HOW THE _JOSÉPHINE_ 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
_Joséphine_. 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 Duchâtel 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 Duchâtel, 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 _Joséphine_ was common elsewhere in
the French ships of war, and often told sorely against them in a fight.
But in such matters Captain Duchâtel 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 Duchâtel 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 _Joséphine_ 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 _Joséphine_,--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 _Joséphine_,
was reported sunk with all on board, and that, as it turned out, was not
without its concern for me.