In The Day Of Adversity Part 25

The robber of the dead and wounded paused and stared at him; then she a.s.sumed a whining tone, and exclaimed in her northern accent:

"Oh, good gentleman, you mistake. I am no slayer of injured men, but a comforter thereof. Will you not take a sup of good Nantz to ease you?"

"No, begone! Away. Yet stay. Where is the nearest village where I can procure food? Answer me, quickly."

"A mile off, good gentleman; there is an auberge there. It is very good. _I_ keep it."

"You!"

"Yes, I. Yes, an excellent inn. But," with a suspicious glance at him, "why not go to the fort, good gentleman? The marshal is there and that king who has been ruined by his own subjects to-day."

"I do not wish to go to the fort. I am not a soldier, but a sailor--saved from one of the transports. Direct me."

"Ha!" she said, with a grunt. "You are not the first. There are many like you who do not want to go to the fort. A many poltroons who are deserting from the army, now defeat has come to France. Are you deserting too, friend?"

"No. But I have nothing to do with the forts nor the army. Direct me, I say."

"There is the road," the hag said, pointing to the north across the sandhills. "Follow that a mile and you will come to my house. But,"

and she came a step nearer, "give me some money, or you will, perhaps, be followed. The others have given me some. Give me a piece, and I will be silent."

"Away, wretch!" St. Georges said. "If the soldiers come forth again you will flee from them, not wait a moment. I do not fear you," and pushing past her he made toward the road she had indicated, while she stood there muttering curses after him. Then she returned to her work of prowling among the dead and dying, and rifling their pockets.

He made his way among those dead and dying, most of whom were wounded French seamen who had managed to get ash.o.r.e only to fall down and expire where they fell, and a few of whom were soldiers on land who had been struck by the projectiles from the French vessels while standing gazing at the sea fight. In all, there were lying about the dunes some hundred men, who were in different states of approaching death. One thing he noticed as he went on--several wore the colours of the Picardy Regiment, which he knew well, from having once been quartered with it. Therefore, he understood why De Roquemaure had been on board the transport. They had doubtless been shipped ready for the projected invasion, and these wretched soldiers had been more fortunate than he in one way--they had at least escaped ash.o.r.e to die, instead of being blown to pieces in the explosions of the transports.

He made his way through the sand, stopping once or twice to endeavour to help some dying wretch whom he came across, and then going on again when he found his efforts useless; and so he came at last to what he supposed must be the auberge spoken of by the woman, a miserable wooden structure with a seat and a bench outside the door.

Two hors.e.m.e.n were drawn up in front of this, and were speaking to some stragglers standing before them, all of whom St. Georges noticed stood cap in hand. One, a tall thin man with a hatchet face, dressed in gray, was questioning them; the other, who sat his horse by his side, was an elderly man of dark, swarthy features, who was, however, deathly pale. His eye--a wandering one--lighted on St. Georges's the instant he approached the front of the inn, and turning away from his companion he addressed him in good French, which, however, St. Georges noticed had a strong accent.

"What uniform is yours, sir?" he asked. "I do not know it. And you seem to have been in the water. Are you one of his Majesty's naval officers?"

"I am," St. Georges replied, recognising at once the danger he was in.

"And the uniform is that of a transport officer."

"A transport officer!" the other exclaimed, turning round suddenly at the words--"a transport officer! Have any escaped?"

"I have, at any rate," St. Georges replied.

"You can then give us some information," the first said. "How many others are there who have also escaped?"

"Very few, I imagine. I myself did so only by swimming ash.o.r.e. And even then the transport was blown up ere I had quitted it very long."

"And," asked the second, "have the--English--made many prisoners?"

"A great number, I should suppose."

"G.o.d help me!" the dark, pale man exclaimed.

"Louis will do no more. This is our last chance, Melfort."

As he spoke St. Georges knew in whose presence he was--the presence of the unhappy James. Then, because he knew also that this place was full of danger to him--some naval officers of the French fleet might by chance have got ash.o.r.e as he had done, and might also come here at any moment--he saluted James, and said he must make his way onward as fast as possible.

"Where are you going to, sir?" the late King of England asked. "You will be better in the forts. They will not refuse you succour."

"Doubtless. Yet I must go on. I have to----"

As he spoke his eyes fell on the doorway of the inn, and, brave man though he was, what he saw there appalled him.

Leaning against the doorpost, regarding him fixedly, were two French sailors whom he had last seen on board the transport--two sailors who, as he had leaped on board followed by his own men, had disputed his entrance, had then been driven back to the larboard side of the ship, and had hurled themselves into the shoalwater and so escaped.

What was there for him to do? In another moment it was possible--certain--that they would denounce him, that he would be seized by the half dozen soldiers standing or sitting about.

He had to make his plans quickly ere these men could speak--already he could perceive they were about to do so; one touched the other with his finger and called his attention to him, and looked with an inquiring glance into his companion's eyes, as though asking if by any possibility he could be mistaken? He had to act at once. But how?

Then in a moment an inspiration came.

