CHAPTER XXI.

None riding along the Portsmouth road that warm April night could doubt that a great crisis was at hand. Certainly St. Georges did not do so as couriers and messengers galloped past him toward London calling out the news to all who cared to hear it. As he mounted Kingston Vale two men, hastily jumping on their steeds outside "The Baldfaced Stag," cried that they must rouse the queen even, though she be a-bed,[7] for the Frenchman was at sea with an enormous fleet and had been seen in the morning from the coast of Dorset; and all along the route it was the same. Wherever he changed his horse he found couriers setting out for London; whomsoever he passed on the road gave him the same news. At Ripley they told him the French had landed under the command of Bellefonds and King James—but these were rustics drinking in a taproom—at Guildford the news was contradicted, but the certainty of the landing taking place shortly was much believed in. Then, at Godalming, where by now the day had come, he passed a regiment marching as fast as might be toward the coast, and the officer in command told him that no landing had yet been effected; at Petersfield he heard the same; at Portsmouth laughter and derision, scorn and contempt were hurled at all who dared even to suppose that a French fleet would put a French army ashore. For here, in every inn and tavern, were men who had fought in a score of naval engagements, and who were going out now to fight again. And, as he stood upon the Hard, waiting for a boat to take him off, he observed the vast fleet of sixty-three ships under Russell's command lying at anchor off the island, and saw from the maintop-gallant-mast head of the Britannia (flagship) the admiral's flag flying. Also on the main shrouds he saw another flag, showing that a council of war was already being held. There, too, were visible the ensigns of Rooke, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Sir John Ashley, Sir Ralph Delaval, and Rear Admiral Carter, and as the noble spectacle met his view his heart beat fast within him. The country that had adopted him was about to help him revenge his wrongs on the country that had sent him forth to stripes and beatings and ignominy.

The shore boat made its way through countless others—some filled with officers and their baggage going off to the ships, some with sailors half drunk, who would, nevertheless, fight to the death when once they boarded the Frenchmen; some with provisions for the fleet; and some with other volunteers like himself, and with, in several cases, girls going off to say farewell to their sweethearts, or with mothers and wives. From most of these boats there rose the babel of scores of different songs and ballads, all telling how when French sailors met English their doom was sealed. Yet at this time, and for about another month, the French held the supremacy of the sea. After that month was over the supremacy was gone forever!

From the Britannia there came away, as St. Georges's boat approached the lines, several barges bearing the admirals and captains who had attended the council of war, and among them St. Georges saw that of Admiral Rooke, who, as he saluted him, made signs for the other boat to follow to his ship.

"Now," said Rooke, after he had greeted St. Georges and complimented him upon his promptitude in hastening down to the fleet, and also on his improved appearance—for the two years he had passed in London had done much to restore his original good looks, and, with the exception that there rested always upon his face a melancholy expression, none would have guessed the sufferings he had once endured—"now let me understand. Therefore, speak definitely and frankly. You have thrown in your lot forever with England."

"Forever," St. Georges replied.

"Without fear of change, eh?" the admiral said. "Remember—recall before we sail to-night—all you are doing. If you fight on our side now, there will be—henceforth—no tie between you and France. That dukedom of which you told me once is gone forever, no matter how clearly you may find your title to it. Louis will never forgive the work we mean to do. If you are English to-day—for the next week, the next month—you are English for always."

"I have come down here," St. Georges replied, his voice firm, his words spoken slowly, so that Rooke knew that henceforth his resolution would never be shaken, "to fight on England's side against France. There will be no wavering! If I fall, I fall an Englishman; if I survive, I am an Englishman for the rest of my life. I renounce my father's people, whomsoever that father may have been, provided he was a Frenchman: I acknowledge only my mother's. Short of one thing—my endeavour to regain my child."

"How is that to be accomplished? If you survive this which we are about to undertake, your life will be forfeited in France."

"It is forfeited already. Remember, sir, I am still, in the eyes of the law of France, a galley slave. That alone is death, or worse than death. In the future when I go, as I intend to go if I live, upon another quest for her I have lost, I shall be in no worse case. Only, then, it will be the halter and not the galleys. So best!"

"Be it so," the admiral replied. "Henceforth you belong to us. Now, this is what I can do for you. Listen. I find there is a place for you here on this very ship. You know something of seamanship from your bitter experiences; as a soldier, also, you understand discipline. The master's mate of this ship was drowned a week ago; you can try the post if you please. And when the campaign is over, it may be that I can find you a better one."

"I accept, with thanks," St. Georges said. "I adopt from to-day your calling. Henceforth I am an English sailor."

"Come, then, and see your captain," Rooke replied; "you will find him a good one, and hating France as much as you can desire."

He followed the admiral to another cabin, where they found the captain, who was Lord Danby—Rooke's flagship being now the Windsor Castle—and here they were made acquainted with each other, though Danby had already heard the history of the man who was coming into his ship.

"I am very glad to see you, sir," he said quietly. "I know your story—at least so far as it concerns me. I only trust you will encounter some of your late friends' galleys and be able to repay them for some of the kindnesses they once testified toward you."

So St. Georges became a sailor once more—though in a very different manner from what he had last been—and as master's mate sailed in the Blue Squadron of Russell's fleet against the French fleet under Tourville.

