by G. A. Henty
The splash of oars was heard, and a boat rowed along close to the bank.
“Is that you, Pierre?”
“It is us, sure enough, Mere Pichon. Is all right?”
“Yes, we are both here.”
In another minute the boat was rowed alongside, and Harry and the woman got on board. There were few words spoken as the two men rowed vigorously down stream. In three quarters of an hour some lights were seen on the opposite bank, and the boat was headed towards them and soon reached a little causeway.
“I shall not be more than twenty minutes,” Mere Pichon said as she got out.
“All right, we will wait!” was the reply, and mounting the causeway La Mere Pichon led the way to the farthest cottage in the little fishing-village. A light was burning within, and lifting the latch she entered, followed by Harry. A fisherman and his wife were sitting by the fire.
“Here, sister Henriette and brother Pierre,” Marthe said; “you have heard from me how a dear angel, who lived next door to me, has nursed and tended my little Julie, and by blessing of the Virgin brought her round from her illness; and those wretches, the Reds, have carried her off to-day with her sister, and you know what it is to fall into their hands. This is her brother, and I am going to ask you to give him shelter and let him stay here with you. I have brought him a suit of clothes with me, and no one will guess that he is not the son of some comrade of yours. He will pay you well for sheltering him till we can put him on board Adolphe’s lugger and send him across the water. If it had not been that the Reds had come to-day I should have brought his sisters with him. I was just starting to arrange it with you when those wretches came and took them away, and it may be that they would pay a hundred crowns to you, and that is not a sum to be earned every day.”
“No, indeed,” her sister said briskly; “that will buy Pierre a new boat, and a good one, such as he can go out to sea in; besides, as you say, after what his sister did for Julie we are bound to help them. What do you say, Pierre?”
Pierre’s face had expressed anything but satisfaction until the money was mentioned, but it then changed entirely. The times were bad—his boat was old and unseaworthy—a hundred crowns was a fortune to him.
“I have risked my life often,” he said, “to earn five crowns, therefore I do not say no to the offer. Monsieur, I accept; for a hundred crowns I will run the risk of keeping you here, and your sisters too if they should come, until you can cross the water.”
“Very well then,” Marthe Pichon said. “That’s settled, now I shall be off at once. They will be watching the street for monsieur, and to-morrow, when they find he has not come back, they will be asking questions, so the sooner I am back the better.”
“We cannot give you much accommodation, monsieur,” the fisherman said. “There is only the loft upstairs, and, for to-night, the sails to sleep on; but we will try and make you more comfortable to-morrow.”
“I care nothing for comfort,” Harry answered, “so make no change for me. Just treat me as if I were what I shall seem to be—a young fisherman who has come to work with you for a bit. I will row with you and help you with your nets. Your sister has promised to send a boy every day with all the news she can gather. Now, if you have a piece of bread I will gladly eat it, for I have touched nothing since breakfast.”
“We can do better than that for you,” the woman replied, and in a few minutes some fish were frying over the fire. Fortunately the long hours he had been on his feet had thoroughly tired Harry out, and after eating his supper he at once ascended to the loft, threw himself on the heap of sails, and in a few minutes was sound asleep. The next morning he dressed himself in the fisherman’s clothes with which he had been provided, and went down stairs.
“You will do,” Pierre said, looking at him; “but your hands and face are too white. But I was tanning my sails yesterday, and there is some of the stuff left in the boiler; if you rub your hands and face with that you will do well.”
Harry took the advice, and the effect was to give him the appearance of a lad whose face was bronzed by long exposure to the sea and air.
“You will pass anywhere now,” Pierre said approvingly. “I shall give out that you belong to St. Nazaire, and are the son of a friend of mine whose fishing-boat was lost in the last gale, and so you have come to work for a time with me; no one would ask you any more. Besides, we are all comrades, and hate the Reds, who have spoilt our trade by killing all our best customers, so if they come asking questions here they won’t get a word out of anyone.”
For ten days Harry lived with the fisherman. Adolphe had returned in his lugger the day after his arrival there, and came over the next evening to see him. He said that it would be some little time before the lugger sailed again, but that if he was ready to start before she sailed he would manage to procure him a passage in some other craft. He said that he had already been talking to some of the sailors on the wharves, and that they had promised to go to the Tribunal when the girls were brought up before it, and that he would manage to get news from a friend employed in the prison when that would be.
Harry frequently went up in a boat to Nantes with Pierre with the fish they had caught. He had no fear of being recognized, and did not hesitate to land, though he seldom went far from the boat. Adolphe was generally there, and he and two or three of his comrades, who were in the secret, always hailed him as an old acquaintance, so that had any of the spies of the Revolutionists been standing there, no suspicion that Harry was other than he seemed would have entered their minds.
One evening, three weeks after Harry’s arrival at the hut, Adolphe came in with his head bound up by a bandage.
“What is the matter, Adolphe?” Harry exclaimed.
