“Come, my dear Champcey; don’t blame an old friend who has done what he
thought was his duty to do.”
Daniel was too painfully affected to pay much attention to the
conclusive and sensible reasons alleged by the chief surgeon; he saw
nothing but that his friends had taken advantage of his condition to
keep him in the dark. Still he also felt that it would have been black
ingratitude and stupid obstinacy to preserve in his heart a shadow
of resentment. He therefore, took the hand that was offered him, and,
pressing it warmly, replied in a tone of deep emotion,--
“Whatever the future may have in store for me, doctor, I shall never
forget that I owe my life to your devotion.”
As usually, when he felt that excitement was overcoming him,--a very
rare event, to tell the truth,--the old surgeon fell back into his rough
and abrupt manner.
“I have attended you as I would have attended any one: that is my duty,
and you need not trouble yourself about your gratitude. If any one owes
me thanks, it is Miss Ville-Handry; and I beg you will remind her of it
when she is your wife. And now you will be good enough to dismiss all
those dismal ideas, and remember that you have only five days longer to
tremble with impatience in this abominable country.”
He spoke easily enough of it,--five days! It was an eternity for a
man in Daniel’s state of mind. In three hours he had made all his
preparations for his departure, arranged his business matters, and
obtained a furlough for Lefloch, who was to go with him. At noon,
therefore, he asked himself with terror, how he was to employ his time
till night, when they came, and asked if he would please come over to
the courthouse, to see the magistrate.
He went at once, and found the lawyer, but so changed, that he hardly
recognized him at first. The last mail had brought him the news of his
appointment to a judgeship, which he had long anxiously desired, and
which would enable him to return, not only to France, but to his native
province. He meant to sail in a frigate which was to leave towards the
end of the month, and in which Crochard, also, was to be sent home.
“In this way,” he said, “I shall arrive at the same time as the accused,
and very soon after the papers, which were sent home last week; and I
trust and hope I shall be allowed to conduct the trial of an affair,
which, so far, has gone smoothly enough in my hands.”
His impassive air was gone; and that official mask was laid aside, which
might have been looked upon as much a part of his official costume as
the black gown which was lying upon one of his trunks. He laughed, he
rubbed his hands, and said,--
“I should take pleasure in having him in my court, this Justin
Chevassat, alias Maxime de Brevan. He must be a cool swindler, brimful
of cunning and astuteness, familiar with all the tricks of criminal
courts, and not so easily overcome. It will be no child’s play, I am
sure, to prove that he was the instigator of Crochard’s crimes, and
that he has hired him with his own money. Ah! There will be lively
discussions and curious incidents.”
Daniel listened, quite bewildered.
“He, too,” he thought. “Professional enthusiasm carries him away; and
here he is, troubling himself about the discussions in court, neither
less nor more than Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet. He thinks only of the
honor he will reap for having handed over to the jury such a formidable
rascal as”--
But the lawyer had not sent for Daniel to speak to him of his plans and
his hopes. Having learned from the chief surgeon that Lieut. Champcey
was on the point of sailing, he wished to tell him that he would receive
a very important packet, which he was desired to hand to the court as
soon as he reached Paris.
“This is, you understand,” he concluded, “an additional precaution which
we take to prevent Maxime de Brevan from escaping us.”
It was five o’clock when Daniel left the court-house; and on the little
square before it he found the old surgeon, waiting to carry him off to
dinner, and a game of whist in the evening. So, when he undressed at
night, he said to himself,--
“After all, the day has not been so very long!”
But to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and the next days!
He tried in vain to get rid of the fixed idea which filled his mind,--a
mechanical instinct, so to say, which was stronger than his will, and
drove him incessantly to the wharf where “The Saint Louis” was lying.
Sitting on some bags of rice, he spent hour after hour in watching the
cargo as it was put on board. Never had the Annamites and the
Chinamen, who in Saigon act as stevedores, appeared to him so lazy, so
intolerable. Sometimes he felt as if, seeing or guessing his impatience,
they were trying to irritate him by moving the bales with the utmost
slowness, and walking with unbearable laziness around with the windlass.
Then, when he could no longer bear the sight, he went to the cafe on the
wharf, where the captain of “The Saint Louis” was generally to be found.
“Your men will never finish, captain,” he said. “You will never be ready
by Sunday.”
To which the captain invariably replied in his fierce Marseilles
accent,--
“Don’t be afraid, lieutenant. ‘The Saint Louis,’ I tell you, beats the
Indian mail in punctuality.”
