DISCLOSES THE MANNER OF MY ESCAPE AND HOW WE SET SAIL FOR ALBION
Thurot turned the key on me with a pleasantry that was in no accordance
with my mood, and himself retired to the round house on deck where his
berth was situated. I sat on a form for a little, surrendered all to
melancholy, then sought to remove it by reading, as sleep in my present
humour was out of the question. My reading, though it lasted for an hour
or two, was scarcely worth the name, for my mind continually wandered
from the page. I wondered if my note to Kilbride had been delivered, and
if any step on his part was to be expected therefrom; the hope that rose
with that reflection died at once upon the certainty that as the Dutch
seaman had not signalled as he had promised he had somehow learned the
true nature of my condition in the frigate. Had he told Thurot? If he
had told Thurot--which was like enough--that I had communicated with any
one outside the vessel there was little doubt that the latter would take
adequate steps to prevent interference by Kilbride or any one else.
We are compact of memories, a mere bundle of bygone days, childish
recollections, ancient impressions, and so an older experience came to
me, too, of the night I sat in the filthy cabin of Dan Risk's doomed
vessel hearing the splash of illegitimate oars, anticipating with a mind
scarcely more disturbed than I had just now the step of the officer from
the prison at Blackness and the clutch of the chilly fetters.
There was a faint but rising nor'-east wind. It sighed among the shrouds
of the frigate. I could hear it even in the cabin, pensive like the call
of the curfew at a great distance. The waves washed against the timbers
in curious short gluckings and hissings. On the vessel herself not a
sound was to be heard, until of a sudden there came a scratching at my
cabin door!
It was incredible! I had heard no footstep on the companion, and I had
ceased to hope for anything from the Dutchman!
“Who's there?” I asked softly, and at that the key outside was turned
and I was fronted by Kilbride!
He wore the most ridiculous travesty of the Dutchman's tarry breeks
and tarpaulin hat and coarse wide jumper, and in the light of my candle
there was a humorous twinkle on his face as he entered, closed the door
softly after him, and sat down beside me.
“My goodness!” he whispered, “you have a face on you as if you were in a
graveyard watching ghosts. It's time you were steeping the withies to go
away as we say in the Language, and you may be telling me all the story
of it elsewhere.”
“Where's the Dutchman that took my letter?” I asked.
“Where,” said Kilbride, “but in the place that well befits him--at the
lug of an anker of Rotterdam gin taking his honest night's rest. I'm
here guizing in his tarry clothes, and if I were Paul Greig of the Hazel
Den I would be clapping on my hat gey quick and getting out of here
without any more parley.”
“You left him in the hoy!” said I astonished.
“Faith, there was nothing better for it!” said he coolly. “Breuer gave
him so much of the juniper for old acquaintance that when I left he was
so full of it that he had lost the power of his legs and you might as
well try to keep a string of fish standing.”
“And it was you took Clancarty ashore?”
“Who else? And I don't think it's a great conceit of myself to believe
I play-acted the Dutch tarry-breeks so very well, though I was in
something of a tremble in case the skipper here would make me out below
my guizard's clothes. You may thank your stars the moon was as late of
rising this night as a man would be that was at a funeral yesterday.”
“And where's the other man who was on this vessel?” I asked, preparing
to go.
“Come on deck and I'll show you,” said Kilbride, checking a chuckle of
amusement at something.
We crept softly on deck into the night now slightly lit by a moon veiled
by watery clouds. The ship seemed all our own and we were free to leave
her when we chose for the small boat hung at her stern.
“You were asking for the other one,” said Kilbride. “There he is,” and
he pointed to a huddled figure bound upon the waist. “When I came on
board after landing Clancarty this stupid fellow discovered I was a
stranger and nearly made an outcry; but I hit him on the lug with the
loom of an oar. He'll not be observing very much for a while yet, but
I was bound all the same to put a rope on him to prevent him disturbing
Captain Thurot's sleep too soon.”
We spoke in whispers for the night seemed all ear and I was for ever
haunted by the reflection that Thurot was divided from us by little more
than an inch or two of teak-wood. Now and then the moon peeped through
a rift of cloud and lit a golden roadway over the sea, enticing me
irresistibly home.
“O God, I wish I was in Scotland!” I said passionately.
“Less luck than that will have to be doing us,” said Kilbride, fumbling
at the painter of the boat. “The hoy sets sail for Calais in an hour
or two, and it's plain from your letter we'll be best to be taking her
round that length.”
“No, not Calais,” said I. “It's too serious a business with me for that.
I'm wanting England, and wanting it unco fast.”
“_Oh, Dhe!_” said my countryman, “here's a fellow with the appetite of
Prince Charlie and as likely to gratify it. What for must it be England,
_loachain?_”
“I can only hint at that,” I answered hastily, “and that in a minute.
Are ye loyal?”
“To a fine fellow called MacKellar first and to my king and country
after?”
“The Stuarts?” said I.
He cracked his thumb. “It's all by with that,” said he quickly and not
without a tone of bitterness.
