A VISIT TO NOTRE-DAME-DE-LA-GARDE.
The noise made by the Captain in shaking the door aroused Harry, and he
sprang up, looking very much frightened.
“It’s not six o’clock yet, is it, sir?” he asked; “I must have fallen
asleep just a minute ago.”
“Yes, you are a very valuable man on watch,” the Captain answered. “The
fire burned out in that minute while you were asleep, I suppose? And it
must have been in the same minute that some one came along and fastened
the door and locked us all in here, no doubt.”
“Locked us in, sir!” Harry exclaimed. “Why, there is no one on the
island to lock us in. I shut the door some time ago because it was
growing colder. But no one could have locked it.”
He went up to the door and shook it, but of course could not open it.
“The bolt must have slipped when I shut it, sir,” he said. “The wind
was blowing in so hard.”
“No matter what fastened it,” the Captain replied; “it is enough for
us to know that it is fastened. It is much more important to know why
you were asleep when I put you on watch. Don’t you know that that is
one of the most serious offences you could commit? But I shall have
something to say to you about that later on. Start up the fire, and put
the remainder of the coffee on to warm.”
It was in no very pleasant frame of mind that Harry set to work at
building the fire. There was something in the Captain’s manner that
looked ominous. Though it was plain that he was greatly displeased at
such a breach of discipline, and the results that had followed it, he
was cool and quiet, and that promised worse things for the offender
than if he had stormed and blustered. And even in his own mind, Harry
could not excuse himself. He had been left on watch and had gone to
sleep, and while he slept they had been locked in. He could not help
thinking of the death chamber below, and the prisoners called from
sleep to be guillotined. He felt, he imagined, very much as they must
have felt while walking down the stone steps, chained and guarded, to
enter the gloomy chamber.
The noise soon awakened Kit and the chief and Haines, and they could
not believe at first that they were really prisoners. But very little
experimenting with the door convinced each in turn that it was only too
true.
“The bolt must have slipped when the door slammed,” the chief engineer
decided, bringing his mechanical mind to bear on the problem. “Maybe we
can shove it back with a thin strip of board.”
He found a bit that he thought might answer the purpose and went to the
window with it, but one or two trials convinced him that the bolt could
not be reached in that way.
“Don’t waste your strength on that idea,” the Captain said. “These
heavy bolts cannot slip so easily. Indeed, I should be very sorry to
think that it had slipped of itself, for in that case we might possibly
be kept here for days, without sufficient provisions. Evidently some
one has fastened the bolt. Either there was some one else on the island
from the beginning, or the guardian of the castle has returned and shut
us in. I hope that is the case, for whoever shut us in will let us out.
At any rate, we will eat some breakfast before doing anything else. By
that time it will be daylight.”
Somehow it did not seem quite so romantic to be encamped in
Louis-Philippe’s cell when they were actually prisoners. Kit could not
help making a mental picture of some visitor opening the door after
weeks had passed, and finding them all lying starved to death. The
coffee was comforting in the raw morning, but the breakfast was not as
jolly a meal as the supper had been.
“Now,” said the Captain, when they were done eating, “we will see what
we can do toward getting out. It is growing light outside. You reach
a piece of board through the window, Haines, and pound it against the
wall, and halloo at the same time. If there is any one in the castle,
he will be pretty sure to hear it.”
Haines followed these directions, and made such a racket that it seemed
as if it must have been heard across the water in Marseilles.
“Somebody’s coming!” he exclaimed, after a minute or two of pounding.
“I hear a footstep on the stones below.”
“Halloo!” he shouted. “Halloo there! Come and unfasten the door! We
want to get out!”
“Here he comes!” Haines cried, a moment later. “It’s a soldier. He’s
coming up the stairs.”
“Then let me take your place,” the Captain said; “I will do the
talking.”
The footsteps came nearer and nearer around the gallery, and in another
moment a young soldier in the French uniform stood before the window.
“Good morning,” said the Captain. “Just slide that bolt back, please;
we are fastened in here.”
The soldier gave a military salute, but did not stir.
“Oh, he speaks French, of course,” the Captain exclaimed; “and I don’t
know enough of the language to talk to him. Do any of you speak French?”
“I can struggle with it a little,” the chief engineer answered, “though
I know very little about it.” He took the Captain’s place at the
window, and bowed to the soldier.
“Bon jour, monsieur,” he said. “Nous avons une grand desir to--to--(oh,
what a dreadful language!) to sortie. Ouvrir la porte, s’il vous plait.”
