No Surrender! A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee, G. A. Henty [top 10 ebook reader txt] 📗

knots tightly; and of course my uniform will help to lead them astray. The men with me were really some of your cellarmen, under Lefranc."

"We shall be ready in three minutes. Fortunately we have not much beyond my wife's jewels that we want to save. Like your wife's brother, I have already made provision in England for this."

"I will be off as soon as I see the servants tied up."

He ran downstairs again. The two men and the maids willingly suffered themselves to be tied up, when Leigh explained to them the reasons for which it was done.

"Mind," he said, "if questioned, you say you believe that the men who rushed in and fastened you up were sailors."

Before the work was done Monsieur Flambard came down and, standing at the door which communicated with the cellars, shook hands with his rescuers as they went out; and thanked them most heartily, in the name of himself as well as his wife, for the service that they had rendered. The men, before they passed through the door, took off their masks. It had already been arranged that they should at once scatter, and return quietly to the places where they had been at work, and in so large a place it was not likely that their absence had been noticed, as it would be supposed that they had gone to another part of the cellar, and it was not above twenty minutes since they had left it.

As soon as they had gone out, the door was locked on the inside. Leigh and the Flambards went out at the back entrance into another street, and there separated, Leigh hurrying back to his lodgings. Madame Chopin opened the door.

"Madame," he said, "I have good news for my sister. I hope that we shall be able to obtain news of her husband at Blaye; for he may, if my information is correct, have sailed up the Dordogne, and we may catch him as he comes down again. If my information is not correct, we shall return here. I will therefore, if you will allow me, pay you our reckoning at once, and also the rent of the rooms for another week; so that if we return, we may find them unoccupied."

"But you are not going to start this evening, surely, monsieur?"

"Yes; I have arranged for a passage on a boat that is on the point of starting, and have not a moment to lose."

He ran upstairs to Patsey.

"They have gone on to the carriage," he said. "Put on Louis's things and your own. I will tell you all about it, as we go."

He then went down again and settled up with his landlady, who was profuse in her exclamations of regret at their departure. In a couple of minutes Patsey came down. She had the letter that she had written in her hand. Leigh took it from her.

"I have already settled up with our kind hostess," he said. "Say goodbye, dear, at once, or the boat may be starting without us."

A minute later they were out of the house. Leigh carried Louis, and led the way to a spot near, where two or three fiacres were always standing. He took the first, and told the driver to put them down in a street at the lower end of the town, the name of which he had noticed when he went with Monsieur Flambard to the inn where the carriage was standing.

When he got to the end of the street he told the driver to stop, saying that he was not sure of the number. Paying the man his fare, they walked slowly down the street until the fiacre had driven off; and then, returning, took the road leading into the country.

Ten minutes' walking brought them close to the little inn. They met the carriage coming along slowly, three hundred yards before they arrived there. It stopped at once.

"You are here sooner than I expected, madame," Monsieur Flambard said, as he alighted and helped Patsey.

As she took her place by the side of Madame Flambard, the latter threw her arms round her neck.

"Thank God this awful time is over!" she said. "It is to your brother we owe it that we are not, both, now in that terrible prison.

"Leigh is good at breaking prison," Patsey said. "He rescued me from the gaol at Nantes."

By this time her husband and Leigh had taken their places. Louis, still soundly asleep, was transferred to his mother's lap; and the carriage, turning, went back at the full speed of the horses.

Chapter 18: Home.

"Why did you come down the road?" Leigh asked Monsieur Flambard, as the carriage flew past the little inn. "We had not arranged for that, and in the dark we might have passed it without knowing that it was yours."

"We were on the lookout for you, and had no fear of missing you. I decided to drive back to the town as we went out. I believe the innkeeper to be an honest fellow, and he has been one of our customers for a number of years; but I thought it just as well to throw dust in his eyes. Therefore, as I got into the carriage, I said in his hearing:

"'Don't go through the main streets of the town, but drive round and strike the road beyond it. Keep on to Langon. We shall stop there tonight.'

"We drove off fast, and only broke into a walk just before you met us. The innkeeper would have gone into the house again, before we met; and as I noticed that the shutters were up, he certainly would not have supposed that the vehicle which passed was our carriage, coming back again.

"Well, thank God we are all safe and together! In three hours we shall be at the village. Lefaux was to keep a boat ashore, and to be himself at the inn. There is only one in the village."

The road was a good one, and the horses fast, and in less than an hour and a half they reached the spot where the relay of horses had been stationed. Five minutes sufficed to make the change and, in a little under three hours after starting, they arrived at the village two miles below Fort Medoc. They stopped at the first house.

