"The captain was sitting with one foot upon the carronade in his
outer-cabin, looking through the port at the heavy Indiaman, as she
slued about and plunged in the blue surge, with all sorts of ugly ropes
hanging from her bows, dirty pairs of trousers towing clear of the water
when she lifted, and rusty stains at her hawse-holes. A stout-built,
hard-featured man he was, with bushy black eyebrows, and grizzled black
hair and whiskers, not to speak of a queer, anxious, uneasy look in the
keen of his eyes when he turned to me. However, he got half up on my
coming in, and I saw he was lame a little of one foot, while he
overhauled me all over with his eye. 'I'm sorry to have to send for you
in this way, sir,' said he, rather surprised at my rig,
apparently--'very sorry, sir, and no more about it; but I can't help it,
confound me--_must_ do my duty.' 'Certainly, sir,' I said. 'In fact,'
said Captain Wallis, 'the Admiral ordered us to see after you--_him_,
that's to say--at the Cape, you know.' 'Ay, ay, sir,' said I, watching
the Indiaman's poop-nettings through the port over his head, as he sat
down. 'Pooh, pooh,' continued he, 'you can't be the man--just say you
don't belong to the service--confound it, I'll pass you!' 'Why, sir,'
said I, 'I can't exactly say _that_.' 'I hear you're Westwood of the
_Orestes_, though,' said he; 'now I don't ask you to say _no_, sir; but
everybody knew the _Orestes_, and I don't like the thing, I must say: so
perhaps you're able to swear _he_ is not aboard the Indiaman--just now,
you know, sir--_just now_, eh?'
"This tack of his rather dumfoundered me, seeing the captain of the brig
meant it well; but deuced unlucky kindness it was, since I couldn't
swear to the very thing he fancied so safe, and his glance was as quick
as lightning, so he caught the sense of my blank look in a moment--as I
fancied, at least. 'The fact is, sir,' added he,'the surgeon told me
just now he knows Lieutenant Westwood well enough by sight so they
locked him up! You see we could have made you out at any rate,
sir--however, we'll let the doctor stay till we're clear of the
Indiaman, I think.' 'Then you take me for the gentleman you speak of,
Captain Wallis?' asked I, faintly; for at the same moment I could see a
light-coloured dress and a white ribbon fluttering on the
_Seringapatam's_ poop, the look of which sent the blood about my heart.
'Twas hard to settle betwixt a feeling of the kind, and fear for
Westwood; it struck me Captain Wallis wasn't very eager in the affair,
and 'twas on my lips to assure him I wasn't the man. 'Hark'ee,' broke in
he, with almost a wink, and a smile ready to break out on his mouth,
'the short and the long of it is, I'll take _you_! We must have somebody
to show in the case; though now I remember, there was someone else said
to've gone off with you--but we won't trouble _him_! If we've brought
away the wrong man, why, hang it, so much the better! If you're
Westwood, I can tell you, they'll run ye up to a yardarm, sir! Much more
comfortable than ten years or so in a jail, too, as--as no one knows
better than _I_ do myself.'
"Here the captain's face darkened, his eye gleamed, and he rose with a
limp to ring a hand-bell on the table. 'White,' said he to the marine
that put his head in at the door, with his hand up to it, 'desire the
first lieutenant, from me, to send a boat aboard for this gentleman's
things.' 'I'm afraid, sir,' continued he gravely to me, 'you'll have to
reckon yourself under arrest--but you'll find the gentlemen in the
gun-room good company, I hope, for a day or two, till we make St
Helena.' I saw the captain's mind was made up, and for the life of me I
didn't know what to say against it; but speak I could not, so with a
stiff bow and a sick sort of a smile I turned out of the door, and
walked along to the gun-room, which was empty. I could see the boat soon
after under the ship's side, dipping and rising as they handed down my
couple of portmanteaus to the man-o'-war's men; the young reefer came
down again as nimble as a monkey, with some letters in his hand, took
off his cap to some ladies above, and sang out to give way; five or six
flashing feathers of the oars in the sunlight, and they were coming
round the brig's stern.
"The brig was just squaring away her main-yard at the whistle from the
boatswain's mates, when the whole run of the Indiaman's bulwarks was
crowded with the passengers' and men's faces, watching the brig gather
way to pass ahead; I could hear the officers on deck hail the India
mates, wishing them a good voyage, the ladies bowing and waving their
handkerchiefs to the British Union-Jack. Some sort of confusion seemed
to get up, however, about the ship's taffrail, where Rollock, Ford, and
some others were standing together; the planter jumped up all at once on
the quarter-mouldings nearest the brig, then jumped down again, and his
straw hat could be seen hurrying towards the quarter-deck.