The Dutch allies were coming in rapidly ere they left St. Helen's and Spithead on the 26th of April, and already of the fleet of thirty-six ships under Van Almonde many had joined. Their first cruise was, however of no result; they simply picked up their pilots from the Sally Rose, these men having been got from Jersey, and observed that all along the peninsula of Cotentin—where James and Marshal Bellefonds were encamped—great beacons were burning by night. They knew, therefore, that France expected the English fleet. A little later, while once more they lay off Spithead and St. Helen's, they knew that Tourville had put to sea to meet them. Fishermen coming into harbour, spies sent out in various directions, the Sally Rose herself—all brought the news that the French admiral was on the sea—his squadron headed by his own flagship, Le Soleil Royal, and by Le Triumphant and L'Ambitieux, had been seen from Portland cliffs.

The time had come.

On May 18th that great English fleet, formed into two squadrons—the Red commanded by Russell, Delaval, and Cloudesley Shovell, and the Blue by Sir John Ashby, Rooke, and Carter—and followed by the Dutch, stood away from the English coast, their course south and south by west. Swiftly, too, when clear of the Isle of Wight, the line of battle was formed, the Tyger leading the starboard and the Centurion the larboard tacks. And so they sailed to meet the enemy, and to frustrate the last attack of any importance ever made by the French to invade England.

It was not long ere that frustration commenced.

Scouts coming back swiftly on the morning of the 19th reported the enemy in full force near them, and from the Britannia ran out the signal—received with cheers from thousands of throats—to "clear the ships for action!" And St. Georges, busy with his own work, knew that the time was at hand for which he longed.

To the west there loomed up swiftly the topmasts of the French flagships; soon the figurehead of Le Soleil Royal was visible—a figurehead representing Louis standing upon his favourite emblem, a great sun, and with the inhabitants of other nations lying prostrate at his feet and bound in chains.

"Behold," said Rooke, as St. Georges passed close to him, "your late king! Ah, well! that sun shall set ere long, or——"

His words were drowned in more cheers. From all those English seamen on board the various ships—nearly thirty thousand men exclusive of the Dutch allies—there rose hurrah after hurrah, as swiftly the opposing forces advanced to meet one another. Then the Britannia saluted the Soleil Royal—a sinister politeness—and from the French flagships there came an answer in the shape of a discharge of small shot. The battle had begun.

From the English vessels that discharge was answered by broadsides from their great guns: from the Britannia, the Royal Sovereign—Delaval's flagship—those broadsides were poured in with merciless precision. Moreover, the wind favoured the English foe more than it did the French; their great ships being enabled to form a circle round their foes and to pour in their fire on either side of them. Already one Frenchman had blown up, hurling her contents into the air; already, too, the Soleil Royal had had her maintopsail shot away by the Britannia; in another moment she had let down her mainsail and was tacking away from her untiring foe. And following her went L'Admirable and Le Triumphant.

"Heavens!" exclaimed St. Georges, as, black and grimed with powder, he worked with the men under his direction at the lower-deck tier of guns in the Windsor Castle, "they run already! Is that the king the world has feared so long—the king I served?"

The French flagship was not beaten yet, however—it was too soon; and though she could not force her way through those enemies which surrounded her, she could still keep them off, prevent them from boarding her. Twice the Britannia and another had endeavoured to lay themselves alongside her for that purpose, but the fire she vomited from her gunports was too hot; like a gaunt dying lioness she made it death to come too near. Yet her struggles were the struggles of despair; already twenty of her squadron had deserted her and, pursued by English vessels, were tearing through the Race of Alderney as fast as their shot sails would take them, in the hopes of reaching the lee of Cotentin. Two alone remained with her—remained to share her fate—the Admirable and Triumphant.

That fate was not yet, however; those three ships had yet a few hours of existence left to them. Fighting still, still belching forth flames and destruction, they closed together, and so withstood the merciless broadsides of the Britannia and Royal Sovereign; then, at last wounded and shattered—the figure of Louis, his emblem the sun, and the downtrodden representatives of other nations were long since shot away and floating, or sunk, in the sea—a favourable wind sprang up and beneath it they ran, Tourville having already transferred his flag to L'Ambitieux. Yet, fly as they might, behind them came their pursuers as fast as they. Delaval in the Royal Sovereign with a small squadron never halted in the chase. Still pouring volley upon volley from his bow fire into their sterns, he hung upon them, and, when they found they could not enter St. Malo, followed them to Cherbourg.

And here their end came. They had struggled into shoal water, forcing themselves aground in the hope the English men-of-war could not follow them, and rapidly, in a frenzy of fear, the men were casting themselves over the sides and gaining the land. The ships were doomed they knew, their own lives might still be saved. They were none too soon even for that. The fireships and attenders were soon among those three. Le Soleil Royal was ablaze first, Le Triumphant next, and then L'Admirable. As the night came on they lit up the coast for miles around; as morning dawned they were burnt to the water's edge. Their own magazines as they took fire assisted in their destruction and helped by their explosions to finish them.

Meanwhile the remainder of the great French fleet had run for the bay of La Hogue, and behind them, like sleuthhounds, went Russell, Shovell, and Rooke with their squadrons.

CHAPTER XXII.

Three hours ere that sun set, Rooke had sent for St. Georges and bade the latter follow him.

