"A NEW LIFE."
From the frigate there floated at the maintop-gallant-masthead the
flag of a rear admiral; on the poop of the frigate herself there
stood, surrounded by his officers, Admiral Rooke, the brilliant
seaman, soon to win his knighthood and other honours.
The galley had disappeared--was gone forever--and with her had
disappeared most of the sufferers from the cruelty of France, and also
all those who had inflicted that suffering. Of her survivors there
were but a dozen all told, who, some wounded and some untouched, were
being brought on board. Among the latter was No. 211, who, in spite of
the thanks he had given to God for having brought the end of all his
miseries to him, now stood dripping on the deck of the Englishman.
"Send them down to the cockpit to be attended to," the admiral said,
"and let them be well cared for. Poor wretches! they all seem to be
galley slaves; they have suffered enough, God knows, if all accounts
be true!" Then he called to his own men attending to the rescued, and
asked if any were unhurt.
"Only two, sir; this man standing here," and he pointed to 211, "and
one other. He has just fainted."
"Let that man come up to me; I wish to know something of the--the late
galley."
To his surprise the man himself instantly turned and advanced toward
the poop ladder, and slowly mounted it. Then, as he reached the poop
itself he saluted Rooke, raising his hand to his dark, matted hair,
and stood silent and dripping before him and the officers round.
"My man," the admiral said, while his eye roved over the torn and
lacerated bare back and shoulders, saw the old and new cuts and
bruises, and observed the half-starved flanks through which the bones
were plainly visible--"my man, you understand English. Are you an
Englishman?"
"My mother was an English woman," No. 211 replied, in a deep, hollow
voice.
"That any English woman's son should suffer this!" exclaimed the
other, again glancing at the worn, bruised body with warm and manly
indignation. "And that!" pointing out to his officers the
_fleur-de-lis_ roughly branded on his shoulder; sure sign of the
_forcat_. Then, continuing, he asked, "What was your fault?"
"Nothing," 211 answered, as he had answered his brother _galerien_ an
hour before. Only now he lifted his eyes and looked at the admiral, as
though by that straight glance he would force him to believe. "No
crime, no fault. I was--oh!" he broke off, "not now; not now! The
story is too long to tell now."
His tone and bearing--sad and miserable as both were--told all who
stood around him that this was no common man, no malefactor flung to
the slave ship for an ignoble crime, no wretched printer sent to the
galleys for producing Protestant pamphlets, or chapel clerk for
assisting in a Protestant service.
"You are of gentle blood?" the admiral asked kindly. "Followed,
doubtless, the calling of a gentleman? What are you?"
"I was a cavalry officer of King Louis. But broken and ruined
for--for----" and again he broke off.
"Will you tell me your name?"
"Georges St. Georges."
The name conveyed nothing to any on board the frigate; the rank he had
borne, when stated by him, stirred them all. They knew one thing,
however--namely, that the cavalry officers of France were all
gentlemen of birth, and many of great position. Could this be true, or
if true was it possible that the man before them had not perpetrated
some hideous crime? Louis had the reputation of encouraging and
treating good officers well; surely no man of that position could have
been condemned to this awful existence but for some great sin. Rooke,
however, thought he knew the clew, and continued:
"You are, perhaps, a Protestant? The King of France still wages bitter
war against them. Is that your crime?"
"I am a Protestant; but that was not my crime."
He shivered as he spoke, although he stood in the full glare of the
July sun, the burnt face whitened beneath its bronze, and the lips
became livid and ghastly, then he reeled and staggered against the gun
tackle on the poop.
"Take him below," Rooke said, turning to one of the subaltern officers
at his side; "let him be seen too and carefully tended and those sores
dressed. Also find some proper apparel for him. And--treat him as a
gentleman. It is more like that he has been sinned against than sinned
himself."
So the fainting man was carried below in the brawny arms of the
sailors, a spare cabin was found for him--it had but a few weeks
before been occupied by a lieutenant who was killed in the disastrous
battle off Beachy Head--and he was put into a clean, comfortable bunk.
