In The Day Of Adversity Part 23

There, gathered together, the flames leaping from the decks to enfold and set on fire the furled sails, the magazines exploding, the great guns turned toward the land that owned them and their projectiles mowing down all on that land, were the best ships of that French fleet which had put out to sea to crush the English. Among them were Le Merveilleux, L'Ambitieux, Le Foudriant, Le Magnifique, Le St. Philip, L'Etonnant, Le Terrible, Le Fier, Le Gaillard, Le Bourbon, Le Glorieux, Le Fort, and Louis. And all were doomed to destruction, for the English fleet had blockaded them into the shallow water of La Hogue; there was no escape possible.

Three hours ere that sun set, Rooke had sent for St. Georges and bade the latter follow him.

"I transfer my flag at once," he said, "to the Eagle, so as better to direct a flotilla of fireships and boats. Come with me," and stepping into his barge he was quickly rowed to that vessel with St. Georges alongside him in the stern sheets.

Reaching the Eagle, Rooke, who had now the command of the attacking party, rapidly made his dispositions for despatching the flotilla--the officering of the various fireships being at his disposition.

"My Lord Danby," he said to that gallant captain, who had refused to remain doing nothing in his own ship, "you will attack with the Half Moon and thirty boats; you, Lieutenant Paul, with the Lightning and thirty more. Mr. St. Georges, who has done well for us to-day, and has a trifling grudge against our friends, will take the Owner's Love."

And so he apportioned out the various commands, until, in all, two hundred fireships and attenders were ready to go into the doomed fleet.

At first things were not favourable. The Half Moon ran ash.o.r.e, blown thereto by the breeze from off the sea, but in an instant Lord Danby's plans were formed. He and his crew destroyed her, so that she could not be used against their own fleet, then swiftly put off in their boats and rejoined the others. Meanwhile those others were rapidly creeping in toward the French.

Already two fireships had set Le Foudriant and L'Etonnant on fire, the boats were getting under the bows of all the others, the boarders were swarming up the sides, cutla.s.ses in hand and _mouths_, and hurling grenades on to the French decks.

"Follow!" called St. Georges, as, his foot upon a quarter-gallery breast rail, his hand grasping the chain, he leaped into the huge square port of Le Terrible. "Follow, follow!" and as he cried out, the sailors jumped in behind him.

Yet, when they had entered the great French ship, there was no resistance offered. She was deserted! As they had come up the starboard side, her crew, officers and men, had fled over the larboard--as hard as they could swim or wade they were making for the sh.o.r.e. Yet her guns on the lower tier forward were firing slowly, one by one as the boats reached them. A grenade had been hurled in as St.

Georges's party pa.s.sed under her bows and had set the ship alight forward, and the flames were spreading rapidly.

"Quick!" St. Georges exclaimed, "ignite her more in the waist and here in the stern. Cut up some chips, set this after cabin on fire. As it burns, the flames will fall and explode the magazine. Some men also to the guns, draw the charges of those giving on us; leave charged those pointing toward the sh.o.r.e."

All worked with a will--if they could not get at the Frenchmen themselves, they had, at least, the ships to vent their pa.s.sions upon--some tore up fittings, some chopped wood, some ignited tow and oak.u.m; soon the stern of the Terrible was in flames. Meanwhile, from Le Fier hard by--so near, indeed, that her bows almost touched the rudder of the ship they were in--there came an awful explosion. Her magazine was gone, and as it blew up it hurled half the vessel into the air, while great burning beams fell on to the deck of the Terrible and helped to set her more alight.

"To the boats!" ordered St. Georges, "to the boats! There is more work yet, more to be destroyed." And again, followed by his men, they descended to their attenders and barges.

But now the tide was retreating, they could do no more that night.

They must wait until the morrow when the tide would come back. Then there would be, indeed, more work to do. There were still some transports unharmed; they, too, must be annihilated!

They called the roll that night in the British fleet. There were many men wounded, but _not one_ killed. So, amid the noise of powder rooms and magazines exploding, and under a glare from the burning French ships which made the night as clear as day they lay down and rested.

And in the morning they began again.

"The work," the admiral said, "is not done yet. It is now to be completed."

Back went, therefore, the fireships and attenders--this time it was the turn of the transports.

"Hotter this than yesterday," called out Lord Danby to St. Georges from one boat to the other, as, propelled by hundreds of oars, all swept in toward the transports. His lordship's face was raw and bleeding now, for on the previous day he had burned and nearly blinded himself by blowing up tow and oak.u.m to set on fire a vessel which he and his men were engaged in destroying. "Hotter now. See, there are some soldiers in the transport, and the forts on sh.o.r.e are firing on us. On, on, my men!" and he directed those under his charge to one transport, while St. Georges did the same as he selected another.