"I transfer my flag at once," he said, "to the Eagle, so as better to direct a flotilla of fireships and boats. Come with me," and stepping into his barge he was quickly rowed to that vessel with St. Georges alongside him in the stern sheets.

Reaching the Eagle, Rooke, who had now the command of the attacking party, rapidly made his dispositions for despatching the flotilla—the officering of the various fireships being at his disposition.

"My Lord Danby," he said to that gallant captain, who had refused to remain doing nothing in his own ship, "you will attack with the Half Moon and thirty boats; you, Lieutenant Paul, with the Lightning and thirty more. Mr. St. Georges, who has done well for us to-day, and has a trifling grudge against our friends, will take the Owner's Love."

And so he apportioned out the various commands, until, in all, two hundred fireships and attenders were ready to go into the doomed fleet.

At first things were not favourable. The Half Moon ran ashore, blown thereto by the breeze from off the sea, but in an instant Lord Danby's plans were formed. He and his crew destroyed her, so that she could not be used against their own fleet, then swiftly put off in their boats and rejoined the others. Meanwhile those others were rapidly creeping in toward the French.

Already two fireships had set Le Foudriant and L'Etonnant on fire, the boats were getting under the bows of all the others, the boarders were swarming up the sides, cutlasses in hand and mouths, and hurling grenades on to the French decks.

"Follow!" called St. Georges, as, his foot upon a quarter-gallery breast rail, his hand grasping the chain, he leaped into the huge square port of Le Terrible. "Follow, follow!" and as he cried out, the sailors jumped in behind him.

Yet, when they had entered the great French ship, there was no resistance offered. She was deserted! As they had come up the starboard side, her crew, officers and men, had fled over the larboard—as hard as they could swim or wade they were making for the shore. Yet her guns on the lower tier forward were firing slowly, one by one as the boats reached them. A grenade had been hurled in as St. Georges's party passed under her bows and had set the ship alight forward, and the flames were spreading rapidly.

"Quick!" St. Georges exclaimed, "ignite her more in the waist and here in the stern. Cut up some chips, set this after cabin on fire. As it burns, the flames will fall and explode the magazine. Some men also to the guns, draw the charges of those giving on us; leave charged those pointing toward the shore."

All worked with a will—if they could not get at the Frenchmen themselves, they had, at least, the ships to vent their passions upon—some tore up fittings, some chopped wood, some ignited tow and oakum; soon the stern of the Terrible was in flames. Meanwhile, from Le Fier hard by—so near, indeed, that her bows almost touched the rudder of the ship they were in—there came an awful explosion. Her magazine was gone, and as it blew up it hurled half the vessel into the air, while great burning beams fell on to the deck of the Terrible and helped to set her more alight.

"To the boats!" ordered St. Georges, "to the boats! There is more work yet, more to be destroyed." And again, followed by his men, they descended to their attenders and barges.

But now the tide was retreating, they could do no more that night. They must wait until the morrow when the tide would come back. Then there would be, indeed, more work to do. There were still some transports unharmed; they, too, must be annihilated!

They called the roll that night in the British fleet. There were many men wounded, but not one killed. So, amid the noise of powder rooms and magazines exploding, and under a glare from the burning French ships which made the night as clear as day they lay down and rested. And in the morning they began again.

"The work," the admiral said, "is not done yet. It is now to be completed."

Back went, therefore, the fireships and attenders—this time it was the turn of the transports.

"Hotter this than yesterday," called out Lord Danby to St. Georges from one boat to the other, as, propelled by hundreds of oars, all swept in toward the transports. His lordship's face was raw and bleeding now, for on the previous day he had burned and nearly blinded himself by blowing up tow and oakum to set on fire a vessel which he and his men were engaged in destroying. "Hotter now. See, there are some soldiers in the transport, and the forts on shore are firing on us. On, on, my men!" and he directed those under his charge to one transport, while St. Georges did the same as he selected another.

There were more than a dozen of those transports, and against them went the two hundred boats, Rooke in chief command. As they neared the great vessels, however, on that bright May morning, they found that the work of last night had only to be repeated. They poured into the ships from the starboard side, the French poured out on the larboard; those who could not escape were slaughtered where they stood. And if to St. Georges any further impetus was needed—though none was, for his blood was up now to boiling heat and France was the most hated word he knew—it was given him as he approached the vessel he meant to board; for, from it, out of a stern port, there glared a pair of eyes in a ghastly face—a face that looked as though transfixed with horror!—the eyes and face of De Roquemaure! With a cry that made the rowers before him think he had been struck by a bullet, so harsh and bitter it was, he steered the barge alongside the vessel; in a moment he had clambered on the deck, followed by man after man; had cut down a French soldier who opposed him, and was seeking his way toward the cabin where the other was.

"There is an officer below," he muttered hoarsely to those who followed him. "He is mine—remember, mine—none others. My hand alone must have his life, my sword alone take it. Remember!"

As his followers scattered—some to slay the few remaining on board who had not escaped, some to rush forward and ignite the fore part of the transport, others to fire the great guns laid toward the shore, and still others to find and burst open the powder room—he rushed down to where that cabin was, his sword in hand, his brain on fire at the revenge before him.

"Now! now! now!" he murmured. "At last!"

