successful and came back full from every cruise, when others brought only tales of empty seas. He lived in security on British soil and played tinder both flags. By means of a quickly assumed disguise, he robbed British ships as a Frenchman, and French ships as an Englishman. That explained to the full the sinking of the Swallow and the extermination of her crew. It was to him a matter of life or death. If one escaped with knowledge of the facts, the devilment must end. And I was that one man.

His keen black eyes had swept over us as he came over the side. I shrank small and prayed God he had not seen me.

He walked up to the captain and said gruffly, "You are a, wise man, monsieur. It is no good fighting against the impossible."

"I know it, or I'd have seen you damned before I'd have struck to you," growled the old man sourly.

"Quite so! Now, your papers, if you please, and quick!" and the captain turned to go for them.

All this I heard mazily, for my head was still whirring with its discovery.

Then, without a sign of warning, like one jerked by sudden instinct, Torode turned, pushed through the double row of men behind whom I had shrunk—and they opened quickly enough at his approach—and raising his great fist struck me to the deck like an ox.

When I came to I was lying in a bunk, bound hand and foot. My head was aching badly, and close above me on deck great traffic was going on between the ship and the schooner, transferring choice pickings of the cargo, I supposed, when my senses got slowly to work again.

But why was I there—and still alive? That was a puzzle beyond me entirely. By all rights, and truly according to my expectation, I should have been a dead man. Why was I here, and unharmed, save for a singing head?

Puzzle as I might, I had nothing to go upon and could make nothing of it. But since I was still alive, hope grew in me. For it would have been no more trouble to Torode to kill me—less indeed. And since he had not, it could only be because he had other views.

For a long time the shuffling tread of laden men went on close above my head—for hours, I suppose. The sun was sinking when at last the heel and swing of the schooner told me we were loosed and away.

No shot had been fired, save the first one calling the Indiaman to stop, and the second one that drove the command home. To that extent I had been of service to them, bitter as surrender without a fight had been, for an utterly impossible resistance could only have ended one way and after much loss of life.

Long after it was dark a man came in with a lantern and a big bowl of soup, good soup such as we get in the Islands, and half a loaf of bread, and a pannikin of water. He set the things beside me, and untied my hands, and placed the light so that it fell upon me, and stood patching me till I had finished.

From his size I thought it was Torode himself, but he never opened his mouth, nor I mine, except to put food into it. When I had done, he tied my hands again and went out.

I slept like a top that night, in spite of it all, and felt better in the morning and not without hope. For, as a rule, civilised men, ruffians though they may be, do not feed those they are going to kill. They kill and have done with it.

The same man brought me coffee and bread and meat, and stood watching me again with his back to the porthole while I ate.

It was, as I had thought, Torode himself, and I would have given all I possessed—which indeed was not overmuch—to know what was passing concerning me in that great black head of his. But I did not ask him, for I should not have expected him to tell me. I just ate and drank every scrap of what he brought me, with as cheerful an air as I could compass, and thanked him politely when I had done.



CHAPTER XX

HOW I LAY IN THE CLEFT OF A ROCK

On the third day of my confinement, and as near as I could tell about midday, the small round porthole of my cabin was suddenly darkened by a flap of sail let down from above, purposely I judged, and shortly afterwards I found the ship was at rest.

It was after dark when Torode came in, and, without a word, bandaged my eyes tightly, and then called in two of his men, who shouldered me, and carried me up the companion and laid me in a boat. The passage was a short one, about as far I thought as, say, from the anchorage at Herm to the landing-place. Then they shouldered me again, and stumbled up a rocky way and along a passage where their feet echoed hollowly, and finally laid me down and went away. Torode untied my hands and feet and took off the bandage.

By the light of his lantern I saw that I was in a rock room, with rough natural walls, and sweet salt air blowing in from the farther end. There was food and water, and a mattress and blanket. He left me without a word, and locked behind him a grating of stout iron bars which filled all the space between floor and roof. I was long past puzzling over the meaning of it all. I ate my food, and lay down and slept.

A shaft of sunlight awoke me, and I examined my new prison with care. It was a bit of a natural rock passage, such as I had often seen on Sercq, formed, I have been told, by the decay of some softer material between two masses of rock. It was about eight feet wide, and the roof, some twenty feet above my head, was formed by the falling together of the sides which sloped and narrowed somewhat at the entrance. In length, my room was thirty paces from the iron grating to the opening in the face of the cliff. This opening also was strongly barred with iron. The floor of the passage broke off sharply there, and when I worked out a piece of rock from the side wall, and dropped it through the bars, it seemed to fall straight into the sea, a good hundred feet below. The left-hand wall stopped a foot beyond the iron bars, but at the right hand the rock wall ran on for twenty feet or so, then turned across the front of my window and so obscured the outlook. I hated that rock wall for cutting off my view, but it was almost all I had to look at, and before I said good-bye to it I knew every tendril of every fern that grew on it, and the colours of all the veins that ran through it, and of the close-creeping lichen that clothed it in patches.

By squeezing hard against the bars where they were let into the rock on the right, I found I could just get a glimpse of the free blue sea rolling and tossing outside, and by dint of observation and much careful watching I learned where I was.

For, away out there among the tumbling blue waves, I could just make out a double-headed rock which the tide never covered, and I recognised it as the Grand Amfroque, one of our steering points in Great Russel.

So, then, I was in Herm, not four miles away from Brecqhou, and though, for any benefit the knowledge was to me, I might as well have been in America itself, it still warmed my heart to think that Carette was there, and almost within sight but for that wretched wall of rock. If fiery longing could melt solid rock, that barrier had disappeared in the twinkling of an eye.

The time passed very slowly with me. I spent most of it against the bars, peering out at the sea. Once or twice distant boats passed across my narrow view, and I wondered who were in them. And I thought sadly of the folk in Peter Port still looking hopefully for the Swallow, and following her possible fortunes, and wishing her good luck—and she and all her crew, except myself, at the bottom of the sea, as foully murdered as ever men in this world were.

Twice each day Torode himself brought me food and watched me steadfastly while I ate it. His oversight and interest never seemed to slacken. At first it troubled me, but there was in it nothing whatever of the captor gloating over his prisoner; simply, as far as I could make out, a gloomy desire to note how I took matters, which put me on my mettle to keep up a bold front, though my heart was heavy enough at times at the puzzling strangeness of it all.