"Next I caught a bright glimpse of Violet Hyde's face, as the sun shot
on it free of the awnings--her eyes wandering with the brig's motion, I
fancied, along the deck above me, till suddenly she seemed to start, and
Westwood appeared behind her. The next thing I saw was the black-faced
figure-head of the _Seringapatam_ rising below her bowsprit, about sixty
yards from the gun-room port where I was, and down she went again with a
heavy plash, as Tom Westwood himself leapt up between the knight-heads
at the bow, hailing the brig's deck with a voice like a trumpet. 'Ahoy!
the _Podargus_ ahoy! For mercy's sake, heave to again, sir!' he sung
out. 'I'm the man you want!' 'The Indiaman ahoy!' I heard Captain Wallis
himself hail back. 'What d'ye say?' The creak of our yards, with the
flap of the jib, and the men's feet, drowned Westwood's second hail, as
it came sharp up to windward; the sailors in the Indiaman's bows were
grinning at him behind, while the first lieutenant of the brig shouted
gruffly that she had no time to wait for more letters; and I heard the
gun-room steward say to the marine, on going out with the dirty
breakfast-cloth, he wondered if 'that parson cove thought the _Pedarkis_
wanted a chapling,' or was only 'vun of these fellers that's so
troublesome to see the French Hemperor.'
"'Well,' said the marine, ''twas pretty queer if he took the _Pedarkis_
for the ship to carry him there. I don't think the captain would let a
rat into the island if he could help it' 'Not he,' said the steward;
'plenty on 'em in already, Vite, my man--I do think they used to swim
off on board here, by the way our cheese vent.' All this time I never
stirred from the port, watching with my chin on the muzzle of the gun
till the Indiaman was half-a-mile to windward of us, her big hull still
rising and falling on the same swells, topped with clusters of heads;
her topsails lowered in honour of the flag, the ensign blowing out
half-mast high for the death of Captain Williamson; a long wash of the
water ran outside the brig's timbers, surge after surge, and the plunge
at her bows showed how fast she began to run nor'-westward before the
wind. You may well fancy my state, after all I'd done for weeks; in
fact, one scarce knew the extent of what he'd felt, what he'd looked
forward to, till he found himself fairly adrift from it; 'twould even
have been nothing, after all, could I just have thought of Violet Hyde
as I'd done two hours ago, on waking with last night in the river on my
mind.
"As it was, 'twould have taken little to make me jump out of the port
into the sweep of blue water swelling toward the brig's counter; the
_Seringapatam_ being by this time astern. I couldn't even see her, or
aught save the horizon, to windward; but at this moment the young second
lieutenant came below, and, seeing me, he began in a polite enough way,
with a kindly manner about it, trying to raise my spirits. 'I suppose,
sir,' said I, rather sulkily I daresay, 'I can have a berth just now?'
'Oh, certainly,' said he, 'the steward has orders to see to it at once.
Will you come on deck a minute or two in the meantime, sir?'
"I looked back from the ship astern to the brig-of-war's clean white
decks, flush fore and aft, with the men all forward at their stations,
neatly dressed in regular man-o'-war style, everyone alike--a sight that
would have done me good at another time, small as she was by comparison;
but the very thought of the Indiaman's lumbering poop and galleries was
too much for me--'twas as if you'd knocked out those two round-house
doors of hers, and let in a gush of bare sky instead. The ship-shape
man-o'-war cut of things was nothing, I fancied, to the snug spot under
those top-gallant bulwarks of hers, and the breezy poop all a-flutter
with muslin of an evening, where you found books and little basket
affairs stuck into the coils of rope. I thought the old _Seringapatam_
never looked so well, as she commenced trimming sail on a wind,
beginning to go drive ahead, with a white foam at her bows, and her
whole length broadside-on to us. All at once we saw her clue up courses
and to'-gallant sails, till she was standing slowly off under the three
topsails and jib; the two lieutenants couldn't understand what she was
about, and the captain put the glass to his eye, after which he said
something to the second lieutenant, who went forward directly.