Under the poop he went, down the aftermost companion ladder, through a large cabin—the officers' living room—and then to a smaller one beyond, opening out of the other on the starboard side—the cabin from which he had seen the livid, horror-stricken face of his enemy. But it was closed tight and would not give to his hand.

"Open," he called; "open, you hound, open! You cannot escape me now. Open, I say!"

There came no word in answer. All was silent within, though, above, the roars and callings of the sailors made a terrible din.

"You hear?" again cried St. Georges, "you hear those men? Open, I say, and meet your death like a man! Otherwise you die like a dog! One way you must die. They are setting fire to the magazine. Cur, open!"

The bolt grated from within as he spoke, and the door was thrown aside. De Roquemaure stood before him.

Yet his appearance caused St. Georges to almost stagger back, alarmed. Was this the man he had dreamed so long of meeting once again, this creature before him! De Roquemaure was without coat, vest, or shirt; his body was bare; through his right shoulder a terrible wound, around which the blood was caked and nearly dry. His face, too, was as white as when he had first seen it from the boat, his eyes as staring.

"So," he said, "it is you, alive! Well, you have come too late. I have got my death. What think you I care for the sailors or the powder room? I was struck yesterday by some of the Englishmen who passed here as the tide turned, who fired into this ship ere the tide—the tide—the——"

"Yet will I make that death sure!" St. Georges cried, springing at him. "Wounds do not always kill. You may recover this—from my thrust you shall never recover!"—and he shortened his sword to thrust it through his bare body.

"I am unarmed," the other wailed. "Mercy! I cannot live!"

"Ay, the mercy you showed me! The attempted murder of my child—the theft of her, the murder perhaps done by now—the galleys! Quick, your last prayer!"

Yet even as he spoke he knew that he was thwarted again. He could not strike, not slay, the thing before him. The villain was so weakened by his wound that he could scarce stand, even though grasping a bulkhead with his two hands; was—must be—dying. Why take his death, therefore, upon his soul when Fate itself was claiming him? It would be murder now, not righteous execution!

Moreover, he had another task to execute ere it was too late.

"Wretch," he exclaimed, "die as you are—find hell at last without my intervention! Yet, if you value a few more minutes of existence, gain them thus. Tell me, ere you go, where you have hidden my child—what done with——"

Before he could finish there came another roar from an exploding transport, the sound of beams and spars falling in the water round; a darkness over the cabin produced by the volumes of smoke; the screams of wounded and burnt Frenchmen hurled into the sea; the loud huzzas and yells of the British sailors. Then, as that roar and shock died away, there rose in the air another sound—a pæan of triumph that must have reached the ears of those on shore as it also reached the ears of those two men face to face in that cabin. From hundreds of throats it pealed forth, rising over all else—crackling wood, guns firing, the swish of oars, orders bawled, and shrieks of dead and dying.

It was the English sailors singing Henry Carey's song, almost new then, now known over all the world:

"Answer," St. Georges cried, "ere your master, the devil, gets you! ere I send you to him before even he requires you!"

The man had sunk down upon a locker outside the bunk, his two hands flattened out upon the lid, his face turned up in agony. From either side of his mouth there trickled down a small streak of blood looking like the horns of the new moon; the lips were drawn back from the teeth, as though in agony unspeakable. And did he grin mockingly in this his hour—or was it the pangs of approaching death that caused the grin?

Then he gasped forth:

"You are deceived. The woman who stole—your child—was Aurélie——"

"What!" from St. Georges.

"Aided by—servant—Gaston. Her—servant—not mine——"

"My God!" In that moment there came back to him a memory. The lad, Gaston, had his arm in a sling the morning he learned the child was missing; the woman, who lived in the hut and saw the child taken from Pierre, had said, "His arm hung straight by his side, as though stiff with pain."

Had he found the truth at last?

"Go on," he said.

"The bishop's man—had—got it safe. Aurélie and Gaston—caught—slew him—took the child. She—knew—your birth—and—hated you—and would gain—as much as—as I. Seek her—if you—would-know——"

He fell prone on the lid and spoke no more.

And St. Georges, reeling back against the opposite bulkhead, stared down at him, forgetting all that was taking place around the burning transport in his misery at that revelation.

"Aurélie," he whispered, "Aurélie! Hated me, too, and hated her. O God, pity me!"

And again above all else there rose the triumphant shout:

Note.—The description of the battle of La Hogue is taken from many sources, but principally from the narrative of the chaplain on board the Centurion. It is the most full and complete, especially as regards the ships engaged, which I know of. The worthy divine was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and this seems to have been his first cruise. He returned "home" afterward, viz., to Oxford, and has left very fervent expressions of gratitude at having been able to do so.

CHAPTER XXIII.

As he staggered back after that revelation, St. Georges noticed that the great chant sounded less strongly and more distantly in his ears, and, seized with a sudden apprehension, he rushed to the cabin porthole.

Then he knew that what he had dreaded, that the idea which had sprung into his mind a second before, as the sturdy English voices became more hushed and subdued, was indeed an absolute fact—the flotilla was retiring. It had finished its work of destruction—it was returning to the man-of-war.

And he was left behind!

Behind! to fall into the hands of the French, who, he knew very well, would come forth from the fort and batteries directly the conquerors had withdrawn. He was in a trap from which there was no escape. He would be found there, and his doom be swift.

