The Fishguard Invasion by the French in 1797 Part 12

"Are ye cursed, boy, or only dull?" {223} queried my angry relative.

"What d'ye mean?"

"Nothing," I answered; "only I know no more about Nell than I do about the French. Isn't she in the shop?"

"In the shop! My patience-she isn't in the house, nor hasn't been for hours. Her bed is cold; I doubt she never got into un, only topsy-turvied un a bit."

"Nellie really gone!" I was beginning to grasp the situation. "Oh, Aunt Jane; she must have gone with Jack."

"Who's Jack, name o' fortune? I heard tell of a Billy and a Tommy, but norra Jack."

"Oh, this wasn't a Pembroke Jack, but Mounseer Jacques Roux, Esq., an engineer."

"A Mounseer!" Words failed my venerable relative; she sat down and went off into hysterics, which brought Aunt Rebecca to the rescue, and in the confusion I sidled down the stairs and escaped.

I made my way through the crowd to the Golden Prison, and here a light dawned, and many things became clear to me. A crowd of people were standing at what appeared to me to be a hole in the ground, about sixty yards from the wall of the prison. I edged myself through the lookers-on till I had reached the hole; it was one end of a subterranean pa.s.sage, the other end of which doubtless emerged-but a sick qualm came over me, and to make matters worse at this moment I espied-and was seen by-Roche the turnkey. He was looking very small, but a.s.sumed an air of bl.u.s.ter when he perceived me.

"Arrest that young chap there," he ordered his a.s.sistants. "He was a helping o' they sneaking scoundrels; I see un."

In another moment the two men had me in tow, and being also propelled by the crowd in a few minutes, I found myself inside the Golden Prison. I did not find the place at all entertaining this time. However, there were some magistrates there, and one of them, a Dr. Mansell, ordered the men to loose their hold while he questioned me.

I told all I knew, and at the end was relieved, but mortified to hear him say, "There is no occasion to detain him, the boy evidently knew nothing about it. He was a young a.s.s, but he is not the first of us who has been befooled by a woman."

At this there was a general guffaw in which I tried to join, but I felt as small as Roche the turnkey. It appeared that all those pails and bundles had been full of earth, stones, and mortar, which the men had sc.r.a.ped out in making the tunnel. I went into the little inner room, and there in the floor, just behind where Pierre Lebrun used to sit, surrounded with bundles of straw, blocks of wood, etc., was the other end of the subterranean pa.s.sage. They had absolutely scratched through the thick wall of the prison, and then grubbed like moles through sixty yards of earth, with no other implement than the bones of horses' legs.

I did not care for the remarks of the bystanders, and I got out of that gaol as quickly as I could, but not before Dr. Mansell had asked me another question or two.

"I hear Frances Martin has absconded," he said. "Can you tell me anything about Eleanor? She lives with your aunts, I think."

"She is not to be found, sir," I answered. "She is off with Jack, no doubt."

"Jack?"

"Mounseer Jacques Roux, the engineer."

"Ah, the fellow who managed the tunnelling. Why do you pitch upon him?"

"I didn't-she did, because he used to kiss her."

"Kiss! By George, didn't that rouse your suspicions?" cried the doctor.

"No, sir, they said it was the French way of shaking hands."

"Go along, softy!" cried the crowd, and I went. But as I went I heard the stentorian voice of Dr. Mansell proclaim-

"Five hundred guineas reward for the recovery of those two young women, dead or alive!"

In a few hours handbills to this effect were posted all over the place, and, as soon as practicable, in every town in the kingdom; by which the names of Frances Martin and Eleanor Martin must have become well known.

Whenever I saw one of these placards it seemed to me as if I had had something to do with a great crime, and that part of the five hundred guineas would perhaps be given for my body some day-dead or alive.

I walked down to the sh.o.r.e to a little port on the outside of the town, the very place to which I had been on the previous Sunday with Nell. I remembered, with another qualm, the interest which she had taken in the shipping, and how she had even begged me to ask some questions of the sailors, who, as usual, lounged about where they could smell tar. She said it was awkward for a girl to talk to these rough fellows, but that it was a pleasant variety for a young man. So, of course, I asked all the questions she desired about incoming sloops. I, thinking these questions referred to some sailor sweetheart, took no account of the matter at all. As we looked and talked we perceived a sloop in the offing coming in. The men said she would be in shortly, and that she was bringing culm for the use of Lord Cawdor's household.

