IN TARRAGONA BAY
Henceforth little personal was said. The two men spoke mostly of the
work of the ship, the chances of escape (like all prisoners), and
especially concerning the progress of the Holy War against ignorance and
tyranny. But of Claire, nothing.
Something withheld them. A new thing was working in the heart of John
d'Albret. Like many another he had been born a Catholic, and it had
always seemed impossible to him to change. But the Place of Eyes, the
Question Greater and Lesser in the Street of the Money, the comradeship
of Rosny and D'Aubigne in the camps of the Bearnais, had shaken him. Now
he listened, as often as he had time to listen, to the whispered
arguments and explanations of his new friend. I do not know whether he
was convinced. I am not sure even that he always heard aright. But,
moved most of all by the transparent honesty of the man whose body had
so suffered for that royal law of liberty which judges not by
professions but by works, the Abbe John resolved no more to fight in the
armies of the Huguenot Prince merely as a loyal Catholic, but to be even
such a man as Francis Agnew, if it in him lay.
That it did not so lie within his compass detracts nothing from the
excellence of his resolution. The flesh was weak and would ever remain
so. This gay, careless spirit, bold and hardy in action, was much like
that of Henry of Navarre in his earlier days. There were indeed two
sorts of Huguenots in France in the days of the Wars of Religion. They
divided upon the verse in James which says, "Is any among you afflicted?
Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing."
The Puritans afterwards translated the verse, "Let him sing _psalms_."
But the Genevan translators (whom in this book I follow in their first
edition of 1560) more mercifully left out the "psalms": "_Is any merry,
let him sing!_" say they.
Now such was the fashion of the men who fought for Henry IV. Even
D'Aubigne, the greatest of all--historian, poet, and satirist--expelled
from France for over-rigidity, found himself equally in danger in Geneva
because of the liberty of his Muse's wing.
So, though the Abbe John became a suffering and warring Huguenot, on
grounds good and sufficient to his own conscience, he remained ever the
lad he was when he scuffled on the Barricades for the "Good Guise"--and
the better fighting! A little added head-knowledge does not change men.
No motives are ever simple. No eye ever quite single. And I will not say
what force, if any, the knowledge that Francis Agnew the Scot would
never give his daughter in marriage to a Persecutor of the Brethren, had
in bringing about the Abbe John's decision.
Perhaps none at all--I do not know. I am no man's judge. The weight
which such an argument might have with oneself is all any man can know.
And that is, after all, perhaps best left unstated.
At first John was all for revealing his name and quality; but against
this Francis Agnew warned him At present he was treated as a pressed
man, escaping the "hempen breakfasts of the heretic dogs"--which the
captain, the young Duke d'Err, often commanded the "comite" to serve out
to those condemned for their faith. Only the Turks, of whom there were a
good many, captured during the Levantine wars, strong, grave, sturdy
men, were better treated than he.
"If, then," said his companion, "they know that you are a cousin of the
Bearnais, they will most likely send you to the Holy Bonfire, especially
as you are of too light weight to row in the galley, at any rate."
The Abbe John cried out against this. He was as good as any man, in the
galley or elsewhere.
"In intent, yes," said the Scot, "but your weight is as nothing to
Hamal's or even mine, when it comes to pulling at fifty foot of oar on
an upper deck!"
The Duke of Err was a young nobleman who had early ruined himself by
evil life. The memory rankled, so that sometimes the very devil of
cruelty seemed to ride him. He would order the most brutal acts for
sport, and laugh afterwards as they threw the dead slaves over, hanging
crucifixes, Korans, or Genevan Bibles about their necks in mockery
according to their creed.
"My galley is lighter by so much carrion!" he would say on such
occasions.
It chanced that in the late autumn, when the great heats were beginning
to abate and the equinoctials had not yet begun to blow on that exposed
eastern coast of Spain, that for a private reason the Duke-Captain
desired to be at Tarragona by nightfall. So all that day the slaves were
driven by the "executioners"--as the Duke invariably named his
"comites"--till they prayed for death.
Although it was a known sea and a time of peace the slaves were allowed
no quarter--that is, one half rowing while the other rested. All were
forced most mercilessly through a long day's agony of heat and labour.
"Strike, _bourreau_--strike!" cried the captain incessantly; "what else
are you paid the King's good money for? If we do not get to Tarragona by
four o'clock this afternoon, I will have you hung from the yardarm. So
you are warned. If you cannot animate, you can terrorise. Once I saw a
'comite' in the galleys of Malta cut off a slave's arm, and beat the
other dogs about the head with it till they doubled their speed!"
It was in order to give a certain entertainment at Tarragona that the
Duke of Err was so eager to get there. For hardly had the _Conquistador_
anchored, before the great sail was down, the fore-rudder unshipped, the
after part of the deck cleared, and a gay marquee spread, with tables
set out underneath for a banquet.
By this time, what with the freshness of the sea and fear of missing a
stroke occasionally--a crime always relentlessly punished--the men were
so fatigued with the heat, the toil, and the bruising of their chests
upon the oar-handles, that many would gladly have fallen asleep as they
were--but the order came not. All were kept at their posts ready for the
salute when the guests of the Duke should come on board--that is, the
lifting of the huge oars out of the water all in a moment and holding
them parallel and dripping, a thing which, when well performed, produces
a very happy effect.
After dinner the Duke conducted his guests upon the _coursier_, or
raised platform, to look down upon the strange and terrible spectacle
beneath. It was full moon, and the guests, among them several ladies,
gazed upon that mass of weary humanity as on a spectacle.
"God who made us all," murmured the Abbe John, "can woman born of woman
be so cruel?"
The young Duke was laughing and talking to a lady whom he held
cavalierly by the hand, to preserve her from slipping upon the narrow
ledge of the _coursier_.
"I told you I had the secret of sleep," he said; "I will prove it. I
will make three hundred and fifty men sleep with a motion of my hand."
He signed to one of the "comites," whom he was accustomed to call his
"chief hangman," and the man blew a long modulated note. Instantly the
whole of the men who had kept at attention dropped asleep--most of them
being really so, because of their weariness. And others, like John
d'Albret and Francis the Scot, only pretended to obey the order.
At the sight of the hundreds of miserable wretches beneath, crowded
together, naked to the waist (for they had had no opportunity of
dressing), their backs still bleeding from the blows of the _bourreau_,
the lady shuddered and drew her arm hastily from that of the captain.
But he, thinking that she was pleased, and only in fear of slipping
among such a horrid gang, led her yet farther along the estrade, and
continued his jesting in the same strain as before.
"My dear lady," he said, "you have now seen that I am possessed of the
art of making men sleep. Now you will see that I know equally well how
to awake them."
Again he signed to the "comites" to blow the _reveille_.
A terrible scene ensued as the men rose to resume their oars. The chains
clanked and jingled. The riveted iron girdles about their waists
glistened at the part where the back-pull of the oar catches it. Hardly
one of the crew was fit to move. With the long strain of waiting their
limbs had stiffened; their arms had become like branches of trees. Even
the utmost efforts of "hangman" were hardly able to put into them a
semblance of activity.
As the party looked from above upon that moving mass, the moon, which
had been clouded over, began to draw clear. Above, was the white and
sleeping town sprinkled with illuminated windows--beneath, many
riding-lights of ships in harbour. The moon sprang from behind the
cloud, sailing small and clear in the height of heaven, and Valentine la
Nina found herself looking into a pallid, scarcely human face--that of
John d'Albret, galley-slave.
He was--where she had vowed him. Her curse had held true. With a cry she
slipped from the captain's arm, sprang from the _coursier_, and threw
her arms about the neck of the worn and bleeding slave!