From Dilly I learned that the Dolphin had suffered severely in the
engagement. A third of the crew had been killed or wounded: Captain
Cawson himself was dead. The survivors had been divided, some being
left in the Dolphin, the remainder being brought to the Francois;
among these were the more severely wounded, who were tended with
much humanity in the sick bay.
Now that the chase and the fight were over, we were allowed on deck
a few at a time, a boon for which I was very grateful. I was
surprised at the youth of our captor, the renowned Duguay-Trouin.
He looked little older than myself, and was in fact, as I
afterwards discovered, but twenty-three years of age.
His youthful appearance somewhat heartened me. Here was a man (so
ran my thought) but little my senior, yet he had already won a
great name for daring and courage; he had been captured and
imprisoned, but had escaped, and was now again active in his
vocation. Other men as well as I had their mischances and
surmounted them: why should not I? Thus it happened that when, a
few days later, we arrived at the French port of St. Malo, and were
handed over to the authorities of the prison there, I was not so
depressed in spirits as I had expected to be.
This was fortunate, for the lot to which we were condemned was
miserable in the extreme. We had wretched quarters, foul and
unhealthy; some five hundred prisoners, most of them captured in
merchant vessels, were herded in a space not large enough for the
comfortable habitation of half that number. In my heart I fully
sympathized with Vetch's objection to being classed among the
seamen, for they were in the main a sorry lot, filthy in their
habits and base minded. Some, like old Dilly, were of a higher
type, and these consorted together as much as possible.
The conditions at St. Malo were so had that I was not sorry when,
after some few weeks there, a great number of us were marched out
under an armed guard to a castle about fifteen miles to the
southeast. A very woebegone battalion we must have looked as we
tramped to our new quarters--many of us suffering from prison
fever, all more or less in rags, and half starved. The change was
due to no compassion on the part of the authorities, but to an
alarm in the town. A sloop had come in, it appeared, with news that
an attack was intended against the port by no other than Benbow,
and it was feared that the prisoners might seize this opportunity
for a mutiny. I did not learn this until after we had reached our
new prison; it came out through one of our jailers, a talkative
fellow who liked to air his little English, otherwise I should not
have felt so much pleased at the change of quarters; though even if
Benbow had assaulted the town and we prisoners had risen, it was
improbable that we could have found a means of escaping to him.
The new prison was, as I have said, a castle, or to speak more
precisely, the ruins of one. It had once been a place of
considerable dimensions and of great strength; but it was now far
gone towards demolition. The outer walls still stood, completely
encircled by a moat, the only entrance being by way of the
drawbridge which, to judge by its moss-grown edges, had not been
raised for many a day. Marching over it, and through an archway, we
found ourselves in the courtyard, a large area roughly square in
shape, and open to the sky.
At the farther end, built against the wall in the intervals between
three round towers, a kind of wooden barracks had been erected for
our accommodation, the only habitable portion of the castle being
the keep, flanking the entrance, and this was devoted to our
guardians. Our barracks was in two stories, the lower being
intended for use by day, the upper, which was reached by a ladder,
containing our sleeping apartments. The rooms on the ground were
lit by windows opening into the courtyard; the sleeping rooms only
by narrow gratings in the wooden wall. I did not learn all this at
once, of course; but I have set it down here for convenience sake.
On arriving at the castle we were marshaled in the courtyard, and
taken into the keep one by one. There, with the aid of the
loquacious sergeant as interpreter, we gave our names, ages, and
descriptions to the commandant, a sour-visaged fellow, who entered
the particulars in a book. Then we were severally assigned our
sleeping quarters, and I found myself one of a squad of ten, none
of whom was known to me with the exception of Vetch and Dilly.
Vetch once more protested against being ranked with common seamen,
and demanded to be released on parole; but the commandant ordered
him gruffly to be silent, and he went away very sullen and
wrathful.
Our sleeping apartment, I found, was a small room at the right-hand
corner of the barracks--so small that I foresaw our nights would
not be comfortable. There were five truckle beds ranged against the
wall; 'twas clear that each of us would have a bedfellow. The
bedding consisted of a hard straw mattress and a single woollen
coverlet which, judging by its tenuity, had already seen service
with generations of sleepers. Luckily it was early autumn; we
should not need to dread the winter cold for some time to come; and
I was young and lighthearted enough to flatter myself with the
fancy that we should either be released as the sequel to some
terrible defeat of the French, or that we should find some way of
escape.
