THUROT'S PRISONER. MY FRIEND THE WATCH
It was plain from the first that my overhearing of the plot must compel
Thurot to the step he took. He was not unkind, but so much depended on
the absolute secrecy of the things he had talked to the Prince, that,
even at the unpleasant cost of trepanning me, he must keep me from
carrying my new-got information elsewhere. For that reason he refused to
accede to my request for a few minutes' conversation with the priest or
my fellow-countrymen. The most ordinary prudence, he insisted, demanded
that he should keep me in a sort of isolation until it was too late to
convey a warning across the Channel.
It was for these reasons I was taken that Sabbath afternoon to the
frigate that was destined to be in a humble sense his flagship, and was
lying in the harbour with none of her crew as yet on board. I was given
a cabin; books were furnished to cheer my incarceration, for it was
no less. I was to all intents and purposes a prisoner, though enjoying
again some of the privileges of the _salle d'épreuves_ for the sake of
old acquaintance.
All that day I planned escape. Thurot came to the cabin and smoked and
conversed pleasantly, but found me so abstracted that he could scarcely
fail to think I meant a counter-sap.
“Be tranquil, my Paul,” he advised; “Clancarty and I will make your life
on ship-board as little irksome as possible, but it is your own cursed
luck that you must make up your mind to a fortnight of it.”
But that was considerably longer than I was ready to think of with
equanimity. What I wished for was an immediate freedom and a ship to
England, and while he talked I reviewed a dozen methods of escape. Here
was I with a secret worth a vast deal to the British Government; if I
could do my country that service of putting her into possession of it
in time to prevent catastrophe, might I not, without presumption, expect
some clemency from her laws for the crime I had committed in the
hot blood of ignorant and untutored youth? I saw the most cheerful
possibilities rise out of that accident that had made me an eavesdropper
in Thurot's lodging--freedom, my family perhaps restored to me, my name
partly re-established; but the red shoes that set me on wrong roads to
start with still kept me on them. Thurot was an amiable enough gaoler,
but not his best wine nor his wittiest stories might make me forget by
how trivial a chance I had lost my opportunity.
We were joined in the afternoon by Lord Clancarty.
“What, lad!” cried his lordship, pomaded and scented beyond words;
fresh, as he told us, from the pursuit of a lady whose wealth was
shortly to patch up his broken fortunes. “What, lad! Here's a pretty
matter! Pressed, egad! A renegade against his will! 'Tis the most cursed
luck, Captain Thurot, and wilt compel the poor young gentleman to cut
the throats of his own countrymen?”
“I? Faith, not I!” said Thurot. “I press none but filthy Swedes. M.
Greig has my word for it that twelve hours before we weigh anchor he may
take his leave of us. _Je le veux bien_.”
“Bah! 'Tis an impolite corsair this. As for me I should be inconsolable
to lose M. Greig to such a dull country as this England. Here's an
Occasion, M. le Capitaine, for pledging his health in a bottle, and
wishing him well out of his troubles.”
“You do not stand sufficiently on your dignity, Clancarty,” laughed
Thurot. “Here's the enemy--”
“Dignity! pooh!” said his lordship. “To stand on that I should need a
year's practice first on the tight-rope. There's that about an Irish
gentleman that makes the posturings and proprieties and pretences of
the fashionable world unnecessary. Sure, race will show in his face
and action if he stood alone in his shirt-sleeves on a village common
juggling balls. I am of the oldest blood that springs in Irish kings.
'Tis that knowledge keeps my heart up when circumstances make the world
look rotten like a cheese. But the curst thing is one cannot for ever
be drinking and dining off a pedigree, and here I am deserted by M.
Tête-de-mouche----”
Thurot put up his hand to check one of these disloyalties to the
Pretender that I had long since learned were common with Lord Clancarty.