I thought much of Carette and my mother, and my grandfather and Krok, and I walked each day for hours, to and fro, to and fro, to keep myself from falling sick or going stupid. But the time passed slower than time had ever gone with me before, and I grew sick to death of that narrow cleft in the rock.

By a mark I made on the wall for each day of my stay there, it was on the tenth day that Torode first spoke to me as I ate my dinner.

"Listen!" he said, so unexpectedly, after his strange silence, that I jumped in spite of myself.

"Once you asked to join us and I refused. Now you must join us—or die. I have no desire for your death, but—well—you understand."

"When I asked to join you I believed you honest privateers. You are thieves and murderers. I would sooner die than join you now."

"You are young to die so."

"Go where you can, die when you must," I answered in our Island saying. "Better die young than live to dishonour."

He picked up my dishes and went out. But I could not see why he should have kept me alive so long for the purpose of killing me now, and I would not let my courage down.

One more attempt he made, three days later, without a word having passed between us meanwhile.

"Your time is running out, mon gars," he said, as abruptly as before. "I am loth to put you away, but it rests with yourself. You love Le Marchant's girl, Carette. Join us, and you shall have her. You will live with us on Herm, and in due time, when we have money enough, we will give up this life and start anew elsewhere."

"Carette is an honest girl—"

"She need not know—all that you know."

"And your son wants her—"

When you have had no one to speak to but yourself for fourteen days, the voice even of a man you hate is not to be despised. You may even make him talk for the sake of hearing him.

"I know it," said Torode. "I hear she favours you, but a dead man is no good. If you don't get her, as sure as the sun is in the sky the boy shall have her."

"Even so I will not join you."

"And that is your last word?"

"My last word. I will not join you. I have lived honest. I will die honest."

"Soit!" he growled, and went away, leaving me to somewhat gloomier thoughts.



CHAPTER XXI

HOW I FACED DEATHS AND LIVED

On the sixteenth day of my imprisonment I had stood against my bars till the last faint glow of the sunset faded off a white cloud in the east, and all outside had become gray and dim, and my room was quite dark. I had had my second meal, and looked as usual for no further diversion till breakfast next morning. But of a sudden I heard heavy feet outside my door, and Torode came in with a lantern, followed by two of his men.

"You are still of that mind?" he asked, as though we had discussed the matter but five minutes before.

"Yes."

"Then your time is up;" and at a word from him the men bound my hands and feet as before, tied a cloth over my eyes, and carried me off along the rocky way—to my death I doubted not.

To the schooner first in any case, though why they could not kill a man on shore as easily as at sea surprised me. Though, to be sure, a man's body is more easily and cleanly disposed of at sea than on shore, and leaves no mark behind it.

I was placed in the same bunk as before, and fell asleep wondering how soon the end of this strange business would come, but sure that it would not be long.

I was wakened in the morning by the crash of the big guns, and surmised that we had run across something. I heard answering guns and more discharges of our own, then the lowering of a boat, and presently my porthole was obscured as the schooner ground against another vessel.

Then the unexpected happened, in a furious fusillade of small arms from the other ship. Treachery had evidently met treachery, and Death had his hands full.

From the shouting aboard the other ship I felt sure they were Frenchmen, and glad as I was at thought of these ruffians getting paid in their own coin, and fit as it might be to meet cunning with cunning, I was yet glad that the payment was French and not English.

Of the first issue, however, I had small doubts in view of Torode's long guns and merciless methods, and though I could see nothing, with our own experiences red in my mind, I could still follow what happened.

The schooner sheared off, and presently the long guns got to work with their barbarous shot, and pounded away venomously, till I could well imagine what the state of that other ship must be.

When we ranged alongside again, no word greeted us. There was traffic between the two ships, and when we cast off I heard the crackling of flames.

Then there was much sluicing of water above my head, as our decks were washed down, and presently there came a rattling of boards which puzzled me much, until the end of one dipped suddenly across my porthole, and my straining wits suggested that Torode was changing his stripes and becoming a Frenchman once more.

The next day passed without any happening, and I lay racking my brain for reasons why one spot of sea should not be as good as another for dropping a man's body into.

But on the day after that, Torode came suddenly in on me in the afternoon, and looking down on me as I lay, he said roughly—

"Listen, you, Carre! By every reason possible you should die, but—well, I am going to give you chance of life. It is only a chance, but your death will not lie at my door, as it would do here. Now here is my last word. You know more than is good for me. If ever you disclose what you know, whether you come back or not, I will blot out all you hold dear in Sercq from top to bottom, though I have to bring the Frenchmen down to do it. You understand?"

"I understand."

"Be advised, then, and keep a close mouth."

I was blindfolded and carried out and laid in a waiting boat, which crossed to another vessel, and I was passed up the side, and down a gangway, amid the murmur of many voices.

When my eyes and bonds were loosed I found myself among a rough crowd of men in the 'tween decks of a large ship. The air was dim and close. From the row of heavy guns and great ports, several of which were open, I knew her to be a battleship and of large size. From the gabble of talk all round me I knew she was French.

After the first minute or two no one paid me any attention. All were intent on their own concerns. I sat down on the carriage of the nearest gun and looked about me.

The company was such as one would have looked for on a ship of the Republic—coarse and free in its manners, and loud of talk. They were probably most of them pressed men, not more than one day out, and looked on me only as a belated one of themselves. There was—for the moment at all events—little show of discipline. They all talked at once, and wrangled and argued, and seemed constantly on the point of blows; but it all went off in words, and no harm was done. But to me, who had barely heard a spoken word for close on twenty days, the effect was stunning, and I could only sit and watch dazedly, while my head spun round with the uproar.

Food was served out presently—well-cooked meat and sweet coarse bread, and a mug of wine to every man, myself among the rest. There was no lessening of the noise while they ate and drank, and I ate with the rest, and by degrees found my thoughts working reasonably.

I was at all events alive, and it is better to be alive than dead.

I was on a French ship of war, and that, from all points of view, save one, was better than being on a King's ship.