"The next thing I saw was the Indiaman coming up in the wind again for
about a minute; she had her stern nearly to us, when the moment after,
as she rose upon a long sea, you saw something flash white off her lee
gangway in the sunlight, that dropped against it into the hollow of a
wave. The next minute she fell off again with her topsails full, and the
first shower of spray was rising across her forefoot, when the flash of
a gun broke out of her side, and the sound came down to us; then a
second and a third. The brig gave her the same number in answer, and as
soon as the smoke betwixt us had cleared away, the ship could be seen
under full sail to the south-westward by west. '_That_'s her poor
skippers hammock dropped alongside, gentlemen,' said Captain Wallis to
his officers; 'God be with him.' 'Amen,' said the first lieutenant, and
we put our caps on again. 'Set stu'nsails, Mr Aldridge,' said the
captain, limping down the hatchway; as for me, I leant I don't know how
long over the brig's taffrail, watching the ship's canvas grow in one,
through the width of air betwixt us; my heart full, as may be supposed,
not to say what notions came into my head of what might happen to her
under Finch's charge, ere she reached Bombay. No one belonging to the
brig spoke to me, out of kindness, no doubt; and the ship was hull-down
on the horizon, to my fancy with somewhat of a figure like _hers_, when
she stood with the cashmere shawl over her head in the dusk. Then I went
gloomily down to my berth, where I kept close by myself till I fell
asleep, though the gun-room steward was sent to me more than once to
join the officers.
"It wasn't till the next day, in fact, when I went on the quarter-deck
at noon, wearied for a fresher gulp of air, that I saw any of them; and
the breeze having fallen lighter that morning, they were too busy
trimming sail and humouring her to give me much notice. I must say I had
seldom seen a commander seem more impatient about the sailing of his
craft, in time of peace, than the captain of the _Podargus_ appeared to
be; walking the starboard side as fast as the halt in his gait would let
him, and the anxious turn of his eyes plainer than before, while he
looked from the brig's spread of stu'nsails to the horizon, through the
glass, which, I may say, he never once laid down. From where the brig
spoke the Indiaman, to St Helena, would be about two or three days' sail
with a fair wind, at the ordinary strength of the south-east trade;
though, at this rate, it might cost us twice the time. I noticed the men
on the forecastle look to each other now and then knowingly, at some
fresh sign of the captain's impatience; and the second lieutenant told
me in a low voice, with his head over the side near mine, Captain Wallis
had been out of sorts ever since they lost sight of the island. 'You'd
suppose, sir,' said he, laughing, 'that old _Nap_ was his sweetheart, by
the way he watches over him; and now, I fancy, he's afraid St Helena may
be sunk in blue water while we were away! In fact, Mr Westwood,' added
he, 'it looks devilish like as if it had come up from Davy Jones, all
standing; so I don't see why it shouldn't go down to him again some day;
I can tell you it's tiresome work cruising to windward there, though,
and we aren't idle at all!'
"'Did you ever see the French Emperor yourself, sir?' asked I--for I
must say the thought of nearing the prison such a man was in made me a
little curious. 'Never, sir, except at a mile's distance,' said the
second lieutenant; 'indeed, it's hard to get a pass, unless you know the
governor. But I've a notion,' continued he, 'the governor's carefulness
is nothing to our skipper's! Indeed, they tell a queer story of how Sir
Hudson Lowe was gulled for months together, when he was governor of
Capri island, in the Mediterranean. As for the captain, again, you'd
seek a long time ere you found a better seaman--he's as wide awake, too,
as Nelson himself; while the curious thing is, I believe, he never once
clapped eyes on Bonaparte in his life! But good cause he has to hate
him, you know, Mr Westwood!' 'Indeed,' said I, taking a moment's
interest in the thing; and I was just going to ask the reason, when the
first lieutenant came over to say Captain Wallis would be glad if I
would dine with him in the cabin.
"At dinner-time, accordingly, I put on a coat, for the first time, less
like those the cadets in the _Seringapatam_ wore, and went aft, where I
found the first lieutenant and a midshipman with the captain. He did his
best to soften my case, as I saw by his whole manner during dinner;
after which, no sooner had the reefer had his one glass of wine, than he
was sent on deck to look out to windward. 'Well, sir,' said Captain
Wallis thereupon, turning from his first luff to me, 'I'm sorry for this
disagreeable business! I believe you deny being the person at all,
though?' 'Why, sir,' said I, 'I am certainly no more the first
lieutenant of the _Orestes_ than yourself, Captain Wallis! 'Twas all
owing to a mistake of that India mate, who owed me a grudge.' 'Oh, oh, I
see!' replied he, beginning to smile, 'the whole matter's as plain as a
handspike, Mr Aldridge! But I couldn't do less, on the information.'
'However, sir,' put in the first lieutenant, 'there's no doubt the real
man must have been in the ship, or the mistake could not have happened,
sir!' 'Well--you look at things too square, Aldridge,' said the captain.