Being myself long and broad, I made matters even by choosing as my
bedfellow a little fellow named Joseph Runnles, lean as a rake, and
of a quiet and melancholy countenance, thinking that such an one
would not discommode me in either body or mind. My choice was
justified; he neither kicked nor snored, and was so reserved and
silent that I believe I did not exchange with him a dozen words a
week.
Our new quarters proved a deal less dreary than those we had left
at St. Malo. The weather was fine; there was ample elbow room in
the courtyard, and though we were closely watched by the guard
constantly set at the gate, we had our liberty during the day. At
night, when we repaired to our dormitories, the doors opening on
the courtyard were locked, and we could dully hear the tramping of
the sentry along the battlements above our heads.
In a few days we had settled down in our new life. Some of the men
passed all the daylight hours in throwing dice or playing games of
chance, not without frequent quarrels, which our guardians ignored
so long as they remained short of fighting. Others, more
industriously inclined, occupied themselves in fashioning toys from
wood supplied them, which were afterwards sold in neighboring
villages, the proceeds (after a very liberal commission had been
subtracted) being devoted to the purchase of additions to their
meagre fare.
As for me, the idea of escape was already beating in my mind, and
as a first step I resolved to pick up a knowledge of the French
tongue, of which I was almost wholly ignorant. Accordingly I lost
no opportunity of conversing with soldiers of the guard, with whom
I ingratiated myself by showing them some of the tricks of fence
taught me by Captain Galsworthy. The only work which all the
prisoners had to perform in turn was the drawing of water from a
well in the keep. The water of the moat, as I had seen when we
crossed it on entering, was covered with a green scum, the rivulet
which fed it not being of sufficient volume to keep it in
circulation.
A few days after our arrival I was laid low by a mild attack of
jail fever, of which I had doubtless brought the seeds from St.
Malo. I kept my bed for a couple of days, being tended with much
kindliness by a little old surgeon attached to the garrison. I
should not have mentioned this trifling sickness but that it
prevented me from witnessing the arrival of a fresh batch of
prisoners; so that when I descended on the third day into the
courtyard I was mightily surprised to see, at that very instant
carrying a bucket of water across from the keep, no other than my
old friend Joe Punchard.
"Joe!" I cried, beyond measure delighted at seeing a familiar face.
Down went the bucket with a clatter upon the stones, and Joe looked
around as though scarce trusting his ears. Then seeing me he
waddled across, seized my hand, and shook it with a hearty goodwill
that was somewhat over vigorous for my enfeebled condition.
"Ods firkins, sir!" he cried, "my head spins like a whirligig. How
dost come here among these heathen Frenchies, and all the way from
Shrewsbury, too?"
Before I was halfway through my story, one of the soldiers ran up
and ordered Joe to fill his bucket again and wash out the lower
rooms.
"Ay, I'm a swab again, sure enough," says poor Joe, going off
ruefully to his task.
He was soon back, and when he had heard me through my account of
what had befallen me since I saw him last, he broke out into
vehement denunciation of Cyrus Vetch and all the race of Cluddes.
Vetch himself happening to pass at that moment, wearing the hangdog
look habitual to him since fate had made him a prisoner, Joe bursts
out:
"Ay, you may well look ashamed of yourself, you villain! Where's
that will, rogue? What have you done wi' 't?"
Vetch turned a shade paler, I thought. I had never said a word to
him about the loss of my father's will, and had no intention of
doing so, biding my time, and I was a little vexed that Joe in his
impetuous espousal of my cause had let the fellow know of our
suspicions. He halted a moment, then with a "What are you prating
about, turnip head?" he turned on his heel and walked away.
Joe, in a great rage, was for springing after him, but I caught him
by the arm and begged him to let the matter rest.
"Snatch my bowlines!" he cried, in a tone reminding me of Captain
Cawson; "he'd better 'ware of running across my course. If I come
athwart his hawser I'll turn him keel upwards, I will."
I diverted the current of his anger by asking him how he had become
a prisoner of the French.