The one impossible point in the matter was that I was an Englishman on a ship whose mission in life must be to fight Englishmen. And that I never would do, happen what might, and it seemed to me that the sooner this matter was settled the better.

Discipline on a ship under the Republican flag was, I knew, very different from that on our own ships. The principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, if getting somewhat frayed and threadbare, still tempered the treatment of the masses, and so long as men reasonably obeyed orders, and fought when the time came, little more was expected of them, and they were left very much to themselves.

That was no doubt the reason why I had not so far, since I recovered my wits, come across anyone in authority, which I was now exceedingly anxious to do.

It was almost dark, outside the ship as well as inside, when I spied one who seemed, from his dress and bearing, something above the rest, and I made my way to him.

"Will you be so good as to tell me where I sleep, monsieur?" I asked.

"Same place as you slept last night, my son."

"I would be quite willing—"

"Ah tiens! you are the latest bird."

"At your service, monsieur."

"Come with me, and I'll get you a hammock and show you where to sling it."

And as he was getting it for me, I asked him the name of the ship and where she was going.

"The Josephine, 40-gun frigate, bound for the West Indies."

Then I proffered my request—

"Can you procure me an interview with the captain, monsieur?"

"What for?"

"I have some information to give him—information of importance."

"You can give it to me."

"No—to the captain himself, or to no one."

He looked at me critically and said curtly, "B'en, mon gars, we will see!" which might mean anything—threat or promise. But my thoughts during the night only confirmed me in my way.

Next morning after breakfast the same man came seeking me.

"Come then," he said, "and say your say," and he led me along to the quarterdeck, where the captain stood with some of his officers. He was a tall, good-looking man, very handsomely dressed. I came to know him later as Captain Charles Duchatel.

"This is the man, M. le capitaine," said my guide, pushing me to the front.

"Well, my man," said the captain, pleasantly enough, "what is the important information you have to give me?"

"M. le capitaine will perhaps permit me to explain, in the first place, that I am an Englishman," said I, with a bow.

"Truly you speak like one, mon gars," he laughed.

"That is because I am of the Norman Isles, monsieur. I am from Sercq, by Guernsey."

"Well!" he nodded.

"And therefore monsieur will see that it is not possible for me to fight against my own country." And I went on quickly, in spite of the frown I saw gathering on his face. "I will do any duty put upon me to the best of my power, but fight against my country I cannot."

He looked at me curiously, and said sharply, "A sailor on board ship obeys orders. Is it not so?"

"Surely, monsieur. But I am a prisoner. And as an Englishman I cannot fight against my country. Could monsieur do so in like case?"

"This is rank mutiny, you know."

"I do not mean it so, monsieur, I assure you."

"And was this the important information you had to give me?"

"No, monsieur, it was this. The man who brought me prisoner on board here,—monsieur knows him?"

"Undoubtedly! He has made himself known."

"Better perhaps than you imagine, monsieur. The merchants of Havre and Cherbourg will thank you for this that I tell you now. Torode to the English, Main Rouge to the French—he lives on Herm, the next isle to Sercq, where I myself live. He is the most successful privateer in all these waters. And why? I will tell you, monsieur. It is because he robs French ships as an English privateer, and English ships as a French privateer. He changes his skin as he goes and plunders under both flags."

"Really! That is a fine fairy tale. On my word it is worthy almost of La Fontaine himself. And what proof do you offer of all this, my man?"

"Truly none, monsieur, except myself—that I am here for knowing it."

"And Main Rouge knew that you knew it?"

"That is why I am here, monsieur."

"And alive! Main Rouge is no old woman, my man."

"It is a surprise to me that I still live, monsieur, and I cannot explain it. He has had me in confinement for three weeks, expecting to die each day, since he sank our schooner and shot our men in the water as they swam for their lives. Why, of all our crew, I live, I do not know."

"It is the strongest proof we have that what you tell me is untrue."

"And yet I tell it at risk of more than my life, monsieur. Torode's last words to me were that if I opened my mouth he would smite my kin in Sercq till not one was left."

"And he told me you were such an inveterate liar and troublesome fellow that he had had enough of you, and only did not kill you because of your people, whom he knows," he said, with a knowing smile.

Torode's forethought staggered me somewhat, but I looked the captain squarely in the face and said, "I am no liar, monsieur, and I have had no dealings with the man save as his prisoner." But I could not tell whether he believed me or not.

"And your mind is made up not to obey orders?" he asked, after a moment's thought.

"I cannot lift a hand against my country, monsieur."

"Place him under arrest," he said quietly, to the man who had brought me there. "I will see to him later;" and I had but exchanged one imprisonment for another.

That was as dismal a night as ever I spent, with no ray of hope to lighten my darkness, and only the feeling that I could have done no other, to keep me from breaking down entirely.

What the result would be I could not tell, but from the captain's point of view I thought he would be justified in shooting me, and would probably do so as a warning to the rest. He evidently did not believe a word I said, and I could not greatly blame him.

I thought of them all at home, but mostly of my mother and of Carette. I had little expectation of ever seeing them again, but I was sure they would not have had me act otherwise. It was what my grandfather would have done, placed as I was, and no man could do better than that. Most insistently my thoughts were of Carette and those bright early days on Sercq, and black as all else was, those remembrances shone like jewels in my mind. And when at times I thought of Torode and his stupendous treachery, my heart was like to burst with helpless rage. I scarcely closed my eyes, and in the morning felt old and weary.

About midday they came for me, and I was content that the end had come. They led me to the waist of the ship, where the whole company was assembled, and there they stripped me to the waist and bound my wrists to a gun carriage.

It was little relief to me to know that I was to be flogged, for the lash degrades, and breaks a man's spirit even more than his body. Even if undeserved, the brand remains, and can never be forgotten. It seemed to me then that I would as lief be shot and have done with it.

The captain eyed me keenly.

"Well," he asked, "you are still of the same mind? You still will not fight?"

"Not against my own country—not though you flog me to ribbons, monsieur."

The cat rested lightly on my back as the man who held it waited for the word.

Then, as I braced myself for the first stroke, which would be the hardest to bear, the captain said quietly to the officer next to him, "Perhaps as well end it at once. Send a file of marines—" and they walked a few steps beyond my hearing, for the blood belled in my ears and blurred my eyes so that my last sight of earth was like to be a dim one.

