A Roving Commission Part 31

The meal was a very short one, but the ladies, to please their rescuers, took a few spoonfuls of soup and a gla.s.s of wine. Madame Pickard and her elder daughter were too much worn out by anxiety and emotion to talk, Monsieur Pickard was no less moved, and the conversation was supported entirely by the three officers and Louise. The young men hurried through their meal, and then, saying good-night to the others, went up on deck.

"Well, never did a thing turn out better," Nat said as he lit his pipe; "it is a tremendous satisfaction that we have not lost a single man in the affair."

"And it is no less a satisfaction," Turnbull said, "that we have given a good many of those black brutes their deserts. It was a good fight for a bit."

As they were smoking, the seven white men came up in a body.

"We could not lie down, monsieur," one of them said, "till we had come to thank you for saving us from the most frightful deaths. We had given up all hopes even of obtaining a weapon and putting an end to ourselves, which we should certainly have done could we have got hold of a knife, after having been obliged to witness the tortures of two of our comrades. Had you been but ten minutes later another of us would have been their victim. Ah, monsieur! your voice, when you spoke at the window, seemed like that of an angel who had come to our relief."

"How long had you been in the woods?" Nat asked.

"Six weeks, monsieur, before the negroes found us. We had carried off some provisions with us, but these were all consumed, and we were obliged to go down to the plantation to search for food. We suppose that we were seen and followed, and the next night we were surrounded by the band you saw."

"Well, we are all very glad to have got you out of their hands, and you rendered good service when the blacks came down on us."

"We had our revenge to take," the man said, "and not one of us but would have fought until he was killed."

"You have had something to eat, I hope?"

"Yes, thank you, sir."

"You had better turn in now. I don't suppose you have had much sleep of late."

"Poor beggars," Turnbull said as the men walked away, "I wonder myself that they did not strangle each other, or hang themselves, or something.

I am sure I should have done so rather than wait day after day till my turn came to be burnt alive, or to be cut to pieces gradually, or put to death by any other means of slow torture."

"Yes, Turnbull, if one were quite sure that there was no possible hope of rescue or escape; but I suppose a man never does quite give up hope.

This was an example, you see, of the unlikely happening."

"What are you going to do next, Glover?"

"I don't know, I have hardly thought it out yet. You see, we can manage with this lot we have on board without much difficulty, and I don't know that I should be justified in going round to Cape Francois on purpose to land them. So far we have not been able to bring any news of value, and at any rate I think we might as well cruise about here a little longer.

There is one thing, if we should fall in with anyone bigger than ourselves and have to fight for it, those fellows who have just gone below will be a valuable addition to our strength. When it comes to a hand-to-hand fight seven stout fellows might turn the scale."

"Yes, there is something in that, and I am glad you mean to keep them on board for a bit. I think the girls will be very good fun when they have a little got over what they have gone through. The young one is a jolly little thing, and her sister is very pretty, in spite of her short hair and boy's dress, though one had not much opportunity of forming an idea as to whether she had any fun in her."

"I fancy it will be some time before she will feel inclined for a flirtation, Turnbull," Nat laughed. "What she has gone through, and what she has seen in the way of horrors, is enough to damp a girl's spirits for a very long time."

In the morning the ladies did not appear at breakfast.

"My wife is completely prostrated," Monsieur Pickard said, "and the two girls are shy and do not like showing themselves until they have made up a couple of dresses. Your steward gave them the roll of white cotton early this morning and needles and thread, and both are very hard at work. I hope you will excuse them, they will come out and have breakfast here after we have done. May I ask where we are sailing now?"

"We are sailing east, monsieur. I hope that it will not inconvenience you to be a few days on board. My orders are to cruise up and down the coast, and I wish therefore to go east as far as the boundary between the French and Spanish portions of the island; after that I can go round into the bay of Hayti and land you at Port-au-Prince or Cape Francois, whichever you would prefer."

"It will make no difference whatever to us, and indeed I am sure that a cruise on your beautiful little ship will be the very best thing for my wife and daughters. They will have perfect rest and sea air, and it will not be necessary for them to tell over and over again the stories of their sufferings; but I lament that we should be putting you to such personal inconvenience."

"I can a.s.sure you, monsieur, that you are putting us to no inconvenience whatever. We sleep just as well in our cots as in our berths, and the society of the ladies and yourself will be a very great pleasure to us, for as a rule we have very small opportunity in that way."

"You speak our language very fluently, Monsieur Glover."

"I am afraid that I speak it more fluently than grammatically. I had the opportunity of picking it up by ear last year, when I was staying for six weeks at the house of Monsieur d.u.c.h.esne at Cape Francois."

"We know him well, and his charming wife and daughter," Monsieur Pickard said, "for we have a house there, and generally go there for three months every winter. Can it be that you are the officer who saved their daughter's life, when she was attacked by a fierce hound?"

