Carette of Sark Part 30

Perhaps it was a harsh test and an over cruel jest. But the man had no means of coming at the truth, and if he had shot me none could have said a word against it.

For me, I said simply, "I thank you, monsieur," and went to my duty.

My shipmates were for making much of me, in their rough and excited way, but I begged them to leave me to myself for a time, till I was quite sure I was still alive. And they did so at last, and I heard them debating among themselves how it could be that an Englishman could speak French as freely as they did themselves.

I had no cause to complain of my treatment on board the _Josephine_ after that. The life was far less rigorous than on our own ships, and the living far more ample. If only I could have sent word of my welfare to those at home, who must by this time, I knew, be full of fears for me, I could have been fairly content. The future, indeed, was full of uncertainty, but it is that at best, and my heart was set on escape the moment the chance offered.

I went about my work with the rest, and took a certain pride in showing them how a British seaman could do his duty. Our curious introduction had given Captain Duchatel an interest in me. I often caught his eye upon me, and now and again he dropped me a word which was generally a cheerful challenge as to my resolution, and I always replied in kind. Recollections of those days crowd my mind as I look back on them, but they are not what I set out to tell, and greater matters lay just ahead.

With wonderful luck, and perhaps by taking a very outside course, we escaped the British cruisers, and arrived safely in Martinique, and there we lay for close on four months, with little to do but be in readiness for attacks which never came.

The living was good. Fresh meat and fruit were abundant, and we were allowed ash.o.r.e in batches. And so the time pa.s.sed pleasantly enough, but for the fact that one was an exile, and that those at home must be in sorrow and suspense, and had probably long since given up all hope of seeing their wanderer again. For this time was not as the last. They would expect news of us within a few weeks of our sailing, and the utter disappearance of the _Swallow_ could hardly leave them ground for hope.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE _JOSePHINE_ CAME HOME

I had ample time to look my prospects in the face while we kept watch and ward on Martinique, and no amount of looking improved them.

My greatest hope was to return to French and English waters in the _Josephine_. I could perhaps have slipped away into the island, but that would in no way have furthered my getting home, rather would it have fettered me with new and tighter bonds. For in the end I must have boarded some English ship and been promptly pressed into the service, and that was by no means what I wanted. It was my own Island of Sercq I longed for, and all that it held and meant for me.

I saw clearly that if at any time we came to a fight with a British warship, and were captured, I must become either prisoner of war as a Frenchman, or pressed man as an Englishman. Neither position held out hope of a speedy return home, but, of the two, I favoured the first as offering perhaps the greater chances.

As the weeks pa.s.sed into months, all of the same dull pattern, I lost heart at times, thinking of all that might be happening at home.

Sometimes it seemed to me hardly possible that Torode would dare to go on living at Herm and playing that desperate game of the double flags, while somewhere one man lived who might turn up at any time and blow him to the winds. And in pondering the matter, the fact that he had spared that man's life became a greater puzzle to me than ever. Depressing, too, the thought that if he did so stop on, it was because he considered the measures he had taken for his own safety as effective as death itself, and he was undoubtedly a shrewd and far-thinking man. That meant that my chances of ever turning up again in Sercq were small indeed. And, on the other hand, if a wholesome discretion drove him to the point of flitting, I had reason enough to fear for Carette. He had vowed his son should have her, and both father and son were men who would stick at nothing to gain their ends.

So my thoughts were black enough. I grew homesick, and heart-sick, and there were many more in the same condition, and maybe, to themselves, with equal cause.

Just four months we had been there, when one morning an old-fashioned 20-gun corvette came wallowing in, and an hour later we knew that she had come to relieve us and we were to sail for home as soon as we were provisioned. Work went with a will, for every man on board was sick of the place in spite of the easy living and good faring, and we were at sea within forty-eight hours. The word between-decks, too, was that Bonaparte was about to conquer England, and we were hurrying back to take part in the great invasion. The spirits and the talk ran to excess at times. I neither took part in it nor resented it. My alien standing was almost forgotten through the constant companionship of common tasks, and I saw no profit in flaunting it, though my determination not to lift a hand against my country was as strong as ever.

We had a prosperous voyage of thirty-five days, and were within two days'

sail of Cherbourg, when we sighted a ship of war which had apparently had longer or quicker eyes than our own. She was coming straight for us when we became aware of her, and she never swerved from her course till her great guns began to play on us under British colours.

True to those colours, as soon as her standing was fixed, I made my way to Captain Duchatel to claim performance of his promise.

I had no need to put it into words. The moment I saluted, he said, "Ah, yes. So you stick to it?"

I saluted again, without speaking.

"Bien! Go to the surgeon and tell him you are to help him. There will be work for you all before long."

And there was. The story of a fight, from the c.o.c.k-pit point of view, would be very horrible telling, and that is all I saw. I heard the thunder of our own guns, and the shouts of our men, and the splintering crash of the heavy shot that came aboard of us. But before long, when the streams of wounded began to come our way, I heard nothing but gasps and groans, and saw nothing but horrors which I would fain blot out of my memory, but cannot, even now.

I had seen wounded men before. I had been wounded myself. But seeing men fall, torn and mangled in the heat of fight, with the red fury blazing in one's own veins, and the smoke and smell of battle p.r.i.c.king in one's nostrils, and death in the very air--that is one thing. But tending those broken remnants of men in cold blood--handling them, and the pitiful parts of them, rent torn and out of the very semblance of humanity by the senseless shot--ah!--that was a very different thing. May I never see it again!

If my face showed anything of what I felt I must have looked a very sick man. But the surgeon's face was as white as paper and as grim as death, and when he jerked out a word it was through his set teeth, as though he feared more might come if he opened his mouth.

