I should have been less than a man had I not thanked God for my
escape. But it is in the sap of a tree to run upward in the spring,
and in the blood of a man to live in the present and future, the past
going for little; and I had not crouched two minutes on the thwart
before the steady lurch of the boat outwards and seawards fixed my
attention. From this to asking myself by what chance I had been saved,
and who were the men who sat round me--and evinced no more curiosity
about me than if they had been sent to the spot purely and simply to
rescue me--was but a step.
I took it, scanned them stealthily, and was far from reassured; the
sea-garb was then new to me, and these wearers of it were the wildest
of their class. The fog which enfolded us magnified their clumsy
shoulders and great knitted night-caps and the tarry ringlets that
hung in festoons about their scarred and tanned faces. The huge
gnarled hands that swung to and fro with the oars were no more like
human flesh than the sea-boots which the men wore, drawn high on their
thighs. They had rings in their ears, and from all came a reek of
tobacco, and salt-fish, and strange oaths; nor did it need the
addition of the hanger and pistol which each wore in his belt to
inform me that I had fallen once again among fierce and desperate men.
Dismayed by all I saw, it yet surprised me that no one questioned me.
He who sat in the stern of the boat, and seemed to be in command, had
a whistle continually at his lips, and his eyes on the curtain of haze
before us; but if the tiller and navigation of the boat took up his
thoughts, there were others. These, however, were content to pull on
in silence, eyeing me with dull brutish stares, until the fog lifting
disclosed on a sudden the hull of a tall ship looming high beside us.
A shrill piping came from it--a sound I had heard before, but taken to
be the scream of a sea-bird; and this, as we drew up, was followed
by a hail. The man by my side let his whistle fall that he might
answer--which he did, in French. A moment later our boat grated
against the heaving timbers, and I, looking up through the raw morning
air, saw a man in a boat-cloak spring on the bulwarks and wave his
hat.
"Welcome!" he cried, lustily. "And God save the King! A near thing
they tell me, sir. But come on board, come on board, and we shall see
Dunquerque the sooner. Up with you, Sir John, if you please, and let
us be gone with the fog, and no heel-taps!"
Then, without another word, I knew what had happened; I knew why the
boat which had picked me up, had been waiting on the beach at that
hour; and as I rose to my feet on the seat, and clutched the rope
ladder which the sailors threw down to me, my knees knocked together;
for I foresaw what I had to expect. But the deck was surer ground for
debate or explanation than the cockle-shell wherein I sat, and which
tossed and ducked under me, threatening every moment to upset my
stomach; and I went up giddily, grasped the bulwark, and, aided by
half-a-dozen grinning seamen, night-capped and ringletted, I sprang
down on the deck.
The man in the boat-cloak received me with a clumsy bow, and shook my
hand. "Give you joy, Sir John!" he said. "Glad to see you, sir. I
began to fear that you were taken! A little more, and I must have left
you. But all's well that ends well, and--your pardon one moment."
With that he broke off, and shouted half-a-dozen orders in French and
English and French to the sailors; and in a moment the capstan, as I
afterwards heard it called, was creaking round, and there was a hurry
of feet, first to one side and then to the other, and a great shouting
and a hauling at ropes. The ship heeled over so suddenly that if I had
not caught at the rail I must have lost my footing, and for an instant
the green seas seemed to swell up on a level with the slanting deck as
if they would swallow us bodily. Instead, the sloop, still heeling
over, began to gather way, and presently was hissing through the
water, piling the white surf before it, only to pour it foaming to
either side. The haze, like a moving curtain, began to glide by us;
and looking straight ahead I saw a yellow glare that told of the sun
rising over the French dunes.
The man who had received me, and who seemed to be the master, returned
to my side. "We are under way, sir," he said, "and I am glad of it.
But you will like to see Mr. Birkenhead? He would have met you, but
the sea-colic took him as he lay on the swell outside Dunquerque
whistling for a wind. He gets it badly one time, and one time he is as
hearty as you are. He is better this morning, but he is ill enough."
I muttered that I would see him by-and-by, when he was better. That I
would lie down a little, and----
"Oh! I have got a bunk for you in his cabin," the master answered
briskly. "I thought you would want to talk State secrets. Follow me,
if you please, and look to your sea-legs, sir."
He led the way to a hatch or trap-door, and raising it began to
descend. Not daring to refuse I followed him, down a steep ladder into
the dark bowels of the ship, the reek of tar and bilge-water, cheese
and old rum, growing stronger with every foot we descended. At the
bottom of the ladder he pushed aside a sliding panel, and signed
me to pass through the opening. I obeyed, and found myself in a
sort of dog-hole--as it seemed to me who knew nothing of ships'
cabins--lighted only by a span-wide round window, so dark, therefore,
that I stood a moment groping, and so close and foul-smelling that my
gorge rose.
