In the Day of Adversity

Meanwhile the remainder of the great French fleet had run for the bay of La Hogue, and behind them, like sleuthhounds, went Russell, Shovell, and Rooke with their squadrons.

CHAPTER XXII.

LA HOGUE

The sun was setting brilliantly behind the peninsula that juts out into the English Channel and forms the department of La Manche; its last rays as it fell away behind Cherbourg lit up a strange scene. On land, looking east, were thirty thousand so-called French troops; they were, indeed, mostly Irish rapparees whom Louis had thought suitable for an invasion of England under James and his own marshal, Bellefonds; among them and in command were Bellefonds, Melfort, and James himself – now a heartbroken man. Also there stood by his side one who knew that not only his heart but his life was broken too – Tourville, who had now come ashore.

What they gazed on in the bay was enough to break the hearts of any.

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 ashore, 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, cutlasses 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 shore. 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 passed 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 shore."

All worked with a will – if they could not get at the Frenchmen themselves, they had, at least, the ships to vent their passions upon – some tore up fittings, some chopped wood, some ignited tow and oakum; 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 oakum 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 shore 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 hoarsely 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 shore, 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 poop 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 passed 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 hell 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 pæan of triumph that must have reached the ears of those on shore 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:

"God save our gracious king!Long live our noble king!God 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 Aurélie – "

"What!" from St. Georges.

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

"My God!" In that moment there came back to him a memory. The lad, Gaston, had his arm in a sling the morning he learned the child was missing; the woman, who lived in the hut and saw the child taken from Pierre, had said, "His arm hung straight by his side, as though stiff with pain."

Had he found the truth at last?

"Go on," he said.

"The bishop's man – had – got it safe. Aurélie and Gaston – caught – slew him – took the child. She – knew – your birth – and – hated you – and would gain – as much as – as I. Seek her – if you – would-know – "

He fell prone on the lid and spoke no more.

And St. Georges, reeling back against the opposite bulkhead, stared down at him, forgetting all that was taking place around the burning transport in his misery at that revelation.

"Aurélie," he whispered, "Aurélie! Hated me, too, and hated her. O God, pity me!"

And again above all else there rose the triumphant shout:

"Send him victorious, Happy and glorious,God save the king!"

Note. – The description of the battle of La Hogue is taken from many sources, but principally from the narrative of the chaplain on board the Centurion. It is the most full and complete, especially as regards the ships engaged, which I know of. The worthy divine was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and this seems to have been his first cruise. He returned "home" afterward, viz., to Oxford, and has left very fervent expressions of gratitude at having been able to do so.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH

As he staggered back after that revelation, St. Georges noticed that the great chant sounded less strongly and more distantly in his ears, and, seized with a sudden apprehension, he rushed to the cabin porthole.

Then he knew that what he had dreaded, that the idea which had sprung into his mind a second before, as the sturdy English voices became more hushed and subdued, was indeed an absolute fact – the flotilla was retiring. It had finished its work of destruction – it was returning to the man-of-war.

And he was left behind!

Behind! to fall into the hands of the French, who, he knew very well, would come forth from the fort and batteries directly the conquerors had withdrawn. He was in a trap from which there was no escape. He would be found there, and his doom be swift.

Yet, in a moment, even as he glanced down at his enemy at his feet and noted the set features – handsome as in life – the white face, the blood at either side of the mouth, looking as before like two small down-turned horns, he asked himself if he was indeed doomed? Also, why stay there to be taken like a rat in a trap? The sea was beneath him; a mile off was the English fleet. If he could swim to that, even halfway to it, he could make signs and, perhaps, be seen and rescued; at the worst it would but be death. And a more fearful death than any the sea could bring awaited him if he remained here.