"Yes, I had that good fortune."

"I fear that they have fallen in this terrible insurrection. We have had no direct news from Cape Francois, but we heard that in their district all the plantations have been destroyed and the owners murdered."

"I am happy to be able to tell you that they were saved. I was staying there at the time when the revolt broke out We were warned just in time by an old nurse, Dinah."

"I remember her," Monsieur Pickard broke in, "a tall old woman."

"Yes, Monsieur d.u.c.h.esne himself was in town, and madame, Myra, and I had just time to gain the forest. There we were joined by Dinah, who did everything for us. Madame was attacked by fever, but fortunately Dinah knew of a very safe place of refuge. She did everything for us, fetched up provisions, concocted medicine, and after being ten days in hiding, we were able to get them down to the town."

Both the midshipmen had a fair knowledge of French, though they were not able to speak it with Nat's ease and fluency. When the latter had finished, Turnbull broke in:

"Mr. Glover does not tell you, monsieur, that the cave they were in was attacked by six negroes, led by two mulattoes, and he shot them all, nor that he and the nurse carried Madame d.u.c.h.esne down in a litter some twenty miles to the town, although he had one of his ribs broken by a pistol shot."

"What is the use of talking about that?" Nat said angrily. "The thing was done and there was an end of it. There has been a lot too much said about it as it is."

Monsieur Pickard smiled. "Monsieur Glover is like my daughters at present, he is shy. He should not be so. It is right that we, his friends,--for we are his friends, now and for the rest of our lives,--should know what he is. Ah, my wife and the girls will be pleased indeed to hear that their friends have escaped! They have often said how sorry they were that they had not seen the young officer who rescued their friend Myra from the dog. It is strange indeed that he should afterwards have saved her and her mother from the negroes, and should now have so rescued us."

That evening the girls appeared on deck in snowy-white dresses, simply made, but fitting admirably. "We have always been accustomed to cut out our own dresses," Valerie said, laughing, when Nat complimented her on the work. "The slaves did the sewing, but we fitted each other. Of course at Cape Francois we had our dresses made for us, but on the plantation we were obliged to trust to ourselves."

One morning, three days later, as they were at breakfast, Nat stopped as he was raising a cup to his lips. "That is a gun!" he exclaimed. "There is another!" and with the two middies he ran up on deck. "There is a fight going on somewhere," he said as the sound of firing was again heard. "It must be six or seven miles away, somewhere beyond that headland. At any rate we will hold on and have a look at them. With this light wind it will take us from an hour and a half to two hours before we are up with them, so we may as well finish our breakfast in comfort."

"What is it, Monsieur Glover! Are those noises really the sound of guns?"

"There is no doubt about it. There is a fight going on seven or eight miles away. We should hear the sound more plainly were it not that there is a headland between us and the vessels engaged."

"Who can they be?" Madame Pickard said.

"A pirate and a merchantman, no doubt. None of the European nations are at war, but the seas swarm with piratical craft of one kind or another.

The small ones content themselves with plundering native coasting vessels, the larger ones attack ships from or to Europe. The _Orpheus_, to which I belonged at that time, last year rooted out one of their worst nests. They had no fewer than four ships. We were lucky enough to catch one of them, and learned where the rendezvous was, and fortunately found the other three at home, and destroyed them and their storehouses."

"Are you going on in that direction now?" Valerie asked.

"Yes, we are going to have a look at them. If the trader is making a good fight of it, our arrival may turn the scale; if we arrive too late and find the enemy too big for us, we can run away; in a light wind like this there are very few vessels that could catch us. It is probable that we should not interfere were it not for the possibility that we may be in time to save some of the pa.s.sengers and crew of the merchantman. She must be a vessel of some size, judging from the sound of her guns. Even if she has surrendered before we get there, and we find that we are in any way a match for the pirate, we might, after defeating her, save at least some of the captives. As a rule, these scoundrels, when all opposition has ceased, confine the prisoners in the hold, and after emptying the prize of everything valuable, scuttle her, and of course drown all on board. In that way all traces of their crime are lost, whereas if they killed them some of the bodies might float insh.o.r.e, or if they burnt the ship the smoke might bring down any cruiser that happened to be in the neighborhood.

"I am sorry that you are on board, ladies."

"Oh, do not think of us!" Madame Pickard exclaimed. "After the wonderful deliverance that we have had, I am sure that none of us would mind any risk if there is a chance of saving others in as dire peril as we were."

The two girls and Monsieur Pickard warmly agreed. "Please put us altogether out of consideration," the latter said. "Even if we knew that it was probable we should all lose our lives we should not hesitate. We are not, I hope, any of us, afraid of death. It was the kind of death that we were terrified at."

"I thank you all," Nat said gravely. "I shall not fight unless I think that there is at any rate a fair chance of victory."