"Now, Gregoire," Monsieur Flambard said, as they alighted, "here are five louis for yourself. You had better drive back to the place where we changed horses, and put up there for the night. Tomorrow you can go quietly back to Bordeaux. Don't get there until late in the afternoon. Return the carriage and the other two horses to the stables where you hired them, and take my two horses back to our stables.

"You are sure to be questioned, and can tell them the truth. Say that you acted by my orders, and had no idea of the reason for which I had hired the carriage and the extra horses; that you knew that I often made flying visits to the vineyards, and you thought I wanted to see some proprietor of Medoc, on business, and to return as quickly as possible; and were much surprised when you saw that madame went with me. Do not say anything about our picking up my friends on the road."

"I understand, monsieur, and I will stick to that story. God bless you, sir, and you, madame; and I trust that, before long, you will be back again with us."

"I hope so, Gregoire, but I fear it will not be for some time to come."

They now walked forward, Leigh hurrying on in front until he came to the little village inn. It was already closed but, on his knocking violently at the door, a window above was opened.

"What are you making such a noise for, at this time of night?"

"I have come to call Captain Lefaux," he said. "A messenger has just brought an order, from Bordeaux, that he is to get up anchor at daylight."

"I will call him," the landlord said, and in three minutes Lefaux came out.

"We are all here, Lefaux," Leigh said, "and we want to go on board and get up anchor at once, and to be as far down the river as we can, before daylight."

"The saints be praised that you have all escaped, Monsieur Stansfield! We will lose no time. I have two men sleeping in a cottage, close to where the boat is made fast. They sleep on the ground floor, and I can tap at the window and get them out. I told them to turn in as they stood, as they might be wanted at any moment."

The others had now come up, and together they went down to the boat. The tide had turned about an hour before, and the boat was afloat.

"Now, I will fetch the men out," the skipper said, and in five minutes he came down with them.

They untied the head rope of the boat, from the stump to which it was fastened, and hauled it in.

"That is the lugger, I suppose?" Leigh said, pointing to a dark object, a hundred yards from the shore.

"That is her, sir, and it won't take us long to get under weigh. Everything is ready for hoisting sail."

They rowed off to the Henriette, and Leigh could hardly restrain a shout of joy at finding himself once again on board her. The crew had been unchanged since they left Nantes and, tumbling up on deck as they heard the boat coming off, greeted Leigh most heartily; and respectfully saluted Patsey and their owner. They would have broken into cheers, had not their skipper sharply silenced them.

"It will be time enough to cheer when we reach the open sea, lads," he said; "and we will do so more heartily still, when we land Madame Martin, Monsieur Leigh, and the owner and his wife either on English ground, or the deck of an English ship."

"You mistake, captain," Monsieur Flambard said. "As you know, the lugger was only passed over to me by Monsieur Martin to escape confiscation. There is no longer any need that I should appear as owner; and in fact Madame Martin, as representative of her husband, is the owner of the Henriette, and I and my wife are passengers on board her."

"I hope that you will find it all right below, madame," Captain Lefaux said. "Captain Martin's cabin--we have always called it so--is ready for you and Madame Flambard. Monsieur will take the spare cabin, and Monsieur Leigh mine."

"I will sleep on one of the sofas in the saloon, captain. I should not feel comfortable if I turned you out; and besides, I like being able to pop quietly on deck, whenever I feel inclined: so that is settled."

"Now we will have a tumbler of hot brandy and water," the captain said. "You have had a cold drive.

"What will you take, ladies?"

Both declared that they wanted nothing but to get to bed, and they at once retired to the after cabin with little Louis, who had slept without waking, ever since he had been lifted from his bed at Bordeaux. The captain had given orders, as soon as he came on board, to have the sails hoisted and, as Monsieur Flambard and Leigh sipped their grog, they had the satisfaction of hearing the water rippling past; and of feeling, by the heel of the boat, that there was sufficient wind to send them along at a good rate.

"What is she making, captain?" Leigh asked, as he went up to take a last look round.

"About five knots, but the wind is getting up. There was scarcely a breath when I turned in, at ten o'clock."

"How far do you call it to the mouth of the river?"

"It is about forty miles to the tower of Cordouan. Once past that, we reckon we are at sea."

"Eight hours going, at five knots. It is nearly twelve now. It will be daylight when we get there."

"I hope that we shall be there before that, sir. You have not allowed for the tide, nor for the wind increasing. I reckon we shall be there by six, and day does not begin to break till an hour later.

"I want to get past without being seen. There are always a couple of gunboats lying there. I fancy that they know us pretty well by this time, but sometimes as we go out they make us lie to, and come on board to see that we are not taking off suspected persons, and that any passengers we have tally with those on the manifest. If they should take it into their heads to do that in the morning, it would be awkward; and I am anxious to get past without being seen. Once out of gunshot I do not mind. I fancy that we can show our heels to either of the gunboats."

Leigh and