The Shoes of Fortune
All that day I planned escape. Thurot came to the cabin and smoked and conversed pleasantly, but found me so abstracted that he could scarcely fail to think I meant a counter-sap.
“Be tranquil, my Paul,” he advised; “Clancarty and I will make your life on ship-board as little irksome as possible, but it is your own cursed luck that you must make up your mind to a fortnight of it.”
But that was considerably longer than I was ready to think of with equanimity. What I wished for was an immediate freedom and a ship to England, and while he talked I reviewed a dozen methods of escape. Here was I with a secret worth a vast deal to the British Government; if I could do my country that service of putting her into possession of it in time to prevent catastrophe, might I not, without presumption, expect some clemency from her laws for the crime I had committed in the hot blood of ignorant and untutored youth? I saw the most cheerful possibilities rise out of that accident that had made me an eavesdropper in Thurot’s lodging – freedom, my family perhaps restored to me, my name partly re-established; but the red shoes that set me on wrong roads to start with still kept me on them. Thurot was an amiable enough gaoler, but not his best wine nor his wittiest stories might make me forget by how trivial a chance I had lost my opportunity.
We were joined in the afternoon by Lord Clancarty.
“What, lad!” cried his lordship, pomaded and scented beyond words; fresh, as he told us, from the pursuit of a lady whose wealth was shortly to patch up his broken fortunes. “What, lad! Here’s a pretty matter! Pressed, egad! A renegade against his will! ‘Tis the most cursed luck, Captain Thurot, and wilt compel the poor young gentleman to cut the throats of his own countrymen?”
“I? Faith, not I!” said Thurot. “I press none but filthy Swedes. M. Greig has my word for it that twelve hours before we weigh anchor he may take his leave of us. Je le veux bien.”
“Bah! ‘Tis an impolite corsair this. As for me I should be inconsolable to lose M. Greig to such a dull country as this England. Here’s an Occasion, M. le Capitaine, for pledging his health in a bottle, and wishing him well out of his troubles.”
“You do not stand sufficiently on your dignity, Clancarty,” laughed Thurot. “Here’s the enemy – ”
“Dignity! pooh!” said his lordship. “To stand on that I should need a year’s practice first on the tight-rope. There’s that about an Irish gentleman that makes the posturings and proprieties and pretences of the fashionable world unnecessary. Sure, race will show in his face and action if he stood alone in his shirt-sleeves on a village common juggling balls. I am of the oldest blood that springs in Irish kings. ‘Tis that knowledge keeps my heart up when circumstances make the world look rotten like a cheese. But the curst thing is one cannot for ever be drinking and dining off a pedigree, and here I am deserted by M. Tête-de-mouche – ”
Thurot put up his hand to check one of these disloyalties to the Pretender that I had long since learned were common with Lord Clancarty.
“Bah!” cried his lordship. “I love you, Tony, and all the other boys, but your Prince is a madman – a sotted madman tied to the petticoat tails of a trollope. This Walkinshaw – saving your presence, Paul Greig, for she’s your countrywoman and by way of being your friend, I hear – has ruined Charles and the Cause. We have done what we could to make him send madame back to the place she came from, but he’ll do nothing of the kind. ‘She has stuck by me through thick and thin, and lost all for me, and now I shall stick by her,’ says foolish Master Sentiment.”
“Bravo!” cried Thurot. “‘Tis these things make us love the Prince and have faith in his ultimate success.”
“You were ever the hopeful ass, Tony,” said his lordship coolly. “Il riest pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre, and you must shut your ears against a tale that all the world is shouting at the pitch of its voice. Who knows better than Tony Thurot how his Royal Highness has declined? Why! ‘tis manifest in the fellow’s nose; I declare he drinks like a fish – another vice he brought back from your mountain land, M. Greig, along with Miss Walkinshaw – ”
“There is far too much of Miss Walkinshaw about your lordship’s remarks,” I cried in an uncontrollable heat that the lady should be the subject of implications so unkind.
He stared, and then kissed his hand to me with laughter and a bow, “Ha!” he cried, “here’s another young gentleman of sentiment. Stap me if I say a word against the lady for your sake, Andy Greig’s nephew.” And back he went to his bottle.