"Cast him loose and bandage his eyes," said the captain, and they set me standing against the side of the ship and tied a white cloth over my eyes.

I heard clearly enough now and with a quickened sense. I heard them range the men opposite to me—I hard the tiny clicking of the rings on the muskets as the men handled them—the breathing of those who looked on—the soft wash of the sea behind. But as far as was in me I faced them without flinching, for in truth I had given myself up and was thinking only of Carette and my mother and my grandfather, and was sending them farewell and a last prayer for their good.

"Are you ready?" asked the captain. "You will fire when I drop the handkerchief. You—prisoner—for the last time—yes or no?"

I shook my head, for I feared lest my voice should betray me. Let none but him who has faced this coldest of deaths cast a stone at me.

"Present! Fire!"—the last words I expected to hear on earth. The muskets rang out—but I stood untouched.

The captain walked across to me, whipped off the bandage, and clapped me soundly on the bare shoulder. "You are a brave boy, and I take as truth every word you have told me. If we come to fighting with your countrymen you shall tend our wounded. As to Red Hand—when we return home we will attend to him. Now, mon gars, to your duty!" and to my amazement I was alive, unflogged, and believed.

Perhaps it was a harsh test and an over cruel jest. But the man had no means of coming at the truth, and if he had shot me none could have said a word against it.

For me, I said simply, "I thank you, monsieur," and went to my duty.

My shipmates were for making much of me, in their rough and excited way, but I begged them to leave me to myself for a time, till I was quite sure I was still alive. And they did so at last, and I heard them debating among themselves how it could be that an Englishman could speak French as freely as they did themselves.

I had no cause to complain of my treatment on board the Josephine after that. The life was far less rigorous than on our own ships, and the living far more ample. If only I could have sent word of my welfare to those at home, who must by this time, I knew, be full of fears for me, I could have been fairly content. The future, indeed, was full of uncertainty, but it is that at best, and my heart was set on escape the moment the chance offered.

I went about my work with the rest, and took a certain pride in showing them how a British seaman could do his duty. Our curious introduction had given Captain Duchatel an interest in me. I often caught his eye upon me, and now and again he dropped me a word which was generally a cheerful challenge as to my resolution, and I always replied in kind. Recollections of those days crowd my mind as I look back on them, but they are not what I set out to tell, and greater matters lay just ahead.

With wonderful luck, and perhaps by taking a very outside course, we escaped the British cruisers, and arrived safely in Martinique, and there we lay for close on four months, with little to do but be in readiness for attacks which never came.

The living was good. Fresh meat and fruit were abundant, and we were allowed ashore in batches. And so the time passed pleasantly enough, but for the fact that one was an exile, and that those at home must be in sorrow and suspense, and had probably long since given up all hope of seeing their wanderer again. For this time was not as the last. They would expect news of us within a few weeks of our sailing, and the utter disappearance of the Swallow could hardly leave them ground for hope.



CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE JOSEPHINE CAME HOME

I had ample time to look my prospects in the face while we kept watch and ward on Martinique, and no amount of looking improved them.

My greatest hope was to return to French and English waters in the Josephine. I could perhaps have slipped away into the island, but that would in no way have furthered my getting home, rather would it have fettered me with new and tighter bonds. For in the end I must have boarded some English ship and been promptly pressed into the service, and that was by no means what I wanted. It was my own Island of Sercq I longed for, and all that it held and meant for me.

I saw clearly that if at any time we came to a fight with a British warship, and were captured, I must become either prisoner of war as a Frenchman, or pressed man as an Englishman. Neither position held out hope of a speedy return home, but, of the two, I favoured the first as offering perhaps the greater chances.

As the weeks passed into months, all of the same dull pattern, I lost heart at times, thinking of all that might be happening at home.

Sometimes it seemed to me hardly possible that Torode would dare to go on living at Herm and playing that desperate game of the double flags, while somewhere one man lived who might turn up at any time and blow him to the winds. And in pondering the matter, the fact that he had spared that man's life became a greater puzzle to me than ever. Depressing, too, the thought that if he did so stop on, it was because he considered the measures he had taken for his own safety as effective as death itself, and he was undoubtedly a shrewd and far-thinking man. That meant that my chances of ever turning up again in Sercq were small indeed. And, on the other hand, if a wholesome discretion drove him to the point of flitting, I had reason enough to fear for Carette. He had vowed his son should have her, and both father and son were men who would stick at nothing to gain their ends.

So my thoughts were black enough. I grew homesick, and heart-sick, and there were many more in the same condition, and maybe, to themselves, with equal cause.

Just four months we had been there, when one morning an old-fashioned 20-gun corvette came wallowing in, and an hour later we knew that she had come to relieve us and we were to sail for home as soon as we were provisioned. Work went with a will, for every man on board was sick of the place in spite of the easy living and good faring, and we were at sea within forty-eight hours. The word between-decks, too, was that Bonaparte was about to conquer England, and we were hurrying back to take part in the great invasion. The spirits and the talk ran to excess at times. I neither took part in it nor resented it. My alien standing was almost forgotten through the constant companionship of common tasks, and I saw no profit in flaunting it, though my determination not to lift a hand against my country was as strong as ever.

We had a prosperous voyage of thirty-five days, and were within two days' sail of Cherbourg, when we sighted a ship of war which had apparently had longer or quicker eyes than our own. She was coming straight for us when we became aware of her, and she never swerved from her course till her great guns began to play on us under British colours.

True to those colours, as soon as her standing was fixed, I made my way to Captain Duchatel to claim performance of his promise.

I had no need to put it into words. The moment I saluted, he said, "Ah, yes. So you stick to it?"

I saluted again, without speaking.

"Bien! Go to the surgeon and tell him you are to help him. There will be work for you all before long."

And there was. The story of a fight, from the cock-pit point of view, would be very horrible telling, and that is all I saw. I heard the thunder of our own guns, and the shouts of our men, and the splintering crash of the heavy shot that came aboard of us. But before long, when the streams of wounded began to come our way, I heard nothing but gasps and groans, and saw nothing but horrors which I would fain blot out of my memory, but cannot, even now.

