by G. A. Henty
“That’s the best thing that could have happened,” Harry said as Jeanne stooped over her sister. “Lie down on the deck, dear, or you may be struck; they are firing with muskets now. I am going to lie down too,” he said in answer to her look, “but I shall first twist this cord round Virginie so as to keep her arms by her side, otherwise when the water touches her she may come to her senses and struggle. That’s all right.”
Then he lay down on the deck between the girls with his head against the hatch, and holding the rope.
“Put your head on my shoulder, Jeanne, and I will put my arm round you; I will hold Virginie the same way the other side. Hold tight by me for a moment as we sink, I may have to use my arms to get the hatch over our faces. Do not breathe while you are under the water, for we shall, no doubt, go down with the lugger, although I shall try to keep you afloat; when you are under the hatch you will find you will float with your mouth well out of the water, and will be able to breathe, the corks will keep you up.”
“I understand, Harry; now let us pray until the time comes.”
Shot after shot struck the lugger, then Harry felt her give a sudden lurch. There was a wild cry and the next moment she went down stern first. She was so nearly even with the water when she sank, that there was less downward suck than Harry had expected, and striking out with his feet his head was soon above the surface. The cord had kept the hatch within a couple of feet of him, and with some difficulty, owing to the buoyancy of the corks, he thrust himself and the girls under it. The tarpaulin was old and rotten, and the light penetrated in several places, and Harry could see that, in the position in which they were lying, the faces of both girls were above the water.
It was useless to speak for their ears were submerged; but a slight motion from Jeanne responded to a pressure of his arm, and he knew that she was sensible although she had not made the slightest motion from the moment the vessel sank. Virginie had not, as he feared would be the case, recovered her senses with the shock of the immersion, but lay insensible on his shoulder. He could see by the movement of Jeanne’s lips that she was praying, and he too thanked God that He had given success to the plan so far, and prayed for protection to the end.
With every minute that passed, his hopes rose; everything had answered beyond his expectation. The other victims had apparently not even noticed what he was doing, and therefore had not, as he feared might be the case, interfered with his preparations, nor had any of them striven to gain a hold on the hatchway. The sinking of the vessels, and the tearing up of the water by the shot, would render the surface disturbed and broken, and decrease the chances of the floating hatch attracting attention. After ten minutes had passed he felt certain that they must be below the point where the troops were assembled.
The tide was running out strong, for the time for the massacre had been fixed at an hour which would ensure the bodies being swept down to sea. Half an hour would, he thought, take them past the bend, where their friends would be waiting for them. The time seemed endless, for although Harry felt the coldness of the water but little for himself, he knew that it must be trying indeed for Jeanne. As far as he could see her face it was as white as her sister’s; but he had hold of one of her hands now, and knew that she was still conscious.
At last he heard the sound of oars. It might not be one of the friendly boats; but the probability was that it was one or other of them. Had they seen any other fisherman’s boat near the point they would have rowed high up so as to intercept the hatch before it reached the stranger. Harry could not hear voices; for although the water had conveyed the sound of the oars a considerable distance, he could hear no sound in the air.
The oars came nearer and nearer, and by the quickness with which the strokes followed each other he knew that two boats were at hand. Then the hatch was suddenly lifted, and as Harry raised his head above water there was a loud cheer, and he saw Adolphe and Pierre, one on each side, stretch out their arms to him. The girls were first lifted into Pierre’s boat, for Jeanne was as incapable of movement as her sister, then Harry was dragged in, the rough sailors shaking his hand and patting him on the shoulder, while the tears ran down their cheeks.
“Give them some hot brandy and water,” were his first words. Pierre had a kettle boiling. A glass of hot liquor was placed to Jeanne’s lips.
At first she could not swallow, but after a few drops had passed her lips she was able to take a sip, and would then have stopped, but Harry insisted upon her drinking the whole contents of the glass.
“You must do as you are told, Jeanne,” he said in her ear. “You belong to me now, you know. It can do you no harm chilled as you are, and may save you from illness.”
In the meantime Pierre had poured several spoonfuls of nearly neat brandy between Virginie’s lips. Adolphe, and one of the men with him, had changed over into Pierre’s boat, and were rowing lustily down the river.
As soon as Jeanne was able to sit up she began to chafe one of Virginie’s hands, while Harry took the other.
“Take off her shoes, Pierre, and soak a swab with the hot water and put it to her feet.”
But with all these efforts it was not until they were close to Pierre’s village that Virginie opened her eyes. When they arrived at the little causeway the two girls were wrapped up in the peasants cloaks which Pierre had brought with him. Jeanne took Harry’s arm, while Adolphe lifted Virginie and carried her up. Henriette was standing at the door as Jeanne staggered in with Harry.
“That is right, mademoiselle. Thank God who has brought you straight through the danger. Now, do not stop a moment, but come in here and get into bed, it is all ready for you. The blankets have been before the fire until the moment you landed; they will soon give you warmth. Hurry in, mademoiselle; I will undress your sister. And do you, Monsieur Sandwith, hurry up to the loft and get on dry clothes.”
