The Wild Geese by Stanley John Weyman (best ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📖

happened, to seize it and cling to it. But the first wave washed over them, blinding them and choking them; and, warned by this, they worked themselves desperately along the rope until their shoulders were clear of the water and they could twist a leg over their slender support.

That effected, they could spit out the water, breathe again, and look about them. They shouted for help once, twice, thrice, thinking that some on the great ship looming dim and distant to shoreward of them must hear. But their shouts were merged in the wail of despair, of shrieks and cries that floated away into the mist. The boat, travelling with the last of the tide, had struck the cable with force, and was already drifting a gunshot away. Whether any saved themselves on it, the two clinging to the hawser could not see.

Bale, shivering and scared, would have shouted again, but Colonel John stayed him. "God rest their souls!" he said solemnly. "The men aboard can do nothing. By the time they'll have lowered a boat it will be done with these."

"They can take us aboard," Bale said.

"Ay, if we want to go to Cadiz gaol," Colonel John answered slowly. He was peering keenly towards the land.

"But what can we do, your honour?" Bale asked with a shiver.

"Swim ashore."

"God forbid!"

"But you can swim?"

"Not that far. Not near that far, God knows!" Bale repeated with emphasis, his teeth chattering. "I'll go down like a stone."

"Cadiz gaol! Cadiz gaol!" Colonel John muttered. "Isn't it worth a swim to escape that?"

"Ay, ay, but----"

"Do you see that oar drifting? In a twinkling it will be out of reach. Off with your boots, man, off with your clothes, and to it! That oar is freedom! The tide is with us still, or it would not be moving that way. But let the tide turn and we cannot do it."

"It's too far!"

"If you could see the shore," Colonel John argued, "you'd think nothing of it! With your chin on that oar, you can't sink. But it must be done before we are chilled."

He was stripping himself to his underclothes while he talked: and in haste, fearing that he might feel the hawser slacken and dip--a sign that the tide had turned. Or if the oar floated out of sight--then too the worst might happen to them. Already Colonel John had plans and hopes, but freedom was needful if they were to come to anything.

"Come!" he cried impulsively. "Man, you are not a coward, I know it well! Come!"

He let himself into the water as he spoke, and after a moment of hesitation, and with a shiver of disgust, Bale followed his example, let the rope go, and with quick, nervous strokes bobbed after him in the direction of the oar. Colonel John deserved the less credit, as he was the better swimmer. He swam long and slow, with his head low: and his eyes watched his follower. A half minute of violent exertion, and Bale's outstretched hand clutched the oar. It was a thick, clumsy implement, and it floated high. In curt, clipped sentences Colonel John bade him rest his hands on it, and thrust it before him lengthwise, swimming with his feet.

For five minutes nothing was said, but they proceeded slowly and patiently, rising a little above each wave and trusting--for they could see nothing, and the light wind was in their faces--that the tide was still seconding their efforts. Colonel John knew that if the shore lay, as he judged, about half a mile distant, he must, to reach it, swim slowly and reserve his strength. Though a natural desire to decide the question quickly would have impelled him to greater exertion, he resisted it as many a man has resisted it, and thereby has saved his life. At the worst, he reflected that the oar would support them both for a short time. But that meant remaining stationary and becoming chilled.

They had been swimming for ten minutes, as he calculated, when Bale, who floated higher, cried joyfully that he could see the land. Colonel John made no answer, he needed all his breath. But a minute later he too saw it loom low through the fog; and then, in some minutes afterwards, they felt bottom and waded on to a ledge of rocks which projected a hundred yards from the mainland eastward of the mouth of the inlet. The tide had served them well by carrying them a little to the eastward. They sat a moment on the rocks to recover their strength--while the seagulls flew wailing over them--and for the first time they took in the full gravity of the catastrophe. Every other man in the boat had perished--so they judged, for there was no stir on shore. On that they uttered some expressions of pity and of thankfulness; and then, stung to action by the chill wind, which set their teeth chattering, they got to their feet and scrambled painfully along the rocks until they reached the marshy bank of the inlet. Thence a pilgrimage scarcely less painful, through gorse and rushes, brought them at the end of ten minutes to the jetty.

Here, too, all was quiet. If any of O'Sullivan Og's party had saved themselves they were not to be seen, nor was there any indication that the accident was known on shore. It was still early, but little after six, the day Sunday; and apart from the cackling of poultry, and the grunting of hogs, no sound came from O'Sullivan's house or the hovels about it.

