GEORGE RECONNOITRES
Splash through the water rushed the French soldiers in full chase.
Already they were beginning to cheer, for the leading man had all but
grabbed the boat, and the prisoner was as good as retaken. George
looked down for something with which to strike, for he did not intend
to submit without a struggle, but there was no oar on board. There had
been a small boat-hook, but that he had left sticking in the sand when
he gave his lusty shove off. The pursuer, up to his neck in water,
seized the boat, and for a moment his chin rested on the side. But the
next instant the lad had kicked out with the clumsy wooden shoes he
wore, and the soldier fell back half stunned into the sea. The rest of
the fellows instantly raised their guns, but George did not wince; he
perceived what they in their wild scamper after him had not noticed,
that they had dragged their muskets through the water, and for the
time had rendered the weapons useless. The boy laughed in spite of his
predicament, as he hastily ran up the little sail.
The breeze at once caught the canvas, and the bark moved briskly away.
But two of the soldiers, who had not entered the sea, hastily
reloading--they had not done so hitherto, after the recent
discharges--levelled their pieces at the retreating prisoner. George
flung himself to the bottom of the boat as he saw the move, and the
bullets whistled harmlessly overhead. Springing up again, he perceived
that he was now beyond range, and with a shout of joy he waved his cap
triumphantly. The whole escape had been planned and successfully
carried out in the space of five minutes. He was free!
But his joy was presently tempered by the thought of what might
follow. That the men would endeavour to give chase he well knew;
indeed he could make out their forms running in search of another
boat. However, he had gained a start; that was something. As to
whither he was destined to be driven, or how he was to get food and
water, these things were for the present of less consequence than the
fact that he was free.
Fortune favoured him, for within ten minutes a thickness came on, and
soon the boat was enveloped in fog. The chase was now rendered
impossible to the enemy. Hour after hour George kept his sail hoisted,
driving briskly he knew not whither.
"I am bound," said he to himself, "to stumble upon either the English
or the Dutch coast, and in either case I shall be among friends." Thus
the lad comforted himself.
The day wore on, and he was becoming ravenously hungry. He would have
given much for a basin of even the prison _soupe maigre_. The sky was
darkening and he began to feel drowsy; he resigned himself to a night
of hunger. All at once he heard shouts, and the hull of a big vessel
loomed up within a few yards of him. He was instantly wide awake. Was
the stranger French? Thank Heaven, no! She was Dutch built, and as her
flag showed, Dutch owned. Hurrah!
His cheer attracted the attention of the crew, and much wondering the
sailors drew him up on deck. "A Frenchman," was the verdict in gruff
Dutch. George did not understand Dutch, but he instantly guessed their
meaning.
"Not I," he cried, in English, and was delighted to be answered in the
same tongue by the skipper.
George's account of his escape, translated by the captain, set the fat
Dutchmen a-rolling. And, after the lad had had the good square meal
the skipper ordered for him, he spent the evening in going over his
adventures again. The jolly-hearted English lad became an immediate
favourite with the sailors and the soldiers, for, as he soon learnt,
the ship was a Dutch transport carrying troops and stores for the war
in Spain.
"Where are we, sir?" George inquired of the skipper next morning when
he came on deck, to find a clear sky, and land faintly seen on the
starboard bow.
"Off the Isle of Wight, my lad," replied the Dutchman.
"Can't you put me ashore, captain?" he pleaded.
The master smiled and shook his head.
"Impossible, boy; you must go with us to Spain. And here comes a
gentleman to speak with you."
An officer in military uniform approached, and the boy touched his
cap. With the skipper as interpreter the major made George an offer of
service under him.
"We want fellows of your sort," he said. "And there will be brave
doings in Spain, and plenty of good pay, and glory to be won. Besides,
you will be fighting under one of your own countrymen, most likely Sir
George Rooke himself. Say the word, my good lad."
George's face flushed.
"I have always wanted to be a soldier, sir," he stammered.
"Of course you have, my lad. Then we may take it that the matter is
settled. Good luck go with you, my boy."
Here then was George Fairburn, who ought to have been driving a quill
in the office of Mr. Allan, shipping merchant, of London, sailing to
join the allied forces in Spain, and to fight against the French. His
head swam with the thought of it.
But what of George's friends at home all this long while? When
Fairburn learnt that his brig had not arrived in port, though she had
been spoken in Boston Deeps by another collier which was returning to
the Tyne, his heart misgave him. There had been a bad storm on the
coast; it seemed only too likely that the _Ouseburn Lassie_ had gone
down in it! When week after week passed without news it seemed more
and more likely that the vessel had foundered in the gale. News of
captures by French privateers usually filtered through sooner or
later; but for long there were no tidings of the _Ouseburn Lassie_.
