"Bravo, kinsman!" said I. "If Marmont hates one thing more than another
it's to see his majestic image diminished in the looking-glass. But--
faith! I'd have kept that letter in my pocket until I was many miles
south of Bayonne."
"South? You don't suppose I had any intention of escaping towards the
Pyrenees? Why, my dear fellow, that's the very direction in which they
were bound to search."
"Oh, very well," said I--a trifle nettled, I will confess--"perhaps you
preferred Paris!"
"Precisely," was the cool answer. "I preferred Paris: and having but an
hour or two to spare before the hotels closed, I at once inquired at the
chief hotels if any French officer were starting that night for the
capital. The first-named, if I remember, the _Hotel du Sud_--I drew
blank. At the second, the _Trois Couronnes_, I was informed that a
chaise and four had been ordered by no less a man than General Souham,
who would start that night as soon as he returned from supping with the
Governor. I waited: the General arrived a few minutes before ten
o'clock: I introduced myself--"
"General Souham," I groaned. "Reverend father, I have not yet tasted
the wine of Rueda: it appears to me that the fumes are strong enough.
He tells me he introduced himself to General Souham!"
"--and, I assure you, found him excellent company. We travelled three
in the chaise--the General, his aide-de-camp, and your fortunate
kinsman. A second chaise followed with the General's baggage.
He and the aide-de-camp at times beguiled the road with a game of
picquet: for myself, I disapprove of cards."
"Doubtless you told them so at an early stage?" I suggested, with a last
effort at irony.
"I was obliged to, seeing that the General challenged me to a _partie_;
but I did not, I hope, adopt a tone inconsistent with good fellowship.
We travelled through to Paris, with a few hours' break at Orleans--an
opportunity which I seized to purchase a suit of clothes more congruous
than my uniform with the part I had to play in Paris. I had ventured to
ask General Souham's advice, and he assured me that a British officer,
though a prisoner on parole, might incur some risk from the Parisian mob
by wearing his uniform in public."
"Cousin," said I, "henceforth pursue your tale without interruption.
There was a time when, in my folly, I presumed to criticise your
methods. I apologise."
"On leaving the tailor's shop I was accosted by a wretched creature who
had seen me alight from the chaise in His Majesty's uniform, and had
followed, but did not venture to introduce himself until I emerged in a
less compromising garb. He was, it appeared, a British agent--and a
traitor to his own country--and I gathered that a part of his dirty
trade lay in assisting British prisoners to break their parole.
He assumed that I travelled on parole, and insinuated that I might have
occasion to break it: and, with all the will in the world to crack his
head, I let the mistake and suspicion pass. For a napoleon I received
the address of a Parisian agent in the Rue Carcassonne, whose name I
will confide in you, in case you should ever require his services.
For truly, although I had some difficulty in persuading him that I broke
no faith in seeking to escape from France (a point in which self-respect
obliged me to insist, though he himself treated it with irritating
nonchalance), this agent proved a zealous fellow, and served me well.
"He fell in, too, with my proposals, complimented me on their boldness,
and advanced me money to further them. I took a lodging _au troisieme_
in the Faubourg St. Honore, and for a fortnight walked Paris without an
attempt at concealment, frequenting the cafes, and spending my evenings
at the theatre. Once or twice I encountered Souham himself, with whom I
had parted on the friendliest terms: but he did not choose to recognise
me--perhaps he had his good-natured suspicions. I lived unchallenged,
though walking all the while on a razor's edge. I had reckoned on two
fair chances in my favour. There was a chance that the Governor of
Bayonne, on finding himself tricked, would for his own security suppress
Marmont's letter, trusting that the affair would pass without inquiry:
and there was the further chance that Marmont himself, on receipt of my
note, would remember the magnanimity which (to do him justice) he
usually has at call, and give orders whistling off the pursuit.
At any rate, I spent a fortnight in Paris; and no man questioned or
troubled me.
