the sightless, thinking sort of gaze from that head of his, after the
telescope sank from his eye, when the Conqueror must have shot back
with all her stately hamper into the floor of the Atlantic again!
Once more I brought my spyglass to bear on the place where he had
been, and was almost on the point of calling out to warn him off the
edge of the cliff, forgetting the distance I was away. Napoleon had
stepped, with one foot before him, on the very brink, his two hands
hanging loose by his side, with the glass in one of them, till the
shadow of his small black cocked hat covered the hollows of his eyes,
and he stood as it were looking down past the face of the precipice.
What he thought of no mortal tongue can say, whether he was master
at the time over a wilder battle than any he'd ever fought--but just
then, what was the surprise it gave me to see the head of a man,
with a red tasselled cap on it, raised through amongst the ivy from
below, while he seemed to have his feet on the cracks and juts of
the rock, hoisting himself by one hand round the tangled roots, till
no doubt he must have looked right aloft into the French Emperor's
face; and perhaps he whispered something,--though, for my part, it
was all dumb-show to me, where I knelt peering into the glass. I
saw even _him_ start at the suddenness of the thing--he raised his
head upright, still glancing down over the front of the crag, with
the spread hand lifted, and the side of his face half turned toward
the party within earshot behind, where the Governor and the rest
apparently kept together out of respect, no doubt watching both
Napoleon's back and the ship of war far beyond. The keen sunlight
on the spot brought out every motion of the two in front--the _one_
so full in my view, that I could mark his look settle again on the
other below, his firm lips parting and his hand out before him, like
a man seeing a spirit he knew; while a bunch of leaves on the end
of a wand came stealing up from the stranger's post to Napoleon's
very fingers. The head of the man on the cliff turned round seaward
for one moment, ticklish as his footing must have been; then he
looked back, pointing with his loose hand to the horizon--there was
one minute between them without a motion, seemingly--the captive
Emperor's chin was sunk on his breast, though you'd have said his
eyes glanced up out of the shadow on his forehead; and the stranger's
red cap hung like a bit of the bright-coloured cliff, under his two
hands holding amongst the leaves. Then I saw Napoleon lift his hand
calmly, he gave a sign with it--it might have been refusing, it might
have been agreeing, or it might be farewell, I never expect to know;
but he folded his arms across his breast, with the bunch of leaves
in his fingers, and stepped slowly back from the brink toward the
officers. I was watching the stranger below it, as he swung there
for a second or two, in a way like to let him go dash to the bottom;
his face sluing wildly seaward again. Short though the glance I had
of him was--his features set hard in some bitter feeling or other,
his dress different, too, besides the mustache being off, and his
complexion no doubt purposely darkened--it served to prove what I'd
suspected: he was no other than the Frenchman I had seen in the brig,
and, mad or sensible, the very look I caught was more like that he
faced the thunder-squall with, than aught besides. Directly after,
he was letting himself carefully down with his back to my glass;
the party above were moving off over the brow of the crags, and the
Governor riding round, apparently to come once more down the hollow
between us. In fact, the seventy-four had stood by this time so
far in that the peaks in the distance shut her out; but I ran the
glass carefully along the whole horizon in my view, for signs of the
schooner. The haze was too bright, however, to make sure either way;
though, dead to windward, there were some streaks of cloud risen with
the breeze, where I once or twice fancied I could catch the gleam of
a speck in it. The Podargus was to be seen through a notch in the
rocks, too, beating out in a different direction, as if the telegraph
had signalled her elsewhere; after which you heard the dull rumble
of the forts saluting the Conqueror down at James Town as she came
in: and being late in the afternoon, it was high time for me to crowd
sail downward, to fall in with my shipmates.
I was just getting near the turn into Side Path, accordingly, after
a couple of mortal hours' hard riding, and once more in sight of
the harbour beneath, when the three of them overtook me, having
managed to reach the top of Diana's Peak, as they meant. The first
lieutenant was full of the grand views on the way, with the prospect
off the peak, where one saw the sea all round St Helena like a ring,
and the sky over you as blue as blue water. "But what do you think
we saw on the top, Mr Collins?" asked one of the urchins at me--a
mischievous imp he was himself, too, pockmarked, with hair like a
brush, and squinted like a ship's two hawse-holes. "Why, Mister
Snelling," said I, gruffly--for I knew him pretty well already, and
he was rather a favourite with me for his sharpness, though you may
suppose I was thinking of no trifles at the moment--"why, the devil
perhaps!" "I must say I thought at first it was him, sir," said the
reefer, grinning; "'twas a black Nigger, though, sir, sitting right
on the very truck of it with his hands on his two knees, and we'd
got to shove him off before we could dig our knives into it!" "_By_
the Lord Harry!" I rapped out, "the very thing that--" "'Twas really
the case, though, Mr Collins," said the first lieutenant; "and I
thought it curious, but there are so many Negroes in the island."
