Behold our young friend, having travelled from the southern coast almost
to Madrid with a Spanish general of the highest family, now prepared to
make the rest of his journey to France as a member of a company of
mountebanks!
His first introduction into this new profession was anything but
pleasant. As soon as they arrived at the tent, where the two women,
Maria and Julia, were cooking supper, José opened a chest and took out a
tawdry and dirty costume, which he proposed that Archy should wear. Now
the green velvet jacket, the brown breeches with silver buttons, and the
yellow gaiters of a peasant had gone hard with Archy, but at least they
were clean, and this acrobatic costume was not. He looked at it, sniffed
at it, and finally, in a volley of Spanish and French, declared he would
not wear it. That came near losing him his engagement. José swore that
wear it he must; Archy vowed that wear it he wouldn't. Maria, José's
wife, solved the difficulty by saying:
"See, it makes no difference--it is too small for him, anyhow."
Then they all calmed down, and ate supper very amicably out of a large
pannikin of something or other which tasted violently of onions, leeks,
and garlic.
Next morning early they took up the line of march. Among José's
possessions was a stout horse, by name Bébé, which José regarded as by
far the most important member of the company. When hitched to the rude
cart which transported their belongings, Archy thought there was still
room for the two women; but, to his surprise, Maria and Julia toiled
along contentedly, each with a pack on her back, while the three men
carried nothing. Archy had nothing to carry except his shirts and his
two books. Naturally, he was very much disgusted with the want of
chivalry of the gentlemen of the party, and offered to help both of the
ladies with their burdens. But they scarcely understood what he meant by
his offer, and laughed at him for it. They showed their good-will to
him, though, by proposing to wash his shirts for him, which he
thankfully accepted, and afterwards astonished them very much by the
frequency with which he called upon them for this service.
By the time the day's march was over, Archy found that he had fallen in
with a very honest set of people, although rude and unlettered. Next day
they reached a small town, and gave their first performance in the
public square. The wire was stretched for the tight-rope walking, and
José shrewdly fastened it to the balcony of a tall building with a
chimney, not unlike the one near Madrid where Archy had first appeared
in public. Maria, disguised as a gypsy, sat in the tent, which was
decorated with bunting, and told marvellous fortunes to the gaping
rustics who were credulous enough to cross her hand with silver. Luis's
performance on the trapeze was considered fine, and was much applauded;
and when he got through, José, as general director of affairs, advanced,
and, ringing a huge bell to secure silence, began an oration which
surprised Archy as much as anybody.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, "you will now see a marvellous
performance by Señor Archibaldisto de Baskervilliano, a distinguished
Indian gentleman from North America. Señor Archibaldisto was once a
sailor, and as all the vessels in his country have masts as high as the
spire of Seville Cathedral, it is nothing for him to dance the bolero on
the top of yonder chimney. He is the heir to immense estates, and his
father is a grandee of the first class in North America. But having been
stolen in his youth, he adopted the acrobatic profession, and has
performed with great applause before all the crowned heads of North
America."
Archy bowed modestly in response to the tremendous applause which this
evoked, and began his trapeze performance.
As he was now endeavoring to do his best, and as he had practised in the
last day or two, he acquitted himself to the delight of the people, and
when he repeated his performance of shinning up the chimney, although he
could not dance the bolero on top of it, he went through with some
gymnastic performances which charmed the crowd. When their afternoon's
work was over, and Julia handed around her apron for contributions, José
divided the money with perfect honesty among them, and Archy's
one-eighth was somewhat more than he expected.
As José had promised, they pushed on rapidly, only giving performances
in the larger villages and towns. Luis, without the slightest
professional jealousy, taught Archy the bolero, and he was able to
introduce the national dance of Spain in some of his exhibitions. He
also taught José many things, and in a little while their joint
performance so charmed José that he began to try and persuade Archy to
return to Madrid with them, and was quite disgusted when Archy only
laughed at him.
Archy was sometimes surprised at his own happiness on that journey. The
travel was fatiguing, the fare rough, the work hard; but it was under
the open sky, he was with honest people, and he was travelling towards
freedom. He had lost all fear of being arrested for an Englishman, but,
as it turned out, that danger still remained, and eventually came near
to cost him dear.
On the tenth day from Madrid they reached Vitoria, and gave a
performance in the quaint old town.
José made his harangue concerning Señor Archibaldisto, dwelling upon the
fact that he was a sailor by profession. The crowd was made up, as
usual, of villagers and peasants; but Archy observed a group of three or
four persons, one in the dress of a notary, which seemed of a better
class. Archy did better than usual even, the crowd applauded
vociferously, and Julia, going about holding her apron out, soon had it
heavy with copper coins.