"On the same morning that I paid my second weekly bill the agent called
on me with a capital plan of escape, which (being a facetious fellow) he
announced as follows: 'I wish you good morning, Mr. Buck,' he began.
'Sir,' I answered, 'I have no claim to such a designation. My pleasures
in Paris have been entirely respectable, and I dislike familiarity.'
'Mr. Jonathan Buck, I should have said.' 'Sir,' I corrected him,
'if your clients are so numerous that you confuse their names, I must
remind you that mine is McNeill.' 'Pardon me,' he replied, 'you have
this morning inherited that of an American citizen who died suddenly
last evening in an obscure lodging near the Barriere de Pantin; and, in
addition, a passport now waiting for him at the Foreign Office, if you
have the courage to claim it. You resemble the deceased sufficiently to
answer a passport's description: and if you secure it, I advise a speedy
departure, with Nantes for your objective.' Accordingly, that same
evening I left Paris for the Loire."
"You had the coolness to apply for that passport?"
"And the good fortune to obtain it. If anything, my dear fellow,
deserves the degree of astonishment your face expresses, it should
rather be my consenting to use disguise, and so breaking through a
self-denying ordinance on which you have sometimes rallied me.
Suspense--the danger from Bayonne hourly anticipated--had perhaps shaken
my nerves. To be brief, I travelled to Nantes as Mr. Jonathan Buck, and
in that name took passage in a vessel bound for Philadelphia and on the
point (as I understood) of lifting anchor.
"I slept that night on board the _Minnie Dwight_--this was the vessel's
name--in full hope that my troubles were at an end. But next morning
her captain came to me with a long face and a report that some hitch had
occurred between him and the port authorities over his clearing-papers.
'And how long will this detain us?' I asked, cutting short an
explanation too technical for my understanding. He answered that he had
been to his Consul to protest, but could promise nothing short of a
week's delay.
"Well, I saw nothing for it but to shut the cabin-door, make a clean
breast of my fears, and desire him to help me in devising some new plan.
He was a good fellow, and ingenious too; for after he had dashed up my
hopes with the news that a similar embargo lay on all foreign ships in
the port, his face cleared, and, said he, 'There's no help for it, but
you must play the sea-lawyer and I the brutal tyrant. It's hard, too,
upon a man who treats his crew like his own children, and victuals his
ship like an eating-house: but a seaman's rig and forty dollars is all
you need, and with this you'll fare off to the American Consul's and
swear that I've made life a burden to you.' 'Why forty dollars?' I
asked. He winked. 'That's earnest money that when you reach the United
States you'll have the law of me for ill-usage.' 'And what shall I get
in exchange?' 'You will get a certificate enabling you to pass from
port as a discharged sailor seeking a ship.' I thanked him warmly, and
agreed; climbed down the ship's side in my new rig, waved an affecting
farewell to my benevolent tyrant, and sought the American Consul who (it
seemed) was used to discontented seamen. At all events, he accepted
without suspicion his share in the dishonouring comedy, took my forty
dollars, and made out my certificate."
Here the Captain glanced at Doctor Gonsalvez, who blinked.
Said I: "Even a Protestant must sometimes understand the relief of
confession."
"Armed with this," he went on, "I made my way to the mouth of the Loire,
to St. Nazaire, between which and Le Croisic lies a small island where,
in the present weakness of the French marine, English ships of war are
suffered to water unmolested. For ten napoleons I bribed an old
fisherman to row me out at night to this island, which we reached at
daybreak, and to our dismay found the anchorage empty. We cast our
nets, however, for a blind, and taking a few fish on our way, worked
slowly down to the south-west, where my comrade (and a faithful one he
proved) had heard reports of an English frigate nosing about the coast.
Sure enough, between breakfast and noon we caught sight of her topmasts:
but to reach her we must pass in full view and almost within point-blank
range of a coast battery. We were scarcely abreast of it when a
round-shot plumped into the sea ahead of us and brought us to, and
almost at once a boatful of soldiers put off to board us.
