The Blue Pavilions by Arthur Quiller-Couch (most read books .txt) 📖

"Permit me, sir," said Captain Runacles, stepping forward, "to add my assurance, if such be needed, that Captain Barker is a man of his word."

The Commodore essayed gentler tactics.

"Listen, monsieur!" he called down.

"Go away!"

"I have the pleasure to announce to you that you shall meet only with such treatment as your bravery deserves. Dismiss all apprehension of imprisonment—"

At this point he skipped backwards with such violence as to knock a couple of sailors sprawling. A bullet had embedded itself in the timbers at his feet.

He determined to use summary measures, and ordered twelve grenadiers, with fixed bayonets, to advance to the cabin door, break it open, and overpower the Englishman.

The twelve men advanced as they were bidden. The sergeant was half-way down the ladder, with his detachment at his heels, when the report of a musket was heard and down he dropped with a ball in his leg. The grenadiers hesitated. Another shot followed. It was pretty clear that the besieged man had plenty of firearms loaded and ready. They scrambled up the steps again. "It was all very well," they said; "but as they could only advance in single file, exposing their legs before they could use their arms, the Englishman from behind his barricade could shoot them down like sheep."

M. de la Pailletine stamped and swore, upbraiding them for their cowardice. He was about to order them down again when a diversion occurred.

A door slammed below, a wheezing cough was heard, and Captain Barker's head appeared at the top of the ladder.

"Which of you is the French captain?"

M. de la Pailletine lifted his hat.

"H'mph!"

He stepped up on deck and the French officers drew back in sheer amazement. They looked at this man who had defied them for pretty near an hour. They had expected to see a giant. Instead they saw a tiny man, hump-backed, wry-necked, pale of face, with a twisted smile, and glaring green eyes, that surveyed them with a malicious twinkle. His wig was off, and his bandaged scalp, as well as his face, was smeared black with powder; and it appeared that he could not even walk like other men, for he moved across the deck with a gait that was something between a trot and a shamble and indescribably ludicrous.

Yet all this abated his dignity no whit. He trotted straight up to M. de la Pailletine (whose astonishment mastered his manners for the moment, so that he stared and drew back), and working his jaw, as a man who has to swallow a bitter pill which sticks in his mouth, he held out his sword without ceremony.

"Here you are," he said: "I've done with it; can't waste words."

"Sir," the Commodore answered, bowing, "believe me, I receive it with little gratification. The victory is ours, no doubt; but the honour of it you have wrested from us. Sir, I am a Frenchman; but I am a sailor, too; and my heart swells over such a feat as yours. Suffer me, then, to remind you that your present captivity is but the fortune of war, against which you have struggled heroically; that your self-sacrifice has saved your fleet; and that, as France knows how to appreciate gallantry in her adversaries, your bondage shall be merely nominal."

"H'mph," said the little man, "fine talk, sir, fine talk! As for the ships, I saw the last of 'em slip into the Thames ten minutes since, from my cabin window. Sorry to keep you parleying so long, but couldn't come out before."

He blew his nose violently, cocked his head on one side, and added— ". . . though, to be sure, sir, your words are devilish kind— devilish kind, 'pon my soul!"

M. de la Pailletine, with a pleasant smile, held out his sword to him.

"Take it back, monsieur—take back a weapon no man better deserves to wear. Forget that you are my prisoner: and, if I may beg it, remember rather that you are my friend."

The face of the little hunchback flushed crimson. He hesitated, took back the sword clumsily, hesitated again, then swiftly held out his hand to M. de la Pailletine, with a smile as beautiful as his body was deformed.

"Sir, you have beaten me. I fought your men for awhile, but I can't stand up against this."

There was one man, however, who soon had reason to repent that the little man had been given his sword again.

Dark had fallen when M. de la Pailletine conducted him courteously over the frigate's side and across the deck of L'Heureuse towards his own cabin. Flinging the door open, he bowed, motioning Captain Barker to precede him.

As the hunchback entered, a figure rose from beside the table under the swinging-lamp. It was Roderick Salt, who had been sitting there and sulking since the engagement began.

Captain Barker jumped back a foot and stared.

"You!"

Captain Salt had been expecting the Commodore, and was waiting to pay him a dozen satirical compliments on the issue of the engagement. Triumph shone in his eyes. It went out like a candle-flame before a puff of wind.

"YOU!"

In a flash the hunchback was running on him with drawn sword. M. de la Pailletine, in a trice, interposing, knocked the blade up and out of his hand. But he rushed on, and, dealing the traitor a sound blow on the face with his fist, began to kick and cuff and pummel him without mercy.

"Take him off—take him off!" gasped Captain Salt, but offered not the least resistance.

The Commodore, amused and secretly pleased, caught the little man in his arms and dragged him away by main force.

"Messieurs," he said, slipping between them, and still panting with the effort, "circumstances compel me to leave you together for a while. But before I go, I must exact a parole from both of you that you will keep the peace towards each other."

"But, monsieur," Captain Barker exclaimed, "I want to kill him!"

"Doubtless; but if, sir, you have that consideration for me which you professed by shaking hands with me just now, you will refrain. Captain Salt will tell you, sir, that we have a small affair to discuss together as soon as we reach France again. When that discussion is over, no doubt he will be at your service."