Yet, in a moment, even as he glanced down at his enemy at his feet and noted the set features—handsome as in life—the white face, the blood at either side of the mouth, looking as before like two small down-turned horns, he asked himself if he was indeed doomed? Also, why stay there to be taken like a rat in a trap? The sea was beneath him; a mile off was the English fleet. If he could swim to that, even halfway to it, he could make signs and, perhaps, be seen and rescued; at the worst it would but be death. And a more fearful death than any the sea could bring awaited him if he remained here.

He cast one more look at De Roquemaure lying with his head upon the locker. At last he was done for! He would never cross his path again. If he himself could live, if he could escape out of this burning pandemonium, could again stand a free man on an English deck, he would have to contend with him no more. There would be but one thing further to do then—to stand face to face with Aurélie de Roquemaure, to ask her if this charge against her was true—as St. Georges never doubted!—to demand his child, and, if she would not restore it to him, to—to—what? His mind was full of deeds of savagery now; the last few days, filled with slaughter and spent amid the arousal of men's fiercest passions, had made him fierce too. At this moment if Aurélie could appear before him he knew that he should slay her—send her to join her brother and all the other victims of his own aroused passions. It would be dangerous for her if she were face to face with him at this moment and refused to acknowledge where she had hidden Dorine.

She was not there, however; at the present moment he had to take steps to free himself, to escape from the burning transport. "'Twill be time enough," he muttered, "to tax her with her perfidy when I stand once more before her to punish her for it. And my own hour is too near, may be too close at hand, for me to think of that. But when it comes, then——"

He heard an explosion in another part of the vessel—he knew another tier of guns had been reached by the flames; he was tarrying too long. The magazine must be close to the cabin in which he was, might be, indeed, beneath the cabin floor—at any moment he risked being blown to atoms. He must lose no time. To be caught there was death, instant and certain!

Lying at the door of the main cabin where he had been slain was one of the officers of the transport; near him another man of lower rank, the one shot through the back the other cut down by Rooke's sailors as he fled into the cabin; and as his eye rested on them a thought struck him. None of Bellefonds and James's forces on land could say who were or were not officers of the transports—what was there to prevent him from being one for the time being? All was fair in war!—and he was as much French as any who might come out from the forts or batteries to the sinking and exploding ships—if any dared to come at all. Once in the garb of either of these lying here, officer or petty officer, and he would be able to get safely ashore, and could avoid question by disappearing a moment afterward, or as soon as might be.

And he would be in France—would be so much nearer to the reckoning with Aurélie de Roquemaure!

He drew on the jacket of the officer as the thoughts of all this chased one another through his mind, threw his own sword down and took up that of the dead man, placed on his head the hat he had worn—bearing in it a gold cockade on which a glittering sun was stamped—and then, glancing through the square porthole that gave on the shore, he looked to see if, yet, any of the French were coming out to save some of their vessels from the conflagration. But the wind was blowing off the sea to the land and carrying with it the smoke from the burning ships; between those ships and the shore all was obscured. And still, as he looked, the explosions—though fainter now—took place at every moment; he could hear the crackling of the flames in the vessel in which he was.

He knew that he must go—must not tarry another instant. Those flames were gaining round him; they would reach the magazine before long—and—then! He must go at once.

He cast one more hurried glance at De Roquemaure, who seemed quite dead now. But, dead or alive, what mattered it? If dead, so much the better; if alive, he would be blown to atoms in a few more moments—as he would himself if he tarried longer. He must go at once.

"Farewell, dog!" he muttered, with one look downward at his enemy. "Farewell. Your account is made!" And without wasting another moment—for his fear of being hurled into eternity himself the next moment had gained terrible hold on him—he rushed to the main cabin door and seized the handle.

An awful sweat of fear—a cold, clammy sweat—broke out all over him as he did so; he knew now how dear life was to him—dearer than he had ever dreamed before that it would be; or was it rather the fear of an awful death than death itself? Was it that which caused him to almost faint with horror as he recognised that the door was either locked or jammed, so that it would not open?

He was doomed—the fire was spreading—he heard one great gun explode by itself—a gun on the lower deck near where the powder room must be—beneath him—he was doomed! In another few moments—perhaps not more than four or five at most—the bulkheads would fly asunder, the deck split like matchwood, he and the dead bodies of De Roquemaure and the others be flung to the elements, be blown into portions of the elements themselves.

Drenched with sweat, paralyzed with terror—it was the terror of an awful death and not of death itself; livid with horror—though he was not aware such was the case; his lips parched and glued together; not knowing whether his limbs were shaking beneath him or the deck of the cabin quivering before its impending upheaval, his starting eyes glared round the prison he was in. And as he so glared he saw—if God gave him a moment more—his opportunity. The great square ports—an invention of but the last few years and superseding the old small round ones—furnished that opportunity.

With a gasp—nay, almost a cry—he clambered on the locker beneath the nearest one—again it seemed as though the ship was quivering with the impending explosion!—thrust his head and shoulders through, dragged the sword by his side carefully after him, seized a top chain hanging down into the water, and was himself in the water a moment later. Then a nervous, hurried thrust of one foot against the hull, with an impetus obtained thereby which propelled him a dozen feet from the vessel, a few masterful strokes made boldly, all trembling with fear and horror as he was, and he plunged into a puff of black smoke, the cinders among which hissed on his face as he struck it, and he was saved—saved from that most awful death, even though countless other deaths surrounded and loomed up before him; saved, at least, from being dismembered and flung piecemeal in a million atoms on the bosom of the ocean.

