The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

came up from below the level of the

deck. Then the lighter shuddered under a great blow upon the planks

of the forecastle port. The cries in the hold redoubled. Panting,

cursing, wailing men hurtled against Leroy, and almost crushed him

for a moment under their weight as the vessel heaved to starboard.

Came a succession of blows, not only on the port in the bow, but

also on that astern. There was a cracking and rending of timbers,

and the water rushed in.

 

Then the happenings in that black darkness became indescribably

horrible. In their frenzy not a few had torn themselves free of

their bonds. These hurled themselves towards the open ports through

which the water was pouring. They tore at the planks with desperate,

lacerated hands. Some got their arms through, seeking convulsively

to widen the openings and so to gain an egress. But outside in the

shipwrights’ boat stood Grandmaison, the fencing-master, brandishing

a butcher’s sword.

 

With derision and foul objurgations he slashed at protruding arms

and hands, thrust his sword again and again through the port into

that close-packed, weltering mass, until at last the shipwrights

backed away the boat to escape the suction of the sinking lighter.

 

The vessel, with its doomed freight of a hundred and thirty human

lives, settled down slowly by the head, and the wailing and cursing

was suddenly silenced as the icy waters of the Loire eddied over it

and raced on.

 

Caught in the swirl of water, Leroy had been carried up against the

deck of the lighter. Instinctively he had clutched at a crossbeam.

The water raced over his head, and then, to his surprise, receded,

beat up once or twice as the lighter grounded, and finally settled

on a level with his shoulders.

 

He was quick to realize what had happened. The lighter had gone

down by the head on a shallow. Her stern remained slightly

protruding, so that in that part of her between the level of the

water and the deck there was a clear space of perhaps a foot or a

foot and a half. Yet of the hundred and thirty doomed wretches on

board he was the only one who had profited by this extraordinary

chance.

 

Leroy hung on there; and thereafter for two hours, to use his own

expression, he floated upon corpses. A man of less vigorous mettle,

moral and physical, could never have withstood the ordeal of a two

hours’ immersion in the ice-cold water of that December morning.

Leroy clung on, and hoped. I have said that he was tenacious of

hope. And soon after daybreak he was justified of his confidence

in his luck. As the first livid gleams of light began to suffuse

the water in which he floated, a creaking of rowlocks and a sound

of voices reached his ears. A boat was passing down the river.

 

Leroy shouted, and his voice rang hollow and sepulchral on the

morning stillness. The creak of oars ceased abruptly. He shouted

again, and was answered. The oars worked now at twice their former

speed. The boat was alongside. Blows of a grapnel tore at the

planking of the deck until there was a hole big enough to admit the

passage of his body.

 

He looked through the faint mist which he had feared never to see

again, heaved himself up with what remained him of strength until

his breast was on a level with the deck, and beheld two men in a

boat.

 

But, exhausted by the effort, his numbed limbs refused to support

him. He sank back, and went overhead, fearing now, indeed, that

help had arrived too late. But as he struggled to the surface the

bight of a rope smacked the water within the hold. Convulsively

he clutched it, wound it about one arm, and bade them haul.

 

Thus they dragged him out and aboard their own craft, and put him

ashore at the nearest point willing out of humanity to do so much,

but daring to do no more when he had told them how he came where

they had found him.

 

Half naked, numbed through and through, with chattering teeth and

failing limbs, Leroy staggered into the guard-house at Chantenay.

Soldiers of the Blues stripped him of his sodden rags, wrapped him

in a blanket, thawed him outwardly before a fire and inwardly with

gruel, and then invited him to give an account of himself.

 

The story of the horse will have led you to suppose him a ready liar.

He drew now upon that gift of his, represented himself as a mariner

from Montoir, and told a harrowing tale of shipwreck. Unfortunately,

he overdid it. There was present a fellow who knew something of the

sea, and something of Montoir, to whom Leroy’s tale did not ring

quite true. To rid themselves of responsibility, the soldiers

carried him before the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes.

 

Even here all might have gone well with him, since there was no

member of that body with seacraft to penetrate his imposture. But

as ill-chance would have it, one of the members sitting that day

was the black-mustached sans-culotte Jolly, the very man who had

dragged Leroy out of his cell last night and tied him up.

 

At sight of him Jolly’s eyes bulged in his head.

 

“Where the devil have you come from?” he greeted him thunderously.

 

Leroy quailed. Jolly’s associates stared. But Jolly explained to

them:

 

“He was of last night’s bathing party. And he has the impudence

to come before us like this. Take him away and shove him back into

the water.”

 

But Bachelier, a man who, next to the President Goullin, exerted

the greatest influence in the committee, was gifted with a sense

of humour worthy of the Revolution. He went off into peals of

laughter as he surveyed the crestfallen cocassier, and, perhaps

because Leroy’s situation amused him, he was disposed to be humane.

 

“No, no!” he said. “Take him back to Le Bouffay for the present.