He cast one more look at De Roquemaure lying with his head upon the locker. At last he was done for! He would never cross his path again. If he himself could live, if he could escape out of this burning pandemonium, could again stand a free man on an English deck, he would have to contend with him no more. There would be but one thing further to do then – to stand face to face with Aurélie de Roquemaure, to ask her if this charge against her was true – as St. Georges never doubted! – to demand his child, and, if she would not restore it to him, to – to – what? His mind was full of deeds of savagery now; the last few days, filled with slaughter and spent amid the arousal of men's fiercest passions, had made him fierce too. At this moment if Aurélie could appear before him he knew that he should slay her – send her to join her brother and all the other victims of his own aroused passions. It would be dangerous for her if she were face to face with him at this moment and refused to acknowledge where she had hidden Dorine.

She was not there, however; at the present moment he had to take steps to free himself, to escape from the burning transport. "'Twill be time enough," he muttered, "to tax her with her perfidy when I stand once more before her to punish her for it. And my own hour is too near, may be too close at hand, for me to think of that. But when it comes, then – "

He heard an explosion in another part of the vessel – he knew another tier of guns had been reached by the flames; he was tarrying too long. The magazine must be close to the cabin in which he was, might be, indeed, beneath the cabin floor – at any moment he risked being blown to atoms. He must lose no time. To be caught there was death, instant and certain!

Lying at the door of the main cabin where he had been slain was one of the officers of the transport; near him another man of lower rank, the one shot through the back the other cut down by Rooke's sailors as he fled into the cabin; and as his eye rested on them a thought struck him. None of Bellefonds and James's forces on land could say who were or were not officers of the transports – what was there to prevent him from being one for the time being? All was fair in war! – and he was as much French as any who might come out from the forts or batteries to the sinking and exploding ships – if any dared to come at all. Once in the garb of either of these lying here, officer or petty officer, and he would be able to get safely ashore, and could avoid question by disappearing a moment afterward, or as soon as might be.

And he would be in France – would be so much nearer to the reckoning with Aurélie de Roquemaure!

He drew on the jacket of the officer as the thoughts of all this chased one another through his mind, threw his own sword down and took up that of the dead man, placed on his head the hat he had worn – bearing in it a gold cockade on which a glittering sun was stamped – and then, glancing through the square porthole that gave on the shore, he looked to see if, yet, any of the French were coming out to save some of their vessels from the conflagration. But the wind was blowing off the sea to the land and carrying with it the smoke from the burning ships; between those ships and the shore all was obscured. And still, as he looked, the explosions – though fainter now – took place at every moment; he could hear the crackling of the flames in the vessel in which he was.

He knew that he must go – must not tarry another instant. Those flames were gaining round him; they would reach the magazine before long – and – then! He must go at once.

He cast one more hurried glance at De Roquemaure, who seemed quite dead now. But, dead or alive, what mattered it? If dead, so much the better; if alive, he would be blown to atoms in a few more moments – as he would himself if he tarried longer. He must go at once.

"Farewell, dog!" he muttered, with one look downward at his enemy. "Farewell. Your account is made!" And without wasting another moment – for his fear of being hurled into eternity himself the next moment had gained terrible hold on him – he rushed to the main cabin door and seized the handle.

An awful sweat of fear – a cold, clammy sweat – broke out all over him as he did so; he knew now how dear life was to him – dearer than he had ever dreamed before that it would be; or was it rather the fear of an awful death than death itself? Was it that which caused him to almost faint with horror as he recognised that the door was either locked or jammed, so that it would not open?

He was doomed – the fire was spreading – he heard one great gun explode by itself – a gun on the lower deck near where the powder room must be —beneath him – he was doomed! In another few moments – perhaps not more than four or five at most – the bulkheads would fly asunder, the deck split like matchwood, he and the dead bodies of De Roquemaure and the others be flung to the elements, be blown into portions of the elements themselves.

