In the Day of Adversity

Scarce had he done so than, as he swam a little now, being eased by having floated and trod water for some time, he saw beneath the smoke, which dispersed as it neared the shore and drifted inland, that he himself was close in shore. He could perceive quite clearly the yellow beach of Cotentin on which the incoming tide was rippling, and could see also several bodies lying about on that beach – soldiers doubtless killed by the fire from the English war vessels, or, perhaps, by the discharge of the French guns when turned upon them by the parties which had boarded their own ships. But that was all, except one or two figures moving about and bending over them – no doubt the ghouls who are to be found wherever a dead body is after a battle.

And as he glanced at these last relics of the great battle of La Hogue, his foot touched the bottom; a moment later he was wading ashore.

He stood once more in France, the land in which he would find his child – if she was still alive.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ON THE ROAD

He stood once more upon French ground – then fell half fainting on the wet, shining shingle, struggling to get his breath back, panting and gasping painfully.

Then came toward him a figure terrible to behold, a creature in the garb of a woman, a knife at her girdle, her pockets, which were outside her dress, bulging, and from their openings pieces of gold lace, a silver-hilted pistol, and other things protruding. But besides her and the dead bodies lying further inland upon the beach nothing else was to be seen. The thirty thousand men – some, and most of them, those rapparees whom Louis had thought good enough to send against England – some forming part of the regiments of Picardy, Verdelin, Le Calvados, and others, were not visible, although he could see on the roofs and turrets of the forts that they were still there and lined the coast for many miles. Also he saw with dimmed eyes that the English fleet was moving. It had done its work!

The creature prowling about came nearer, and St. Georges sprang to his feet and drew from the wet scabbard which had remained by his side during his swim ashore, his sword.

"Wretch," he said, "put down that knife and come no nearer, or I will run you through, woman though you seem to be! Begone, vulture!"

The robber of the dead and wounded paused and stared at him; then she assumed 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 ashore 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 ashore 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 horsemen 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 ashore. 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."

"God 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 ashore 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! Lâches! 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 passage 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 passage roaring; while to add to the hubbub two large dogs, sitting by the fire of a room opening out of that passage, 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 assumed 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 passage 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 passed 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 passed 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 ashore 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 passed 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 coarse 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.

It was the road, too, to Troyes and Aurélie de Roquemaure, the woman who had to answer to him for the theft of his child, and also for her duplicity when they had met in Paris!

CHAPTER XXV.

"I KNOW YOUR FACE."

The deserted road along which he now walked was, in a way, a relief to him. Nothing could have better suited his present needs than to be thus outside the life of any town and free from all observation, for he had much to meditate upon – many plans to form for his safety. And of those plans, the first to be carried out was to free himself from any appearance of conspicuousness which would draw attention on him.

There was, to begin with, the officer's jacket and cap which he had assumed, and the naval sword by his side, from which he had by now removed all damp it might have received from being in the sea. Yet how to deprive himself of the latter, and still be safe, he knew not.

As for the jacket – which was, indeed, a short coat filled with pockets, outside and in – he could dispense with it very well. He had dragged it on over his own coat when quitting the burning transport, simply as a disguise, as a safeguard. It could now be discarded.

His clothes – the plain English clothes which he had worn in London, and in which he had joined Rooke's flagship and fought through Barfleur and La Hogue8 – would attract no attention. They were suitable to any one in the middle class; but with the cap it was not the same thing, since he had nothing wherewith to replace it, and if he rejected that he must go bareheaded. This would not do; he had, therefore, to cast about for some headdress.

At last, however, he was obliged to retain it, altering it as well as he was able with his fingers, tearing off a strip of lace round it and throwing away the gilt cockade. As for the jacket, that was easily disposed of; he rolled up some stones in it and flung it into a pool of water among the reeds by the wayside, where it soon sank beneath the surface. But the sword still remained – a good enough blade, in a leather scabbard, and with not too much to proclaim that it was a sailor's except an anchor – on, of course, the eternal sun, Louis's emblem – fastened to the top of its handle. There was also a sword knot, which followed the jacket into another pool, and he decided that he must take his chance with the weapon itself.

"At least," he thought grimly, "none will have much chance to observe it closely if I am using it against them; if I am not, I can keep my hand on the emblem. Under any circumstances it cannot be parted with."

And now he neared Bayeux, worn and spent with all he had gone through in the last twenty-four hours, since he had hardly slept at all, and that only by snatches after the battle off Barfleur had begun; also his immersion in the sea and his long ride had made him very weary.

"Rest! rest!" he muttered to himself, "a long rest I must have. And then for Troyes and my child – and for Aurélie de Roquemaure. Ay, for her!"

He trudged along by the horse's side, still carrying the saddle over his arm to ease it, and it was not until the gates and walls of Bayeux came into sight that he mounted it again. It would have a good night in a stall before long; that small addition to its day's work would not hurt it much. And he could not present himself on foot before the custodian without raising suspicion of having come a long distance, without courting remark.

"You are from the coast?" the man asked, as he rode through the gate. "How goes it with the marshal's army there? Have they invaded England yet?"

"Not yet, so far as I am aware," he answered. He knew it would be madness to appear cognizant of what had taken place at La Hogue. The whole town would clamour for news, and he would be for the time the most conspicuous man in it. "Not yet."