'All _you_'ve got to do, I hope, sir, is just to prove you're not
Westwood; and if you want still to go out to the East Indies, why, I
daresay you won't be long of finding some outward-bound ship or other
off Jamestown. Only, I'd advise you, sir, to have your case over with
Sir Pulteney, before Admiral Plampin comes in--as I fear he would send
you to England.' 'It matters little to me, sir,' I answered; 'seeing the
reason I had for going out happens to be done with.' Here I couldn't
help the blood rising in my face; while Captain Wallis's steady eye
turned off me, and I heard him say in a lower key to the lieutenant, he
didn't think it was a matter for a court-martial at all. 'Pooh,
Aldridge!' said he, 'some pretty girl amongst the passengers in the
case, I wager!' 'Why,' returned Aldridge, carelessly, 'I heard Mr Moore
say some of the ladies were pretty enough, especially one--some India
judge or other's young daughter--I believe he was in raptures about,
sir.' This sort of thing, as you may suppose, was like touching one on
the raw with a marling-spike; when the captain asked me--partly to
smooth it over, maybe--'By-the-by, sir, Mr Aldridge tells me there was
something about a pirate schooner, or slaver, or some craft of the
kind, that frightened your mates--that's all stuff, I daresay--but what
I want to know is, in what quarter you lost sight of her, if you
recollect?' 'About nor'-west by north from where we were at the time,
sir,' said I. 'A fast-looking craft was she?' asked he. 'A
thorough-built smooth-going clipper, if ever there was one,' I said. At
this the captain mused for a little, till at last he said to his
lieutenant: 'They daren't risk it; I don't think there's the Frenchman
born, man enough to try such a thing by water, Aldridge?' 'Help _him_
out, you mean, sir?' said the luff; 'why, if he ever got as far as the
water's edge, I'd believe in witchcraft, sir!' 'Give a man time, Mr
Aldridge,' answered the captain, 'and he'll get out of anything where
soldiers are concerned--every year he's boxed up sharpens him till his
very mind turns like a knife, man! It makes one mad on every point
besides, I tell you, sir--whereas after he's free, perhaps, it's just on
_that only_ his brain has a twist in it!' 'No doubt, Captain Wallis,'
said Aldridge, glancing over to me, as his commander got up and began
walking about the cabin, spite of his halt. 'D'ye know,' continued he,
'I've thought at times what I should like best would be to have _him_
ahead of the brig, in some craft or other, and we hard in chase--I'd go
after that man to the North Pole, sir, and bring him back! Without once
going aboard to know he was there, I'd send word it was Jack Wallis had
him in tow!' 'What is Bonaparte like, then, after all, sir?' I asked,
just to fill up the break. 'I never saw him, nor he me,' replied Captain
Wallis, stopping in his walk; 'but every day he may have a sight of the
brig cruising to windward; and as for the island, we see plenty of _it_,
I think, Aldridge?' 'Ay, ay, sir,' said Aldridge, 'that we do! For my
part, I can't get the ugly stone steeples of it out of my head!' 'Well,'
continued the captain, 'at times, when we're beating round St Helena of
a night, I'll be hanged if I haven't thought it began to loom as if the
French Emperor stood on the top of it, like a shadow looking out to sea
the other way--and I've gone below lest he'd turn round till I saw his
face. I've a notion Mr Aldridge, if I once saw his face, I'd lose what I
feel against him, just as I used always to fancy, the first five years
in the _Temple_, if he were only to see _me_, he would let me out! But
they say he's got a wonderful way of coming over everyone, if he
likes!' After this, Captain Wallis sat down and passed the decanters,
the first lieutenant observing, he supposed Bonaparte was a great man in
his way, but nothing to Nelson. 'Don't tack them together, Aldridge!'
said his commander quickly; 'Nelson was a man all over, he'd got the
feelings of a man and his faults; but I call _him_, yonder, a perfect
demon let loose upon the world! To my mind all the blood those
republicans shed, with their murdered king's at bottom of it, got
somehow into him, till he thought no more of human beings, or aught
concerning 'em, than I do of so many cockroaches! But the terrible thing
was, sir, his infernal schemes, and his cunning: why, he'd twist you one
country against another, and get hold of both, like a man bending
stu'nsail halliards; there were men grew up round him quick as
mushrooms, fit to carry out everything he wanted; so one couldn't wonder
at him enough, Mr Aldridge, if it was only natural! I can't tell you
anything like what I felt,' he went on, 'when I was in Sir Sydney
Smith's ship, cruising down Channel, and we used to see the gun-boats
and flat-bottoms he got together for crossing the straits; or one night
with poor Captain Wright, that we stood in near enough to get a shot
sent at us off the heights--the whole shore about Boulogne was one
twinkle of lights and camp-fires, and you heard the sound of the hammers
on planks and iron, with the carts and gun-carriages creaking--not to
speak of a hum from soldiers enough, you'd have thought, to eat Old
England up! And where are they now?' 'I don't know, sir, indeed,' said
the first lieutenant gravely, supposing by the captain's look, no doubt,
that it was a question. 'What, Captain Wallis!' exclaimed I, 'were you
with Captain Wright, then, sir?' Of course, like everyone in the
service, I had heard Captain Wright's story often, with ever so many
versions; there was a mystery about his sad fate that made me curious to
hear more of what gave the whole navy, I may say, a hatred to Bonaparte
not at all the same you regard a fair enemy with.
