AN ESCAPE.
The wind shifted never a point, so that, ere sunset the next day, we
were well down the river and nearing the mouth, while already ahead of
us we could see the waves of the North Sea tumbling about. Also, we
could see something else, that we could have done very well without,
namely, the topmasts of a great frigate lying about three miles off
the coast, or rather cruising about and keeping off and on, the vessel
being doubtless one of Louis' warships, bent on intercepting anything
that came out of the river.
"Yet," said Captain Tandy, as he stood on the poop and regarded her
through his perspective glass, "she will not catch us. Let but the
night fall, and out we go, while, thanks to the Frenchman who built
our little barky, we can keep so well in that she can never come anear
us."
"She can come near enough, though, to send a round shot or two into
our side," I hazarded, "if she sees our lights."
"She won't see our lights," the captain made answer, and again he
indulged in that habit which seemed a common one with him--he winked
at me; a steady, solemn kind of a wink, that, properly understood,
conveyed a good deal. And, having favoured me with it, he gave orders
that the light sail under which we had come down the river should be
taken in, and, this done, we lay off the little isle of Rosenberg,
which here breaks the Maas in two, until nightfall.
And now it was that Tandy gave me a piece of information which, at
first, I received with anything but satisfaction; the information, to
wit, that at the last moment almost--at eleven o'clock in the morning,
and before I had come on board--he had been fortunate enough to get
another passenger, this passenger being the man Carstairs--or
Cuddiford, as he came to consider him--whom, at the opening of this
narrative, you have seen in a delirium.
"I could not refuse the chance, Mr. Crespin," he said, for he knew
my name by now. "Things are too ill with me, owing to this accursed
fresh war, for me to throw guineas away. So when his blackamoor
accosted me at the 'Indian' and said that he heard I was going a
voyage south--God, He knows how these things leak out, since I had
never spoke a word of my intention, though some of the men, or the
ship's chandler, of whom I bought last night, may have done so--and
would I take his master and him? I was impelled to do it! There are
the wife and the children at home."
"And have you got another hundred guineas from him?" I asked.
"Ay, for him and the black. But they will not trouble you. The old
gentleman--who seems to be something like a minister--tells me he is
not well, and will not quit his cabin. The negro will berth near him;
they will not interfere with you."
"Do they know there is another passenger aboard?"
"I have not spoken to the old man; maybe, however, some of the sailors
may have told the servant. Yet none know your name; but I--it can be
kept secret an you wish." And again he winked at me, thinking, of
course, as he had done before, that my business was of a ticklish
nature, as indeed it was, though not quite that which he supposed.
Nay, he felt very sure it must be so, since otherwise he would have
got no hundred guineas out of me for such a passage.
"I do not wish it known," I said. "It _must_ be kept secret. Also my
country. There must be no talking."
"Never fear," he replied. "I know nothing. And I do not converse with
the men, most of whom are Hollanders, since I had to pick them up in a
hurry. As for the old man, you need not see him; and, if you do, you
can keep your own counsel, I take it."
I answered that I could very well do that; after which the captain
left me--for now the night had come upon us, dark and dense, except
for the stars, and we were about to run out into the open. But even as
I watched the men making sail, and felt the little ship running
through the water beneath me--I could soon hear her fore foot gliding
through it with a sharp ripple that resembled the slitting of silk--I
wished that those other passengers had not come aboard, that I could
have made the cruise alone.
Yet we were aboard, he and I, and there was no help for it; it must be
endured. But still I could not help wondering what any old minister
should want to be making such a journey as this for; especially
wondered, also, why he should be attended by a black servant; and why,
again, it should be worth his while to pay a hundred guineas for the
passage.
But you know now as well as I do that this man was no minister, but
rather, if Tandy's surmises were right, some villainous old filibuster
who had lived through evil days and known evil spirits; my meditations
are, therefore, of no great import. Rather let me get on to what was
the outcome of my journey.
When we were at sea we showed no light at all; no! not at foremast,
main or mizzen; so that I very well understood now why the captain had
winked as he said that the Frenchman, if she was that, would not see
us; and especially I understood it when, on going below, I found that
the cabin windows were fastened with dead lights so that no ray could
steal out from them. Also, the hatches were over the companions so
that neither could any light ascend from below. In truth, as we
slapped along under the stiff northeast breeze that blew off the
Holland coast, we seemed more like some dark flying spectre of the
night than a ship, and I could not but wonder to myself what we should
be taken for if seen by any passer-by. Yet, had I only known, there
were at that time hundreds of ships passing about in all these waters
in the same manner--French ships avoiding the English war vessels, and
English and Dutch avoiding the French war vessels; and--which,
perhaps, it was full as well I did not know--sometimes two of them
came into contact with each other, after which neither was ever more
heard of. Only, in different ports there were weeping women and
children left, who--sometimes for years!--prayed for the day to come
when the wanderers might return, they never knowing that, instead of
those poor toilers of the sea having been made prisoners (as they
hoped) who would at last be exchanged, they were lying at the bottom
of the sea.