Harry soon rejoined the party in the kitchen. The strong glass of hot spirits he had drunk had sent the blood quickly through his veins, and he felt in a glow of warmth.
“Now,” he said, “my friends, I can thank you all for the aid you have given us. It is to you we owe our lives, for without your aid I never should have succeeded.”
“Say nothing about it, monsieur. We are happy to have saved such a brave young man, and to have rescued two victims from those monsters.”
“Do you think there is any danger of anyone here taking the news of our landing to the town?” Harry asked. “They must have seen us come up to the cottage.”
“There is no fear,” Pierre said confidently. “There is not a man or woman here who would not tear the scelerats to pieces if they had the chance. Have they not spoiled our market by killing all our best customers? And now how are we to earn our living, I should like to know? Why, not even the poorest beggar in Nantes would buy fish out of the river for months after this. No, you need have no fear of them. They may guess who you are, but it is no business of theirs, and they will hold their tongues.”
“At anyrate, Pierre, you had better distribute a few crowns among them, to help them live till the fishing is good again.”
“That I will do, monsieur. It is quite safe; but it is as well to make it even safer.”
In half an hour Pierre’s wife came in from the inner room, and said that both girls were sound asleep.
“Now, Adolphe, it only remains for you to arrange with your captain for our passage.”
“That I will do this afternoon,” Adolphe said confidently. “Consider it as good as done.”
After Adolphe had started for the town, Harry was persuaded by Pierre to lie down for a bit; but he soon gave up the idea of going to sleep. His brain was in a whirl from the events of the last twenty-four hours, and above all he felt so brimming over with happiness that the girls had been saved that he soon found it impossible to lie still. He therefore went down again and joined Pierre, who was doing some repairs to his boat.
“It is no use my trying to sleep, Pierre. I am too delighted that everything
has turned out right. I want to break out into shouting and singing.”
“I can understand, monsieur. Yes, yes. After great trouble great joy. I know it myself. I was once adrift in a boat for three weeks. I was on a voyage to Guadaloupe when we were blown in a hurricane on a ‘key,’ as they call the low sandy islands out there. It was in fact no more than a sand-bank. More than half of those on board were drowned; but eight of us got ashore, and we managed to haul up a woman with her child of two years old in her arms.
“We thought at first the mother was dead, but she came round. The ship went to pieces and we saved nothing. The currents swept everything away but a boat, which had been thrown up beyond the reach of the waves. For two days we had no food or water, and suffered terribly, for the sun had shone down straight on our heads, and we envied those who had died at once. The woman set us a good example. She spent her time tending her child and praying to God; and we sailors, who are rough, you know—but who know that God protects us, and never go for a long voyage without going to the chapel and paying for a mass for our safety—we prayed too, and the third morning there were three turtles asleep on the shore. We turned them over on their backs, and there was meat for us for a long time.
“We killed one and drank the blood, and ate our first meal raw. Then we cut up the rest of the flesh and hung it up in the sun to dry. That very night we saw the clouds banking up, and knew it was going to rain.
“’Now,’ our mate said, ‘if we had but a barrel we could catch water and start in our boat, but without that the water will last only a day or two; for if we kill all the turtles and fill their shells, it will evaporate in a day under this hot sun, and it may be weeks before there is rain again, and we might as well have died at once.
“’For shame,’ the woman said. ‘You are doubting the good God again, after he has saved your life and has sent you food and is now going to send you water. Do you think he has done all this for nothing? There must be some way out of the difficulty if we could but think of it.’
“She sat looking at the turtle for two or three minutes, and then said:
“’It is easy. Why have you not thought of it? See there. Cut off one of their heads, and then you can get your arm in, if you take the biggest. Then cut out all the meat and bones piece by piece, and there is a great bottle which will hold gallons.’
“We shouted for joy, for it was as she had said, though I am sure none of us would ever have thought of it if God had not given her the idea. We soon set to work and got the shell ready. The rain storm came quickly. We had turned the boat over, the oars had been washed away, but the mast and sail were lashed to the thwarts. We made a little hollow in the sand and stretched out the sail, and by the time this was done and the men were ready with the turtle-shell the rain came. When it rains in those parts it comes down in bucketfuls, and we soon had enough in the sail to drink our fill and to fill up the turtle-shell to the top.
“The next morning we got the boat afloat, put the other turtle in, with our stock of dried flesh and our shell of water, and set sail. But our luck seemed gone. We lay for days scarce moving through the water, with the sail hanging idle and the sun blazing down upon us. We had not been careful enough of the water at first, making sure that in three or four days we should sight land, and when after three days we put ourselves on short rations, there was scarce a gallon of water left.
“It was a week after that before we saw a sail. Two of the men had jumped overboard raving mad, the rest were lying well-nigh senseless in the bottom of the boat. Only the woman was sitting up, holding her child in her arms. She was very weak, too; but she had never complained, never doubted for a moment. Her eyes went from the child’s face over the sea to look for the help she felt would come, and back again, and at last she said quite quiet and natural:
“’There is the ship. I knew it must come to-day, for my child could not live through another night.’