"Why, in a deuced unlucky way," says he. "Captain Benbow--he's now
rear admiral, but will always be captain to me--he had a mind to
draw alongside that there place they call St. Malo, and cut out a
frigate of Doggy Trang he believed to be there, and he sent me and
some more by night to take the bearings of the harbor. We was in a
skiff, and a gale came on and beat us about all night and split our
sails and drove us ashore in the very teeth of a crew o' Frenchies.
There was a tight little scrimmage, I promise you, but they were
two to one, and grappled us close, and clapped a stopper on our
cable, hang 'em. They chained us together, the dogs, and marched us
into St. Malo with scarce a rag to our backs, and yesterday they
sent me and some more here."
"And right glad I am they did, Joe. But surely Captain Benbow did
not send you in charge of the party?"
"Well, no, if you put it so, he didn't. We was in command of
Lieutenant Curtis."
"And is he here, too?"
"No. He happened to have a pocketful o' money, and so they let him
sling his hammock in the town, where he could spend it. When it is
gone, belike they will send him to join us."
"And let us hope that we'll be gone as soon as his money, Joe. I am
mighty glad you are here; for if we put our heads together we can
surely find some way of getting free."
"Bless your eyes, don't I wish we may. Maybe there's a fate in it,
sir. Fate jined you and me when it made me set Vetch a-rolling in
the barrel, and 'tis fate has jined us all three here. Ay, please
God, sir, one day we'll slip our cables, clap on all canvas, and
steer for the north, though how, whereby, and by what means we can
do it beats Joe Punchard."
The companionship of Joe, at a time when I was weak from my
sickness, mightily cheered me, and we spent much of each day
together. Our longing to be free did but increase as the days
passed. The monotony of prison life fretted us, Joe perhaps less
than me, for his life had been harder than mine, and as the days
grew shorter, and the nipping cold of winter by degrees overtook
us, we began to know what real wretchedness is. By day we could
warm ourselves with exercise and active sports in the courtyard,
but at night we shivered under our thin coverlets, and I found
myself by and by wishing that my bedfellow Runnles had a little
more flesh on his bones, for a lean man is no comfort in bed on a
bitter night. Joe was not in my dormitory, or I should certainly
have bedded with him.
Above everything else, I think, the wretched food made us unhappy.
If a man be but well fed he can endure much hardship and trouble,
and I had never wanted in this respect. The prison food was bad,
ill cooked, and meagre; and though Joe, for one, might have
procured better if he had chosen to employ himself in his old trade
of coopering, he refused to do so after making one barrel, the
price of which, after the soldiers' commission had been deducted,
was something less than a fourth of what it would have been in
England.
"'Noint my block!" he cried, when the pitiful sum was placed in his
hand. "Dost think a Shrewsbury man 'll be done out of his dues by a
codger of a Frenchman what he don't vally no more than pork slush
or a stinking dogfish? Split my binnacle if I be!"
And he flung the money at the amazed Frenchman, and kept his word
to work at his old trade no more.
I think this sturdiness of his raised him somewhat in the
estimation of our jailers, and in spite of the opprobrious epithets
he applied to them (which to be sure they did not understand) he
was soon as popular with them as Vetch was the reverse. Joe was
blessed with a great fund of good humor, which withstood all
privation and restraint. He growled and groaned at being compelled
to take his turn in scouring the floors and other menial tasks, but
after emitting a stream of hot language, which ever appears to flow
very freely from the lips of sailor men, he went his way with great
cheerfulness. He joked with his fellow prisoners, and being of a
loquacious turn, had many things to tell them of the doings of his
hero, Captain Benbow.
Vetch, on the contrary, was what the Scriptures call a "continual
dropping." He kept himself apart, sulking the livelong day, scarce
ever speaking, and when he did speak using a tone which the Grand
Turk might employ towards a beggar. It was true enough that the
prisoners were inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and
circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make
the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill
breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a
contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash
him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our
dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general
consent. It happened in this wise.
One bleak day of mud and rain, when we were driven by the weather
out of the courtyard into the lower rooms of the barracks, and were
sitting in doleful dumps, at a loss how to pass the time, Joe
Punchard cried out of a sudden:
"Come, souls, what's a spell of foul weather to men that have
sailed the salt seas! Haul forward your stools, mates, and we'll
have a concert and make all snug. I warrant some of you can troll a
ditty, though ye be too modest to own it; and not being plagued wi'
modesty myself, I'll heave anchor first."