The smoke drifting in his face recalled to him that he was swimming toward the English fleet; the current still making toward the shore told him that he could never reach that fleet. Even as he swam away from the doomed transport he knew that the powerful tide beneath was carrying him back; he must change his course, or another moment would carry his body against the after part of the ship he had but now escaped from, the ship which must now ere long be hurled out of the sea! It was easy to do so, however; to turn himself away from her so that, even though borne back to the coast of Cotentin, he would pass far astern of her. He had enough strength for that, enough left to haul himself far out from where she lay—but not much more. He was sore spent now with all he had gone through, and was borne down also with the double weight of clothes upon him; as he glided by, or was carried back—though some forty yards adrift of the transport—he could do nothing more than tread water and so manage to keep himself afloat.

Borne through the murky grime, along that water there came now the swish of oars and the voices of men speaking in French—French strongly accentuated and in the Manche patois. What were they doing, he wondered. Had they come out to save some of the burning transports and boats, to endeavour to stop the flames and also the firing of the guns by the heat—their own guns that, as they fired, hurled their charges on their own shore? Were they going to meet their dooms unknowingly by venturing on that very place of death which he had just escaped from?

It might be—might well be so; and though he had fought against them—though they were Frenchmen and his enemies, too, he must warn them, save them, if he could: they were men, human beings; he could not let them go unwittingly to such an awful end as this, could not let them board that ship and meet the fate he had avoided. Therefore he hailed them as loudly as he was able, screamed to them, besought them to enter no vessel near; above all to avoid the burning transport. But whether they understood him, even if they heard, he could not guess; he caught still the beat of the oars upon the waves, heard their chattering voices, even one or two of their expressions; and then, as the tide took him nearer and nearer to the shore, he lost sound of those voices altogether.

"Strange," he muttered, "strange she blows not up—many minutes have elapsed since I quitted her—twenty at the least, and yet the explosion has not come. They may have boarded her, those men, have extinguished the flames: there may have been no powder left in the mag—Ah!"

There came an awful roar as he so muttered, a roar such as he had heard twenty times in as many hours; a hundred feet above and behind him, as he turned swiftly in the water, he saw a fan-shaped mass of flame ascending to the skies; he saw black objects amid that mass of flame—what were they, beams, masts, or human bodies?—he saw the smoke rent open, and great pieces of the transport floating or falling on to the waters with terrific crashes. Then there rushed down on him a fresh mountain of blood-coloured smoke, with blazing cinders and pieces of burning wood, and smouldering sails all borne along in its midst, and it enveloped him and choked him, while the burning matter fell on him and hissed on his wet hair and skin, so that he was fain to let himself sink below the waves for some few seconds to escape the débris and those suffocating fumes. And even as he did so, and when he arose to the surface once more, cooled and refreshed by the immersion of his face, his first thought was to utter a heartfelt prayer for his escape from the awful fate that, but half an hour ago, had threatened him and been so near.

Scarce had he done so than, as he swam a little now, being eased by having floated and trod water for some time, he saw beneath the smoke, which dispersed as it neared the shore and drifted inland, that he himself was close in shore. He could perceive quite clearly the yellow beach of Cotentin on which the incoming tide was rippling, and could see also several bodies lying about on that beach—soldiers doubtless killed by the fire from the English war vessels, or, perhaps, by the discharge of the French guns when turned upon them by the parties which had boarded their own ships. But that was all, except one or two figures moving about and bending over them—no doubt the ghouls who are to be found wherever a dead body is after a battle.

And as he glanced at these last relics of the great battle of La Hogue, his foot touched the bottom; a moment later he was wading ashore.

He stood once more in France, the land in which he would find his child—if she was still alive.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Then came toward him a figure terrible to behold, a creature in the garb of a woman, a knife at her girdle, her pockets, which were outside her dress, bulging, and from their openings pieces of gold lace, a silver-hilted pistol, and other things protruding. But besides her and the dead bodies lying further inland upon the beach nothing else was to be seen. The thirty thousand men—some, and most of them, those rapparees whom Louis had thought good enough to send against England—some forming part of the regiments of Picardy, Verdelin, Le Calvados, and others, were not visible, although he could see on the roofs and turrets of the forts that they were still there and lined the coast for many miles. Also he saw with dimmed eyes that the English fleet was moving. It had done its work!

The creature prowling about came nearer, and St. Georges sprang to his feet and drew from the wet scabbard which had remained by his side during his swim ashore, his sword.

"Wretch," he said, "put down that knife and come no nearer, or I will run you through, woman though you seem to be! Begone, vulture!"

The robber of the dead and wounded paused and stared at him; then she assumed a whining tone, and exclaimed in her northern accent:

"Oh, good gentleman, you mistake. I am no slayer of injured men, but a comforter thereof. Will you not take a sup of good Nantz to ease you?"

"No, begone! Away. Yet stay. Where is the nearest village where I can procure food? Answer me, quickly."

"A mile off, good gentleman; there is an auberge there. It is very good. I keep it."

"You!"