"'_With_ him, say you, sir?' repeated the captain of the _Podargus_, 'ay
was I! I was his first lieutenant, and good cause I had to feel for the
end he came to, as I'll let you hear. One night Captain Wright went
ashore, as he'd often done, into the town of Beville, dressed like a
smuggler; for the fact was the French winked at smuggling, only I must
say _we_ used to land men instead of goods. I didn't like the thing that
night, and advised him not to go, as they'd begun to suspect something
of late! However, the captain by that time was foolhardy, owing to
having run so many risks, and he was bent on going in before we left the
coast; though, after all, I believe it was only to get a letter that any
fisherman could have brought off. The boat was lying off and on behind a
rocky point, and we waited and waited, hearing nothing but the sound of
the tide making about the big weedy stones, in the shadow from the
lights of the town; when at last the French landlord of the little
tavern he put up at came down upon the shingle and whistled to us. He
gave me a message from Captain Wright, with the private word we had
between us, saying he wanted me to come up to the town on a particular
business. Accordingly I told the men to shove out again, and away I went
with the fellow.
"'No sooner did I open the door of the room, however, than three or four
gendarmes had hold of me, and I was a prisoner: as for Captain Wright, I
never saw him more. The morning broke as they brought me up on horseback
in the middle of them, along the road to Paris, from whence I could make
out the cutter heeling to the breeze a mile or two off the land, with
two or three gun-boats hard in chase.
"'Well, sir, at Paris they clapped me into a long gloomy-like piece of
masonwork called the _Temple_, close alongside of the river, where
plenty of our countrymen were; Captain Wright and Sir Sydney Smith
himself among the rest, as I found out afterwards. The treatment wasn't
so bad at first; but when you climbed up to the windows, there was
nothing to be seen but the top of a wall and roofs of houses all round,
save where you'd a glimpse of the dirty river and some pig-trough of a
boat. One day I got a letter from Captain Wright--how they let me have
it I don't well know--saying he was allowed a good deal of comfort in
the meantime, but he suspected some devilish scheme in it, to make him
betray the British Government, or something of the kind; that he'd heard
one of the French royalist generals had choked himself in his prison,
but never to believe he'd do the same thing, though every night he woke
up thinking he heard the key turn in the door. The next thing I heard
of was that Captain Wright had made away with himself, sir!'
"Here Captain Wallis got up again, walking across the cabin, seemingly
much moved. 'Well, after that I slept with the dinner-knife in my
breast, till the jailer took it away; for I thought at the time that
poor Wright had been murdered, though I found cause to change my mind
when I knew what loneliness does with a man, not to speak of the notion
being put before him to take his own life. For a while, too, Captain
Shaw was in the same cell; by which time we had such bad food, and so
little of it, that one day when a pigeon lighted on the window, which
used to come there for a crumb or two every afternoon, right along with
the gold gleam of the sun as it shot over the dark houses to that
window, I jumped up and caught it. Shaw and I actually tore it in bits,
and ate it raw on the spot; though 'twas long ere I could get rid of the
notion of the poor bird fluttering and cooing against the bars, and
looking at me with its round little soft eye as it pecked off the slab.
But what was that to the thought of my old father that had hurt himself
to keep me in the navy, and me able now to make his last days
comfortable? or the innocent young girl I had married the moment I got
my commission of first lieutenant, expecting to be flush of prize-money?
It even came into my head often, when I sat by myself in the cell they
afterwards put me into, alone, how that little blue pigeon might have
carried a letter to England for me; at any rate it was the only thing
like a chance, or a friend, I ever saw the whole time I was there; and
foolish as the notion may look, why the window was too high in a smooth
wall for me once to reach it.
"'I heard all Paris humming round the thick of the stone every day, and
sometimes the sound of thousands of soldiers tramping past below, over
the next bridge, with music and such like--no doubt when the First
Consul, as they called him, went off to some campaign or other: then I'd
dream I felt the deck under me in a fresh breeze at night, till the soul
sickened in me to wake up and find the stones as still as before, and
now and then hear the sentries challenging on their rounds.