I had seen wounded men before. I had been wounded myself. But seeing men fall, torn and mangled in the heat of fight, with the red fury blazing in one's own veins, and the smoke and smell of battle pricking in one's nostrils, and death in the very air—that is one thing. But tending those broken remnants of men in cold blood—handling them, and the pitiful parts of them, rent torn and out of the very semblance of humanity by the senseless shot—ah!—that was a very different thing. May I never see it again!

If my face showed anything of what I felt I must have looked a very sick man. But the surgeon's face was as white as paper and as grim as death, and when he jerked out a word it was through his set teeth, as though he feared more might come if he opened his mouth.

We worked like giants down there, but could not keep pace with Giant Death above. Before long all the passages were filled with shattered men; and with no distinct thought of it, because there was time to think of nothing but what was under one's hand, it seemed to me that the fight must be going against us, for surely, if things went on so much longer, there would be none of our men left.

Then with a grinding crash, and a recoil that sent our broken men in tumbled heaps, the two ships grappled, and above our gasps and groans we heard the yells and cheers of the boarding parties and their repellers, and presently from among the broken men brought down to us, a rough voice, which still sounded homely to my ears, groaned—

"Oh,—you— —— Johnnies! One more swig o' rum an' I'd go easy," and he groaned dolorously.

I mixed a pannikin of rum and water and placed it to his lips. He drank greedily, looked up at me with wide-staring eyes, gasped, "Well ——! my God!"—and died.

Captain Duchatel, as I heard afterwards, and as we ourselves might then judge by the results that came down to us, made a gallant fight of it. And that is no less than I would have looked for from him. He was a brave man, and his treatment of myself might have been very much worse than it had been. But he was overmatched, and suffered too, when the time of crisis came, from the lack of that severe discipline which made our English ships of war less comfortable to live in but more effective when the time for fighting came. I had often wondered how all the miscellaneous gear which crowded our 'tween decks would be got rid of in case of a fight, or, if not got rid of, how they could possibly handle their guns properly. I have since been told that what I saw on the Josephine was common elsewhere in the French ships of war, and often told sorely against them in a fight.

But in such matters Captain Duchatel only did as others did, and the fault lay with the system rather than with the man. For myself I hold his name in highest gratitude and reverence, for he crowned his good treatment of me by one most kindly and thoughtful act at the supremest moment of his life.

I was soaked in other men's blood from head to foot, and looked and felt like a man in a slaughterhouse. I was drawing into a corner, as decently as I could, the mangled remnants of a man who had died as they laid him down. I straightened my stiff back for a second and stood with my hands on my hips, and at that moment Captain Duchatel came running down the stairway, with a face like stone and a pistol in his hand.

He glanced at me. I saluted. He knew me through my stains.

"Sauvez-vous, mon brave! C'est fini!" he said quietly through his teeth.

A great thing to do!—a most gracious and noble thing! In his own final extremity to think of another's life as not rightly forfeit to necessity or country.

I understood in a flash, and sped up the decks—with not one second to spare. The upper deck was a shambles. I scrambled up the bulwark straight in front and sprang out as far as I could. Before I struck the water I heard the roar of a mighty explosion behind, and dived to avoid the after effects. When I came up, the sea all round was thrashing under a hail of falling timbers and fragments, but mostly beyond me because I was so close in to the ship. I took one big breath and sank again, and then a mighty swirling grip, which felt like death itself, laid hold on me and dragged me down and down till I looked to come up no more.

It let me go at last, and I fought my way up through fathomless heights of rushing green waters, with the very last ounce that was in me, and lay spent on my back with bursting head and breaking heart, staring straight up into a great cloud of smoke which uncoiled itself slowly like a mighty plume and let the blue sky show through in patches.

After the thunder of the guns, and that awful final crash, everything seemed strangely still. The water lapped in my ears, but I felt it rather than heard. Without lifting my head I could see, not far away, the ship we had fought, gaunt, stark, the ruins of the masterful craft that had raced so boldly for us two hours before. Her rigging was a vast tangle of loose ropes and broken spars, and some of her drooping sails were smouldering. Her trim black-and-white sides were shattered and scorched and blackened. It looked as though she had sheered off just a moment before the explosion, and so had missed the full force of it, but still had suffered terribly. Some of her lower sails still stood, and her crew were busily at work cutting loose the raffle and beating out the flames. But damaged as their own ship was, they still had thought for possible survivors of their enemy, and two boats dropped into the water as I looked, and came picking their way through the floating wreckage, with kneeling men in the bows examining everything they saw.

They promptly lifted me in, and from their lips I saw that they spoke to me. But I was encased in silence and could not hear a sound.

I had long since made up my mind that if we were captured I would take my chance as prisoner of war rather than risk being shot as a renegade or pressed into the King's service. For it seemed to me that the chances of being shot were considerable, since none would credit my story that I had been five months aboard a French warship except of my own free will. And as to the King's forced service, it was hated by all, and my own needs claimed my first endeavours.

So I answered them in French, in a voice that thundered in my head, that the explosion had deafened me and I could not hear a word they said. They understood and nodded cheerfully, and went on with their search.

Out of our whole ship's company six only were saved, and not one of them officers.

In the first moments of safety the lack of hearing had seemed to me of small account, compared with the fact that I was still alive. But, as we turned and made for the ship, the strange sensation of hearing only through the feelings of the body grew upon me; the thought of perpetual silence began to appal me. I could feel the sound of the oars in the rowlocks, and the dash of the waves against the boat, but though I could see men's lips moving it was all no more to me than dumb show.

They were busily cleaning the ship when we came aboard, but I could see what a great fight the Josephine had made of it. A long row of dead lay waiting decent burial, and every second man one saw was damaged in one way or another.

My companions were all more or less dazed, and probably deafened like myself. An officer questioned them, but apparently with small success. He turned to me, and I told him I could hear nothing because of the explosion, but I gave him all particulars as to the Josephine,—captain's name, number of men and guns, and whence we came, and that was what he wanted.

In the official report the saving of six out of a crew of over three hundred was, I suppose, not considered worth mentioning. The Josephine, was reported sunk with all on board, and that, as it turned out, was not without its concern for me.