Out of the gloom came a groan as of a sick sheep. "Here is Sir John,
safe and sound!" cried the master in his sea tones. "There is good
medicine for you, Mr. Birkenhead." And he peered into the darkness.
The only answer was a second groan. "Do you hear, sir?" the captain
repeated. "Sir John is here."
A voice feebly yet unmistakably d----d Sir John and the captain.
The master chuckled hoarsely. "Set a frigate behind us with a noose
flying at the yard-arm, and there is no man like him!" he said. "None,
Sir John; and I have carried him across seventy times and over, sick
and well, he should know the road from the Marsh to Southwark if any
man does. But let him be for the present, and do you lie down in the
bunk above him, and I will bring you some Nantz and a crust. When he
is better, he will be as glad to see you as if you were his brother."
I obeyed, and fortified by the strong waters he brought me, was glad
to lie down, and under cover of darkness consider my position and what
chance I had of extricating myself from it. For the time, and probably
until we reached Dunquerque, I was safe; but what would happen when
Birkenhead--the man whom the Jacobites called the Royal Post, and who
doubtless knew Sir John Fenwick by sight--what would happen, I say,
when he roused himself, and found that he had not only taken off the
wrong man but left Sir John to his fate? Would he not be certain to
visit the mischance on my head? Or if I escaped his hands, what must I
expect, a stranger, ashore in a foreign land with little money, and no
language at my command? I shuddered at the prospect; yet shuddered
more at the thought of Birkenhead's anger; so that presently all my
fore-looking resolved itself into a strenuous effort to put off the
evil day, and prolong by lying still and quiet the sleep into which he
appeared to have fallen.
He lay so close to me, divided only by the one board on which I
reclined, that all the noises of the ship--the creaking of the
timbers, the wash of the seas as they foamed along the quarter, and
the banging of blocks and ropes--noises that never ceased, failed to
cover the sound of his breathing. And this nearness to me, taken with
the fact that I could not see him, so tormented me with doubt whether
he was awake or asleep, was recovering or growing worse, that more
than once I raised my head and listened until my neck ached. In the
twilight of the cabin I could see his cloak swaying lazily on a hook;
on another hung a belt with pistols, that slid this way and that with
the swing of the vessel. And presently watching these and listening to
the regularity of his breathing, I laid my head down and did the last
thing I proposed to do or should have thought possible; for I fell
asleep.
I awoke with a man's hand on my shoulder; and sat up with a start of
alarm, a man's voice in my ear. The floor of the cabin slanted no
longer, the cloak and swordbelt hang motionless on the wall; and in
place of the sullen plash of the waves and the ceaseless creaking of
joists and knees, that had before filled the inwards of the ship, a
medley of shouts and cries, as shrill as they were unintelligible,
filled the pauses of the windlass. These things were, and I took them
in and drew the inference, that we were in harbour; but mechanically,
for it seemed, at the moment, that such wits as terror left me were in
the grasp of the man who shook me and swore at me by turns; and whose
short hair--for he was wigless--fairly bristled with rage and
perplexity.
"You! Who the devil are _you?_" he cried, frantically. "What witchcraft
is this? Here, Gill! Gill! Do you hear, you tarry pudding-head? Who is
this you have put in my cabin? And where is Fenwick? Where----"
"Where is Sir John?" cried a voice somewhat distant, as if the
speaker stooped to the hatchway. "He is there, Mr. Birkenhead. I set
him there myself. And between gentlemen, such words as those, Mr.
Birkenhead----"
"As what?" cried the man who held me.
"As tarry. But never mind; between friends----"
"Friends be hanged!" cried my assailant with violence. "Who is this
fool? That is what I asked. And you, have you no tongue?" he
continued, glaring at me. "Who are you, and where is Sir John
Fenwick?"
Before I could answer, the master, who had descended, crowded himself
into the doorway. "That is Sir John," he said, sulkily. "I thought
that you----"
"This, Sir John?" the other exclaimed.
"Ay, to be sure."
"As much Sir John as you are the warming-pan!" Birkenhead retorted;
and released me with so much violence that my head rapped against the
panels. "This, Sir John Fenwick?" And then, "Oh, man, man, you have
destroyed me," he cried. "Where is my reputation now? You have left
the real Simon Pure to be taken, and brought off this--this--you
booby, you grinning ape, who are you?"
Trembling, I told him my name.
"And Sir John?" he said. "Where is he?"
"I left him at Ashford," I muttered.
"It is a lie!" he cried in a voice that thrilled me to the marrow.
"You did not leave him at Ashford! He was with you on the beach--he
was with you and you deserted him! You left him to be taken, and saved
yourself. You wretch! You Judas!"