"If you please, sir," put in the least of the mids, "perhaps they
haven't all of 'em room to meditate, sir!" "Or sent to the masthead,
eh, Roscoe?" said Snelling. "Which you'll be, sirrah," broke in the
first lieutenant, "the moment I get aboard, if you don't keep a small
helm!" We were clattering down over James Town by this time, the sun
blazing red off the horizon, into it and the doors of the houses,
and the huge hull and spars of the Conqueror almost blocking up the
harbour, as she lay anchored outside the Indiamen. The evening gun
fired as we pulled aboard the Hebe, which immediately got under weigh
by order, although Lord Frederick was not come down yet; but it fell
to her turn that night to supply a guard-boat to windward, and she
stood up under full sail round Sugar-Loaf Point, just as the dusk
fell like a shadow over the island.
The Newcastle's boat was on the leeward coast that night, and one
of our cutters was getting ready to lower, nearly off Prosperous
Bay, to windward; while the frigate herself would hold farther out
to sea. One of the master's mates should have taken the cutter; but
after giving the first lieutenant a few hints as far as I liked
to go, I proposed to go in charge of her that time, myself--which
being laid to the score of my freshness on the station, and the mate
being happy to get rid of a tiresome duty, I got leave at once. The
sharp midshipman, Snelling, took it into his ugly head to keep me
company, and away we pulled into hearing of the surf. The moment
things took the shape of fair work, in fact, I lost all thoughts of
the late kind. In place of seeing the ragged heights against the
sky, and musing all sorts of notions about the French Emperor, there
was nothing but the broad bulk of the island high over us, the swell
below, and the sea glimmering wide from our gunwale to the stars;
so no sooner did we lose sight of the Hebe slowly melting into the
gloom, than I lit a cheroot, gave the tiller to the mid, and sat
stirring to the heart at the thought of something to come, I scarce
knew what. As for Buonaparte, with all that belonged to him, 'twas
little to me in that mood, in spite of what I'd seen during the day,
compared with a snatch of old Channel times: the truth was, next
morning I'd feel for him again.
The night for a good while was pretty tolerable starlight, and in a
sort of a way you could make out a good distance. One time we pulled
right round betwixt the two points, though slowly enough; then again
the men lay on their oars, letting her float in with the long swells,
till the surf could be heard too loud for a safe berth. Farther on in
the night, however, it got to be dark--below, at least--the breeze
holding steady, and bringing it thicker and thicker; at last it was
so black all round that on one side you just _knew_ the rocks over
you, with the help of a faint twinkle of stars right aloft. On the
other side there was only, at times, the two lights swinging at the
mast-head of the Podargus and Hebe, far apart, and one farther to sea
than the other; or now and then their stern-window and a port, when
the heave of the water lifted them, or the ships yawed a little. One
hour after another, it was wearisome enough waiting for nothing at
all, especially in the key one was in at the time, and with a long
tropical night before you.
All of a sudden, fairly between the brig and the frigate, I fancied I
caught a glimpse for one moment of another twinkle; then it was out
again, and I had given it up, when I was certain I saw it plainly
once more, as well as a third time, for as short a space as before.
We were off a cove in the coast, inside Prosperous Bay, where a
bight in the rocks softened the force of the surf, not far from the
steep break where one of these same narrow gullies came out--a good
deal short of the shore, indeed, but I knew by this time it led up
somewhere toward the Longwood side. Accordingly the idea struck me of
a plan to set agoing, whether I hit upon the right place or not; if
it _was_ the schooner, she would be coming down right from windward,
on the look-out for a signal, as well as for the spot to aim at: the
thing was to lure her boat ashore there before their time, seize her
crew and take the schooner herself by surprise, as if we were coming
back all right; since signal the ships we couldn't, and the schooner
would be wary as a dolphin.