“We thought she was dreaming or off her head. But one of us made a shift to stand up and look, and when he screamed out ‘A sail! A sail!’ two of us who were strong enough looked out also. There she was and sailing, as we could soon see, on a line as directly for us as if they had our bearings, and had been sent to fetch us.
“It was not until evening that she came up, though she was bringing a light breeze along with her. And when we were lifted on to her deck, and had water held to our lips, and knew that we were safe, we felt, I expect, much the same as you do now, monsieur, that it was the good God himself who had assuredly saved us from death. That was my last voyage, for Henriette was waiting for me at home, and I had promised her that after we had gone to church together I would go no more to distant countries, but would settle down here as a fisherman.”
“That was a narrow escape indeed, Pierre,” Harry said as he worked away with the tar brush. “That idea of the turtle was a splendid one, and you may well say that God put it into the woman’s head, for without it you could never have lived till the ship found you.”
In the meantime Henriette had made her rounds to the cottage to see what remarks had been made as to the coming of her visitors. She saw that everyone had guessed that the girls who had been picked up by Pierre were victims of the massacre, but no one supposed that it was the result of intention.
“Ah, Mere Gounard, but your good man was fortunate to-day,” one of the women said. “My man did not go out. We heard what was doing at Nantes, and he had not the heart to go; besides, who would buy fish caught to-day? If he had thought of it he would have gone too, and perhaps he would have picked up somebody, as you have done. Poor things, what an escape for them!”
“It is wonderful that they have come round,” Henriette said. “It was lucky my husband had some brandy in the boat. He thought for a time he would never bring the youngest round. They are only young girls. What harm could they have done that those monsters at Nantes should try to murder them? There is no fear, I hope, that any in the village will say a word about it.”
“What!” the woman said indignantly. “Do you think that anyone here would betray a comrade to the Reds? Why, we would tear him to pieces.”
“No, no,” Henriette said; “I never thought for a moment that anyone would do it intentionally; but the boys might let slip a word carelessly which might bring them down upon us.”
“We will take care of that,” the woman said. “Make your mind easy. Not a soul outside the village will ever know of it.”
“And,” Henriette added, “one of them has some money hidden upon her, and she told me just before I came out, when I was saying that the village would have a bad time now the fishing was spoiled—that as she hoped to cross to England in a few days, and would have no need of the money, for it seems that she can get plenty over there, she will give five crowns to each house in the village as a thank-offering.”
“Well, that is not to be despised,” the woman said. “We shall have a hard time of it for a bit, and that will carry us on through it. You are sure she can spare it; because we would rather starve than take it if she cannot.”
Henriette assured her that her visitor said she could afford it well.
“Well, then, it’s a lucky day for the village, Mere Gounard, that your husband picked them up.”
“Well, I will go back now,” Henriette said. “Will you go round the village and tell the others about silencing the children? I must get some broth ready by the time these poor creatures wake.”
The next morning Jeanne appeared at breakfast in her dress as a fish-girl, but few words were spoken between her and Harry, for the fisherman and his wife were present.
“How is Virginie?” he asked.
“She’s better, but she is weak and languid, so I told her she must stop in bed for to-day. Do not look anxious. I have no doubt that she will be well enough to be up to-morrow. She has been sleeping ever since she went to bed yesterday, and when she woke she had a basin of broth. I think by to-morrow she will be well enough to get up. But it will be some time before
she is herself again. It is a terrible strain for her to have gone through, but she was very brave all the time we were in prison. She had such confidence in you, she felt sure that you would manage somehow to rescue us.”
After breakfast Jeanne strolled down with Harry to the river-side.
“I feel strange with you, Harry,” she said. “Before you seemed almost like a brother, and now it is so different.”
“Yes; but happier?” Harry asked gently.
“Oh, so much happier, Harry! But there is one thing I want to tell you. It might seem strange to you that I should tell you I loved you on my own account without your speaking to the head of the family.”
“But there was no time for that, Jeanne,” Harry said smiling.
“No,” Jeanne said simply. “I suppose it would have been the same anyhow; but I want to tell you, Harry, that in the first letter which she sent me when she was in prison, Marie told me, that as she might not see me again, she thought it right I should know that our father and mother had told her that night we left home that they thought I cared for you. You didn’t think so, did you, Harry?” she broke off with a vivid blush. “You did not think I cared for you before you cared for me?”
“No, indeed, Jeanne,” he said earnestly. “It never entered my mind. You see, dear, up to the beginning of that time I only felt as a boy, and in England lads of eighteen or nineteen seldom think about such things at all. It was only afterwards, when somehow the danger and the anxiety seemed to make a man of me, when I saw how brave and thoughtful and unselfish you were, that I knew I loved you, and felt that if you could some day love me, I should be the happiest fellow alive. Before that I thought of you as a dear little girl who inclined to make rather too much of me because of that dog business. And did you really care for me then?”
“I never thought of it in that way, Harry, any more than you did, but I know now that my mother was right, and that I loved you all along without knowing it. My dear father and mother told Marie that they thought I was fond of you, and that, if at any time you should get fond of me too and ask for my hand, they gave their approval beforehand, for they were sure that you would make me happy.