The soldier shook his head and made some reply in French.
“What does he say?” the Captain asked.
“He says why don’t we keep quiet,” the chief answered. “Oh, no; hold
on; I got mixed with that. He says why did we come in?”
“Tell him we came to see the castle,” the Captain said, “and could not
get away on account of the storm.”
The chief put this into French as well as he could, and the soldier
immediately began a long and very rapid tirade, in which they caught
the words “deux cent kilos de bois,” “hier soir,” and “batteau des
gendarmes.” But he showed no inclination to open the door.
“What’s all that?” the Captain asked.
“As well as I can make it out,” the chief replied, “he says that he is
the keeper of the castle, and he was detained on shore by the storm.
When the wind abated early this morning he got a boatman to bring him
out, and seeing a light in this cell he came up and found us here. That
we came without permission, and burned up two hundred kilos of his wood
(that’s nearly four hundred pounds), and that he is going to signal for
the police boat and have us taken in charge.”
“Oh, that’s what he is after, is it?” the Captain laughed. “Then I know
a language he will understand. Let me get there a moment.”
Again at the window, the Captain put his hand in his pocket and
drew out a ten-franc gold piece which he held between his thumb and
forefinger where the soldier could see it, and pointed toward the door.
Evidently that was the language he understood best. He immediately
began to smile and reached for the gold, which the Captain handed him;
and in thirty seconds more the big door was unbolted, and they all
slipped out. The gold piece changed the aspect of affairs entirely.
Instead of being their jailer the soldier tried to show them every
attention; and while the chief exchanged a few polite words with him,
Captain Griffith climbed the tower again, and found that the worst of
the wind had died out, what was left coming from another quarter, so
that there was no longer any difficulty about launching the boat.
It took some time to prepare to start, replacing the sail, packing
the dishes, and getting the boat into the water; but the sun was just
nicely up over the Corniche when they sailed into the Old Port again.
After reaching the _North Cape_, Kit soon went ashore to find the
agents; but it was still much too early for the Captain to do any
business at the Custom House, and he remained on board. Harry set about
cleaning the cabin, making a great show of industry, but wondering all
the time what the Captain would say or do to him. He had not forgotten
the remark that Kit had made to him, long before, about the rope’s-end
in the Captain’s room. To be sure, Captain Griffith had always treated
him very kindly; but he had never before done anything quite as bad as
to go to sleep on watch. The thought of the rope’s-end troubled him;
and it was still troubling him when the Captain’s bell rang.
“Now I’m in for it!” he said to himself. “I’m glad there’s nobody else
down here but the steward, anyhow.”
“Come in here and shut the door, Henry,” the Captain said, when he
answered the call.
“Oh, yes, I’m in for it now,” he thought. “This is the death chamber,
sure.”
“Come up here where I can look at you,” the Captain said. He was seated
in front of his desk. “I want to see whether you realize what it means
for a man to go to sleep on watch. If we had been left locked in that
cell, and had all starved there, who would have been responsible for
it?”
“It would have been my fault, sir,” Harry answered.
“It would have been your fault,” the Captain repeated. “If a sailor
goes to sleep on watch, and a collision results, and lives are lost, he
is responsible for it, and the law would punish him. The man on watch
often holds the lives of his comrades in his hand, and he should always
feel the responsibility.”
The Captain stood up as he spoke and stepped toward Harry, but the
cabin boy did not shrink. He had made up his mind to take whatever
came, without flinching.
“I think you understand what a grave fault you committed,” the Captain
went on, laying his hand on Harry’s shoulder, “and feel sorry for it.
That is not all the punishment you deserve, but it is all you will get
this time, as we were on shore and on a pleasure trip. But never let me
catch you asleep on watch again. Now get out about your business.”
Harry was not the first cabin boy who had gone into Captain Griffith’s
room expecting something unpleasant, and had come out feeling that he
would swim through stormy seas to serve such a captain as that. Perhaps
that was the reason that nearly every one of the Captain’s cabin boys
had turned out well.
It was almost noon when Kit returned to the ship, feeling rather
dissatisfied with the way his affairs had gone on shore.
“What’s the matter, Silburn?” the Captain asked him while they sat at
dinner. “Have they been doing you up? You have to look out for them
here, or they’ll get the strings right out of your shoes. This place is
famous for that. They have a large population in Marseilles from Italy,
Spain, Turkey, Greece, Syria, all over creation, all in a hurry to
make money without caring much how it is made. They tell me that when
Marseilles people buy anything in a store they very often won’t let the
shopkeeper wrap it up, for fear he will change it.”