The Blacketts did what they could to console the bereaved parents, but
father and mother would not be comforted. At length, months
afterwards, they learnt in a casual way that a collier had been
captured off Yarmouth by a French privateer, about the time the
_Ouseburn Lassie_ was making her trip; at least that was the
construction the Yarmouth salts who saw the affair from the shore put
upon the movements of the two vessels. So a ray of hope came to
Fairburn and his wife.
"The lad will be somewhere in a French prison," the father said, "and
some day he will be set free and come home to us again."
The spring of 1703 brought Matthew Blackett's seventeenth birthday,
and with it an ensign's commission in a well-reputed regiment of foot.
He already stood six feet one in his stockings, and mighty proud he
felt when his lanky figure was clothed in his gay uniform.
"Perhaps I shall come across George in my wanderings," he said, when
he went to bid a very friendly adieu to the Fairburns. "Won't it be
jolly if we do meet!" And the parents were constrained to smile in
spite of their sadness.
One of the commonest subjects of conversation in our days is the state
of "political parties," and every child of school age can tell you
which is "the party in power." Three hundred years ago such
expressions would not have been understood at all, in their modern
sense, and "government by party" was a thing as yet undreamed of.
Usually the strongest man of his time, whether sovereign or subject,
was the real ruler in England. Elizabeth, for instance, was the sole
mistress in her own realm, though even she was greatly helped by the
famous minister Burleigh. In later times a Strafford, a Laud, an
Oliver Cromwell, a Clarendon presided over the destinies of England.
But in the second half of the seventeenth century there began that
division of politicians into two sides or parties which has continued
ever since. This division sprang, no doubt, from the civil wars
between King and Parliament, between Cavalier and Roundhead. By the
times of Queen Anne the terms Whig and Tory, replaced in our days for
the most part by Liberal and Conservative, had come into common use,
and no one who desires to understand the history of her reign can
wholly neglect the movements of these two opposing parties in
politics. For Marlborough--with his wife--may be said to be the last
powerful statesman who ruled England without the formal and
acknowledged help of party. Since then the "party in power" has
always, through its chief member, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet,
been the actual ruler in the State.
At the beginning of Anne's reign the Whigs were leading in matters of
state, but presently Rochester and Nottingham, the former a very
strong Tory, came into power. Later on, in 1703, the former was
replaced by a more moderate Tory, Harley, and in the following year
St. John succeeded Nottingham. The truth was, Marlborough, beginning
to see that he was more likely to receive support in his great wars
from the Whig side, was working gradually towards the placing of their
party in office, though he himself had all along been a Tory. Thus it
was that he tried to rule with a coalition, or a mixture of Whigs and
Tories. This was in the year 1705, a little after the time to which
this story has as yet been carried. But Marlborough and his Duchess
were still the real power in the land.
We may rejoin George Fairburn, some three weeks after the day when he
had been picked up by the Dutch transport. With others he had been
landed in the Tagus, and at once drafted into one of the regiments
under the Earl of Galway, a Frenchman by birth, but now, having been
driven out of France by the persecutions he and the rest of the
Protestants had had to endure, a general in the English army. George
learned that Portugal had joined the Grand Alliance, in consequence of
the Methuen Treaty between her and England, by which Portuguese wines
were to be admitted into English ports at a lower customs duty than
those of other countries. This step on the part of Portugal had
greatly enraged the French King, and he had poured his troops into
Spain. The Allies, therefore, were preparing to attack Spain from the
eastern and the western sides of the Peninsula at the same time. So
George and his comrades began their march eastward, while the gallant
admiral Sir George Rooke was attacking Barcelona on the opposite
coast.
It was a new life for the English lad, and the heavy marches in a hot
climate tried him. But he was growing into a stout youth, and was not
afraid of a bit of hard work.
"Besides," he would say to himself, when disposed to grumble, "am I
not a soldier? And isn't that what I've always wanted to be? And I
might have been chained up in a French prison still! A thousand times
better be here, even in this scorching place."
If it seemed odd to the lad that the English soldiers were commanded
by a Frenchman, it was still stranger that the French forces they were
marching to meet were under an Englishman. Yet so it was; the
commander of Louis's army in Spain being the Duke of Berwick, a son of
James II and Arabella Churchill, Marlborough's sister. The two
generals were well matched, according to the opinion that prevailed
among the troops.
Weeks passed, and as yet George Fairburn had seen no actual fighting.
He was all eager to get into action, and was not much comforted by the
declaration of the old sergeant under whom he marched.