I knew, nothing of Joe's musical powers, and it was with no little
surprise I discovered that he had an excellent voice of the pitch
they call barytone. He began:
Of all the lives, I ever say,
A pirate's be for I;
Hap what hap may he's allus gay
And drinks an' bungs his eye.
For his work he's never loath;
An' a-pleasurin' he will go;
Tho' sartin sure to be popt off,
Yo ho, with the rum below.
At the conclusion of the stanza his audience broke into loud
applause. And then, with a sheepish air that set me a-smiling,
Joseph Runnles, my bedfellow, the little silent man of whom I have
spoken, drew out of his pocket the parts of a flute, and putting
them together, set it to his lips and accompanied Joe through the
next stanza, picking up the tune with a facility that spoke well
for his musical ear.
In Bristowe I left Poll ashore,
Well stored wi' togs and gold;
An' off I goes to sea for more,
A-piratin' so bold.
An' wounded in the arm I got,
An' then a pretty blow;
Comes home I finds Poll flowed away.
Yo ho, with the rum below.
"Adad, brother," cries Joe, clapping the little man on the
shoulder, "why have you stowed away your noble talents so long
under hatches? I've sailed the seas for many a year; east, west,
north and south, as the saying is; Blacks, Indians, Moors,
Morattos, and Sepoys; but smite my timbers, never such a man of
music have I drawn alongside of before."
Runnles blushed like a girl, and said never a word, but blew the
moisture out of his flute, ready for the next stanza.
An' when my precious leg was lopt.
Just for a bit of fun,
I picks it up, on t'other hopt,
An' rammed it in a gun.
"What's that for?" cries out Salem Dick.
"What for, my jumpin' beau?
Why, to give the lubbers one more kick!"
Yo ho with the rum below.
By this time the other men had got the hang of the song, and when
Joe started the next stanza they joined in, trolling the tune (they
knew not the words as yet) in voices high and low, rough and coarse
for the most part, and with more heartiness than melody. This happy
thought of Joe's cured our dumps and put us all in a good temper,
and for the rest of that morning we sat singing songs, and
listening to the tootling of Runnles' flute, when the little man
could be prevailed on to treat us to a solo.
"You be mighty bashful for a sailor man," said Joe at the end of
the concert, "partickler as your name be Joe like mine, but we
won't let 'ee hide your talents any more, split my braces if we
will."
It was on the night of that day that Vetch got his thrashing. We
had gone early to our dormitory because of the rain, and being
unable to sleep for the cold, one of the men suggested that Runnles
should give us a tune.
"'Tis comfortin' to the spirits," said the man, a big fellow known
to us as the bosun: his name was Peter Wiggett.
Runnles, evidently gratified at this mark of appreciation, put his
flute together and began to pipe the tune of Mr. Ackroyd's famous
song of the fight in '92 when Admiral Russell beat the French.
This, to be sure, was rather inspiriting than soothing, and thus
perhaps there was a shadow of excuse for Vetch when he called out
from under his coverlet (he lay in the next bed):
"Cease that squealing, hang you, and let a man get to sleep."
"Belay there!" shouted the bosun.
"Pipe away, Runnles, and we'll love you, my hearty."
Runnles struck up again, but he had not gone far (it was to the
line, "To meet the gallant Russell in combat on the deep") when the
fluting suddenly ceased, and we heard a cry that was certainly a
squeal. Vetch had got out of bed in the dark and, snatching the
flute from Runnles' hand, caught him by the throat. I sprang up
from Runnles' side, but the bosun from the bed beyond was before
me.
"Avast, you lubber!" he cries, flinging himself on Vetch; "I
thought we should grapple one day: now I'll bring you up by the
head, you swine."
And with that he took Vetch with the left hand, and belabored him
with the right until the poor wretch fairly howled for mercy. Then
he threw him on to his bed (with some damage, I fear, to Dilly, who
shared it), and bade Runnles play up: but the little man was so
much upset at the turn affairs had taken that he declared his lips
were too dry to blow a note, and indeed it was several days before
he could be prevailed on to flute again.