"We have heard strange rumours," the man said. "But this morning one came in from St. Mère Eglise who said that loud sounds of firing were heard all last night out to sea; and another, a pêcheur de mer, says that great fleets have been seen passing from the west. Mon Dieu! it cannot be that those English chiens would dare to attack us!"

"Impossible, mon ami, impossible! There can be no chance of that. Tourville's fleet would prevent that."

"Je crois bien. Yet why fire all through the night? One fires not on imaginary foes."

"True. Well, later, no doubt, we shall hear more. My friend, tell me a good inn, where I may rest awhile."

"Oh! as for that, there are several. The Pomme d'Or, among others, is good and cheap; also Les Rochers de Calvados. Try one of those and you will be content."

Thanking him, St. Georges passed into the old city, though without the slightest intention of going to either of those houses. His object was to remove every trace of himself as he passed onward to the goal ahead of him – to obliterate his tracks entirely.

He rode quietly through the town, therefore, observing what good and comfortable-looking inns those were which the man had mentioned, but at the same time regretfully avoiding them. For under no circumstances would he have felt justified in alighting at either – he doubted if he could have afforded to do so. When he received Rooke's hasty summons to join him he had but forty-five guineas, saved after two years of an existence that at best had been a hard one. It had been a task to accumulate even that sum, a task entailing careful living, abstinence, almost even a life of total deprivation; when he had paid scrupulously every farthing he owed in the neighbourhood where he lodged, the sum had dwindled down to thirty-five guineas. It was little enough to enable him now to reach Troyes and provide for himself and the horse he had become possessed of on the road, to regain his child, and find his way back to England – if he succeeded in doing so.

To find his way back to England! Would that be possible? Could he pass through the north of France undiscovered? Could he, the ex-galley slave, the man whose face had become known to hundreds of persons connected with the galleys, besides having been known to hundreds of soldiers also, with whom he had been quartered, hope to escape recognition?

"God only knows!" he murmured as he rode through the empty streets of the already dead-and-gone city. "He alone knows. Yet, ere I will be taken alive – ere the mark upon my shoulder shall ever testify against me – I will end it all! Yet, courage! courage! At present I am safe."

He reached the neighbourhood of the east gate, for he had traversed the whole of Bayeux by now, and knew that if he would rest for a night in the old city he must make choice of a halting place. Casting, therefore, his eyes round the wide streets, he saw an auberge – a place, indeed, that in France is known as a pant– a low-roofed, poor drinking place, yet with, inscribed upon its walls over the door, the usual words, "Logement à pied et à cheval."

Around the door several scraggy chickens were picking up anything they could find in the interstices of the stones, and two or three gaunt half-starved-looking dogs lay about basking in the sun and snapping at real or imaginary flies. The place looked none too clean. Yet it was obscure, and it would do for one night. None would molest him here.

"Can I have a room until daybreak to-morrow and a meal?" he asked of a slatternly looking woman leaning against the doorpost; "I have ridden some distance and am very fatigued."

"Without doubt," she answered. "'Tis for that we keep house. Come in."

"And my horse?"

"That also – hard by," she said. "I will call my good man," and uttering a shriek, which was answered from the back by a gruff male voice, she called out again: "Come and take the traveller's horse, scélérat! Mon Dieu, have you nothing else to do but sit drinking there all day?"

A heavy footfall sounded in the passage, and presently a large, unkempt man came along it, and, seeing the traveller standing there, put up a dirty hand to his tousled hair and said, "Bon jour, voyageur." But the next moment he pushed that hair away from his eyes and, staring at St. Georges, said: "I know your face, stranger. Where have I seen it before?"

"How can I say?" St. Georges asked in reply. "I at least do not know yours."

Yet he turned pale as he answered, and regarded the man fixedly, for he had recognised the other at once. The fellow before him had been one of the comites of a galley in which St. Georges had rowed before being transferred to L'Idole – had thrashed and belaboured him often. Of all the brutal overseers this man had been, perhaps, the most cruel! He was in a trap if he should recall where he had seen him before, a trap from which escape would be difficult. For at a word from him he would never be allowed to pass the gates of Bayeux, but would be arrested at once, taken before the president of the city, and – sent back to the galleys if not executed, as he would undoubtedly be if it leaked out that he had fought against France!

"All the same, I know you," the man replied. "I must reflect. I must think. In my time I have known – "

"Dinde!" shrieked the woman at him, "will you keep the traveller standing all day in the passage while you indulge in your accursed recollections? Mon Dieu! are we so overrun with customers that you have naught else to do but gape at them? Sot! take his horse to the forge outside."

The fellow – who seemed bemused by frequent drinkings in the back place whence the termagant had called him forth – did as he was bid, and, seizing the nag's head, led it down an alley running at a left angle to the house, and so to a forge – in which, however, there was no sign of any work being done. And St. Georges, whose old soldier instincts never deserted him, followed by his side, intent on seeing where the animal was taken. The horse was to him – as once, four years ago, another and a dearly loved horse had been – his one chance of reaching Troyes easily, of finding his child, and – Aurélie de Roquemaure!

"A poor place," he said, speaking in as unnatural a tone as possible, while all the time he wondered if the fellow recognised him. And he took heart in recollecting that while he had been subject to this man's brutalities, with scores of other victims, his head had always been either shaved or cropped close and his mustache absent from his face. Now, both hair and mustache were grown again; it might be that the ex-comite could not recall where he had known him. "A poor place for a good horse! And none too secure, I imagine. It has no door. On a winter night a horse stabled here would be chilled to the bone."