CHAPTER XXIII

HOW I LAY AMONG LOST SOULS

The ship we were on was the 48-gun frigate Swiftsure, and of our treatment we had no reason to complain. We were landed at Portsmouth two days later, drafted from one full prison to another, from Forton to the Old Mill at Plymouth, from Plymouth to Stapleton near Bristol, separated by degrees and circumstances, till at last I found myself one more lost soul in the great company that filled the temporary war prison, known among its inmates and the people of that countryside as Amperdoo.

It lay apart from humanity, in a district of fens and marshes, across which, in the winter time, the east wind swept furiously in from the North Sea, some thirty miles away. It cut like a knife—to the very bone. I hear it still of a night in my dreams, and wake up and thank God that after all it is only our own gallant south-wester, which, if somewhat unreasonably boisterous at times, and over fond of showing what it can do, is still an honest wind, and devoid of treachery. For we were but ill-clad at best, and were always lacking in the matter of fuel, and many other things that make for comfort. Whatever we might be at other times, when the east wind blew in from the sea we were, every man of us, ames perdues in very truth, and I marvel sometimes that any of us saw the winter through.

The prison was a huge enclosure surrounded by a high wooden stockade. Inside this was another stockade, and between the two armed guards paced day and night. In the inner ring were a number of long wooden houses in which we lived, if that could be called living which for most was but a weary dragging on of existence bare of hope and love, and sorely trying at times to one's faith in one's fellows and almost in God Himself. For the misery and suffering enclosed within that sharp-toothed circle of unbarked posts were enough to crush a man's spirit and sicken his heart.

In the summer pestilential fevers and agues crept out of the marshes and wasted us. In the winter the east winds wrung our bones and our hearts. And summer and winter alike, the Government contractors, or those employed by them, waxed fat on their contracts, which, if honestly carried out, would have kept us in reasonable content.

How some among my fellow-prisoners managed to keep up their hearts, and to maintain even fairly cheerful faces, was a source of constant amazement to me. They had, I think, a genius for turning to account the little things of life and making the most of them, outwardly at all events. But the cheerfulness of those who refused to break down, even though it might be but skin-deep and subject to sudden blight, was still better than the utter misery and despair which prevailed elsewhere.

Outwardly, then, when the sun shone and one's bones were warm, our company might seem almost gay at times, joking, laughing, singing, gambling. But these things covered many a sick heart, and there were times when the heart-sickness prevailed over all else, and we lay in corners apart, and loathed our fellows and wished we were dead.

I say we, but, in truth, in these, and all other matters, except the regular routine of living, I was for a considerable time kept apart from my fellows by the deafness brought on by the explosion. I lived in a little soundless world of my own with those dearest to me,—Carette, and my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, and Jeanne Falla, and George Hamon. And if I needed further company, I could people the grim stockade with old friends out of those four most wonderful books of my grandfather's. And very grateful was I now for the insistence which had made me read them times without number, and for the scarcity which had limited me to them till I knew parts of them almost by heart.

Outwardly, indeed, I might seem loneliest of the company, for cards and dice had never greatly attracted me, and to risk upon a turn of the one or a throw of the other the absolute necessaries of life, which were the only things of value we possessed as a rule, seemed to me most incredible folly. Possibly the personal value of the stakes added zest to the game, for they wrangled bitterly at times, and more than once fought to the death over the proper ownership of articles which would have been dearly bought for an English shilling. But the loss of even these trifling things, since they meant starvation, inside or out, made all the difference in the world to the losers, and cut them to the quick, and led to hot disputations.

And, though I strove to maintain a cheerful demeanour, which was not always easy when the wind blew from the east, my deafness relieved me of any necessity of joining in that mask of merriment, which, as I have said, as often as not covered very sick hearts. For though a merry face is better than a sad one, I take it to be the part of an honest man to bear himself simply as he is, and the honest sad faces drew me more than the merry masked ones through which the bones of our skeletons peeped grisly enough at times.

Thoughts of escape occupied some of us, but for most it was out of the question. For, even if they could have got out of the enclosure and passed the sentries, their foreign speech and faces must have betrayed them at once outside.

To myself, however, that did not so fully apply. In appearance I might easily pass as an English sailor, and the English speech came almost as readily to my tongue as my own. It was with vague hopes in that direction, and also as a means of passing the long dull days, that I began carving bits of bone into odd shapes, and, when suitable pieces offered, into snuffboxes, which I sold to the country-folk who came in with provisions. At first my rough attempts produced but pence, and then, as greater skill came with practice, shillings, and so I began to accumulate a small store of money against the time I should need it outside.

In building the prison in so marshy a district, advantage had been taken of a piece of rising ground. The enclosure was built round it, so that the middle stood somewhat higher than the sides, and standing on that highest part one could see over the sharp teeth of the stockade and all round the countryside.

That wide view was not without a charm of its own, though its long dull levels grew wearisome to eyes accustomed only to the bold headlands and sharp scarps of Sercq, or to the ever-changing sea. For miles all round were marshes where nothing seemed to grow but tussocks of long wiry grass, with great pools and channels of dark water in between. Far away beyond them there were clumps of trees in places, and farther away still one saw here and there the spire of a church a great way off.

When we came there the wiry grass was yellow and drooping, like bent and rusted bayonets, and the pools were black and sullen, and the sky was gray and lowering and very dismal. And in Sercq the rocks were golden in the sunshine, the headlands were great soft cushions of velvet turf, the heather purpled all the hillsides, and the tall bracken billowed under the west wind. And on the gray rocks below, the long waves flung themselves in a wild abandon of delight, and shouted aloud because they were free.

Then the east winds came, and all the face of things blanched like the face of death, with coarse hairs sticking up out of it here and there. The pools and ditches were white with ice, and all the countryside lay stiff and stark, a prisoner bound in chains and iron. To stand there looking at it for even five minutes made one's backbone rattle for half a day. And yet, even then, in Sercq the sun shone soft and warm, the sky and sea were blue, the fouaille was golden-brown on the hillside, the young gorse was showing pale on the Eperquerie, and the Butcher's Broom on Tintageu was brilliant with scarlet berries.