With a cry he wrenched his sword from his sheath and rushed at them, uttering exclamations that at least he hoped might confuse the others round and also drown any words of those two men.

"Villains! _Laches!_ Deserters!" he cried, as he flew at them, striking one with the flat of his sword and, with his elbows and body, forcing the other into the pa.s.sage behind. "Villains! You would desert in the hour of need! Fly the ship, would you!" and other exclamations in as harsh and loud a tone as possible.

And the ruse succeeded beyond even what he dared to hope. The two sailors affrighted, perhaps not hearing his words, and only thinking that the terrible English officer meant to slay them on land, as he had almost succeeded in doing on their own deck, fled down the pa.s.sage roaring; while to add to the hubbub two large dogs, sitting by the fire of a room opening out of that pa.s.sage, dashed out barking and yelping. A woman too came from the kitchen and screamed for help, and meanwhile the soldiers who had been lounging about rushed in at the front door. As for James and Melfort, they shrugged their shoulders and turned their horses away. Such a scene as this, which they but half understood, had little enough interest for them. An officer punishing two deserters, as they a.s.sumed to be the case, was a trifle in comparison to the ruin which had fallen forever on their cause that day.

The sailors fled down the pa.s.sage yelling "_Au secours! au secours!_"

and "_Sauvez-nous!_" and after them rushed St. Georges, making as much noise as he could, and so they reached first a yard behind, and then the _potager_, or herb garden. One man dashed into an outhouse full of billets of wood and kindlings, and yelled for mercy. "The fight is over!" he screamed; "spare me, spare me!" and in a moment St. Georges had shut the door and turned the key--fortunately it was outside--on him; then he rushed after the other down the sandy path of the garden.

His object was to drive the man on as far as possible away from the inn, and then desist from the chase and escape himself. Behind the garden there ran another path that pa.s.sed up to a copse of stunted, miserable, wind-blown trees; if he could get into that, he might succeed in avoiding any pursuit.

So he let the sailor gain on him as he neared this copse, and then another chance arose before him--an unhoped, undreamed-of chance!

Tethered at the end of the garden, by the reins to the paling, was a horse belonging possibly to some _bourgeois_ who had ridden in to the inn from a village inland and had left his horse at the back. A chance sent by Heaven in its mercy!

Still the sailor ran on swiftly, until, no longer hearing his pursuer behind him, he dared to look over his shoulder, thinking the chase was over; what he saw when he so looked caused him to renew his speed, even to yell with fresh terror.

St. Georges was mounted now, he was urging the horse to its greatest pace, he would be behind him in a moment. And then it would be death, dealt from the sword wielded by the terrible Englishman--almost the man could feel that sword through his back as he ran and the hoofs clattered behind him!

He stumbled and nearly fell in the white sandy dust, got up again with a shriek, and then, in a last, frenzied hope, plunged into the copse which he had now reached. And the awful horseman pa.s.sed on--could that dust, the poor wretch wondered, have hidden him from his view?--a moment or two more and he knew that he was safe. The clatter of the hoofs on the road grew fainter and fainter; when at last he dared to peer from the edge of the little wood, the Englishman had disappeared.

For a couple of hours St. Georges urged the poor roadster to its best speed, then slackened rein as the wayside track reached the bay of Charenton. He was safe now from any recognition--or rather exposure--the army of Bellefonds and all who might by chance have got ash.o.r.e from the destroyed fleet were far behind.

Yet he had been exposed to risks, too, on that ride. Once, near the auberge he had fled from, a farmer riding along called to him to stop, yelling at him to know why he was riding Dubois's horse; but his presence of mind did not fail him, and he called back: "Ride on and see! The French are defeated, the English have burned Barfleur and destroyed La Hogue!" and ere the man, whose terror-stricken face he long remembered, could speak again, he was far away from him.

Also he more than once pa.s.sed deserters from the army--men who no sooner saw another in a uniform riding as though for life, than they fled away into woods and copses or over fields, imagining that he was in pursuit of them. And, once, he again come in contact with two together whose faces he thought he remembered as he leaped on board a French man-of-war the evening before--men who looked up at him with startled faces and oaths upon their lips--did they recognise him as he dashed by them?

But at last he had outdistanced all who might have escaped from La Hogue; his way lay along a sandy sea-blown road, at the sides of which were fields of millet, sanfoin, and sometimes, though not often, wheat. And ahead of him, against the bright May sky, he saw the tower and two high spire steeples of the ancient cathedral of Sainte Marie at Bayeux.

He eased his horse at a pool of fresh water, descended from it and removed the coa.r.s.e saddle, and, while it drank eagerly, rubbed its sides and back.

"Good horse!" he said.--"good horse! I have been a hard taskmaster and a stranger to you to-day. Heaven knows I would not have urged you thus but for my necessity. And you have served me bravely, all rough bred as you are. Well, we will not part now, and some day, may be, I can find out your owner--that Dubois the farmer spoke of--and repay him for the friend I stole from him."

And he sat down by the animal's side for half an hour, and then, walking with the reins in his hand and carrying the saddle to ease it, he followed the road toward Bayeux.