The notary, a keen-eyed fellow, was saying quietly to his companions:
"This Señor Archibaldisto is an impostor--that is, he is a gentleman.
Look at his hands; they are sunburned, but no more out of shape with
work than a fine lady's. And he is an Englishman. I have been in England
and I know them. He is no North American; the North Americans are
Indians--black, like the Moors. Listen to his Spanish. He speaks
rapidly, but incorrectly, and I know the English accent. Depend upon it,
he is an English spy--probably from Gibraltar."
This was enough. A cry went up from the notary's companions, of which
the crowd quickly caught the meaning, and then, like a pack of wolves,
they howled:
"A spy! A spy from Gibraltar! An English spy! Garrote him! Let him be
garroted!"
Archy was standing on the ground near the open door of the tent where
Maria was telling fortunes. As he heard this ominous cry he turned to go
into the tent, but José met him at the door. The Spaniard's face was
black with hate.
"You are an English spy!" he hissed.
"I swear to you I am not--I swear before God that I am not a spy!" cried
Archy.
José barred the way for a moment, but suddenly Maria, who had seemed
nothing more than a beast of burden, rose and pushed him out of the way.
"Come," she said to Archy, for the crowd was now closing around them
menacingly.
Maria spoke to José in a clear, high voice, audible over the enraged
murmurs and shouts and cries of the crowd:
"Do you call yourself a Christian, and stand by and let this honest boy
fall into the hands of these blood-thirsty people? José Monza, I am
ashamed that you are my husband!"
José, stunned by this declaration of independence from the submissive
Maria, could do nothing but turn his head from side to side, with his
mouth gaping wide open.
Maria, albeit her wits were newly found, had them all about her, and
whispered to Archy hurriedly, as she dragged him in the tent:
"While I am talking with the crowd in front, slit the tent behind, and
dash through the crowd. There is a church-yard to the left--you will
know the spire of the church because it is the only white one in
sight--and to-morrow morning before daylight we will come to the
church-yard." Then she advanced to the tent door, and, shoving José out
of the way as if he were a bale of goods, began an animated harangue to
the people, who gathered around the door to hear her, but interrupted
her every moment with demands for the English spy.
In another moment Archy had cut with his pocket-knife a long slit in the
tent, had sprung out, and was flying down a narrow and tortuous street.
Immediately the mob was in full cry after him, but all at once he seemed
to sink into the ground before them. He had caught sight in his flight
of an open trap-door leading into one of those underground shops so
common in Spanish towns; he dropped noiselessly into it, pulled the trap
down with him, and heard hundreds of feet trampling as the multitude
rushed on in pursuit of him.
As soon as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he saw there was
no one in the shop. There was another room behind it, which opened into
a garden. Feeling sure that the proprietor would be back in a very short
time, Archy realized that he must be getting away very shortly. He
slipped through the back room, ran up some crazy steps into the garden,
and to his delight he saw through the gathering gloom the white spire of
which Maria had told him.
The garden door was locked, but the key hung on a nail inside. With
this he let himself softly out, and found himself in a narrow passage
with garden-walls on one side and the back windows of houses on the
other. It was quite dark in there, and he sped along unseen until he
reached the end, and before him were the ivy-covered walls of the
church-yard. It was but a moment's work to climb over. This being done,
he hid himself behind a huge old mausoleum under a grove of ilex-trees;
and then he felt safe. He could hear the cries and the patter of feet
dying away in the distance, and soon all was still; darkness came on
quickly and perfect silence reigned, broken presently by the mellow
ringing of the Angelus bells. Then all was quiet again.
Archy was cold and hungry, but he did not allow this to disturb him. The
black shadows cast by the ilex-trees made him quite invisible under
their low, overhanging branches, and he spent the whole night walking up
and down to keep warm. As the first gray light of the coming dawn
appeared his listening ears caught the sound of some one creeping
outside the wall. He quickly clambered over, and there was Maria with a
huge empty basket, which she put on his back, and together they trudged
rapidly off in the direction of the high-road.
"Remember," said Maria, "if we are stopped you are to be my brother; you
are too old to be my son, and too young to be my husband."
"I think it an honor to be related in any way to so good a woman as you,
Maria," gallantly replied Archy.
On the outskirts of the town they found the rest of the party with the
cart and Bébé, and by hard travelling from dawn until midnight they
reached the Bidassoa, the boundary between France and Spain. They
encamped on the French side of the river, and after a rest of a whole
day and night they set out for St.-Jean-de-Luz.