“I have bad news for you, monsieur. I learned this morning that mesdemoiselles were to-day to be brought before the Tribunal, and we filled the hall with women and two or three score of sailors. Mesdemoiselles were brought out. The young one seemed frightened, but the elder was as calm and brave as if she feared nothing. They were asked their names, and she said:
“’I am Jeanne de St. Caux, and this is my sister Virginie. We have committed no crime.’
“Carrier himself was there, and he said:
“’You are charged with being enemies of France, with being here in disguise, and with trying to leave France contrary to the laws against emigration, and with being in company with one who, under false pretenses, obtained admission to the Committee of Safety here, but who is an enemy and traitor to France. What do you say?’
“’I do not deny that we were in disguise,’ she said in her clear voice. ‘Nor do I deny that we should have escaped if we could. And as you treat us as enemies, and our lives are in danger, I cannot see that we were to blame in doing so. I deny that we are enemies of France, or that the gentleman who was with us was so either. He did not obtain a place on the committee by fraud, for he was really the secretary of Monsieur Robespierre, and he could not refuse the post when it was offered to him.’
“Then we thought it was time to speak, and the women cried out for mercy, and said how good she had been to the poor; and we men cried out too. And then Carrier got into a passion, and said they were traitors and worthy of death, and that they should die. And we shouted we would not have it, and broke into the Tribunal and surrounded mesdemoiselles, and then the guards rushed in and there was a fight. We beat them off and got outside, and then a regiment came up, and they were too strong for us, though we fought stoutly, I can tell you, for our blood was up; but it was no use. The dear ladies were captured again, and many of us got severe wounds. But the feeling was strong, I can tell you, among the sailors when the news spread through the town, for some of the women got hurt, too, in the melee, and I think we could get five hundred men together to storm the jail.”
Harry was bitterly disappointed, for he had hoped that the intercession of the women might have availed with the judges, and doubtless would have done so had not Carrier himself been present. However,
he thanked the sailor warmly for the efforts he had made and gave him some money to distribute among the wounded, for he always carried half his money concealed in a belt under his clothes. The other half was hidden away under a board in his lodgings, so that in case of his being captured the girls would still have funds available for their escape. As to the prospects of storming the jail he did not feel sanguine. It was strongly guarded, and there were three regiments of troops in the town, and these could be brought up before the fishermen could force the strong defences of the jail. However, as a last resource, this might be attempted.
Two days later Adolphe again returned, and was obliged to confess in answer to Harry’s inquiries that he feared the sailors as a body would not join in the attempt.
“I can hardly blame them, monsieur. For though I myself would risk everything, and some of the others would do so too, it is a terrible thing for men with wives and families to brave the anger of these monsters. They would think nothing of putting us all to death. It isn’t the fighting we are afraid of, though the odds are heavy against us, but it’s the vengeance they would take afterwards, whether we happened to win or whether we didn’t.”
“I cannot blame them,” Harry said. “As you say, even if they succeeded there would be a terrible vengeance for it afterwards. No; if the girls are to be rescued it must be by some other way. I have been quiet so long because I hoped that the intercession of the women would have saved them. As that has failed I must set to work. I have thought of every method, but bribery seems the only chance. Will you speak to the man you know in the prison, and sound him whether it will be possible to carry out any plan in that way?”
“I will speak again to him,” Adolphe said. “But I have already sounded him, and he said that there were so many guards and jailers that he feared that it would be impossible. But I will try again.”
The next day, soon after dinner, Adolphe came again, and there was a white scared look upon his face which filled Harry with alarm.
“What is it, Adolphe? What is your news?”
“Monsieur, I can hardly tell it,” Adolphe said in a low awe-stricken voice. “It is too awful even for these fiends.”
“What is it, Adolphe? Tell me. If they have been murdered I will go straight to Nantes and kill Carrier the first time he leaves his house, though they may tear me to pieces afterwards.”
“They are not murdered yet,” Adolphe said; “but they are to be, and everyone else.” And this time the sailor sat down and cried like a child.
At last, in answer to Harry’s entreaties, he raised his head and told the story. The Revolutionary Committee had that day been down at the wharf, and had taken for the public service four old luggers past service which were lying on the mud, and they had openly boasted that an end was going to put to the aristocrats; that the guillotine was too slow, that the prison must be cleared, and that they were going to pack the aristocrats on board the luggers and sink them.
Harry gave a cry of horror, in which the fisherman and his wife joined, the latter pouring out voluble curses against Carrier and the Reds.
After his first cry Harry was silent; he sank down on to a low chair, and sat there with his face hidden in his hands for some minutes, while the fisherman and his wife poured question after question upon Adolphe. Presently Harry rose to his feet, and saying to Adolphe, “Do not go away, I shall be back presently, I must think by myself,” went out bareheaded into the night.
It was half an hour before he returned.
“Now, Adolphe,” he said, “I can think again. Now, how are they to be saved?”