No sooner said than done. I steered cautiously for the cove,
fearfully though the swell bore in, breaking over the rocks outside
of it; and the reefer and I had to spring one after the other for
our lives, just as the bowman prized her off into the back-wash. As
for the cutter, it would spoil all to keep her off thereabouts; and
I knew if a boat did come in of the kind I guessed, why she wouldn't
lay herself out for strength of crew. Snelling and I were well armed
enough to manage half a dozen, if they fancied us friends, so I
ordered the men to pull clear off for an hour, at least, leaving fair
water. In fact there were sentries about the heights, I was aware, if
they could have heard or seen us; but the din of the surf, the dark,
and the expectation of the thing set us both upon our mettle; while
I showed the boat's lantern every now and then, like the light I had
noticed, such as the Channel smugglers use every thick night on our
own coast. I suppose we might have waited five or ten minutes when
the same twinkle was to be caught, dipping dark down into the swell
again, about opposite the cove: next we had half an hour more--every
now and then we giving them a flash of the lantern, when suddenly the
reefer said he saw oars glisten over a swell, which he knew weren't
man-o'-war's strokes, or else the fellows ought to have their grog
stopped. I had the lantern in my hand, slipping the shade once more,
and the other to feel for my cutlass hilt, when the mid gave a cry
behind me, and I turned just in time to see the dark figure of a
Black spring off the stones at our backs. One after another, three
or four more came leaping past me out of the gloom--the Frenchman's
red cap and his dark fierce face glared on me by the light of the
lantern; and next moment it was down, with him and me in a deadly
struggle over it in the thick black of the night. Suddenly I felt
myself lose hold of him in the heave of the swell, washing away back
off the rock; then something else trying to clutch me, when down I
swept with the sea bubbling into my mouth and ears.
I came up above water again by the sheer force of the swell, as it
seemed to me, plunging into the shore; with the choice, I thought, of
either being drowned in the dark, or knocked to a jelly on the rocks;
but out I struck, naturally enough, rising on the huge scud of the
sea, and trying to breast it, though I felt it sweep me backwards at
every stroke, and just saw the wide glimmer of it heave far and wide
for a moment against the gloom of the cliffs behind. All at once, in
the trough, I heard the panting of some one's breath near alongside
of me, and directly after, I was caught hold of by the hair of the
head, somebody else grabbing at the same time for my shoulder. We
weren't half-a-dozen fathoms from the stranger's boat, the Blacks
who had fallen foul of me swimming manfully together, and the boat
lifting bow-on to the run of the sea, as her crew looked about for us
by the light of their lantern. I had just got my senses enough about
me to notice so much, when they were hauling me aboard; all four
of the Negroes holding on with one hand by the boat's gunnel, and
helping their way with the other; while the oars began to make for
the light, which was still to be caught by fits, right betwixt those
of the two cruisers, as the space widened slowly in the midst of
them, standing out to sea. Scarce had I time to feel some one beside
me as wet as myself, whether the reefer or the Frenchman I didn't
know, when crash came another boat with her bows fairly down upon our
gunwale, out of the dark. The spray splashed up betwixt us, I saw the
glitter of the oar-blades, and heard Snelling's shrill voice singing
out to "sink the villans, my lads--down with 'em--remember the second
lieutenant!" The lantern in the French boat flared, floating out
for a single instant amongst a wreck of staves and heads, bobbing
wildly together on the side of a wave. One of my own men from the
cutter pulled me by the cuff of the neck off the crest of it with his
boat-hook, as it rose swelling away past, till I had fast grip of
her quarter; the Blacks could be seen struggling in the hollow, to
keep up their master's body, with his hands spread helplessly hither
and thither above water. The poor devils' wet black faces turned so
wistfully, in their desperation, toward the cutter, that I gasped out
to save him. They kept making towards us, in fact, and the bowman
managed to hook him at last, though not a moment too soon, for the
next heave broke the unlucky wretches apart, and we lost sight of
them; the cutter hanging on her oars till they had both him and me
stowed into the stern-sheets, where the Frenchman lay seemingly dead
or senseless, and I spitting out the salt water like a Cockney after
a bathe.