"Their object, it turned out, was merely to warn us not to pass the
battery, or the chances were five to one that the Englishman would
capture us. In no way discomposed, my friend maintained that we (he
passed me off as his son) must either fish or starve; that we had come a
long distance, knew every inch of the coast, and ran no danger.
He backed this up by bribing the soldiers with our whole morning's
catch, and in the end they contented themselves by insisting that we
should wait under the battery until nightfall and so depart. And this
we did: but in the meanwhile, pretending our anxiety to avoid her, we
cross-questioned the soldiers so precisely on the Englishman's bearings
that, when darkness fell and we slipped our anchor, we ran straight down
on her without the slightest difficulty. She was the _Agile_ sloop of
twenty-four guns, and from her deck I waved good-bye to the fisherman,
scarcely more delighted by my safety than he by his napoleons, which in
my gratitude I had raised to fifteen.
"The _Agile_ landed me in Plymouth without mishap: and so end my
adventures. I ought to add, however, that, though my own conscience
held no reproach for my trick upon Marmont, I sought and obtained
permission from the War Office to select a prisoner of my own rank and
exchange him with France; and with him I sent a precise account, which
will afford some amusement to the Duke of Ragusa's enemies if he happen
to have any at headquarters. You, my cousin, will doubtless consider
this mere supererogation, but I should be glad of the reverend Doctor's
opinion."
"We will reserve this," said the Doctor, "as Question Number Five."
"And you promptly reshipped for Lisbon, followed the army to Salamanca,
and resumed your work?" said I.
"Even so: but I suspect that these adventures have rattled me. I am not
the man I was: else I had not succumbed so easily to a mere
_coup-de-soleil_. Will the reverend Doctor complete the narrative by
describing how he found me?"
"In a ditch," said the reverend Doctor placidly. "My college was
destroyed: my beloved Salamanca in ruins. 'To a philosopher,' said I,
'all the world is a home; but especially such wine-vaults as are found
in Rueda.' I saddled, therefore, my mule; loaded her with a very few
books and still fewer sticks of furniture; more frugal even than
Juvenal's friend Umbricius, _cui tota domus redo, componitur una_.
On my road, and almost under the shadow of this rock, my mule shied in
the most ladylike fashion at sight of a redcoat prostrate in the dust.
The rest you can guess: but assuredly I did not guess at the time that I
had happened on one whose story will--if ever God restores me to my
University--so illustrate my lectures as to make them appear that which
they will not be--an entirely new set of compositions."
"Well," said I, "the hour is late: and however cheerfully you men of
conscience and of casuistry may look forward to spending the night in
these caves, I have seen enough, and have enough imagination at the back
of it, to desire nothing so little."
"I will escort you," said the Doctor.
"That was implied," I answered: and after shaking hands with my kinsman
and promising to visit him on the morrow, I suffered myself to be guided
back along the horrible passages. On the way the Doctor Gonsalvez
paused more than once to chuckle, and at each remove I found this
indulgence more uncanny.
In the great cellar we came upon the sergeant of the 36th, still
slumbering. I stirred him with my foot, and, sitting up, he amicably
invited us to join him in a drink. I did so, the Doctor drawing it from
the spigot into a pail.
"Might be worse!" hiccupped the sergeant, watching me.
I agreed that it might be a great deal worse. Between us we steered him
out, through the tunnel, along the ledge, and so to the archway under
which Venus sparkled in the purple heaven. Here the Doctor bade us
good-night, and left me to pilot my drunkard down the cliff. At the
foot he shook hands with me in a fervour of tipsy gratitude: and I
returned the grasp with an _empressement_, a passion almost, the exact
grounds of which unless he should happen to read these lines and
remember the circumstances--contingencies equally remote--he will spend
his life without surmising.