And really, on Saturday, when he saw his passenger come as usual to the
cafe, the captain exclaimed,--
“Well, what did I tell you? We are all ready. At five o’clock I get my
mail at the post-office; and to-morrow morning we are off. I was just
going to send you word that you had better sleep on board.”
That evening the officers of “The Conquest,” gave Daniel a farewell
dinner; and it was nearly midnight, when, after having once more shaken
hands most cordially with the old chief surgeon, he took possession of
his state-room, one of the largest on board ship, in which they had put
up two berths, so that, in case of need, Lefloch might be at hand to
attend his master.
Then at last, towards four o’clock in the morning, Daniel was aroused
by the clanking of chains, accompanied by the singing of the sailors. He
hastened on deck. They were getting up anchors; and, an hour after that,
“The Saint Louis” went down the Dong-Nai, aided by a current, rushing
along “like lightning.”
“And now,” said Daniel to Lefloch, “I shall judge, by the time it will
take us to get home, if fortune is on my side.”
Yes, fate, at last, declared for him. Never had the most extraordinarily
favorable winds hastened a ship home as in this case. “The Saint Louis”
was a first-class sailer; and the captain, stimulated by the presence of
a navy lieutenant, always exacted the utmost from his ship; so that
on the seventeenth day after they had left Saigon, on a fine winter
afternoon, Daniel could see the hills above Marseilles rise from the
blue waters of the Mediterranean. He was drawing near the end of the
voyage and of his renewed anxieties. Two days more, and he would be in
Paris, and his fate would be irrevocably fixed.
But would they let him go on shore that evening? He trembled as he
thought of all the formalities which have to be observed when a ship
arrives. The quarantine authorities might raise difficulties, and cause
a delay.
Standing by the side of the captain, he was watching the masts, which
looked as if they were loaded down with all the sails they could carry,
when a cry from the lookout in the bow of the vessel attracted his
attention. That man reported, at two ship’s lengths on starboard, a
small boat, like a pilot-boat, making signs of distress. The captain
and Daniel exchanged looks of disappointment. The slightest delay in
the position in which they were, and at a season when night falls so
suddenly, deprived them of all hope of going on shore that night. And
who could tell how long it would take them to go to the rescue of that
boat?
“Well, never mind!” said Daniel. “We have to do it.”
“I wish they were in paradise!” swore the captain.
Nevertheless, he ordered all that was necessary to slacken speed, and
then to tack so as to come close upon the little boat.
It was a difficult and tedious manoeuvre; but at last, after half an
hour’s work, they could throw a rope into the boat.
There were two men in it, who hastened to come on the deck of the
clipper. One was a sailor of about twenty, the other a man of perhaps
fifty, who looked like a country gentleman, appeared ill at ease, and
cast about him restless glances in all directions. But, whilst they were
hoisting themselves up by the man-rope; the captain of “The Saint Louis”
had had time to examine their boat, and to ascertain that it was in good
condition, and every thing in it in perfect order.
Crimson with wrath, he now seized the young sailor by his collar; and,
shaking him so roughly as nearly to disjoint his neck, he said with a
formidable oath,--
“Are you making fun of me? What wretched joke have you been playing?”
Like their captain, the men on board, also, had discovered the perfect
uselessness of the signals of distress which had excited their sympathy;
and their indignation was great at what they considered a stupid
mystification. They surrounded the sailor with a threatening air,
while he struggled in the captain’s hand, and cried in his Marseilles
jargon,--
“Let go! You are smothering me! It is not my fault. It was the gentleman
there, who hired my boat for a sail. I, I would not make the signal;
but”--
Nevertheless, the poor fellow would probably have experienced some very
rough treatment, if the “gentleman” had not come running up, and covered
him with his own body, exclaiming,--
“Let that poor boy go! I am the only one to blame!”
The captain, in a great rage, pushed him back, and, looking at him
savagely, said,--
“Ah! so it is you who have dared”--
“Yes, I did it. But I had my reasons. This is surely ‘The Saint Louis,’
eh, coming from Saigon?”
“Yes. What next?”
“You have on board Lieut. Champcey of the navy?”
Daniel, who had been a silent witness of the scene, now stepped forward,
very much puzzled.
“I am Lieut. Champcey, sir,” he said. “What do you desire?”
But, instead of replying, the “gentleman” raised his hands to heaven in
a perfect ecstasy of joy, and said in an undertone,--
“We triumph at last!”