"'Well, one day, a fellow in a cloak, with a slouch hat over his
forehead, was let in to try, as I thought, if there was anything to be
got out of me, as they tried two or three times at first; some spy he
was, belonging to that police devil Fouché. What did he offer me, d'ye
think, after beating about the bush for half-an-hour, but the command of
a French seventy-four under the Emperor, as he was by that time, and, if
I would take it, I was free! On this I pretended to be thinking of it,
when the police fellow sidled near me, to show a commission signed with
the Emperor's name at the foot.
"'In place of taking hold of it, however, I jumped up and seized the
villain's nose and chin before he saw my purpose, stuffed the parchment
into his mouth by way of a gag, and made him dance round the cell, with
his cloak over his head and his sword dangling alongside of him, to keep
his stern clear of my foot; till the turnkey heard the noise, and he
made bolt out as soon as the door was opened. You'd wonder how long that
small matter served me to laugh over, for my spirit wasn't broken yet,
you see; but even then, in the very midst of it, I would all of a sudden
turn sick at heart, and sit wondering when the exchange of prisoners
would be made that I looked for. The worst of it was, at times a horrid
notion would come into my head of the French seventy-four being at sea
at the moment, and me almost wishing they'd give me the offer over
again--I fancied I felt the very creak of her straining in the trough of
a sea, and saw the canvas of her topsails over me, standing on her poop
with a glass in my hand, till she rose on a crest, and there were the
_Agamemnon's_ lighted ports bearing down to leeward upon us, till I
heard Nelson's terrible voice sing out, "Give it to 'em, my lads!" when
the flash of her broadside showed me his white face under the cocked
hat, and it came whizzing over like a thirty-two-pound shot right into
my breast, as I sunk to the bottom, and found myself awake in the
prison.
"'I don't know how long it was after, but they moved me to another
berth, where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually
met his body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir,
they hadn't taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were
scattered on. There I sat one day after another, watching the spot
marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through
them as long as he was alive in the place, till my own got perfectly
stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times
when the jailer didn't bring me my food in time. I fancied they'd forget
all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by
the notion I had been two or three years in.
"'At last the turnkey got so used to me, thinking me no doubt such a
harmless sort of a poor man, that he would sit by and talk to me, giving
accounts of the Emperor's battles and victories, and such matters. I
must say I began to feel as if he was some sort of a god upon earth
there was no use to strive against, just as the turnkey seemed to do,
more especially when I heard of Nelson's death; so when he told me one
time it wouldn't do for Fouché or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said
nothing more. "Will the Emperor not let me out _now_?" asked I, a long
time after. "_Diable!_" said the man, "do you think His Majesty has time
to think of such a poor fellow as you, among such great matters? No, no,
_pauvr' homme_!" continued he; "you're comfortable here, and wouldn't
know what to do if you were out! No fear of your doing as your Capitaine
_Ourite_ did, since you've lived here so long, monsieur." "How long is
it now, good Pierre?" asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the
door; and the turnkey counted on his fingers. "Ulm--Austerlitz--Jena,"
said he slowly; "_oui, oui_--I scarcely thought it so much--it wants
only six or seven months of ten years!" and he shut-to the door. I
sprang up off the bed I was sitting on, wild at the thought--I may say,
for a day or two I was mad--ten years! ten years!--and all this time
where was my poor innocent Mary, and the child she expected to bear when
I left Exeter--where was my old father? But I couldn't bear to dwell on
it. Yes, Aldridge, by the God above, they had kept me actually _ten
years_ there, in that cursed Temple while _he_ was going on all the time
with his victories, and his shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he
wasn't too high, it seems, to stoop to give out, through his tools, how
Wright and I had both killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the
British Government--not to offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon--_me_, a
man used to wind and water, that loved a breeze at sea like life. 'Twas
the very devil's temptation, sir; but I'll tell you what, both Captain
Wright and myself had been with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, when _he_ was
baffled for the first time in his days--_that_ was the thing, I believe
from my soul, that he hated us for. _I_ had a right to be exchanged ten
times over, though he might have called Wright a spy; but what was my
poor wife and her new-born baby, or my old father's gray hairs to _him_,
and his great ambition to make everything his own--and when the very
thought of me in my hole at the Temple would strike him in the midst of
his victories, where he hadn't time, forsooth, to trouble himself about
a poor man like me. The fact was, I could tell how he offered a British
seaman, that had had a finger in nettling him, the command of one of his
seventy-fours, which he had nobody fit to manage--and that in a prison
where I'd be glad even of fresh air.