"Bide your time, my lad," the veteran would say, "you will get your
full share of fighting; enough to satisfy even a fire-eater such as I
can see you're going to be."
One evening, to his intense delight, the lad was sent forward with a
skirmishing party, a report having come in that the enemy was
concealed somewhere in one of the wooded valleys of the neighbourhood.
After a cautious march of three or four miles, the little company,
commanded by a lieutenant of foot, dropped down into a dingle, at the
bottom of which ran a stream almost everywhere hidden by the thick
growth of trees. The men were startled, on turning a corner in the
break-neck path, to see below them the French flag flying from what
appeared to be an old mill. Scattered about were the roofs of a dozen
cottages, and at the doors could be perceived a number of soldiers
lolling at their ease.
"The enemy, by Jove!" whispered George, who was leading in his usual
eager fashion, pointing out the flag and the hamlet to the lieutenant.
"Wouldn't it be a good joke to whip off their flag from that old mill,
sir!"
The officer laughed at the notion; he was not much more than a boy
himself.
"My lad," said he, "we must know how many the enemy are first."
"I'll climb to the roof there, and from it I can see right down into
the village and command a view of everything in it."
"Do you mean to say, youngster, that you would risk it?" the officer
asked in surprise.
"Oh, wouldn't I, sir," the lad replied with flushed face. "Say the
word, sir, please."
The lieutenant nodded, saying, "It's worth it. But be cautious."
The soldiers looked on while the boy carried out his freak, for such
they judged his bit of reconnoitring to be. Cautiously George crept
towards the mill, the sloping roof of which came almost down to the
very hill side. Tying a wisp of long grass and weeds round each boot,
he crawled noiselessly up till within a foot or two of the ridge. He
paused a moment to gaze down the dingle. There, well seen from his
vantage point, a couple of miles away, ran a far larger valley, which
was filled with tents. "The enemy's main body!" he thought. He waved
his arm in the direction of the camp, but his comrades did not
understand the action, as they stood peering down upon the lad from
among the trees higher up the slope.
Now flat on his face the boy ventured to peep over the roof ridge down
into the village street at no great distance below. Not an eye was
directed upwards, so far as he could see, the men laughing and
chattering gaily as they drank. Then the temptation seized him, and in
a moment he had lifted the flag from the old chimney in which the
staff was loosely set. "I'm in for it now!" he cried to himself, as he
slid like an avalanche down the roof, leapt to the ground, and made
off up the steep slope towards his comrades, the flag triumphantly in
his hand.
He had reached a spot half way up when suddenly wild shouts were heard
from below, and at the same instant a bullet whistled close past his
ear. A little turn in the path had discovered his head to the enemy.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," shouted the lieutenant, and the
Englishmen prepared to receive the French soldiers dashing up to the
attack. George stumbled on unhurt, but fell at his officer's feet,
utterly breathless. There he lay, unable to rise, while shots were
rapidly exchanged. For a minute's space it was hot work, but then the
French began to fall back, and with a shout the English handful
followed. Fairburn pulled himself together and stood on the edge of
the rock-shelf where he had fallen breathless. To his horror, he saw a
Frenchman on the shelf below, taking deliberate aim at the lieutenant.
With a loud cry, the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of the
steepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in his
arms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding over
two or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twenty
or thirty feet into the thick brushwood below.
"You have saved my life, my lad; you are an Englishman worth knowing,"
were the next words the boy heard.
They came buzzing into George's ears some ten minutes later, when, the
brush with the French over, the Englishmen were hastening back to
report to the General.
"What happened when I fell, sir?" George asked with curiosity, as the
officer walked by the side of the litter. He was astounded to learn
that the Frenchman had been found still held in tight grip, his neck
broken. The enemy had been put to the rout and had fled, leaving their
flag behind them. Moreover, the French camp a couple of miles away had
been spied.
"You have three ribs broken, Fairburn," the officer went on, "and
you've got about as many bruises as there are days in a year. But what
of that. By Jerusalem! I wish the honour had fallen to me!"
"I don't mind the wounds a bit, sir," George answered, cheerfully, "so
long as I've been of some use."
The next day no less a person than the great Earl of Galway himself
came to speak to the wounded lad.
"I have heard from your lieutenant here the tale of your doings
yesterday," he said, with a smile. "You are a boy of pluck. You are
done for so far as the present campaign is concerned, and must be sent
back to hospital. But there's work cut out yet for a lad of your
mettle."
George heard all this praise as if in a dream. He was never sure in
after years whether the Earl had really said so much. But Lieutenant
Fieldsend, who was destined to become his comrade on many a
hard-fought field, and his warm friend for life, was always prepared
to tell the full and correct story.