The release which he had prayed for from the galley's slavery had
come, though not in the only way he had dared to hope for.
* * * * *
"So!" exclaimed Rooke as he helped himself to a glass of Calcavella
and passed the bottle to the man whose life had been saved--"so the
wanton stabbed you in the back just as you had the fellow at your
mercy. The deuce is in it that you missed his heart and could only
pink him in the arm. But go on--go on. Faith! 'tis a wondrous story of
wrong and cruelty."
They were seated in the admiral's cabin on another such hot July day
as that on which St. Georges had been dragged out of the sea with
still a portion of his chain attached to the ring round his ankle, and
which was rapidly sinking him, but the latter was looking in very
different case now. The burnt face was still very black and hollow,
the lines of suffering still plainly marked, as they would be for many
a day, but otherwise all was changed. He was dressed as a gentleman
once more, in a plain but neat suit of blue clothes, guarded with
white cotton lace--it had been the unfortunate lieutenant's. His hair,
which was combed and brushed now, was, although still somewhat
short--it being the custom in the galleys to crop it close to the head
for those days once a month--no longer thick and matted.
St. Georges went on as the admiral bade him; he was telling the whole
story of his life to his host.
"Yet, sir," he continued, "she was no common wanton either, as I heard
afterward, but a lady of Louis's court who loved De Roquemaure.
Doubtless her hate and anger were roused by the words I addressed to
her. And I must have wronged her in one instance at least; it could
scarce have been she who stole my--my poor little babe." And, as ever,
when he mentioned that lost one, his eyes filled with tears. She was
gone from him now, he feared, forever--he had been in that accursed
galley for two years!--how could he hope to see her again on this
earth? No wonder that the tears sprang to his eyes!
The seaman opposite to him certainly wondered not at their doing so;
instead, he passed his own hand before his eyes, as he had done more
than once before in the course of the narrative. Countless men had
been sent to their doom by that hand and by his orders, but that was
in battle; now, as he thought of St. Georges's little lonely child and
wondered if it still lived, his memory wandered back to Monk's Horton,
a pleasant seat in Kent, where his own children were doubtless playing
at their mother's knee, and his brave heart became as tender as a
woman's.
"Poor babe!" he said, "poor babe! Pray God the other woman, the one
who did steal her at Troyes, has some bowels of compassion! Surely she
must have, however base in other respects."
"I pray so night and day," St. Georges said. "O God! how I pray so."
Then again, at the admiral's desire that he should not fret too much,
but hope ever for the best, he went on with the account of all that
had befallen him.
"When my wound was nearly healed," he said, "there came to the room in
the inn, where I was closely guarded, a small body of exempts who
carried me to Paris to the prison of La Tournelle, a place from which,
as I shortly afterward learned, a chain of condemned galley slaves was
to set out, all winter as it was, for Marseilles."
"'But,' I cried to the man who fed us morning and night like animals,
while we lay each with an iron collar round our necks by which we
were chained to a beam that traversed the dungeon----"
"In a Christian country!" exclaimed the admiral--"a Christian
country!"
"Ay! in a Christian country! Yet I cried, I say, to the man who
guarded us: 'But these companions of mine _are_ condemned--I am not. I
have undergone no trial!'
"'_Bah!_' he replied, 'your trial is made and done. _Bon Dieu!_ the
courts cannot wait until criminals feel themselves in sufficient good
health to assist at the _seances_. Your trial is over,' and the wretch
made a joke therewith. 'Your _trials_ have now to commence. Keep a
good heart!' 'Show me my sentence, then,' I exclaimed, 'produce it.'
'_A la bonne heure_,' he replied. 'To-morrow I will obtain it from the
governor. You shall see.' And the next day he showed it to me. It was
not so long but that I remember every word of it now. It ran: 'To
Georges St. Georges. For that you, a cashiered officer of his
Majesty's forces, have drawn sword upon and threatened assassination
to his Majesty's chief of the army, Monsieur de Louvois, in his
Majesty's own palace of the Louvre; for that, also, you attempted the
assassination of his Majesty's subject, le Marquis de Roquemaure,
appointed captain of his Majesty's Regiment of Picardy, and of a lady
of his Majesty's court, you are condemned to the galleys in
perpetuity. Signed, Le Marquis de Vrilliere.'"
