Springhaven, Richard Doddridge Blackmore [finding audrey TXT] 📗

and small knowledge of the coast--which lay out of range of the British investment--he had made up his mind to lie by for the night, or at any rate to move no more than he could help, for fear of going altogether in the wrong direction. He could steer by the stars--as great mariners did, when the world was all discovery--so long as the stars held their skirts up; but, on the other hand, those stars might lead him into the thick of the enemy. Of this, however, he must now take his chance, rather than wait and let the wind turn against him. For his main hope was to get into the track where British frigates, and ships of light draught like his own dear Blonde, were upon patrol, inside of the course of the great war chariots, the ships of the line, that drave heavily. Revolving much grist in the mill of his mind, as the sage Ulysses used to do, he found it essential to supply the motive power bodily. One of Madame Fropot's loaves was very soon disposed of, and a good draught of sound cider helped to renew his flagging energy.

Throughout that night he kept wide-awake, and managed to make fair progress, steering, as well as he could judge, a little to the west of north. But before sunrise the arrears of sleep increased at compound interest, and he lowered his sail, and discharged a part of the heavy sum scored against him. But when he awoke, and glanced around him with eyes that resented scanty measure, even a sleepy glance sufficed to show much more than he wished to see. Both sky and sea were overcast with doubt, and alarm, and evil foreboding. A dim streak lay where the land had been, and a white gleam quivered from the sunrise on the waves, as if he were spreading water-lilies instead of scattering roses. As the earth has its dew that foretells a bright day--whenever the dew is of the proper sort, for three kinds are established now--so the sea has a flit of bloom in the early morning (neither a colour, nor a sparkle, nor a vapour) which indicates peace and content for the day. But now there was no such fair token upon it, but a heavy and surly and treacherous look, with lumps here and there; as a man who intends to abuse us thrusts his tongue to get sharp in his cheek.

Scudamore saw that his poor old boat, scarcely sound enough for the men of Gotham, was already complaining of the uncouth manners of the strange place to which she had been carried in the dark. That is to say, she was beginning to groan, at a very quiet slap in the cheeks, or even a thoroughly well-meaning push in the rear.

"You are welcome to groan, if you don't strain," exclaimed the heartless Captain Scuddy.

Even as he spoke he beheld a trickle of water glistening down the forward bends, and then a little rill, and then a spurt, as if a serious leak was sprung. He found the source of this, and contrived to caulk it with a strand of tarred rope for the present; but the sinking of his knife into the forward timber showed him that a great part of the bows was rotten. If a head-sea arose, the crazy old frame would be prone to break in bodily, whereas if he attempted to run before the sea, already beginning to rise heavily from the west, there was nothing to save the frail craft from being pooped. On every side it was a bad lookout, there was every sign of a gale impending, which he could not even hope to weather, and the only chance of rescue lay in the prompt appearance of some British ship.

Even in this sad plight his courage and love of native land prevailed against the acceptance of aid from Frenchmen, if any should approach to offer it. Rather would he lie at the bottom of the Channel, or drift about among contending fishes, than become again a prisoner with his secret in his mind, and no chance of sending it to save his country. As a forlorn hope, he pulled out a stump of pencil, and wrote on the back of a letter from his mother a brief memorandum of what he had heard, and of the urgency of the matter. Then taking a last draught of his tarry water, he emptied the little tub, and fixed the head in, after he had enclosed his letter. Then he fastened the tub to an oar, to improve the chance of its being observed, and laid the oar so that it would float off, in case of the frail boat foundering. The other oar he kept at hand to steer with, as long as the boat should live, and to help him to float, when she should have disappeared.

This being done, he felt easier in his mind, as a man who has prepared for the worst should do. He renewed his vigour, which had begun to flag under constant labour and long solitude, by consuming another of his loaves, and taking almost the last draught of his cider, and after that he battled throughout the dreary day against the increase of bad weather. Towards the afternoon he saw several ships, one of which he took to be a British frigate; but none of them espied his poor labouring craft, or at any rate showed signs of doing so. Then a pilot-boat ran by him, standing probably for Boulogne, and at one time less than a league away. She appeared to be English, and he was just about to make signal for aid, when a patch in her foresail almost convinced him that she was the traitor of the Canche returning. She was probably out of her proper course in order to avoid the investing fleet, and she would run inside it when the darkness fell. Better to go to the bottom than invoke such aid; and he dropped the oar with his neckerchief upon it, and faced the angry sea again and the lonely despair of impending night.