“Bah!” cried his lordship. “I love you, Tony, and all the other boys,
but your Prince is a madman--a sotted madman tied to the petticoat tails
of a trollope. This Walkinshaw--saving your presence, Paul Greig, for
she's your countrywoman and by way of being your friend, I hear--has
ruined Charles and the Cause. We have done what we could to make him
send madame back to the place she came from, but he'll do nothing of the
kind. 'She has stuck by me through thick and thin, and lost all for me,
and now I shall stick by her,' says foolish Master Sentiment.”
“Bravo!” cried Thurot. “'Tis these things make us love the Prince and
have faith in his ultimate success.”
“You were ever the hopeful ass, Tony,” said his lordship coolly. “_Il
riest pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre_, and you must shut
your ears against a tale that all the world is shouting at the pitch of
its voice. Who knows better than Tony Thurot how his Royal Highness has
declined? Why! 'tis manifest in the fellow's nose; I declare he drinks
like a fish--another vice he brought back from your mountain land, M.
Greig, along with Miss Walkinshaw----”
“There is far too much of Miss Walkinshaw about your lordship's
remarks,” I cried in an uncontrollable heat that the lady should be the
subject of implications so unkind.
He stared, and then kissed his hand to me with laughter and a bow, “Ha!”
he cried, “here's another young gentleman of sentiment. Stap me if I say
a word against the lady for your sake, Andy Greig's nephew.” And back he
went to his bottle.
In this light fashion we spent a day that by rights should have been
more profitably and soberly occupied. The frigate lay well out from the
quays from which Thurot had conveyed me with none of the indignities
that might be expected by a prisoner. There was, as I have said, none of
her crew on board save a watch of two men. Beside her quarter there hung
a small smuggling cutter that had been captured some days previously. As
I sat in the cabin, yawning at the hinder-end over Clancarty's sallies,
I could hear now and then the soft thudding of the smuggler's craft
against the fenders as the sea rocked us lightly, and it put a mad fancy
into my head.
How good it would be, I thought, to be free on board such a vessel and
speeding before a light wind to Britain! Was it wholly impossible? The
notion so possessed me that I took an occasion to go on deck and see how
things lay.
The smuggler's boat had her mast stepped, but no sails in her. Over the
bulwark of the frigate leaned one of the watch idly looking at sea-gulls
that cried like bairns upon the smuggler's thwarts and gunnels. He was
a tarry Dutchman (by his build and colour); I fancy that at the time he
never suspected I was a prisoner, for he saluted me with deference.
The harbour was emptier than usual of shipping. Dusk was falling on the
town; some lights were twinkling wanly and bells rang in the cordage
of the quays. I asked the seaman if he knew where the hoy _Vrijster_ of
Helvoetsluys lay.
At that his face brightened and he promptly pointed to her yellow hull
on the opposite side of the harbour.
“Did my honour know Captain Breuer?” he asked, in crabbed French.
My honour was very pleased to confess that he did, though in truth my
acquaintance with the skipper who had taken us round from Helvoetsluys
went scarcely further than sufficed me to recall his name.
The best sailor ever canted ship! my Dutchman assured me with
enthusiasm. How often have I heard the self-same sentiment from
mariners? for there is something jovial and kind in the seaman's manner
that makes him ever fond of the free, the brave and competent of his own
calling, and ready to cry their merits round the rolling world.
A good seaman certainly!--I agreed heartily, though the man might have
been merely middling for all I knew of him.
He would like nothing better than to have an hour with Captain Breuer,
said Mynheer.
“And I, too,” said I quickly. “But for Captain Thurot's pressing desire
that I should spend the evening here I should be in Breuer's cabin now.
Next to being with him there I would reckon the privilege of having him
here.”
There might be very little difficulty about that if my honour was
willing, said Mynheer. They were old shipmates; had sailed the Zuyder
Sea together, and drunken in a score of ports. Dearly indeed would he
love to have some discourse with Breuer. But to take leave from the
frigate and cross to the hoy--no! Captain Thurot would not care for him
to do that.
“Why not have Breuer come to the frigate?” I asked, with my heart
beating fast.
“Why, indeed?” repeated Mynheer with a laugh. “A hail across the harbour
would not fetch him.”