We worked like giants down there, but could not keep pace with Giant Death above. Before long all the pa.s.sages were filled with shattered men; and with no distinct thought of it, because there was time to think of nothing but what was under one's hand, it seemed to me that the fight must be going against us, for surely, if things went on so much longer, there would be none of our men left.

Then with a grinding crash, and a recoil that sent our broken men in tumbled heaps, the two ships grappled, and above our gasps and groans we heard the yells and cheers of the boarding parties and their repellers, and presently from among the broken men brought down to us, a rough voice, which still sounded homely to my ears, groaned--

"Oh,--you-- ---- Johnnies! One more swig o' rum an' I'd go easy," and he groaned dolorously.

I mixed a pannikin of rum and water and placed it to his lips. He drank greedily, looked up at me with wide-staring eyes, gasped, "Well ----! my G.o.d!"--and died.

Captain Duchatel, as I heard afterwards, and as we ourselves might then judge by the results that came down to us, made a gallant fight of it. And that is no less than I would have looked for from him. He was a brave man, and his treatment of myself might have been very much worse than it had been. But he was overmatched, and suffered too, when the time of crisis came, from the lack of that severe discipline which made our English ships of war less comfortable to live in but more effective when the time for fighting came. I had often wondered how all the miscellaneous gear which crowded our 'tween decks would be got rid of in case of a fight, or, if not got rid of, how they could possibly handle their guns properly. I have since been told that what I saw on the _Josephine_ was common elsewhere in the French ships of war, and often told sorely against them in a fight.

But in such matters Captain Duchatel only did as others did, and the fault lay with the system rather than with the man. For myself I hold his name in highest grat.i.tude and reverence, for he crowned his good treatment of me by one most kindly and thoughtful act at the supremest moment of his life.

I was soaked in other men's blood from head to foot, and looked and felt like a man in a slaughterhouse. I was drawing into a corner, as decently as I could, the mangled remnants of a man who had died as they laid him down.

I straightened my stiff back for a second and stood with my hands on my hips, and at that moment Captain Duchatel came running down the stairway, with a face like stone and a pistol in his hand.

He glanced at me. I saluted. He knew me through my stains.

"Sauvez-vous, mon brave! C'est fini!" he said quietly through his teeth.

A great thing to do!--a most gracious and n.o.ble thing! In his own final extremity to think of another's life as not rightly forfeit to necessity or country.

I understood in a flash, and sped up the decks--with not one second to spare. The upper deck was a shambles. I scrambled up the bulwark straight in front and sprang out as far as I could. Before I struck the water I heard the roar of a mighty explosion behind, and dived to avoid the after effects. When I came up, the sea all round was thrashing under a hail of falling timbers and fragments, but mostly beyond me because I was so close in to the ship. I took one big breath and sank again, and then a mighty swirling grip, which felt like death itself, laid hold on me and dragged me down and down till I looked to come up no more.

It let me go at last, and I fought my way up through fathomless heights of rushing green waters, with the very last ounce that was in me, and lay spent on my back with bursting head and breaking heart, staring straight up into a great cloud of smoke which uncoiled itself slowly like a mighty plume and let the blue sky show through in patches.

After the thunder of the guns, and that awful final crash, everything seemed strangely still. The water lapped in my ears, but I felt it rather than heard. Without lifting my head I could see, not far away, the ship we had fought, gaunt, stark, the ruins of the masterful craft that had raced so boldly for us two hours before. Her rigging was a vast tangle of loose ropes and broken spars, and some of her drooping sails were smouldering.

Her trim black-and-white sides were shattered and scorched and blackened.

It looked as though she had sheered off just a moment before the explosion, and so had missed the full force of it, but still had suffered terribly.

Some of her lower sails still stood, and her crew were busily at work cutting loose the raffle and beating out the flames. But damaged as their own ship was, they still had thought for possible survivors of their enemy, and two boats dropped into the water as I looked, and came picking their way through the floating wreckage, with kneeling men in the bows examining everything they saw.

They promptly lifted me in, and from their lips I saw that they spoke to me. But I was encased in silence and could not hear a sound.

I had long since made up my mind that if we were captured I would take my chance as prisoner of war rather than risk being shot as a renegade or pressed into the King's service. For it seemed to me that the chances of being shot were considerable, since none would credit my story that I had been five months aboard a French warship except of my own free will. And as to the King's forced service, it was hated by all, and my own needs claimed my first endeavours.

So I answered them in French, in a voice that thundered in my head, that the explosion had deafened me and I could not hear a word they said. They understood and nodded cheerfully, and went on with their search.

Out of our whole ship's company six only were saved, and not one of them officers.

In the first moments of safety the lack of hearing had seemed to me of small account, compared with the fact that I was still alive. But, as we turned and made for the ship, the strange sensation of hearing only through the feelings of the body grew upon me; the thought of perpetual silence began to appal me. I could feel the sound of the oars in the rowlocks, and the dash of the waves against the boat, but though I could see men's lips moving it was all no more to me than dumb show.

They were busily cleaning the ship when we came aboard, but I could see what a great fight the _Josephine_ had made of it. A long row of dead lay waiting decent burial, and every second man one saw was damaged in one way or another.

My companions were all more or less dazed, and probably deafened like myself. An officer questioned them, but apparently with small success. He turned to me, and I told him I could hear nothing because of the explosion, but I gave him all particulars as to the _Josephine_,--captain's name, number of men and guns, and whence we came, and that was what he wanted.

In the official report the saving of six out of a crew of over three hundred was, I suppose, not considered worth mentioning. The _Josephine_, was reported sunk with all on board, and that, as it turned out, was not without its concern for me.