The pair gave their promise reluctantly, and, as the Commodore left the cabin, sat down, facing each other across the table—Captain Salt with his back to the shattered stern-windows, which, a week or two before Tristram had touched up with fresh paint and simple enthusiasm.

They knew nothing of this. Yet the first question asked by Captain Barker, after he had glared at his enemy in silence for twenty minutes, was:

"Where is Tristram?"

"Tristram?"

"Ay; your son. You have seen him and have been with him."

"I do not know. I lost him."

"When? Where?"

"Two months since. We were travelling south together—"

"What right had you—"

"Excuse me, I was about to put a similar question. To begin with, you do not deny, I suppose, that the lad is my son?" He paused a second or two, and listened; for a sudden shout had gone up from the galley's deck above them. He continued, "Secondly, the boy is heir to considerable estates; thirdly, he has been so for many years; fourthly, I am legally an administrator of those estates; fifthly, you knew that I was alive—what the devil is that noise?"

"Never mind the noise. Proceed with your remarks."

"I have simply to say that you, Captain Barker, together with your friend Runacles, have for years been playing off a fraud on the law, and that I am going to exact my rights to the last farthing."

"Really, you must excuse me; but do you—a traitor, on board a French ship—imagine that you possess any rights in England?"

There was certainly a loud trampling of feet on the galley's deck at this moment. But Captain Barker knew that the French would make haste to clear their dead at once and get into motion with their prize, for the merchantmen must, before this, have given the alarm, and the coast was continually patrolled by British cruisers.

"You have a very imperfect knowledge of my position, Captain Barker; and it naturally leads you to jump to very wrong conclusions. To begin with, you imagine me a traitor."

"I do."

"To whom? To King William, I suppose?"

"Well, as William is the king whose law seems most likely to interfere with your present threats, I will instance King William."

"You are mistaken. Until you came into sight this squadron was advancing on Harwich under my command. You understand? Well, before it started I had sent word to William of its intention. In other words, from first to last I designed the whole expedition in his interests. Had we gone on, by this time half a dozen British frigates would have been upon us."

"My God! And they are here!"

As Captain Barker yelled it out, a broad flame illumined the cabin, and the crash of broken glass and rending timbers mingled with a roar that shook the seas for miles.

And in the light of this thunderous broadside Captain Salt rose slowly, lifted his arms, swayed and dropped forward, striking the table with his brow; then slid down upon the floor, stone-dead.

From his second swoon Tristram awoke to find the light of a lantern flashing in his face.

The Merry Maid's flag had scarcely been hauled down before night fell; and almost with its falling, while the men of the other galleys were helping to clear L'Heureuse's decks, they perceived lights twinkling off the mouth of the Thames.

At once concluding that these were the lights of English men-of-war sent to pursue them, they used the utmost dispatch. Their first concern was to throw the dead overboard and stow the wounded in the hold. But so closely they were pressed by the fear of losing their prize and being made prisoners, that it is to be feared as many of the living were thrown over for dead as of those who were dead in reality.

This, at any rate, came near to being Tristram's fate. For when the keeper came to unchain the killed and wounded of his seat he was still without consciousness lying among the corpses, bathed in their blood and his own.

"A clean sweep of this bench," said the keeper.

He and his fellows, therefore, without further examination, did but unchain the slaves and then fling them over. It was sufficient that the body neither spoke nor cried.

Tristram's comrades, it is true, were in no doubtful plight. The hand of death had impressed them beyond chance of mistake. They were thrown over limb by limb.

Tristram's was the only body that remained entire, and to all appearance he too was dead. Now, he had been chained by the left leg, in which (as we have said) he was severely wounded. The keeper, not knowing that the chain had been blown away, grasped this leg in his hand, felt for the ring and tried to wrench it open.

Fortunately he tugged so lustily and inflicted so sharp a pang in the wounded limb that Tristram opened his eyes and sobbed with the anguish of it. The fellow let go his grasp.

Then, suddenly perceiving what their intention had been, the poor youth screamed out at the top of his voice:

"Please do not throw me over. I'm not dead yet!"

Upon this they carried him to a small chamber in the hold and tossed him down among a heap of groaning wounded, upon a cable made up into a rouleau, perhaps the hardest bed on which a sick man can lie. About him were stretched indiscriminately petty officers, sailors, soldiers, and slaves. The air could reach this den only through a scuttle about two feet square, and the heat and stench were therefore something intolerable. A surgeon was at work among the sufferers. Reaching Tristram at length, he stopped the bleeding of his wounds with a little spirits of wine. He had no bandages; nor did he come again to see if his patient were dead or alive.

But, indeed, our hero was past caring for this, and when he regained consciousness after a third swoon it was to find himself in other hands.

For the pursuing English, aided by the wind (which had shifted a little farther to the northward), had swept down upon the galleys and taken them, with their prize, and were now towing them triumphantly into Sheerness.

At ten o'clock next morning, after a prodigious breakfast at Sheerness, Captain Barker and Captain Runacles (whose wounded arm was slung in a silk kerchief) strolled down to the waterside to