While Colonel John had been picking his way over the rocks and between the gorse bushes, his thoughts had not been idle; and now, without hesitation, he made along the jetty until the masts of the French sloop loomed beside it. He boarded the vessel by a plank and looked round him. There was no watch on deck, but a murmur of talk came from the forecastle and a melancholy voice piping a French song rose from the depths of the cabin. Colonel John bade Bale follow him--they were shivering from head to foot--and descended the companion.

The singer was Captain Augustin. He lay on his back in his bunk, while his mate, between sleep and waking, formed an unwilling audience.

Tout mal chausse, tout mal vetu,

sang the Captain in a doleful voice,

Pauvre marin, d'ou reviens-tu? Tout doux! Tout doux!

With the last word on his lips, he called on the name of his Maker, for he saw two half-naked, dripping figures peering at him through the open door. For the moment he took them, by the dim light, for the revenants of drowned men; while his mate, a Breton, rose on his elbow and shrieked aloud.

It was only when Colonel John called them by name that they were reassured, lost their fears, and recognised in the pallid figures before them their late passenger and his attendant. Then, as the two Frenchmen sprang to their feet, the cabin rang with oaths and invocations, with _Mon Dieu!_ and _Ma foi!_ Immediately clothes were fetched, and rough cloths to dry the visitors and restore warmth to their limbs, and cognac and food--for the two were half starved. Meantime, and while these comforts were being administered, and half the crew, crouching about the companion, listened, and volleys of questions rained upon him, Colonel John told very shortly the tale of their adventures, of the fate that had menaced them, and their narrow escape. In return he learned that the Frenchmen were virtually prisoners.

"They have taken our equipage, cursed dogs!" Augustin explained, refraining with difficulty from a dance of rage. "The rudder, the sails, they are not, see you! They have locked all in the house on shore, that we may not go by night, you understand. And by day the ship of war beyond, Spanish it is possible, pirate for certain, goes about to sink us if we move! Ah, _sacre nom_, that I had never seen this land of swine!"

"Have they a guard over the rudder and the sails?" Colonel John asked, pausing to speak with the food half way to his mouth.

"I know not. What matter?"

"If not, it were not hard to regain them," Colonel John said, with an odd light in his eyes.

"And the ship of war beyond? What would she be doing?"

"While the fog lies?" Colonel John replied. "Nothing."

"The fog?" Augustin exclaimed. He clapped his hand to his head, ran up the companion and as quickly returned. A skipper is in a low way who, whatever his position, has no eye for the weather; and he felt the tacit reproach. "Name of Names!" he cried. "There is a fog like the inside of Jonah's whale! For the ship beyond I snap the finger at her! She is not! Then forward, _mes braves_! Yet tranquil! They have taken the arms!"

"Ay?" Colonel John said, still eating. "Is that so? Then it seems to me we must retake them. That first."

"What, you?" Augustin exclaimed.

"Why not?" Colonel John responded, looking round him, a twinkle in his eye. "The goods of his host are in a manner of speaking the house of his host. And it is the duty--as I said once before."

"But is it not that they are--of your kin?"

"That is the reason," Colonel John answered cryptically, and to the skipper's surprise. But that surprise lasted a very short time. "Listen to me," the Colonel continued. "This goes farther than you think, and to cure it we must not stop short. Let me speak, and do you, my friends, listen. Courage, and I will give you not only freedom but a good bargain."

The skipper stared. "How so?" he asked.

Then Colonel John unfolded the plan on which he had been meditating while the waves lapped his smarting chin, while the gorse bushes pricked his feet, and the stones gibed them. It was a great plan, and before all things a bold one; so bold that Augustin gasped as it unfolded itself, and the seamen, who, with the freedom of foreign sailors in a ship of fortune, crowded the foot of the companion, opened their eyes.

Augustin smacked his lips. "It is what you call _magnifique_!" he said. "But," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is not possible!"

"If the fog holds?"

"But if it--what you call--lifts? What then, eh?"

"Through how many storms have you ridden?" the Colonel answered. "Yet if the mast had gone?"

"We had gone! _Vraiment!_

"That did not keep you ashore."

Augustin cogitated over this for a while. Then, "But we are eight only," he objected. "Myself, nine."

"And two are eleven," Colonel John replied.

"We do not know the ground."

"I do."

The skipper shrugged his shoulders.

"And they have treated you--but you know how they have treated you," Colonel John went on, appealing to the lower motive.

The group of seamen who stood about the door growled seamen's oaths.

"There are things that seem hard," the Colonel continued, "and being begun, pouf! they are done while you think of them!"

Captain Augustin of Bordeaux swelled out his breast. "That is true," he said. "I have done things like that."

"Then do one more!"

The skipper's eyes surveyed the men's faces. He caught the spark in their eyes. "I will do it," he cried.

"Good!" Colonel John cried. "The arms first!"