There were more than a dozen of those transports, and against them went the two hundred boats, Rooke in chief command. As they neared the great vessels, however, on that bright May morning, they found that the work of last night had only to be repeated. They poured into the ships from the starboard side, the French poured out on the larboard; those who could not escape were slaughtered where they stood. And if to St. Georges any further impetus was needed--though none was, for his blood was up now to boiling heat and France was the most hated word he knew--it was given him as he approached the vessel he meant to board; for, from it, out of a stern port, there glared a pair of eyes in a ghastly face--a face that looked as though transfixed with horror!--the eyes and face of De Roquemaure! With a cry that made the rowers before him think he had been struck by a bullet, so harsh and bitter it was, he steered the barge alongside the vessel; in a moment he had clambered on the deck, followed by man after man; had cut down a French soldier who opposed him, and was seeking his way toward the cabin where the other was.

"There is an officer below," he muttered hoa.r.s.ely to those who followed him. "He is mine--remember, mine--none others. My hand alone must have his life, my sword alone take it. Remember!"

As his followers scattered--some to slay the few remaining on board who had not escaped, some to rush forward and ignite the fore part of the transport, others to fire the great guns laid toward the sh.o.r.e, and still others to find and burst open the powder room--he rushed down to where that cabin was, his sword in hand, his brain on fire at the revenge before him.

"Now! now! now!" he murmured. "At last!"

Under the p.o.o.p he went, down the aftermost companion ladder, through a large cabin--the officers' living room--and then to a smaller one beyond, opening out of the other on the starboard side--the cabin from which he had seen the livid, horror-stricken face of his enemy.

But it was closed tight and would not give to his hand.

"Open," he called; "open, you hound, open! You cannot escape me now.

Open, I say!"

There came no word in answer. All was silent within, though, above, the roars and callings of the sailors made a terrible din.

"You hear?" again cried St. Georges, "you hear those men? Open, I say, and meet your death like a man! Otherwise you die like a dog! One way you must die. They are setting fire to the magazine. Cur, open!"

The bolt grated from within as he spoke, and the door was thrown aside. De Roquemaure stood before him.

Yet his appearance caused St. Georges to almost stagger back, alarmed.

Was this the man he had dreamed so long of meeting once again, this creature before him! De Roquemaure was without coat, vest, or shirt; his body was bare; through his right shoulder a terrible wound, around which the blood was caked and nearly dry. His face, too, was as white as when he had first seen it from the boat, his eyes as staring.

"So," he said, "it is you, _alive_! Well, you have come too late. I have got my death. What think you I care for the sailors or the powder room? I was struck yesterday by some of the Englishmen who pa.s.sed here as the tide turned, who fired into this ship ere the tide--the tide--the----"

"Yet will I make that death sure!" St. Georges cried, springing at him. "Wounds do not always kill. You may recover this--from my thrust you shall never recover!"--and he shortened his sword to thrust it through his bare body.

"I am unarmed," the other wailed. "Mercy! I cannot live!"

"Ay, the mercy you showed me! The attempted murder of my child--the theft of her, the murder perhaps done by now--the galleys! Quick, your last prayer!"

Yet even as he spoke he knew that he was thwarted again. He could not strike, not slay, the thing before him. The villain was so weakened by his wound that he could scarce stand, even though grasping a bulkhead with his two hands; was--must be--dying. Why take his death, therefore, upon his soul when Fate itself was claiming him? It would be murder now, not righteous execution!

Moreover, he had another task to execute ere it was too late.

"Wretch," he exclaimed, "die as you are--find h.e.l.l at last without my intervention! Yet, if you value a few more minutes of existence, gain them thus. Tell me, ere you go, where you have hidden my child--what done with----"

Before he could finish there came another roar from an exploding transport, the sound of beams and spars falling in the water round; a darkness over the cabin produced by the volumes of smoke; the screams of wounded and burnt Frenchmen hurled into the sea; the loud huzzas and yells of the British sailors. Then, as that roar and shock died away, there rose in the air another sound--a paean of triumph that must have reached the ears of those on sh.o.r.e as it also reached the ears of those two men face to face in that cabin. From hundreds of throats it pealed forth, rising over all else--crackling wood, guns firing, the swish of oars, orders bawled, and shrieks of dead and dying.

It was the English sailors singing Henry Carey's song, almost new then, now known over all the world:

"G.o.d save our gracious king!

Long live our n.o.ble king!

G.o.d save the king!"

"Answer," St. Georges cried, "ere your master, the devil, gets you!

ere I send you to him before even he requires you!"

The man had sunk down upon a locker outside the bunk, his two hands flattened out upon the lid, his face turned up in agony. From either side of his mouth there trickled down a small streak of blood looking like the horns of the new moon; the lips were drawn back from the teeth, as though in agony unspeakable. And did he grin mockingly in this his hour--or was it the pangs of approaching death that caused the grin?

Then he gasped forth:

"You are deceived. The woman who stole--your child--was Aurelie----"

"What!" from St. Georges.

"Aided by--servant--Gaston. Her--servant--not mine----"