Drenched with sweat, paralyzed with terror – it was the terror of an awful death and not of death itself; livid with horror – though he was not aware such was the case; his lips parched and glued together; not knowing whether his limbs were shaking beneath him or the deck of the cabin quivering before its impending upheaval, his starting eyes glared round the prison he was in. And as he so glared he saw – if God gave him a moment more – his opportunity. The great square ports – an invention of but the last few years and superseding the old small round ones – furnished that opportunity.

With a gasp – nay, almost a cry – he clambered on the locker beneath the nearest one – again it seemed as though the ship was quivering with the impending explosion! – thrust his head and shoulders through, dragged the sword by his side carefully after him, seized a top chain hanging down into the water, and was himself in the water a moment later. Then a nervous, hurried thrust of one foot against the hull, with an impetus obtained thereby which propelled him a dozen feet from the vessel, a few masterful strokes made boldly, all trembling with fear and horror as he was, and he plunged into a puff of black smoke, the cinders among which hissed on his face as he struck it, and he was saved – saved from that most awful death, even though countless other deaths surrounded and loomed up before him; saved, at least, from being dismembered and flung piecemeal in a million atoms on the bosom of the ocean.

The smoke drifting in his face recalled to him that he was swimming toward the English fleet; the current still making toward the shore told him that he could never reach that fleet. Even as he swam away from the doomed transport he knew that the powerful tide beneath was carrying him back; he must change his course, or another moment would carry his body against the after part of the ship he had but now escaped from, the ship which must now ere long be hurled out of the sea! It was easy to do so, however; to turn himself away from her so that, even though borne back to the coast of Cotentin, he would pass far astern of her. He had enough strength for that, enough left to haul himself far out from where she lay – but not much more. He was sore spent now with all he had gone through, and was borne down also with the double weight of clothes upon him; as he glided by, or was carried back – though some forty yards adrift of the transport – he could do nothing more than tread water and so manage to keep himself afloat.

Borne through the murky grime, along that water there came now the swish of oars and the voices of men speaking in French – French strongly accentuated and in the Manche patois. What were they doing, he wondered. Had they come out to save some of the burning transports and boats, to endeavour to stop the flames and also the firing of the guns by the heat – their own guns that, as they fired, hurled their charges on their own shore? Were they going to meet their dooms unknowingly by venturing on that very place of death which he had just escaped from?

It might be – might well be so; and though he had fought against them – though they were Frenchmen and his enemies, too, he must warn them, save them, if he could: they were men, human beings; he could not let them go unwittingly to such an awful end as this, could not let them board that ship and meet the fate he had avoided. Therefore he hailed them as loudly as he was able, screamed to them, besought them to enter no vessel near; above all to avoid the burning transport. But whether they understood him, even if they heard, he could not guess; he caught still the beat of the oars upon the waves, heard their chattering voices, even one or two of their expressions; and then, as the tide took him nearer and nearer to the shore, he lost sound of those voices altogether.

"Strange," he muttered, "strange she blows not up – many minutes have elapsed since I quitted her – twenty at the least, and yet the explosion has not come. They may have boarded her, those men, have extinguished the flames: there may have been no powder left in the mag – Ah!"

There came an awful roar as he so muttered, a roar such as he had heard twenty times in as many hours; a hundred feet above and behind him, as he turned swiftly in the water, he saw a fan-shaped mass of flame ascending to the skies; he saw black objects amid that mass of flame – what were they, beams, masts, or human bodies? – he saw the smoke rent open, and great pieces of the transport floating or falling on to the waters with terrific crashes. Then there rushed down on him a fresh mountain of blood-coloured smoke, with blazing cinders and pieces of burning wood, and smouldering sails all borne along in its midst, and it enveloped him and choked him, while the burning matter fell on him and hissed on his wet hair and skin, so that he was fain to let himself sink below the waves for some few seconds to escape the débris and those suffocating fumes. And even as he did so, and when he arose to the surface once more, cooled and refreshed by the immersion of his face, his first thought was to utter a heartfelt prayer for his escape from the awful fate that, but half an hour ago, had threatened him and been so near.