God knows by what intuition he spoke. For me, I swear that it was not
until that moment, not until he had put the possibility into words
that I knew--ay, knew, for that was the only word, so certain was I
after the event--that the man who had ridden down the beach and called
vainly on the sailors to wait, the man from whom we had rowed away
laughing, taking with us his last hope of life, was not Matthew Smith,
but Sir John Fenwick! _Now_, things which should have opened my eyes
then, and had not, came back to me. I recalled how tall and gaunt the
rider had looked through the haze, and a something novel in his voice,
and plaintive in his tone. True, I had heard the click-clack of
Smith's horse's shoes as clearly as I ever heard anything in my life;
but if Sir John, alarmed by the sound of my hasty departure, and
fearing treachery, had sallied out, and leaping on the first horse he
found, had ridden after me, then all was clear.
I saw that, and cowered before the men's accusing eyes: so that they
had been more than Solomons had they taken my sudden disorder for
aught but guilt--guilt brought home. For Birkenhead, his rage was
terrible. He seized me by the throat, and disregarding my pitiful
pleas that I had not known, I had not known, he dragged me from the
berth, and made as if he would choke me there and then with his naked
hands. Instead, however, he suddenly loosed me. "Faugh," he cried; "I
will not dirty my hands with you! That such as you--_you_ should be a
man's death! _You!_ But you shall not escape. Gill, up with him! Up
with him and to the yard-arm. String him up! He shall swing before he
is an hour older!"
"In Dunquerque harbour?" said the other.
"Why not?"
"Why not?" said the master. "Because, Mr. Birkenhead, I serve a King
_de jure_ and not _de facto_. That is why not. And if you want another
reason----"
"Well?"
"I am not aware that His Majesty has raised you to the Bench," the
master answered sturdily.
"Oh, you have turned sea-lawyer, have you?"
"Law is law," said the shipmaster. "England, or France, or the high
seas."
"And owling is owling!" the other retorted with passion. "And
smuggling, smuggling! You are a fine man to talk! If you will not hang
him--as they will hang Fenwick, so help me, never doubt it!--what will
you do with him?"
"Give my men a bag of sand apiece, and let him run the gauntlet," the
captain answered, with a phlegm that froze me. "Trust me, sir, they
will not leave much of a balance owing."
It was terrible to see how Birkenhead, vain, choleric and maddened by
disappointment, jumped at the cruel suggestion. For me, I shrank into
the bunk into the farthest corner, and cried for mercy; I might as
well have cried to the winds. I was hauled out, the word passed up,
and despite my desperate struggles, prayers and threats--the latter
not unmingled with the name of Shrewsbury, which did but harden
them--I was dragged to the foot of the ladder. Thence I was carried on
deck, where, half-dead with fear and powerless in the hands of three
stout seamen, I met none but grinning faces and looks of cruel
anticipation. Few need to be told with what zest the common herd flock
to a scene of cruel sport, how hard are their bosoms, how fiendish the
pleasure which all but the most humane and thoughtful take in helpless
suffering. Small was the chance that my pleas of innocence and appeals
for a hearing would gain attention. All was ready, the men bared their
arms and licked their lips, and in a moment I must have been set for
the baiting.
But in certain circumstances the extremity of fear is another name for
the extremity of daring; and the master, at this last moment going to
range the crew in two lines, and one of the sailors who had me in
charge releasing me for an instant, that he might arm himself with a
sand-bag, I saw my opportunity. With a desperate swing I wrenched
myself from the grasp of the other men. That done, a single bound
carried me to the plank which joined the deck to the shore. I flew
across it, swift as the wind; and as the whole crew seeing what had
happened broke from their stations and with yells and whoops of glee
took up the chase, I sprang on shore. Bursting recklessly through the
fringe of idlers whom the arrival of the ship had brought to the
water's edge, I sped across the open wharf, threaded a labyrinth of
bales and casks, and darted up the first lane to which I came.
Fear gave me wings, and I left the wharf a score of yards ahead of my
pursuers. But the seamen, who had taken up the chase with the gusto of
boys let loose from school, made up for the lack of speed by whooping
like demons; and the English among them halloing "Stop Thief!" and the
others some French words alike in import, the alarm went abreast of
me. Fortunately the lane was almost deserted, and I easily evaded
the halfhearted efforts to stop me, which one or two made. It seemed
that I should for the present get away. But at the last moment, at the
head of the lane fate waited for me: an old woman standing in a
doorway--and who made, as I came up, as if she was afraid of me--flung
a bucket after me. It fell in front of me, I trod on the edge and fell
with a shriek of pain.
Before I could rise or speak, the foremost of the sailors came up and
struck me on the head with a sand-bag; and the others as they arrived
rained blows on me without mercy. I managed to utter a cry, then
instinctively covered my head with my arms. They belaboured me until
they were tired and I almost senseless; when, thinking me dead, they
went off whistling, and I crawled into the nearest doorway and fainted
away.