“Then go for him,” said I, my heart beating faster than ever lest he
should have some suspicion of my condition and desires.
He reminded me that he had no excuse to leave the frigate, though to
take the small boat at the stern and row over to the hoy would mean but
a minute or two.
“Well, as for excuses,” said I, “that's easily arranged, for I can give
you one to carry a note to the care of the captain, and you may take it
at your leisure.”
At his leisure! He would take it at once and thankfully while we
gentlemen were drinking below, for there was no pleasure under heaven he
could compare with half an hour of good Jan Breuer's company.
Without betraying my eagerness to avail myself of such an unlooked-for
opportunity, I deliberately wrote a note in English intimating that I
was a prisoner on the frigate and in pressing humour to get out of
her at the earliest moment. I addressed it to Kilbride, judging the
Highlander more likely than Father Hamilton to take rational steps for
my release if that were within the bounds of possibility.
I assured the seaman that if he lost no time in taking it over I would
engage his absence would never be noticed, and he agreed to indicate to
me by a whistle when he returned.
With a cheerful assurance that he would have Jan Breuer on this deck in
less than twenty minutes the seaman loosed the painter of the small
boat and set forth upon his errand, while I returned to the cabin where
Thurot and Clancarty still talked the most contrary and absurd politics
over their wine. The vast and tangled scheme of French intrigue was set
before me; at another time it might have been of the most fascinating
interest, but on this particular occasion I could not subdue my mind to
matters so comparatively trivial, while I kept my hearing strained for
the evidence that the Dutchman had accomplished his mission and got
back.
The moments passed; the interest flagged; Clancarty began to yawn and
Thurot grew silent. It was manifest that the sooner my Dutchman was back
to his ship the better for my plan. Then it was I showed the brightest
interest in affairs that an hour earlier failed to engage a second of my
attention, and I discovered for the entertainment of my gaoler and
his friend a hitherto unsuspected store of reminiscence about my Uncle
Andrew and a fund of joke and anecdote whereof neither of them probably
had thought me capable.
But all was useless. The signal that the Dutchman had returned was not
made when Lord Clancarty rose to his feet and intimated his intention
there and then of going ashore, though his manner suggested that it
would have been easy to induce him to wait longer. We went on deck with
him. The night was banked with clouds though a full moon was due; only a
few stars shone in the spaces of the zenith; our vessel was in darkness
except where a lamp swung at the bow.
“_Mon Dieu!_ Tony, what a pitchy night! I'd liefer be safe ashore than
risking my life getting there in your cockle-shell,” said Clancarty.
“'Art all right, Lord Clancarty,” said Thurot. “Here's a man will row
you to the quay in two breaths, and you'll be snug in bed before M.
Greig and I have finished our prayers.” Then he cried along the deck for
the seaman.
I felt that all was lost now the fellow's absence was to be discovered.
What was my astonishment to hear an answering call, and see the
Dutchman's figure a blotch upon the blackness of the after-deck.
“Bring round the small boat and take Lord Clancarty ashore,” said the
captain, and the seaman hastened to do so. He sprang into the small
boat, released her rope, and brought her round.
“_A demain_, dear Paul,” cried his lordship with a hiccough. “It's curst
unkind of Tony Thurot not to let you ashore on parole or permit me to
wait with you.”
The boat dropped off into the darkness of the harbour, her oars thudding
on the thole-pins.
“There goes a decent fellow though something of a fool,” said Thurot.
“'Tis his kind have made so many enterprises like our own have an
ineffectual end. And now you must excuse me, M. Greig, if I lock you
into your cabin. There are too few of us on board to let you have the
run of the vessel.”
He put a friendly hand upon the shoulder I shrugged with chagrin at this
conclusion to an unfortunate day.
“Sorry, M. Greig, sorry,” he said humorously. “_Qui commence mal finit
mal_, and I wish to heaven you had begun the day by finding Antoine
Thurot at home, in which case we had been in a happier relationship
to-night.”