“I cannot say, monsieur,” Adolphe said hesitatingly. “It does not seem to me—”
“They have to be saved,” Harry interrupted him in a grave, steady voice. “The question is how?”
“Yes, monsieur,” Adolphe agreed hesitatingly, “that is the question. You can rely upon me, monsieur,” he went on, “to do my best whatever you may decide; but I have no head to invent things. You tell me and I will do it.”
“I know I can rely upon you, Adolphe. As far as I can see there are but two ways. One is for me to go to Carrier’s house, find the monster, place a pistol at his head, compel him to order them to be released, stand with him at the prison door till they come out, embark with him and them in a boat, row down the river, and put to sea.”
“And then, monsieur?” Adolphe asked after a pause, seeing that Harry was speaking to himself rather than to him.
“Yes, that is the question that I cannot answer,” Harry replied. “I can see all the rest as if it were passing. I can feel Carrier trembling in my grasp, and shrinking as the pistol touches his forehead. I can hear him giving his orders, I can see the crowd falling back as I walk with him through the street, I can hear him crying to the people to stand aside and let us pass, I can see us going down the river together; but what am I to do in a boat with two ladies at sea?”
“Could you not embark in a lugger?” Adolphe exclaimed, carried away by the picture which Harry seemed to be describing as if he saw it. “Why not start in a lugger at once? I might have the Trois Freres ready, and the men will all stand by you; and when we are once outside the river we will throw Carrier over to the fishes and make for England.”
“Thank you, Adolphe. If the other plans seem impossible we will try that, but only as a last resource; for I know the chances are a hundred to one against its success. I should have no fear as to Carrier himself, but as I went through the streets some one else might place a musket at the back of my head and shoot me. If I could get him alone it would be different. You could go with me; I would force him to sign the order of release; you could take it; and I would stand over him till you had time to embark with them; then I would blow out his brains and make my way down to the river. But there would be no chance of finding him alone. Monsters like this are always fearful of assassination.”
“And what is monsieur’s other plan?”
“The other plan is to get on board the boat in which they are to be placed—you might find out which it is from your friend in prison—hide down in the hold until the guards leave her; then join them; and when she sinks fasten them to a spar and drift down the river with them till out of sight of the town, when Pierre could row off and pick them up.”
“They say there are to be soldiers on each side of the river,” Adolphe said despondently, “to shoot down any who may try to swim to shore. But there would not be many who would try. Most of them, they say, will be women and children; but the heads would be seen as you drifted down.”
“Yes; but we must think of something, Adolphe—think, man, think—and you, Pierre, think; if you were in a sinking ship, and you wanted something which would hide you from the eyes of people a hundred yards away, what would you take?”
“But you would be seen on anything you climbed on to or clung to, monsieur.
“But we need not climb on to it,” Harry said. “I can take pieces of cork with me and wrap round them so as to keep their faces just afloat. I should only want something that would hide their faces.”
“A hatch might do,” Pierre said.
“The very thing!” Harry exclaimed with a fresh ring of animation and hopefulness in his voice. “The very thing! Of course there would be a hatchway to the forecastle of the lugger. We might get that loosened beforehand, so that it would float off. What is the size of such a hatch?”
“Some four feet square, monsieur.”
“That will be enough,” Harry said; “but how high would a hatch float out of water, because there must be room between the top of the water for us to breathe as we lie on our backs. Four inches would be enough. Are the sides buoyant enough to keep the top that much out of water?”
“I do not think so, monsieur,” Pierre said with a shake of the head. “It would float nearly level with the water.”
“But see here, monsieur,” Adolphe said eagerly; “I have an idea! The hatches are covered with tarpaulin. If you could hide in the forecastle during the
night you might cut away all the top underneath the tarpaulin and prop it up, so that if anyone trod on it in the morning they would not notice what had been done. Then when they have pushed off you could knock away the props, the board would tumble down, and there would be only the tarpaulin cover on the sides. It would float then quite four inches out of the water, and that in the middle of the stream would look almost level with it.”
“I will try it,” Harry said; “there is a chance of success.”
“It is a terrible risk, monsieur,” Pierre said.
“I know it,” Harry replied; “but it is just possible. The chances are a hundred to one against it, but it may succeed. Well, Pierre, do you be with your boat on the river just below the point where the town can be seen. If you see a hatch floating down row to it. If we are beneath it, well and good; if not—”
“If not, monsieur,” the fisherman’s wife said solemnly, “we will pray for your souls.”
“Adolphe will send down to you in the morning the two fisher-girls’ dresses his wife had prepared for the ladies. Have some brandy in the boat and your little charcoal stove, and keep water boiling. They will want it. And now good-bye, my good friends! Pray for us to-night. Now, Adolphe, let us hasten back to the town, for there is much to be done. And first of all you must see your friend in the prison; find out if mesdemoiselles are on the list of those to be murdered. I have no doubt they will be, for after the emeute there has been about them they are almost sure to be among the first victims. But above all, find out, if you can, which vessel they are to be placed in.