They were now on French soil, and Archy's heart bounded with joy and
hope and gratitude. At St.-Jean-de-Luz he had to part with his humble
friends. He had enough money to take him to Paris, travelling
economically, and his late experiences proved to him that his own good
legs would enable him to get there even if his money gave out. Before
parting they gave two grand performances, in which Archy quite outshone
himself, and they took in a considerable sum of money. With his share
Archy bought some little memento for each of his kind friends. José and
Maria not only had the pain of parting with Archy, but also with Bébé,
that they had determined to sell for about twice his value. Their only
consolation was that they had sold him to one of the woman postilions,
common enough in those days, who plied between St.-Jean-de-Luz and
Bayonne, and Archy was to ride Bébé the day's journey between the two
places. The farewells were touching. All the men kissed Archy, after the
Spanish fashion, and he kissed Maria and Julia, and thanked them from
the bottom of his heart--particularly Maria, to whom he felt he owed his
life. Maria wept bitterly, and Archy said to her, with the greatest
sincerity: "Maria, as long as I live, whenever I see or hear of a good
woman I shall think of you." At last he was started on his journey. On
Bébé's broad back was one of those queer double saddles which were then
used in the Basque Provinces. Archy sat on one side, while on the other
was perched a stout Basque woman, Teresa by name. Being a sailor, Archy
was perfectly willing to ride anything in any manner, from a goat to an
elephant, and always at full speed. Teresa claimed jurisdiction over the
horse, but this Archy would by no means admit, and just as they were
passing through the market-place he gave Bébé a smart cut with a
knotted handkerchief, and the next thing he knew he was floundering amid
the ruins of a wicker chicken-coop, the frightened fowls clacking and
flapping wildly, while a dozen market-women were abusing him at once in
French and Spanish; and Teresa, loud above all, was haranguing him on
his cruelty to poor Bébé, the horse, that did not seem to Archy as much
an object of sympathy as himself. He was disentangled from the coop and
the fowls by two handsome Basque girls, who, however, lost all favor in
his eyes by laughing at him openly. Very sulky and disgusted, he mounted
again, and Teresa guided the stout Bébé out of the town and along the
road to Bayonne.
Archy counted that day as among the most unpleasant of his life. Teresa
alternated with laughing at him and scolding him. In a rage he
dismounted and walked, when Teresa, whipping Bébé into a fast trot,
caused Archy to run after her frantically for fear he should never see
either Teresa or Bébé again. When they reached Bayonne that night they
parted with mutual sentiments of disesteem.
The rest of his journey to Paris was uneventful, and on a February
evening he found himself standing at the door of the large, pleasant
house, set in an ample garden at Passy, which M. Ray de Chaumont had
generously given to the American representatives. Archy's heart beat
rapturously. He scarcely expected to meet Paul Jones, the most he hoped
for being to hear that the Commodore was somewhere on the French coast.
But just as he raised the knocker and gave a thundering rat-tat-tat the
door opened, and he almost walked into Paul Jones's arms.
"My captain!" cried Archy.
"My brave little midshipman!" exclaimed Paul Jones; and they embraced,
and Archy was not ashamed of the happy tears that filled his eyes. And
then Paul Jones held him off at arm's-length, and cried:
"How you are grown! And how handsome you are! And what adventures have
you had? And, faith! how glad I am to see you again!"
They heard a clear voice behind them saying:
"This, then, is the lost Pleiad--the young gentleman who was picked up
by the British at the Texel."
It was Dr. Franklin who spoke. Archy turned to him and involuntarily
removed his hat--so noble, so venerable was this august man.
"Come, Commodore, you do not want to go now. You and your young friend
must remain to sup with me," continued Dr. Franklin; and Archy, almost
abashed by the honor shown him, proudly and delightedly accepted.
Never could Archy Baskerville forget this first evening in the company
of those two extraordinary men. Dr. Franklin's dry and penetrating wit,
his acute reasoning, would have impressed the dullest intelligence;
while Paul Jones, whose schemes were great and far-reaching, had plans
in view well calculated to dazzle an ambitious young mind like Archy
Baskerville's. Nor was he entirely silent. He felt, of course, under a
strict obligation to say nothing about the condition of Gibraltar, but
he told of the unyielding courage of the garrison, of the fortitude of
the women, and of the many noble and admirable incidents that had
occurred; he actually found himself telling the story of throwing the
peacock down the skylight upon the Hanoverian officers, and the old
Genoese woman being blown through the window. He was so much encouraged
by Dr. Franklin's laughter and Paul Jones's that he told of his journey
through Spain, his career as an acrobat; he even related the story of
Teresa, the double saddle, and his fall into the chicken-coop, and some
of his other adventures. But when Paul Jones questioned him about Lord
Bellingham, Archy could not refrain, in the boyish vanity of his heart,
from recounting some of the various duellos at wit in which he and his
grandfather had been engaged--and he only related those in which he had
come out ahead, like the affair about his American uniform. Paul Jones
shouted with laughter, while Dr. Franklin quietly chuckled. At last,
about ten o'clock, Paul Jones made ready to return to Paris, saying to
Archy:
"You must share my lodgings, Mr. Baskerville. I am afraid to trust so
adventurous a young gentleman out of my sight." And Archy delightedly
accepted.