Again the admiral exclaimed, "In a Christian country!" and again St.
Georges continued:
"A week afterward we were on the road, chained together two and two by
the neck, while all along the line through our chains ran another,
joining the first couple to the last. The snow lay on the ground
until we reached Avignon, six weeks later; at night we slept in
barns, in stables, sometimes in the open air. Some--the old and
sickly--fell down and were left by the roadside for the _communes_ to
bury; more than fifty were left thus ere we reached Marseilles. There
we were distributed to the galleys that were short of their
complement, though not before the bishop of the province gave us the
Roman blessing, saying that thereby the heretic spirit of the devil
could alone be driven out of those who were Protestants. From then
till now my life has been what my appearance, as you saw me naked,
testifies."
"What," asked the admiral very gently, "can you do now? To live is
easy enough. You have been both soldier and sailor"--though he uttered
the last word with an expression of disgust as he thought of what
manner of sailor this unhappy man had been--"your existence is
therefore easy. You can serve the king," and he touched his hat with
his finger as he spoke. "Many Huguenots are doing so now, and some
other old ones who followed Charles back to England. But"--and he
leaned forward across the table as he spoke earnestly--"that will
bring you no nearer to regaining your poor little babe; will scarce
enable you to thrust your sword at last through the villain De
Roquemaure's breast; to obtain the dukedom you believe to be yours."
"Obtain the dukedom, sir!" St. Georges replied, looking at him. "Nay,
indeed, that is gone forever. You know what befalls the man in France
who has been condemned to the galleys for life?"
"What?"
"He is as dead forever in the law's eyes as though he were sunk to the
bottom of the sea. He can never inherit, can never dispose of aught
that is his; if he is married, his wife is not considered as a
married woman, but a mistress--every right has gone from him forever!"
"Is there no pardon?"
"Never. Unless he can by some wild chance prove a wrongful
condemnation. And for me, how that? Louvois, the all-powerful
minister, is my judge and executioner; and, further, when once I set
foot on English ground I shall become an English soldier or sailor."
"But the child! At least"--and the sailor spoke more softly even than
before--"you must know her fate. And--De Roquemaure's punishment! How
obtain these?"
"Heaven alone knows! May it, in its supreme mercy, direct me! Yet this
is what I have thought, planned to do since you, sir, have taken pity
on me. England and France are now most happily, as I think it, plunged
in war once more. There is much to do----"
"Ay," interposed the admiral, while his handsome face flushed and his
eyes glistened, for he was smarting over his and Torrington's recent
defeat. "There is. There is Beachy Head to be wiped out--oh, for our
next encounter with them!"
"Thereby," continued St. Georges, "my chance may come. For I may meet
De Roquemaure. The sentence on me said he was appointed captain in one
of the northern regiments; there have been stranger things than foes
to the death meeting on the field, on opposite sides. Then for the
child!"
"Ay, the child."
"For that I must go back to France, disguised it may be; nay, must be!
That will be easy. The language is mine--though because of my mother's
memory I have perfected myself in yours--in hers--there is nothing to
reveal who or what I am but one thing"--and he made a gesture toward
his shoulder where the hateful _fleur-de-lis_ was branded in
forever--"and that thing you may be sure none shall ever see again
until my body is prepared for the grave. But--which to do first? To
become a soldier or a sailor fighting for England, or travel disguised
to Troyes and find out if--if--my child still lives. That would be my
desire--only--only----"
"Only?" repeated the admiral, looking at him.
"Only," the other said--then broke off.
And Rooke knew as well as though St. Georges had uttered the words
what he would have said. He knew that the man before him was beggared,
that he had not a crown in the world to help him perform such a
journey.