“No, sir,” Kit answered, “they haven’t been robbing me; they have had
no chance. But our agents here are curious sort of people, and I am
afraid they will give me as much trouble as they can. Indeed, they have
given me a great deal more trouble already than there was any need of.
One of the first things they said was that they would smooth the way
for me to get my stuff through, and I could do the same for what they
would send over to New York.”
“Did they, though?” the Captain asked, laughing. “And what did you say
to that?”
“Why, I was green enough not to know what they meant, sir. I supposed
they referred to the cargo, so I said it had been properly entered and
there would be no trouble about getting it through, and it would be the
same thing in New York. I can see now, from the way they looked at me,
that they could not quite make out whether I was really so innocent, or
only pretending to be. At any rate, I soon found that they supposed I
had brought some goods on my own account, which I would want to smuggle
ashore, and that they wanted to send some in the same way when we go
back.”
“That was what they meant, and no mistake,” the Captain said. “There is
a great deal of that kind of business done.”
“Not by me, sir,” Kit went on. “I told them very plainly that I had
brought nothing but what was on my manifests, and that if they wanted
to smuggle anything into New York they would have to try some other
ship. That offended them, I am afraid, for they became very cool, and
left me to find my way about and make my own arrangements. If they can
find any fault here with my work, and give a bad account of me to my
employers, I think they will be pretty sure to do it.”
“Well, you have the satisfaction of being in the right,” the Captain
answered, “and they are very clearly in the wrong. They will hardly be
likely to expose their dishonest intentions by making any complaints
in New York. At any rate, your work will show for itself when you get
back, if you carry it through well.”
“I have got along all right so far without their assistance,” Kit
continued; “but it is a new experience to deal with agents who are
disposed to hinder rather than help.”
“Y-e-s,” said the Captain, dryly. “You will find that you have still
one or two things to learn in the world. Well?”
“I have picked up more information than I should have got if I had been
depending upon them. If they think I can’t land a cargo of oil without
their help, they are very much mistaken.”
“Oh, ho!” the Captain laughed; “my young supercargo is beginning to
feel his oats! Quite right, lad. And if they don’t have the homeward
cargo ready for you promptly, their principals will have something to
say to them. You may be sure of that.”
“This wharf that we are at,” Kit went on, “they call the ‘Quai de la
Fratérnité.’ The oil is to go into that warehouse just across the
street. They talked about keeping us a week before their stevedore
could take out our cargo, so I found one myself and made a contract
with him, and his men are to begin work to-morrow morning.”
“Good for the young American!” the Captain cried. “If these people get
too high, just remember that there is such a thing as a cable under the
ocean, and that in a few hours you can get orders from New York that
they are bound to obey as well as you.”
“Yes, sir; but I hope it will not come to that. That square stone
building across the port,” Kit went on, “is the Hôtel de Ville, or
City Hall. You see I am getting to be quite a Frenchman. And this
wide street that runs down to the end of the port is the Cannebiere,
the main street of Marseilles, that is mentioned so often in ‘Monte
Cristo.’ And when you follow it up a little ways, it changes into the
Allée Meilhan, where Monte Cristo’s father died, you know. Then over at
that corner of the port there begins a wide street called the Rue de la
République, which runs diagonally down to the breakwater.
“Well, you have made good use of your morning,” the Captain declared.
“Oh, that is only a beginning, sir,” Kit laughed. “I hear that this is
considered the unhealthiest city in Europe, because it is so dirty.
Why, only three or four years ago all the sewers emptied into this
basin, and they say the smell of it was something frightful.”
“I can testify to that,” the Captain interrupted. “Last time I was
here it was a standing joke that no ship need take in ballast in
Marseilles--the smell of the harbor was strong enough for ballast. It
is none too sweet yet, for that matter.”
“And still it is a very fine city,” Kit said; “the most interesting
place I have ever seen. There are so many strange things here. That
church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde keeps staring at me from its hilltop
wherever I go. I have a strong notion to go to see it this afternoon,
for I shall be very busy after we begin work.”
“You will have plenty of time after dinner,” the Captain replied. “And
I can promise you that you will not be disappointed. We don’t hear much
about it in America, because Marseilles is very little known there; but
to my mind that church is one of the greatest sights in Europe. I won’t
go with you this time, for I lost too much sleep last night and want a
nap. But this will be a capital day to go. The Mistral is rising again,
and on the top of that hill you will learn something about the force of
the wind. You can take Henry with you if you want him, for sight-seeing
alone is stupid work.”