To any man—even to our warders—Amperdoo was a desolation akin to death. To many a weary prisoner it proved death itself and so the gate to wider life. To one man it was purgatory but short removed from hell, and that he came through it unscathed was due to that which he had at first regarded as a misfortune, but which, by shutting him into a world of his own with those he loved, kept his heart sweet and fresh and unassoiled.

In time, indeed, my hearing gradually returned, and long before I left the prison it was quite recovered. But before it came back the habit of loneliness had grown upon me, and there was little temptation to break through it, and I lived much within myself.

Many the nights I sought my hammock as soon as the daylight faded, and lay there thinking of them all at home. To open my eyes was to look on a mob of crouching figures by the distant fire, wrangling as it seemed—for I could not hear them—over their cards and dice. But—close my eyes, and in a moment I was in Jeanne Falla's great kitchen at Beaumanoir, with Carette perched up on the side of the green-bed, swinging her feet and knitting blue wool, and Aunt Jeanne herself, kneeling in the wide hearth in the glow of the flaming gorse, seeing to her cooking and flashing her merry wisdom at us with twinkling eyes. Or—in the glimmer of the dawn, my eyes would open drearily on the rows and rows of hammocks in the long wooden room, every single hammock a stark bundle of misery and suffering. And I would close them again and draw the blanket tight over my head, and—we were boy and girl again, splashing barefoot in the warm pools under the Autelets; or—we were lying in the sunshine in the sweet short herbs of the headlands, with kicking heels and light hair all mixed up with dark, as we laid our heads together and plotted mischiefs; or, side by side, with gleaming brown faces, and free unfettered limbs as white as our thoughts, we slipped through the writhing coils of the Gouliot, and hung panting to the honeycombed rocks while the tide hissed and whispered in the long tresses of the seaweed.

My clearest and dearest recollections were of those earlier days, before any fixed hopes and ideas had brought with them other possibilities. But I thought too of Jeanne Falla's party, and of young Torode, and I wondered and wondered what might be happening over there, with me given up for dead and Torode free to work his will so far as he was able.

Some comfort I found in thought of Aunt Jeanne, in whose wisdom I had much faith; and in George Hamon, who knew my hopes and hated Torode; and in my mother and my grandfather and Krok, who would render my love every help she might ask, but were not so much in the way of it as the others. But, if they all deemed me dead,—as by this time I feared they must, though, indeed, they had refused to do so before,—my time might already be past, and that which I cherished as hope might be even now but dead ashes.

At times I wondered if Jean Le Marchant had not had his suspicions of Torode's treacheries, and how he would regard the young Torode as suitor for Carette in that case. I was sure in my own mind that her father and brothers would never yield her to anything but what they deemed the best for her. But their ideas on that head might differ widely from my own, and I drew small comfort from the thought.

And Carette herself? I hugged to myself the remembrance of her last farewell. I lived on it. It might mean nothing more than the memory of our old friendship. It might mean everything. I chose to believe it meant everything. And I knew that even if I were dead she would never listen to young Torode if a glimmer of the truth came to her ears, for she was the soul of honour.

Then came a matter which at once added to my anxieties, and set work to my hands which kept my mind from dwelling too darkly on its own troubles.

So crowded were all the war prisons up and down the land, and so continuous was the stream of captives brought in by the war-ships, that death no sooner made a vacancy amongst us than it was filled at once from the overflowing quarters elsewhere.

We had fevers and agues constantly with us, and one time so sharp an epidemic of small-pox that every man of us, will he nil he, had to submit to the inoculation then newly introduced as a preventive against that most horrible disease. Some of us believed, and rightly I think, that as good a preventive as any against this or any ailment was the keeping of the body in the fittest possible condition, and to that end we subjected ourselves to the hardest exercise in every way we could contrive, and suffered I think less than the rest.

As the long hard winter drew slowly past, and spring brightened the land and our hearts, and set new life in both, my mind turned again to thoughts of escape. While that bleak country lay in the grip of ice and snow it had seemed certain death to quit the hard hospitality of the prison. It was better to be alive inside than dead outside. But now the stirrings of life without stirred the life within towards freedom, and I began to plan my way.



CHAPTER XXIV

HOW I CAME ACROSS ONE AT AMPERDOO

I had worked hard at my carvings, and had become both a better craftsman and a keener bargainer, and so had managed to accumulate a small store of money. I could see my way without much difficulty over the first high wooden stockade, but so far I could not see how to pass the numberless sentries that patrolled constantly between it and the outer fence.

And while I was still striving to surmount this difficulty in my own mind, which would I knew be still more difficult in actual fact, that occurred which upset all my plans and tied me to the prison for many a day.

Among the new-comers one day was one evidently sick or sorely wounded. His party, we heard, had come up by barge from the coast. The hospital was full, and they made a pallet for the sick man in a corner of our long room.

He lay for the most part with his face to the wall, and seemed much broken with the journey.

I had passed him more than once with no more than the glimpse of a white face. An attendant from the hospital looked in now and again, at long intervals, to minister to his wants. The sufferer showed no sign of requiring or wishing anything more, and while his forlornness troubled me, I did not see that I could be of any service to him.

It was about the third day after his arrival that I caught his eye fixed on me, and it seemed to me with knowledge. I went across and bent over him, then fell quickly to my knees beside him.

"Le Marchant! Is it possible?"

It was Carette's youngest brother, Helier.

"All that's left of him,—hull damaged," he said, with a feeble show of spirit.

"What's wrong?"

"A shot 'twixt wind and water—leaking a bit."

"Does it hurt you to talk?"

He nodded to save words, but added, "Hurts more not to. Thought you were dead."

"I suppose so. Now you must lie quiet, and I'll look after you. But tell me—how were they all in Sercq the last you heard—my mother and grandfather—and Carette? And how long is it since?"

"A month—all well, far as I know. But we—" with a gloomy shake of the head—"we are wiped out."

"Your father and brothers?"

"All in same boat—wiped out."

I would have liked to question him further, but the talking was evidently trying to him, and I had to wait. It was much to have learnt that up to a month ago all was well with those dearest to me, though his last words raised new black fears.

I hung about outside till the hospital attendant paid his belated visit, and then questioned him.

"A shot through the lung," he told me, "and a bout of fever on top of it. Lung healing, needs nursing. Do you know him?"

"He is from my country. If you'll tell me what to do I'll see to him."