"'Tis a gay minister, at any rate," I said to Captain Tandy when I
returned to the deck--for all was so stuffy down below, owing to the
closing up of every ingress for the fresh air, that I could not remain
there--"and he at least seems not to mind the heat."
"What is he doing, then?" the captain asked.
"He is singing a little," I replied, "and through the half open door
of his cabin one may hear the clinking of bottle against glass. A
merry heart."
"The fiend seize his mirth! I hope he will not make too much turmoil,
nor set the ship afire. If he does we shall be seen easy enough."
I hoped so, too, and as each night the old man waxed more noisy and
the clink of the bottle was heard continuously--until at last his
drinking culminated as I have written--the fear which the captain had
expressed took great hold of me, so that I could scarce sleep at all.
Yet those fears were not realized, the Lord be praised! or I should
scarcely be penning this narrative now.
The first night passed and, as 'twas summer, the dawn soon came, by
which time we were running a little more out to sea, though--since to
our regret we saw that the frigate was on our beam instead of being
left far behind, as we had hoped would be the case--we now sailed
under false colours. Therefore at our peak there flew at this
time the lilies of France, and not our own English flag. Yet 'twas
necessary--imperative, indeed--that such should be the case if we
would escape capture. And even those despised lilies might not save us
from that. If the frigate, which we knew by this time to be a ship of
war, since her sides were pierced three tiers deep for cannon, and on
her deck we could observe soldiers, suspected for a moment those
colours to be false she would slap a shot at us; the first, perhaps,
across our bows only, but the second into our waist, or, if that
missed, then the third, which would doubtless do our office for us.
At present, however, she did nothing, only held on steadily on her
course, which nevertheless was ominous enough, for this action told
plainly that she had seen us leave the river, or she would have
remained luffing about there still. And, also, she must have known we
were not French, for what French ship would have been allowed to come
out of the Maas as we had come?
She did nothing, I have said; yet was not that sleuth-like following
of hers something? Did it not expound the thoughts of her captain as
plainly as though he had uttered them in so many words? Did it not
tell that he was in doubt as to who and what we were; that he set off
against the suspicious fact of our having quitted the river, which
bristled with the enemies of France, the other facts, namely, that our
ship was built French fashion, that maybe he could read her French
name on her stern, and that she flew the French flag?
Yet what puzzled us more than aught else was, how had the frigate
known that we had so got out? The night had been dark and black, and
we showed no lights.
Still she knew it.
The day drew on and, with it, the sea abated a little, so that the
tumbling waves, which had often obscured the frigate from us for some
time, and, doubtless, us from it, became smoother, and Tandy, who had
never taken his eye off the great ship, turned round and gave now an
order to the men to hoist more sail. Also another to the man at the
wheel to run in a point.
Then he came to where I was standing, and said:
"She draws a little nearer; I fear they will bring us to. Ha! as I
thought." And even as he spoke there came a puff from the frigate's
side; a moment later the report of a gun; another minute, and, hopping
along the waves went a big round shot, some fifty yards ahead of us.
"What will you do?" I asked the captain. "The next will not be so far
ahead."
"Run for it," he said. "They may not hit us--short of a broadside--and
if I can get in another mile or so they cannot follow. Starboard, you
below," he called out again to the man at the wheel, and once more
bellowed his orders to the men aloft.
This brought the ship's head straight for where the land was--we could
see it plain enough with the naked eye, lying flat and low, ten miles
away--also it brought our stern to the frigate, so that we presented
nothing but that to them--a breadth of no more than between twenty and
twenty-five feet.
"'Twill take good shooting to hit us this way," said Tandy very
coolly. "Yet, see, they mean to attempt it."
That this was so, one could perceive in a moment; then came three
puffs, one after the other, from their upper tier; then the three
reports; then the balls hurtling along on either side of us, one just
grazing our larboard yard-arm--we saw the splinters fly like
feathers!--the others close enough, but doing no harm.
"Shoot, and be damned to you," muttered Tandy; "another ten minutes
more, and you can come no further. Look," and he pointed ahead of us
to where I saw, a mile off, the water crisping and foaming over a
shoal bank, "'tis eight miles outside Blankenberg, and is called 'The
Devil's Bolster.' And we can get inside it, and they cannot." Then
again he bellowed fresh orders, which even I, a landsman, understood
well enough, or, at least, their purport. They were to enable us to
get round and inside the reef, and so place it between us and the
frigate.