"''Twas then, in fact, the purpose rose firmer and firmer in me, out of
the fury that was like to drive me mad, how I'd get out of his clutches,
and spend my life against the very pitch of his power I knew so well
about. Till that time I used to look through the bars of the window at
the Seine, without ever fancying escape, low down as it was, compared
with my last cell. There was a mark in the stone floor with my walking
back and forward since they put me in; and by this time I had the
cunning of a beast, let alone its strength, in regard of anything I took
into my head; often I used to think I saw the end of my finger, or the
corner of a stone, more like the way a fly sees them, than a man. The
turnkey, Pierre, would never let me have a knife to eat my food with,
lest I should do as he said all we English were apt to do--kill
myself--which, by-the-way, is a lie; and I think that fiend of an
Emperor yonder must have taught them to blame us with their own crime.
However, latterly he let me have a fork for half-an-hour at dinner; and
for a quarter of an hour every day, except those when he stayed to talk
to me as I ate it, did I climb up and work with that fork at the top and
bottom of one of the window-bars, taking care not to break the fork, and
jumping down always in time to finish the meal. It took me four whole
months, sir, to loosen them! Such deadly fear as I was in, too, lest
he'd find it out, or lest they moved me to another cell--you'd have
thought I was fond of the walls round the place, where hundreds of men
before me had scrawled their last words; and the one that shot himself
had written, "_Liberté--anéantissement!_ "Liberty--annihilation!" just
over where the spatter of his brains had stuck when he laid his head to
the spot! If Pierre had noticed what I'd been about, my mind was made up
to kill him, and then make the trial before they missed him; but _that_
I had a horror of, after all, seeing the man had taken a sort of liking
to me, and I knew he had a wife.
"'Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I
trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn't carry it through.
I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out
the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line
was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a
sentry's head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past, I
dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping
the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark,
with the river I didn't know how far below me, though I heard it lapping
against some boats at the other side.
"'For a few moments I was quite senseless from the fall into the water.
The splash roused the sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into
it about me, as I struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick
enough to help me clear off among the dark lanes in the city; and the
upshot of it was that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a
pedlar's dress; till, in the end, after I can't tell you how many
ticklish chances, where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast,
and was taken off to a British frigate. At home, sir--at home, I found
I'd been given up long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte's prisons,
and--and--the old man had been buried seven years, Aldridge--but not so
long as my--wife. The news of my taking my own life in the Temple saved
her the rest--'twas too much for her at the time, Aldridge--both she and
her little one had lain in the mould nine years, when I stood looking at
the grass under Exeter Cathedral. I was a young man almost, still; but
my hair was as grizzled when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see
it now, and I'll never walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,' added the
captain of the _Podargus_, turning round and standing still, with a low
sort of a deep whisper, ''tis a strange thing, the Almighty's way of
working--but I never thought--in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave
of the water under me--I I little thought John Wallis would ever come
to keep guard over his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!'
"When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig
below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her
counter, and weltering away astern--one felt it, I may say, somewhat
like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got
all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the
tropics, without the moon. 'Let's go on deck, gentlemen,' said the
captain, coming to himself; 'now clap on those other topmost stu'nsails,
Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir'--'No saying,' I heard him mutter,
as he let us go up before him--'no saying what the want of the
_Podargus_ might do, off the island, these dark nights--with water
alongside, one can't be sure. I warrant me if _that man's_ dreams came
true, as mine did, he would be at the head of his thousands again,
ruining the whole world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while
the wind blows! Ay, dreams, young gentleman!' said he to me as we stood
on deck; 'I'll never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way
that dead man's brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my
part, off St Helena, 'tis Napoleon Bonaparte's dreams that enter into my
head. If you'll believe it, sir, I've _heard_ them as it were creeping
and tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night,
like men in millions ready to break out in war-music, as I used to hear
them go over the bridge near the Temple--or in shrieks and groans; we
all the time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot
of the rocks. I know then _who's_ asleep at the time up in Longwood!'
"The brig-of-war was taking long sweeps and plunges before the wind; the
Southern Cross right away on her larboard quarter, and the very same
stars spread all out aloft, that I watched a couple of nights before,
close by Violet Hyde. The whole of what I'd just heard was nothing to me
in a single minute, matched with the notion of never seeing her more.
Everything I'd thought of since we left England was gone, even one's
heart for the service; and what to do now, I didn't know. I scarce
noticed it commence to rain, till a bit of a squall had come on, and
they were hauling down stu'nsails: the dark swells only to be seen
rising with the foam on them, and a heavier cover of dull cloud risen
off the brig's beam, as well as ahead; so that you merely saw her
canvas lift before you against the thick of the sky, and dive into it
again. 'Twas just cleared pretty bright off the stars astern of us,
however, wind rather lighter than before the squall, when the captain
thought he made out a sail near about the starboard beam, where the
clouds came on the water-line; a minute or two after she was plain
enough in the clear, though looming nearly end-on, so that one couldn't
well know her rig. Thinking at first sight it might be the schooner,
Captain Wallis was for bracing up, to stand in chase and overhaul her;
but shortly after she seemed either to yaw a little, or fall off again
before the wind like ourselves, at any rate showing three sticks on the
horizon, with square canvas spread, and evidently a small _ship_.