What followed was wiped from his memory for years, and the loss was not much to be regretted. When he tried to think about it, he found nothing but a roaring of wind and of waves in his ears, a numbness of arms as he laboured with the oar tholed abaft to keep her heavy head up, a prickly chill in his legs as the brine in the wallowing boat ran up them, and then a great wallop and gollop of the element too abundant round him.

But at last, when long years should have brought more wisdom, he went poaching for supper upon Welsh rabbits. That night all the ghastly time came back, and stood minute by minute before him. Every swing of his body, and sway of his head, and swell of his heart, was repeated, the buffet of the billows when the planks were gone, the numb grasp of the slippery oar, the sucking down of legs which seemed turning into sea-weed, the dashing of dollops of surf into mouth and nose closed ever so carefully, and then the last sense of having fought a good fight, but fallen away from human arms, into "Oh Lord, receive my spirit!"


CHAPTER LV


IN SAVAGE GUISE

"A man came out of the sea to-day, and made me believe we were all found out," said the gay Charron to the gloomy Carne, a day or two after poor Scudamore's wreck. "I never beheld a more strange-looking creature as the owner of our human face divine, as some of your poets have found to say. He has hair from his head all down to here"--the little Captain pointed to a part of his system which would have been larger in more tranquil times--"and his clothes were so thin that one was able to see through them, and the tint of his face was of roasted sugar, such as it is not to obtain in England. A fine place for fat things, but not for thin ones."

"My friend, you arouse my curiosity," the master of the feast, which was not a very fat one, answered, as he lazily crossed his long legs; "you are always apprehensive about detection, of which I have ceased to entertain all fear, during the short time that remains. This stranger of yours must have been very wet, if he had just appeared out of the sea. Was it that which made his clothes transparent, like those of the higher class of ladies?"

"You have not the right understanding of words. He was appeared out of the sea, but the wood of a boat was spread between them. He was as dry as I am; and that is saying much, with nothing but this squeezing of bad apples for to drink."

"Ah, we shall have better soon. What an impatient throat it is! Well, what became of this transparent man, made of burnt sugar, and with hair below his belt?"

"I tell you that you take it in a very different way. But he was a long man, as long almost as you are, and with much less of indolence in the moving of his legs. It was not sincerely wise for me to exhibit myself, in the land. I was watching for a signal from the sea, and a large ship, not of the navy but of merchants, was hanging off about a league and delaying for her boat. For this reason I prevented him from seeing me, and that created difficulty of my beholding him. But he was going along the basin of the sea towards Springhaven--'Springport' it is designated by the Little Corporal; ah ha, how the language of the English comes left to him!"

"And how right it comes to you, my friend, through your fine self-denial in speaking it with me! It is well for our cause that it is not sincerely wise for you to exhibit yourself in the land, or we should have you making sweet eyes at English young ladies, and settling down to roast beef and nut-brown ale. Fie, then, my friend! where is your patriotism?"

"These English young ladies," said the Frenchman, unabashed, "are very fine, in my opinion--very fine indeed; and they could be made to dress, which is sincerely an external thing. By occasion, I have seen the very most belle, and charming and adorable of all the creatures ever made by the good God. And if she was to say to me, 'Abandon France, my Captain, and become my good husband'--and she has the money also--the fair France would go to the bottom, and the good ship Charron hoist the Union-jack."

"This becomes serious:" Carne had long learned to treat his French colleague with a large contempt: "I shall have to confine you in the Yellow Jar, my friend. But what young lady has bewitched you so, and led your most powerful mind astray?"

"I will tell you. I will make no secret of it. You have none of those lofty feelings, but you will be able in another to comprehend them. It is the daughter of the Coast-Defender--Admiral Charles Sir Darling."

"Admiral Darling has two daughters. Which of them has the distinguished honour of winning the regard of Captain Charron?"

"If there are two, it is so much more better. If I succeed not with one, I will try with the other. But the one who has made me captive for the present is the lady with the dark hair done up like this."

In a moment Charron had put up his hair, which was thick but short, into a