"Why, Mister Snelling," said I, as soon as I came fully to myself,
"I can't at all understand how I got into the water!" "Nor I either,
sir," said he; "I'll be hanged, sir, if I didn't think it was a
whirlwind of Niggers off the top of Diana's Peak, seeing I made out
the very one we found there this afternoon--the four of them took
you and this other gentleman up in their arms in a lump, as you
were floundering about together, and took to the water like so many
seals, sir!" I looked down into the Frenchman's face, where he lay
stretched with his head back and his hair dripping. "Is he gone?"
said I. "Well, sir," said the mid, who had contrived to light the
lantern again, "I'm afraid he's pretty near it. Is he a friend of
yours, sir?--I thought as much, by the way you caught him the moment
you clapped eyes on each other, sir." "Silence, sirrah!" said I:
"d'ye see anything of the light to seaward?" For a minute or two we
peered over the swells into the dark, to catch the twinkle of the
signal again, but to no purpose; and I began to think the bird was
flown. All of a sudden, however, there it was once more, dipping as
before beyond the heave of the sea, and between the backs of it,
sliding across the open space, with the blind side to the cruisers.
"Hallo, my lads!" said I, quickly, and giving myself another shake
as I seized the tiller, "give way seaward--stretch your backs
for ten minutes, and we have her!" We were pulling right for the
spot, when the light vanished, but a show of our lantern brought
it gleaming fairly out again, till I could even catch glimpse by
it of some craft or other's hull, and the iron of one boom-end,
rising over the swells. "Bow-oar, there!" whispered I; "stand by,
my lad, and look sharp!" "Hola!" came a short sharp hail over
the swells; "_d'où venez-vous?" "Oui, oui!_" I sung out boldly,
through my hand, to cover the difference as much as possible; then
a thought occurred to me, recollecting the French surgeon's words
on board this very craft the first time we saw her--"De la cage de
l'_Aigle_"--I hailed--"bonne fortune, mes amis!" "C'est possible!
c'est possible, mon capitaine!" shouted several of the schooner's
crew, jumping upon her bulwarks, "que vous apportez _lui-même_?" We
were pulling for her side as lubberly as possible, all the time--a
man ran up on her quarter with a coil of line ready to heave--but
still the main boom of the schooner was already jibing, her helm
up, and she under way; they seemed half doubtful of us, and another
moment might turn the scales. "Vite, vite!" roared I, choosing my
French at hap-hazard. "Oui, oui, jettez votre corde--venez au lof,
mes amis!"--luff, that was to say. I heard somebody aboard say it was
the American--the schooner came up in the wind, the line whizzing
off her quarter into our bows, and we came sheering down close by
her lee quarter, grinding against her bends in the surge, twenty
eager faces peering over at us in the confusion; when I sung out
hoarsely to run for brandy and hot blankets, as he was half-drowned.
"Promptement--promptement, mes amis!" shouted I, and as quickly there
was a rush from her bulwarks to bring what was wanted, while Snelling
and I made dash up her side followed by the men, cutlass in hand.
Three minutes of hubbub, and as many strokes betwixt us, when we
had driven the few that stood in our way pell-mell down the nearest
hatchway. The schooner was completely our own.
We hoisted up the cutter, with the French captain still stretched
in the stern-sheets--hauled aft the schooner's head-sheets, let her
large mainsail swing full again, and were soon standing swiftly out
toward the light at the frigate's masthead.
When the Hebe first caught sight of us, or rather heard the sound of
the schooner's sharp bows rushing through the water, she naturally
enough didn't know what to make of us. I noticed our first luff's
sudden order to clear away the foremost weather-gun, with the rush
of the men for it; but my hail set all to rights. We hove-to off
her weather quarter, and I was directly after on board, explaining
as simply as possible how we had come to get hold of a French craft
thereabouts in such a strange fashion.
Accordingly, you may fancy the surprise at James Town in the
morning, to see the Hebe standing in with her prize; let alone the
governor's perfect astonishment at suspecting some scheme to carry
off Napoleon, apparently, so far brought to a head. The upshot of
it was, to cut this bit of my story short, he and the military
folks would have it, at last, that there was nothing of the kind;
but only some slaver from the African coast wanting to land a
cargo, especially as there were so many Blacks aboard of her; and
the Frenchman at once took the cue, the little Monsieur of a mate
swearing he had been employed by several of the islanders, some
months before, to bring them slaves. For my own part, all things
considered, I had nothing to say; and, after some likelihood of a
shine being kicked up about it at first, the matter was hushed up.
However, the schooner was of course condemned in the mean time, as
the Hebe's fair prize, till such time as the Admiralty Court at the
Cape should settle it on our outward-bound voyage.