"Yes, I. Yes, an excellent inn. But," with a suspicious glance at him, "why not go to the fort, good gentleman? The marshal is there and that king who has been ruined by his own subjects to-day."

"I do not wish to go to the fort. I am not a soldier, but a sailor—saved from one of the transports. Direct me."

"Ha!" she said, with a grunt. "You are not the first. There are many like you who do not want to go to the fort. A many poltroons who are deserting from the army, now defeat has come to France. Are you deserting too, friend?"

"No. But I have nothing to do with the forts nor the army. Direct me, I say."

"There is the road," the hag said, pointing to the north across the sandhills. "Follow that a mile and you will come to my house. But," and she came a step nearer, "give me some money, or you will, perhaps, be followed. The others have given me some. Give me a piece, and I will be silent."

"Away, wretch!" St. Georges said. "If the soldiers come forth again you will flee from them, not wait a moment. I do not fear you," and pushing past her he made toward the road she had indicated, while she stood there muttering curses after him. Then she returned to her work of prowling among the dead and dying, and rifling their pockets.

He made his way among those dead and dying, most of whom were wounded French seamen who had managed to get ashore only to fall down and expire where they fell, and a few of whom were soldiers on land who had been struck by the projectiles from the French vessels while standing gazing at the sea fight. In all, there were lying about the dunes some hundred men, who were in different states of approaching death. One thing he noticed as he went on—several wore the colours of the Picardy Regiment, which he knew well, from having once been quartered with it. Therefore, he understood why De Roquemaure had been on board the transport. They had doubtless been shipped ready for the projected invasion, and these wretched soldiers had been more fortunate than he in one way—they had at least escaped ashore to die, instead of being blown to pieces in the explosions of the transports.

He made his way through the sand, stopping once or twice to endeavour to help some dying wretch whom he came across, and then going on again when he found his efforts useless; and so he came at last to what he supposed must be the auberge spoken of by the woman, a miserable wooden structure with a seat and a bench outside the door.

Two horsemen were drawn up in front of this, and were speaking to some stragglers standing before them, all of whom St. Georges noticed stood cap in hand. One, a tall thin man with a hatchet face, dressed in gray, was questioning them; the other, who sat his horse by his side, was an elderly man of dark, swarthy features, who was, however, deathly pale. His eye—a wandering one—lighted on St. Georges's the instant he approached the front of the inn, and turning away from his companion he addressed him in good French, which, however, St. Georges noticed had a strong accent.

"What uniform is yours, sir?" he asked. "I do not know it. And you seem to have been in the water. Are you one of his Majesty's naval officers?"

"I am," St. Georges replied, recognising at once the danger he was in. "And the uniform is that of a transport officer."

"A transport officer!" the other exclaimed, turning round suddenly at the words—"a transport officer! Have any escaped?"

"I have, at any rate," St. Georges replied.

"You can then give us some information," the first said. "How many others are there who have also escaped?"

"Very few, I imagine. I myself did so only by swimming ashore. And even then the transport was blown up ere I had quitted it very long."

"And," asked the second, "have the—English—made many prisoners?"

"A great number, I should suppose."

"God help me!" the dark, pale man exclaimed.

"Louis will do no more. This is our last chance, Melfort."

As he spoke St. Georges knew in whose presence he was—the presence of the unhappy James. Then, because he knew also that this place was full of danger to him—some naval officers of the French fleet might by chance have got ashore as he had done, and might also come here at any moment—he saluted James, and said he must make his way onward as fast as possible.

"Where are you going to, sir?" the late King of England asked. "You will be better in the forts. They will not refuse you succour."

"Doubtless. Yet I must go on. I have to——"

As he spoke his eyes fell on the doorway of the inn, and, brave man though he was, what he saw there appalled him.

Leaning against the doorpost, regarding him fixedly, were two French sailors whom he had last seen on board the transport—two sailors who, as he had leaped on board followed by his own men, had disputed his entrance, had then been driven back to the larboard side of the ship, and had hurled themselves into the shoalwater and so escaped.

What was there for him to do? In another moment it was possible—certain—that they would denounce him, that he would be seized by the half dozen soldiers standing or sitting about.

He had to make his plans quickly ere these men could speak—already he could perceive they were about to do so; one touched the other with his finger and called his attention to him, and looked with an inquiring glance into his companion's eyes, as though asking if by any possibility he could be mistaken? He had to act at once. But how? Then in a moment an inspiration came.

With a cry he wrenched his sword from his sheath and rushed at them, uttering exclamations that at least he hoped might confuse the others round and also drown any words of those two men.

"Villains! Lâches! Deserters!" he cried, as he flew at them, striking one with the flat of his sword and, with his elbows and body, forcing the other into the passage behind. "Villains! You would desert in the hour of need! Fly the ship, would you!" and other exclamations in as harsh and loud a tone as possible.

And the ruse succeeded beyond even what he dared to hope. The two sailors affrighted, perhaps not hearing his words, and only thinking that the terrible English officer meant to slay them on land, as he had almost succeeded in doing on their own deck, fled down the passage roaring; while to add to the hubbub two large dogs, sitting by the fire of a room opening out of that passage, dashed out barking and yelping. A woman too came from the kitchen and screamed for help, and meanwhile the soldiers who had been lounging about rushed in at the front door. As for James and Melfort, they shrugged their shoulders and turned their horses away. Such a scene as this, which they but half understood, had little enough interest for them. An officer punishing two deserters, as they assumed to be the case, was a trifle in comparison to the ruin which had fallen forever on their cause that day.