Kit was very glad for this permission, both on Harry’s account and his
own; and toward the middle of the afternoon they went ashore and took
an omnibus to the “Garden of the Ascenseurs,” as the starting-point for
the church is called.
“Well, if this is an omnibus, then I never saw a street car,” Harry
declared. “It’s exactly like a street car. Why do they call it an
omnibus, I wonder?”
“Because it does not run on tracks,” Kit explained. “You see there are
no rails; it goes right over the paving-stones. It does look like a
street car, that’s a fact, and has the same small wheels.”
“Everything is different here from anywhere else,” Harry went on. “Just
look at the names of the streets! First we came up the Cannebiere,
then up Rue Paradis. Then we turned up the Cours Pierre Puget into Rue
Breteuil, and now we are going up the Rue Dragon. What would they think
of such names in Huntington, Kit? But the ascenseurs! That’s what takes
me. What are they, Kit? some kind of animals?”
“Why, the word is almost English,” Kit laughed. “We call them
elevators, in London they call them lifts, and in France they are
called ascenseurs. They are elevators, that’s all, to take us up the
hill.”
“Say, old man, I don’t see where you learn so many things!” Harry
exclaimed. “We only got here yesterday, and you travel about this town
like a native.”
“What do you think my eyes are for?” Kit asked. “But here we are. This
seems to be the end of navigation.”
The omnibus had run through a big gateway into a small garden, and
could go no further because at the end of the garden an immense hill of
rock rose almost straight into the air. As they stepped out, an old man
held a tin box in front of them, with a hole in the top to drop coins
through.
“No, thank you,” said Harry, “I don’t care for any to-day. They have a
good stock of beggars in this town,” he added to Kit, “but that’s the
first one I ever saw in uniform.”
“He begs for the sailors’ hospital, so the guidebook says,” Kit
answered, as he dropped a ten-centime piece into the box. “There, what
do you think of going up the hill in that thing?”
He pointed, as he spoke, to a great pile of masonry that rose almost
straight up the side of the hill, with two tracks, one on each side,
and near the top a series of dark and forbidding arches. The whole
thing had an uncanny look; and they heard the rapid flow of a stream of
water, but could not see it.
“Phew!” Harry exclaimed. “I don’t like the looks of it very much. I’ve
never made a practice of going to church in an elevator, you know. But
I suppose it must be safe enough, as other people use it.”
At the foot of the masonry was a small open pavilion where a man
sold tickets for the elevators; and after paying their fares, eighty
centimes, or sixteen cents, each, which entitled them to go up and come
down, they passed through a turnstile and stepped into a car nearly as
large as a small room, with a seat across the back, large windows in
the front, and before the windows a narrow platform, on which stood the
brakeman.
The only other occupant of the car was a priest dressed in the garb
of his order--a low black hat, with broad brim turned up at the sides,
long black robe with a cape, and the usual black bow trimmed with a
narrow edge of white at the throat--the common costume of a Continental
priest. He was a pleasant-looking old man with nearly white hair; and
it was plain that he was accustomed to making the ascent, for he paid
no attention to the strange surroundings, but sat quietly reading a
small book.
“If you tell me what it is, you can have it,” Harry said, nudging Kit
with his elbow and directing his eyes toward the priest. “I suppose
it’s a man, though it’s dressed like a woman. What in the world do they
put black petticoats on their priests for in this part of the world?
But take a look at the hat, will you? Nobody could invent an uglier hat
than that, not if he sat up nights thinking about it.”
Before Kit could reply a bell tapped, the brakeman turned the little
iron wheel by his side, and the car began to ascend--not quietly and
smoothly, like most elevators, but with an oscillating motion and the
noise of a great rush of water.
In half a minute, as they went up, they were far above the roof of the
pavilion, above everything about them but the hill, and Marseilles
seemed to lie at their feet. It was a grand sight from the very
beginning, and grew grander every moment.
“Yes, it’s a big thing, Kit,” Harry cried. “It’s the greatest sight
we’ve seen yet. London hadn’t anything like this to offer.”
At this minute the priest closed his little book and leaned over toward
the boys.
“Is this your first visit to the Church of Our Lady, my young friends?”
he asked, very pleasantly and in excellent English. “You seem to be
strangers. You must let me be your guide when we get to the top, for I
am quite familiar with the place.”
It was such a surprise to the boys that they barely had presence of
mind to answer politely. And Harry could hardly look at the wonderful
view for thinking of the remarks he had made about the obliging
priest’s clothes.