"Then I'll leave him to you. We've got our hands full over there," and he gave me simple directions as to treatment, and told me to report to him each day.

And so my work was cut out for me, and for the time being all thought of escape was put aside.

It was as much as I could do to keep Le Marchant from talking, but I insisted and bullied him into the silence that was good for him, and had my reward in his healing lung and slowly returning strength.

To keep him quiet I sat much with him, and told him by degrees pretty nearly all that had happened to me. In the matter of Torode I could not at first make up my mind whether to disclose the whole or not, and so told him only how John Ozanne and the Swallow encountered Main Rouge, and came to grief, and how the privateer, having picked me up, had lodged me on board the Josephine.

I thought he eyed me closely while I told of it, and then doubted if it was not my own lack of candour that prompted the thought.

His recovery was slow work at best, for the wound had brought on fever, and the fever had reduced him terribly, and when the later journeying renewed the wound trouble he had barely strength to hang on. But he was an Island man, and almost kin to me for the love I bore Carette, and I spared myself no whit in his service, thinking ever of her. And the care and attention I was able to give him, and perhaps the very fact of companionship, and the hopes I held out of escape together when he should be well enough, wrought mightily in him. So much so that the hospital man, when he looked in, now and again, to see how we were getting on, told me he would want my help elsewhere as soon as my present patient was on his feet again, as I was evidently built for tending sick men.

As soon as Le Merchant's lung healed sufficiently to let him speak without ill consequences, I got out of him particulars of the disaster that had befallen them.

They were running an unusually valuable cargo into Poole Harbour when they fell into a carefully arranged trap. They flung overboard their weighted kegs and made a bolt for the open, and found themselves face to face with a couple of heavily-armed cutters converging on the harbour, evidently by signal. Under such circumstances the usual course, since flight was out of the question, would have been a quiet surrender, but Jean Le Marchant, furious at being so tricked, flung discretion after his kegs, and fought for a chance of freedom.

"But we never had a chance," said Helier bitterly, "and it was a mistake to try, though we all felt as mad about it as he did. I saw him and Martin go down. Then this cursed bullet took me in the chest, and I don't remember things very clearly after that, till I came to myself in the prison hospital at Forton, with a vast crowd of others. Then we were bustled out and anywhere to make room for a lot of wounded from the King's ships, and I thought it better to play wounded sailor than wounded smuggler, and so I kept a quiet tongue and they sent me here. The journey threw me back, but I'm glad now I came. It's good to see a Sercq face again."

"And the others?" I asked, thinking, past them all, of Carette.

"Never a word have I heard," he said gloomily. "They were taken or killed without doubt. And if they are alive and whole they are on King's ships, for they're crimping every man they can lay hands on down there."

"And Carette will be all alone, and that devil of a Torode—my God, Le Marchant!—but it is hard to sit here and think of it! Get you well, and we will be gone."

"Aunt Jeanne will see to her," he said confidently. "Aunt Jeanne is a cleverer woman than most."

"And Torode a cleverer man—the old one at all events;" and under spur of my anxiety, with which I thought to quicken his also, I told him the whole matter of the double-flag treachery, and looked for amazement equal to the quality of my news. But the surprise was mine, for he showed none.

"It's a vile business," he said, "but we saw the possibilities of it long since, and had our suspicions of Torode himself. I'm not sure that he's the only one at it either. They miscall us Le Marchants behind our backs, but honest smuggling's sweet compared with that kind of work. And so Torode is Main Rouge! That's news anyway. If ever we get home, mon beau, we'll make things hot for him. He's a treacherous devil. I'm not sure he hadn't a hand in our trouble also."

"If he had any end to serve I could believe it of him."

"But what end?"

"Young Torode wants Carette."

He laughed as though he deemed my horizon bounded by Carette, as indeed it was. "No need for him to make away with the whole of her family in order to get her," he said. "It would not commend him to her."

And presently, after musing over the matter, he said, "All the same, Carre, what I can't understand is why you're alive. In Torode's place now I'd surely have sunk you with the rest. Man! his life is in your hands."

"I understand it no more than you do. I can only suppose he thought he'd finally disposed of me by shipping me aboard the Josephine."

"A sight easier to have shipped you into the sea with a shot at your heels, and a sight safer too."

"It is so," I said. "And how I come to be here, and alive, I cannot tell."

As soon as the lung healed, and he was able to get about in the fresh air, he picked up rapidly, and we began to plan our next move.

We grew very friendly, as was only natural, and our minds were open to one another. The only point on which I found him in any way awanting was in a full and proper appreciation of his sister. He conceded, in brotherly fashion, that she was a good little girl, and pretty, as girls went, and possessed of a spirit of her own. And I, who had never had a sister, nor indeed much to do with girls as a class, could only marvel at his dullness, for to me Carette was the very rose and crown of life, and the simple thought of her was a cordial to the soul.

I confided to him my plans for escape, and we laid our heads together as to the outer stockade, but with all our thinking could not see the way across it. That open space between, with its hedge of sentries, seemed an impassable barrier.

We were also divided in opinion as to the better course to take if we should get outside. Le Marchant favoured a rush straight to the east coast, which was not more than thirty miles away. There he felt confident of falling in with some of the free-trading community who would put us across to Holland or even to Dunkerque, where they were in force and recognised. I, on the other hand, stuck out for the longer journey right through England to the south coast, whence it should be possible to get passage direct to the Islands. Whichever way we went we were fully aware that our troubles would only begin when the prison was left behind us, and that they would increase with every step we took towards salt water. For so great had been the waste of life in the war that the fleets were short-handed, and anything in the shape of a man was pounced on by the pressgangs as soon as seen, and flung aboard ship to be licked into shape to be shot at.

Le Marchant urged, with some reason, that on the longer tramp to the south his presence with me would introduce a danger which would be absent if I were alone. For his English was not fluent, and he spoke it with an accent that would betray him at once. He even suggested our parting, if we ever did succeed in getting out—he to take his chance eastward, while I went south, lest he should prove a drag on me. But this I would not hear of, and the matter was still undecided when our chance came suddenly and unexpectedly.



CHAPTER XXV

HOW WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO AMPERDOO

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 hurried clanging 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.