"'Some homeward-bound craft meaning to touch at the island,' said
Captain Wallis, telling the first lieutenant to keep all fast; by which
time she was lost in the dusk again, and I wasn't long of going below. A
fancy had got hold of me for the moment, I can't deny, of its being the
_Seringapatam_ after us on Westwood's owning himself; whereupon I
persuaded myself Captain Wallis might perhaps take the risk on him of
letting us both go. For my part, I felt by this time as if I'd rather be
in the same ship with _her_, hopeless though it was, than steer this way
for the other side of the line; and I went down with a chill at my heart
like the air about an iceberg.
"Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after
that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side.
The brig had hauled her wind from aft on to her starboard quarter,
making less way than _before_ it, of course; I heard the captain's voice
near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes,
and went quietly up. The _Podargus_ was running through the long broad
swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the
officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond
the brig's fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as
impatient; though I couldn't at first make out the reason of her being
off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great
horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the
clouds, which for a moment you'd have supposed was the moon rising red
and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both
of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out
from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown
puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds;
through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of
canvas fluttering across on the yard.
"Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire--no doubt the vessel
seen abeam of us that evening--a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly
forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard
to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the
burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a
wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of
flame, full of sparks, and all sorts of black spots and broken things,
as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell.
Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of
ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her
headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the
horizon. 'Keep her away, sirrah!' shouted Captain Wallis, and the
_Podargus_ surged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to
speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her
weather-beam. 'God's sake!' exclaimed the captain at last, 'this is
terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first,
we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been
commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.'
'I think not, sir,' said his lieutenant; '_we_ were against the clear;
and if they'd been in danger _then_, she'd have fired a distress-gun.
There couldn't have been much powder aboard, sir--more likely rum, I
think!'
'For Heaven's sake!' continued the captain, 'let's look about--she must
surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge! The best thing we
can do is to fire a few times as we bear down--see that bow-gun cleared
away, Mr Moore, and do it!'
"We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was
last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on
under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the
clouds, with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I
caught a moment's glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was
too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light,
seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half-a-mile upon
the brig's lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain
enough when it rose. Down went the _Podargus_ for the spot, sending the
foam off her cutwater; and it was no long time before a wild hail from
several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after
she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft
of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled
down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after
which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.
"Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet
pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer
of the lanterns: the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make
him out for the crowd about him, and he didn't seem able to speak;
accordingly both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The
rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with earrings and a
seaman's dress who was the spokesman on the quarter-deck to the
captain's questions--plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl.
"'Are there no more of you afloat?' was the first thing asked, to which
the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said,
from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; and he was mate himself,
and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on
fire; so finding they couldn't get it under besides being wearied at the
pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room,
and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry
for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had
jumped overboard; the passenger was a learned sort of a man, and his
servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room
officers; however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the
captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could
use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of
their reckonings a long way. 'Somewhere south of the Line, I guess?'
said he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round
him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied.
'Well,' said he, 'I guess we're considerable unlucky; but I consider to
turn in, if agreeable!' The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy,
half awkward that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below,
he supposed 'this was a war-brig,' and hoped there 'wasn't war between
the States and the old country?' 'No, my man,' said the captain, 'you
may set your mind at ease on that point; but I'm afraid, nevertheless,
we'll have to land you at St Helena!'
"'What, mister?' said the American, starting, 'that's where you've got
Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if you give me a good berth for a few,
mister, I guess I'll rayther ship aboard you, till I get a better!
What's your wage just now, if I may ask, captain?' 'Well, well,' said
the captain, laughing, 'we'll see to-morrow, my man!'--and the American
went below. 'Set stu'nsails again, Mr Aldridge,' continued Captain
Wallis, 'and square yards. Why, rather than have such a fellow in the
ship's company, Aldridge, I'd land him without Sir Hudson's leave!'
"For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new
shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind--the blacks and
the mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected
by the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the
captain had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once
that threw me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was
perfectly beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom
Westwood had shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin's coat,
though I hadn't observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding
out, that, instead of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from
my own sister, little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of way,
that her brother Ned must come home before she could engage to anything!
You may fancy how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never
thinks his own sister charming at all--and what else could I have done
at any rate? All I hoped for, was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St
Helena, and there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again
for. I may say I walked the brig's lee quarter-deck till daybreak; but
anyhow the look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out 'St Helena on
the weather-bow!' when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the
midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat
in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard
quarter running round to it.