And now came a time more easy and brilliant in some respects, and more
harassing and anxious in others, than Archy had ever known. He lived
with Paul Jones in his Paris lodgings, and, like him, his time was
passed between anxious journeys to L'Orient, to find new difficulties
among the _Alliance_ and the _Ariel_ and their crews, and vexatious and
annoying transactions with the French Minister of Marine.
Paul Jones was a favorite at Versailles and in the highest society in
Paris, and he was glad to take with him in those dazzling palaces a
handsome and dashing young officer like Archy, who now wore a splendid
continental naval uniform, and who enjoyed the glitter and splendor of
all he saw. But, like Paul Jones, he would have hailed with joy any
prospect of getting away from this glittering but useless life into the
real service of his country.
Of course the subject of Archy's exchange was at once taken up. All the
officers of his rank captured on the _Bon Homme Richard_ had been
already exchanged, so that he had before him the dreary and tedious
business of trying to arrange an exchange with some young army officer
of the same rank in America. The summer came and waned, as did the
autumn, and no headway was made in his affair, nor in the greater affair
of Paul Jones procuring an armed ship, which was continually promised
but never forthcoming. The gloomy prospects of the American cause at
that time made it daily more unlikely that he would get a ship. Paul
Jones's spirits sank, and so did Archy's. They remained more closely at
their lodgings, and the scenes of splendid gayety which they had
frequented a few months before saw them no more. Only Dr. Franklin,
serene and majestic, lost neither heart nor hope.
One night in November, 1781, Paul Jones and Archy sat together in their
lodgings, which were close by the house of the Minister of War. Never
had they felt so despairing of their country. They knew that both Sir
Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis had been reinforced in America, and
that Rodney's fleet was on its way there to strike a mortal blow to the
fleet of De Grasse, from which much had been expected and nothing had
come. Besides these sad thoughts, Archy's heart was heavy when he
thought of his friends at Gibraltar. Were they still living and
starving? Or had they at last found rest in death?
The fire burned itself out, the candles flickered in their sockets;
midnight came, yet neither made any move towards going to bed. Archy
felt a singular restlessness in spite of his misery--he felt in the
attitude of one waiting for something to happen. At last it came, at one
o'clock in the morning. Far up the stony street they heard the clatter
of a horse's hoofs going at full gallop.
"It is an official messenger. He is stopping at the hôtel of the War
Minister," said Archy, in an intense whisper; and the next minute he
tore down the three flights of stairs of the tall house in which they
lodged, unfastened a window in the _entresol_ and jumped out, instead of
waiting for the _concierge_ to be waked up, and found himself speeding
along the street, and Paul Jones, neither so young nor so active, not
far behind him.
Windows were being opened, people were collecting hurriedly on the
streets, and a little crowd already stood around the steaming horse from
which the messenger had just alighted and had disappeared within the
doors. In an upper window on the first floor of the splendid hôtel a
light quickly appeared--the War Minister was receiving the news. The
crowd below waited, some in breathless silence, others exclaiming and
gesticulating in their excitement, and every moment the people increased
in numbers. Presently the window was flung up, and the War Minister,
with a white nightcap on his head and a dressing-gown wrapped round him,
put his head out and raised his hand for silence. Instantly every voice
was hushed.
"Good news--great news--from our allies in North America! On the 19th of
October, at Yorktown, in Virginia, Lord Cornwallis, with all his
force--guns, stores, and several vessels--surrendered to General George
Washington, in command of the joint forces of America and France. _Vive
l'Amérique!_"
Before the crowd could shout, a sudden, wild cry of joy went up from a
young man and an older one who stood together, clasping each other, with
tears running down their faces. The French might cheer and huzza in
their triumph, as they did, waking up the entire quarter of Paris, and
causing an outpouring of the whole population, but the patriotic joy of
Paul Jones and Archy Baskerville was too deep for words. Theirs was a
passionate thanksgiving which could only be expressed by Paul Jones as,
uncovering his head, he said, reverently:
"Let us bless the good God for his mercies to our dear country!"