They saw our move as soon as it was made, however, whereupon the
firing from their gun-ports grew hotter, the balls rattling about us
now in a manner that made me fear the ship must be struck ere long;
nay, she was struck once, a round shot catching her on her starboard
quarter and tearing off her sheathing in a long strip. Yet, at
present, that was all the harm she had got, excepting that her mizzen
shroud was cut in half.
But now we were ahead of the reef and about half a mile off it; ten
minutes later we were inside it, and, the frigate being able to
advance no nearer because of her great draught, we were safe. They
might shoot, as the captain said, and be damned to them; but shoot as
much as they chose, they were not very like to hit us, since we were
out of range. We were well in sight of each other, however, the reef
lying like a low barricade betwixt us, and I could not but laugh at
the contempt which the sturdy Dutch sailors we had on board testified
for the discomfited Frenchmen. There were three of them at work on the
fo'castle head at the time the frigate left off her firing, and no
sooner did she do so and begin to back her sails to leave us in
peace--though doubtless she meant lying off in wait for us when we
should creep out--than these great Hollanders formed themselves into a
sort of dance figure, and commenced capering and skipping about, with
derisive gestures made at the great ship. And as we could see them
regarding us through their glasses, by using our own, we knew very
well that they saw these gestures of contempt. Tandy, however, soon
put a stop to these, for, said he, "They may lie out there a week
waiting for us, and if then they catch us, they will not forget. And
'twill go all the harder with us for our scorn. Peace, fools, desist."
Whereon the men left off their gibes.
"Lie out there a week," thinks I to myself. "Fore Gad! I trust that
may not be so. For if they do, and one delay follows another, heaven
knows when I shall see Cadiz. Too late, anyway, to send the fleet
after the galleons, who will, I fear, be in and unloaded long before
the admiral can get up to Vigo."
Yet, as luck would have it, the frigate was not to lie there very
long--not even so long as an hour. For, see, now, how Providence did
intervene to help me on my way, and to remove at least that one
obstacle to my going forward on my journey.
Scarce had those lusty Dutch sailors been ordered off the head by
Tandy than, as I was turning away from laughing at them, my attention
was called back by a shout from the same quarter, and on looking
round, I saw two of them spring up the ladder again to the very spot
they had left, and begin pointing eagerly away beyond the frigate. And
following their glances and pointing, this is what I saw:
Two other great ships looming large on the seascape, rising rapidly
above the water, carrying all their canvas, coming on at a mighty
rate. Two great ships sailing very free but near together, which in a
few moments spread apart, so that they put me in mind of some huge
bird opening of its wings--I know not why, yet so it was!--and then
came on at some distance from each other, their vast black hulls
rising every moment, and soon the foam becoming visible beneath their
bows as their fore feet flung it asunder.
"Down with that rag," shouted Tandy, squinting up at the lilies on our
peak, and hardly shifting his perspective glass to do so. "Down with
it, and up with our own. My word! The Frenchman will get a full meal
now. Look at their royal masts and the flag of England flying on
them."
I did look, and, after a hasty glance, at something else--the French
frigate, our late pursuer!
Be very sure that she had seen those two avengers coming up in that
fair breeze--also that she was making frantic efforts to escape. But
her sails were all laid aback as I have said, also, she was off the
wind. The glasses showed the confusion that prevailed on board her.
And she had drifted so near the shoal that her danger was great.
Unless she boldly ran out to meet those two queen's ships she would be
on it ere long, and that was what she dared not do.
For now from the others we saw the puff of smoke, like white balls of
wool, come forth; we saw the spits of flame; saw the Frenchman's
mainmast go down five minutes later, and hang over the side nearest us
like some wounded creature all entangled in a net. And still she
neared the shoal, and still the white balls puffed out till they made
a long fleecy line, through which the red flames darted; borne on the
air we heard shouts and curses; amidst the roaring of the English
cannon firing on the helpless, stricken thing, we heard another sound,
a grinding, crashing sound, and we knew she was on the bank. Then saw
above, at her mizzen, the French flag pulled down upon the cap, and
heard through their trumpets their loud calls for assistance from the
conquerors.
"Humph! Humph!" said Tandy. "Old Lewis," for so he spoke of him, "has
got one ship the less--that's all. Loose the foresheet, there, my
lads; stand by the mainsail halyards. Good. That's it; all together!"
And away once more we went.