Nellie seemed very pleased and happy as she watched the sloop coming rapidly nearer, a brisk breeze from the south filling her sails and urging her onwards. The only boat actually in the harbour was Lord Cawdor's yacht.

His lordship's yacht was now nowhere to be seen; the sloop was still there, for owing to the breeze and the sailors' hurry to get ash.o.r.e on Sunday, they had run her aground, and there she was hard and fast, but not in the same state as on Sunday. A hundred Frenchmen had made their escape, creeping through their tunnel and jumping out at the other end like so many jack-in-the-boxes. Some of the fugitives made at once for the yacht, some for the sloop, which, to their great disappointment, they found aground. They boarded it, lashed the sailors' hands and feet (these men now recounted the story, each man to a listening crowd, which we must hope was a slight solace for their sufferings)-they took compa.s.s, water casks, and every sc.r.a.p of food and clothing they could find; then conveyed them aboard the yacht which they launched, and off they were.

The tied-up sailors had seen nothing of any women, but between darkness and surprise it was a wonder they had noted as much as they had.

This was all that we could gather at the time; it was only enough to make us very uncomfortable about the fate of the two rash girls. My position was not made more comfortable by the constant reproaches of my two old aunts, who seemed to think me in some way responsible for Nell's escapade. Altogether I was not sorry that it was decided to send me back at once to St. David's; school was better than scorn. But the very night before I left Pembroke, my uncomfortable feelings were doomed to be deepened. The stern of the yacht was washed ash.o.r.e with other timbers, on one of which his lordship's name was inscribed. There could be little doubt of the fate of those on board. The weather had been rough and foggy, and these French soldiers were probably little skilled in navigation. So I departed to St. David's with a heavy heart.

Some weeks pa.s.sed in the usual course of cla.s.sics and mathematics rammed in by main force, when one day there came a letter to me in Aunt Jane's handwriting. I was surprised, for my aunts were not given to composition; but on opening the envelope I found Aunt Jane had written-nothing. She had merely enclosed, oh, greater surprise, a foreign letter. I had never had, and never expected to have, a foreign correspondent. What language would he write in-a quick hope flashed through me that it might not be Latin, any other I would give up quietly.

I opened the letter and perceived it was in English. It ran as follows:-

"DEAR MASTR DANL,-I hope as this finds you well as it leaves me at present. You was main good to we, so I pens this line to say as I am no longer Eleanor Martin but Madam Roux. [Oh joy! I didn't care what her name was as long as she wasn't drowned.] Yes, me and Jack have married, only he likes it writ Jacques which is a mort of trouble. Howsomever we gets along lovely so likewise do Frances and her young man Peter which were a commisser and she is now Madam Lebrun. We did a main lot for they lads-which they was grateful.

Praps you'd like to hear that after we got safe away in his ludship's yat, after you'd kindly helpd we to burrow out o jail, we come in for three days fog. Short commons there was till we overtook a brig, gave out as we was shiprackt and was took aboord, Fan and me dressed as lads. That night we was too many for the crew of the brig, as nocked under and us made them steer for France, so here we be. The brig had corn aboord, so we wasnt clemmed. We let the yat go.

Hoping to see you soon, I remains,

"Your humbel servant to command, "NELLIE."

Her ending wish was granted some years after, when peace was settled between England and France. Nellie and her husband, the engineer, came back to Wales and settled for a time in Merthyr, where they opened a large inn, he following his profession in the mines, both he and his wife roasting me unmercifully when I went to stay with them (a full-fledged curate), on the a.s.sistance I had once rendered to the French prisoners in a mining operation; but I hope all will understand that this a.s.sistance was unintentional on my part, and that I greatly condemn the unpatriotic conduct of the sisters.

The Gresham Press.

UNWIN BROTHERS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

NOTES.

{14} Laws, "Little England beyond Wales."

{18} These letters are given in the narrative.

{26} "Biographie de Lazare Hoche," par Emile de Bonnechose. Hachette, Paris.

{36} Laws, "Little England beyond Wales." Mason, Tenby.

{51} Cawl-leek broth.

{52} Cwrw da-good ale.

{80} "Taws pia hi," a Welsh proverb.

{115} Dear Davy.