As the Hebe was to sail at once for India, the governor took the
opportunity to send two or three supernumeraries out in the vessel
along with us to the Cape of Good Hope, amongst whom was the Yankee
botanist; and though, being in the frigate, I didn't see him, I made
as sure as if I had it was my old shipmate Daniel.
Well, the morning came, when we weighed anchor from St James's Bay
for sea, in company with the prize: it wasn't more than ten or eleven
days since we had arrived in the Podargus, but I was as weary with
the sight of St Helena as if I'd lived there a year. The frigate's
lovely hull, and her taunt spars, spreading the square stretch of her
white canvass sideways to the Trade, put new life into me: slowly
as we dropped the peaks of the island on our lee-quarter, 'twas
something to feel yourself travelling the same road as the Indiaman
once more, with the odds of a mail coach, too, to a French diligence.
What chance might turn up to bring us together, I certainly didn't
see; but that night, when we and the schooner were the only things
in the horizon, both fast plunging, close-hauled, on a fresh breeze,
at the distance of a mile, I set my mind, for the first time,
more at ease. "Luck and the anchors stowed!" thought I, "and hang
all forethoughts!" I walked the weather quarterdeck in my watch
as pleasantly as might be, with now and then a glance forward at
Snelling, as he yarned at the fife-rail beside a groggy old mate, and
at times a glimmer of the schooner's hull on our lee-beam, rising wet
out of the dusk, under charge of our third lieutenant.
It was about a week afterwards, and we began to have rough touches
of Cape weather, pitching away on cross seas, and handing our
'gallant-sails oftener of a night, that Lord Frederick said to me
one evening, before going down to his cabin, "Mr Collins, I really
hope we shall not find your Indiaman at Cape Town, after all!"
"Indeed, Lord Frederick!" said I, respectfully enough; but it was
the very thing I hoped myself. "Yes, sir," continued he; "as I
received strict injunctions by Admiral Plampin to arrest Lieutenant
Westwood if we fell in with her there, and otherwise, to send the
schooner in her track, even if it were to Bombay." "The deuce!" I
thought, "are we never to be done with this infernal affair?" "'Tis
excessively disagreeable," continued the Captain, swinging his gold
eye-glass round his finger by the chain, as was his custom when
bothered, and looking with one eye all the while at the schooner.
"A beautiful craft, by the way, Mr Collins!" said he, "even within
sight of the Hebe." "She is so, my lord," said I; "if she had only
had a sensible boatswain, even, to put the sticks aloft in her." "I
say, Mr Collins," went on his lordship, musingly, "I think I have it,
though--the way to get rid of this scrape!"
I waited and waited, however, for Lord Frederick to mention this; and
to no purpose, apparently, as he went below without saying a word
more about it.
PALACE THEATRICALS.
A DAY-DREAM.
I never heard, nor is it important, why my father, Major Von Degen,
an old officer of the King's German Legion, resolved to have me
educated in his native country, unvisited by him since boyhood, and
supplanted in his affections, to all outward appearance, by the land
he long had served and dwelt in, of whose daughters he had taken a
wife, and in which he proposed to end his days. Be that as it may,
at an early age I was sent from England to a town in the north of
Germany, where I passed four years in the house of a worthy and
kind-hearted professor, and which I quitted at the age of eighteen
to proceed to the university of Heidelberg. For me, as for most
young men, the gay, careless, light-hearted student-life, with its
imaginary independence and fantastical privileges, its carouses of
Rhenish wine and Bavarian beer, its harmless duels and mock-heroic
festivals, at first had strong attractions. And when, after a
certain number of joyously-kept terms and pleasant vacation rambles,
university diversions began to pall, and I became a less constant
attendant in the fencing hall and at the evening potations, I still
was detained at Heidelberg--not by love of study, for to study, being
destined to no profession, I little applied, but by the force of
habit, by the charm of a delightful country, and, more particularly,
by the agreeable society I found in a number of families resident
in and around the town. Although but moderately attentive to the
branches of learning usually pursued at a university, I was not
altogether unmindful of my improvement. I busied myself with modern
languages, exercised my pencil by sketching the surrounding scenery,
and, above all, assiduously cultivated a tolerable talent for music.
In this I was particularly successful. Enthusiastically fond of the
art, gifted by nature with a good tenor voice, and having chanced
upon an excellent instructor, I made rapid progress; and during
the latter part of my residence at Heidelberg, no musical party or
amateur concert for miles around was deemed complete without me.