Let the Tribunal deal with him.”

 

So back to Le Bouffay went Leroy, back to his dungeon, his fetid

straw and his bread and water, there to be forgotten again, as he

had been forgotten before, until Fate should need him.

 

It is to him that we owe most of the materials from which we are

able to reconstruct in detail that first of Carrier’s drownings on

a grand scale, conceived as an expeditious means of ridding the

city of useless mouths, of easing the straitened circumstances

resulting from misgovernment.

 

Very soon it was followed by others, and, custom increasing Carrier’s

audacity, these drownings - there were in all some twenty-three

noyades - ceased to be conducted in the secrecy of the night, or to

be confined to men. They were made presently to include women - of

whom at one drowning alone, in Novose, three hundred perished under

the most revolting circumstances - and even little children. Carrier

himself admitted that during the three months of his rule some three

thousand victims visited the national bathing-place, whilst other,

and no doubt more veracious, accounts treble that number of those

who received the National Baptism.

 

Soon these wholesale drownings had become an institution, a sort of

national spectacle that Carrier and his committee felt themselves

in duty bound to provide.

 

But at length a point was reached beyond which it seemed difficult

to continue them. So expeditious was the measure, that soon the

obvious material was exhausted. The prisons were empty. Yet habits,

once contracted, are not easily relinquished. Carrier would be

looking elsewhere for material, and there was no saying where he

might look, or who would be safe. Soon the committee heard a rumour

that the Representative intended to depose it and to appoint a new

one, whereupon many of its members, who were conscious of

lukewarmness, began to grow uneasy.

 

Uneasy, too, became the members of the People’s Society. They had

sent a deputation to Carrier with suggestions for the better conduct

of the protracted campaign of La Vendee. This was a sore point

with the Representative. He received the patriots with the foulest

abuse, and had them flung downstairs by his secretaries.

 

Into this atmosphere of general mistrust and apprehension came the

most ridiculous Deus ex machina that ever was in the person of the

very young and very rash Marc Antoine Jullien. His father, the

Deputy Jullien, was an intimate of Robespierre’s, by whose influence

Marc Antoine was appointed to the office of Agent of the Committee

of Public Safety, and sent on a tour of inspection to report upon

public feeling and the conduct of the Convention’s Representatives.

 

Arriving in Nantes at the end of January of ‘94, one of Marc

Antoine’s first visits happened to be to the People’s Society,

which was still quivering with rage at the indignities offered by

Carrier to its deputation.

 

Marc Antoine was shocked by what he heard, so shocked that instead

of going to visit the Representative on the morrow, he spent the

morning inditing a letter to Robespierre, in which he set forth in

detail the abuses of which Carrier was guilty, and the deplorable

state of misery in which he found the city of Nantes.

 

That night, as Marc Antoine was sinking into the peaceful slumber

of the man with duty done, he was rudely aroused by an officer and

a couple of men of the National Guard, who announced to him that

he was under arrest, and bade him rise and dress.

 

Marc Antoine flounced out of bed in a temper, and flaunted his

credentials. The officer remained unmoved. He was acting upon

orders from the Citizen Representative.

 

Still in a temper, Marc Antoine hurriedly dressed himself. He would

soon show this Representative that it is not safe to trifle with

Agents of the Public Safety. The Citizen Representative should hear

from him. The officer, still unimpressed, bundled him into a waiting

carriage, and bore him away to the Maison Villetreux, on the island

where Carrier had his residence.

 

Carrier had gone to bed. But he was awake, and he sat up promptly

when the young muscadin from Paris was roughly thrust into his room

by the soldiers. The mere sight of the Representative sufficed to

evaporate Marc Antoine’s anger, and with it his courage.

 

Carrier’s pallor was of a grey-green from the rage that possessed

him. His black eyes smouldered like those of an animal seen in the

gloom, and his tumbled black hair, fluttering about his moist brow,

increased the terrific aspect of his countenance. Marc Antoine

shrank and was dumb.

 

“So,” said Carrier, regarding him steadily, terribly, “you are the

thing that dares to denounce me to the Safety, that ventures to

find fault with my work!” From under his pillow he drew Marc

Antoine’s letter to Robespierre. “Is this yours?”

 

At the sight of this violation of his correspondence with the

Incorruptible, Marc Antoine’s indignation awoke, and revived his

courage.

 

“It is mine,” he answered. “By what right have you intercepted it?”

 

“By what right?” Carrier put a leg out of bed. “So you question

my right, do you? You have so imposed yourself upon folk that you

are given powers, and you come here to air them, by “

 

“You shall answer to the Citizen Robespierre for your conduct,”

Marc Antoine threatened him.

 

“Aha!” Carrier revealed his teeth in a smile of ineffable

wickedness. He slipped from the bed, and crouching slightly as if

about to spring, he pointed a lean finger at his captive.

 

“You are of those with whom it is dangerous to deal publicly, and

you presume upon that. But you can be dealt with privily, and you

shall. I