“The breed of them has never been loyal to me, and if I could wipe out
of my life six months of the cursedest folly in Forty-five I would go
back to Scotland with the first chance and throw my bonnet for Geordie
ever after like the greasiest burgess ever sold a wab of cloth or a
cargo of Virginia in Glasgow.”
“Then,” I said, “you and me's bound for England this night, for I have
that in my knowledge should buy the safety of the pair of us,” and I
briefly conveyed my secret.
He softly whistled with astonishment.
“Man! it's a gey taking idea,” he confessed. “But the bit is to get over
the Channel.”
“I have thought of that,” said I. “Here's a smuggler wanting no more
than a rag of sail in this wind to make the passage in a couple of
days.”
“By the Holy Iron it's the very thing!” he interrupted, slapping his
leg.
It takes a time to tell all this in writing, but in actual fact our
whole conversation together in the cabin and on the deck occupied less
than five minutes. We were both of us too well aware of the value of
time to have had it otherwise and waste moments in useless conversation.
“What is to be done is this,” I suggested, casting a rapid glance along
the decks and upwards to the spars. “I will rig up a sail of some sort
here and you will hasten over again in the small-boat to the hoy and
give Father Hamilton the option of coming with us. He may or he may not
care to run the risks involved in the exploit, but at least we owe him
the offer.”
“But when I'm across at the hoy there, here's you with this dovering
body and Captain Thurot. Another knock might settle the one, but you
would scarcely care to have knocks going in the case of an old friend
like Tony Thurot, who's only doing his duty in keeping you here with
such a secret in your charge.”
“I have thought of that, too,” I replied quickly, “and I will hazard
Thurot.”
Kilbride lowered himself into the small-boat, pushed off from the side
of the frigate, and in silence half-drifted in the direction of the
Dutch vessel. My plans were as clear in my head as if they had been
printed on paper. First of all I took such provender as I could get from
my cabin and placed it along with a breaker of water and a lamp in the
cutter. Then I climbed the shrouds of the frigate, and cut away a small
sail that I guessed would serve my purpose, letting it fall into the
cutter. I made a shift at sheets and halyards and found that with a
little contrivance I could spread enough canvas to take the cutter
in that weather at a fair speed before the wind that had a blessed
disposition towards the coast of England. I worked so fast it was a
miracle, dreading at every rustle of the stolen sail--at every creak of
the cutter on the fenders, that either the captain or his unconscious
seaman would awake.
My work was scarcely done when the small-boat came off again from the
hoy, and as she drew cautiously near I saw that MacKellar had with him
the bulky figure of the priest. He climbed ponderously, at my signal,
into the cutter, and MacKellar joined me for a moment on the deck of the
frigate.
“He goes with us then?” I asked, indicating the priest.
“To the Indies if need be,” said Kilbride. “But the truth is that this
accident is a perfect God-send to him, for England's the one place
below the firmament he would choose for a refuge at this moment. Is all
ready?”
“If my sail-making's to be relied on she's in the best of trim,” I
answered.
“And--what do ye call it?--all found?”
“A water breaker, a bottle of brandy, a bag of bread--”
“Enough for a foray of fifty men!” he said heartily. “Give me meal and
water in the heel of my shoe and I would count it very good vivers for a
fortnight.”
He went into the cutter; I released the ropes that bound her to the
frigate and followed him.
“_Mon Dieu_ dear lad, 'tis a world of most fantastic happenings,” was
all the poor old priest said, shivering in the cold night air.
We had to use the oars of the frigate's small-boat for a stroke or two
so as to get the cutter round before the wind; she drifted quickly
from the large ship's side almost like a living thing with a crave
for freedom at last realised; up speedily ran her sail, unhandsome yet
sufficient, the friendly air filled out the rustling folds and drove her
through the night into the open sea.
There is something in a moonlit night at sea that must touch in the most
cloddish heart a spring of fancy. It is friendlier than the dawn that at
its most glorious carries a hint of sorrow, or than the bravest sunset
that reminds us life is a brief day at the best of it, and the one
thing sempiternal yet will be the darkness. We sat in the well of the
cutter--three odd adventurers, myself the most silent because I had the
double share of dubiety about the enterprise, for who could tell how
soon the doomster's hand would be on me once my feet were again on
British soil? Yet now when I think of it--of the moonlit sea, the
swelling sail above us, the wake behind that shone with fire--I must
count it one of the happiest experiences of my life.
The priest looked back at the low land of France receding behind us,
with its scattered lights on the harbour and the shore, mere subjects
to the queenly moon. “There goes poor Father Hamilton,” said he
whimsically, “happy schoolboy, foolish lover in Louvain that had never
but moonlit eves, parish priest of Dixmunde working two gardens, human
and divine, understanding best the human where his bees roved, but
loving all men good and ill. There goes the spoiled page, the botched
effort, and here's a fat old man at the start of a new life, and never
to see his darling France again. Ah! the good mother; _Dieu te bénisse!_”