The sailors fled down the passage yelling "Au secours! au secours!" and "Sauvez-nous!" and after them rushed St. Georges, making as much noise as he could, and so they reached first a yard behind, and then the potager, or herb garden. One man dashed into an outhouse full of billets of wood and kindlings, and yelled for mercy. "The fight is over!" he screamed; "spare me, spare me!" and in a moment St. Georges had shut the door and turned the key—fortunately it was outside—on him; then he rushed after the other down the sandy path of the garden.

His object was to drive the man on as far as possible away from the inn, and then desist from the chase and escape himself. Behind the garden there ran another path that passed up to a copse of stunted, miserable, wind-blown trees; if he could get into that, he might succeed in avoiding any pursuit.

So he let the sailor gain on him as he neared this copse, and then another chance arose before him—an unhoped, undreamed-of chance! Tethered at the end of the garden, by the reins to the paling, was a horse belonging possibly to some bourgeois who had ridden in to the inn from a village inland and had left his horse at the back. A chance sent by Heaven in its mercy!

Still the sailor ran on swiftly, until, no longer hearing his pursuer behind him, he dared to look over his shoulder, thinking the chase was over; what he saw when he so looked caused him to renew his speed, even to yell with fresh terror.

St. Georges was mounted now, he was urging the horse to its greatest pace, he would be behind him in a moment. And then it would be death, dealt from the sword wielded by the terrible Englishman—almost the man could feel that sword through his back as he ran and the hoofs clattered behind him!

He stumbled and nearly fell in the white sandy dust, got up again with a shriek, and then, in a last, frenzied hope, plunged into the copse which he had now reached. And the awful horseman passed on—could that dust, the poor wretch wondered, have hidden him from his view?—a moment or two more and he knew that he was safe. The clatter of the hoofs on the road grew fainter and fainter; when at last he dared to peer from the edge of the little wood, the Englishman had disappeared.

For a couple of hours St. Georges urged the poor roadster to its best speed, then slackened rein as the wayside track reached the bay of Charenton. He was safe now from any recognition—or rather exposure—the army of Bellefonds and all who might by chance have got ashore from the destroyed fleet were far behind.

Yet he had been exposed to risks, too, on that ride. Once, near the auberge he had fled from, a farmer riding along called to him to stop, yelling at him to know why he was riding Dubois's horse; but his presence of mind did not fail him, and he called back: "Ride on and see! The French are defeated, the English have burned Barfleur and destroyed La Hogue!" and ere the man, whose terror-stricken face he long remembered, could speak again, he was far away from him.

Also he more than once passed deserters from the army—men who no sooner saw another in a uniform riding as though for life, than they fled away into woods and copses or over fields, imagining that he was in pursuit of them. And, once, he again come in contact with two together whose faces he thought he remembered as he leaped on board a French man-of-war the evening before—men who looked up at him with startled faces and oaths upon their lips—did they recognise him as he dashed by them?

But at last he had outdistanced all who might have escaped from La Hogue; his way lay along a sandy sea-blown road, at the sides of which were fields of millet, sanfoin, and sometimes, though not often, wheat. And ahead of him, against the bright May sky, he saw the tower and two high spire steeples of the ancient cathedral of Sainte Marie at Bayeux.

He eased his horse at a pool of fresh water, descended from it and removed the coarse saddle, and, while it drank eagerly, rubbed its sides and back.

"Good horse!" he said.—"good horse! I have been a hard taskmaster and a stranger to you to-day. Heaven knows I would not have urged you thus but for my necessity. And you have served me bravely, all rough bred as you are. Well, we will not part now, and some day, may be, I can find out your owner—that Dubois the farmer spoke of—and repay him for the friend I stole from him."

And he sat down by the animal's side for half an hour, and then, walking with the reins in his hand and carrying the saddle to ease it, he followed the road toward Bayeux.

It was the road, too, to Troyes and Aurélie de Roquemaure, the woman who had to answer to him for the theft of his child, and also for her duplicity when they had met in Paris!

CHAPTER XXV.

The deserted road along which he now walked was, in a way, a relief to him. Nothing could have better suited his present needs than to be thus outside the life of any town and free from all observation, for he had much to meditate upon—many plans to form for his safety. And of those plans, the first to be carried out was to free himself from any appearance of conspicuousness which would draw attention on him.

There was, to begin with, the officer's jacket and cap which he had assumed, and the naval sword by his side, from which he had by now removed all damp it might have received from being in the sea. Yet how to deprive himself of the latter, and still be safe, he knew not.

As for the jacket—which was, indeed, a short coat filled with pockets, outside and in—he could dispense with it very well. He had dragged it on over his own coat when quitting the burning transport, simply as a disguise, as a safeguard. It could now be discarded.

His clothes—the plain English clothes which he had worn in London, and in which he had joined Rooke's flagship and fought through Barfleur and La Hogue[8]—would attract no attention. They were suitable to any one in the middle class; but with the cap it was not the same thing, since he had nothing wherewith to replace it, and if he rejected that he must go bareheaded. This would not do; he had, therefore, to cast about for some headdress.