In this light fashion we spent a day that by rights should have been more profitably and soberly occupied. The frigate lay well out from the quays from which Thurot had conveyed me with none of the indignities that might be expected by a prisoner. There was, as I have said, none of her crew on board save a watch of two men. Beside her quarter there hung a small smuggling cutter that had been captured some days previously. As I sat in the cabin, yawning at the hinder-end over Clancarty’s sallies, I could hear now and then the soft thudding of the smuggler’s craft against the fenders as the sea rocked us lightly, and it put a mad fancy into my head.
How good it would be, I thought, to be free on board such a vessel and speeding before a light wind to Britain! Was it wholly impossible? The notion so possessed me that I took an occasion to go on deck and see how things lay.
The smuggler’s boat had her mast stepped, but no sails in her. Over the bulwark of the frigate leaned one of the watch idly looking at sea-gulls that cried like bairns upon the smuggler’s thwarts and gunnels. He was a tarry Dutchman (by his build and colour); I fancy that at the time he never suspected I was a prisoner, for he saluted me with deference.
The harbour was emptier than usual of shipping. Dusk was falling on the town; some lights were twinkling wanly and bells rang in the cordage of the quays. I asked the seaman if he knew where the hoy Vrijster of Helvoetsluys lay.
At that his face brightened and he promptly pointed to her yellow hull on the opposite side of the harbour.
“Did my honour know Captain Breuer?” he asked, in crabbed French.
My honour was very pleased to confess that he did, though in truth my acquaintance with the skipper who had taken us round from Helvoetsluys went scarcely further than sufficed me to recall his name.
The best sailor ever canted ship! my Dutchman assured me with enthusiasm. How often have I heard the self-same sentiment from mariners? for there is something jovial and kind in the seaman’s manner that makes him ever fond of the free, the brave and competent of his own calling, and ready to cry their merits round the rolling world.
A good seaman certainly! – I agreed heartily, though the man might have been merely middling for all I knew of him.
He would like nothing better than to have an hour with Captain Breuer, said Mynheer.
“And I, too,” said I quickly. “But for Captain Thurot’s pressing desire that I should spend the evening here I should be in Breuer’s cabin now. Next to being with him there I would reckon the privilege of having him here.”
There might be very little difficulty about that if my honour was willing, said Mynheer. They were old shipmates; had sailed the Zuyder Sea together, and drunken in a score of ports. Dearly indeed would he love to have some discourse with Breuer. But to take leave from the frigate and cross to the hoy – no! Captain Thurot would not care for him to do that.
“Why not have Breuer come to the frigate?” I asked, with my heart beating fast.
“Why, indeed?” repeated Mynheer with a laugh. “A hail across the harbour would not fetch him.”
“Then go for him,” said I, my heart beating faster than ever lest he should have some suspicion of my condition and desires.
He reminded me that he had no excuse to leave the frigate, though to take the small boat at the stern and row over to the hoy would mean but a minute or two.
“Well, as for excuses,” said I, “that’s easily arranged, for I can give you one to carry a note to the care of the captain, and you may take it at your leisure.”
At his leisure! He would take it at once and thankfully while we gentlemen were drinking below, for there was no pleasure under heaven he could compare with half an hour of good Jan Breuer’s company.
Without betraying my eagerness to avail myself of such an unlooked-for opportunity, I deliberately wrote a note in English intimating that I was a prisoner on the frigate and in pressing humour to get out of her at the earliest moment. I addressed it to Kilbride, judging the Highlander more likely than Father Hamilton to take rational steps for my release if that were within the bounds of possibility.
I assured the seaman that if he lost no time in taking it over I would engage his absence would never be noticed, and he agreed to indicate to me by a whistle when he returned.
With a cheerful assurance that he would have Jan Breuer on this deck in less than twenty minutes the seaman loosed the painter of the small boat and set forth upon his errand, while I returned to the cabin where Thurot and Clancarty still talked the most contrary and absurd politics over their wine. The vast and tangled scheme of French intrigue was set before me; at another time it might have been of the most fascinating interest, but on this particular occasion I could not subdue my mind to matters so comparatively trivial, while I kept my hearing strained for the evidence that the Dutchman had accomplished his mission and got back.
The moments passed; the interest flagged; Clancarty began to yawn and Thurot grew silent. It was manifest that the sooner my Dutchman was back to his ship the better for my plan. Then it was I showed the brightest interest in affairs that an hour earlier failed to engage a second of my attention, and I discovered for the entertainment of my gaoler and his friend a hitherto unsuspected store of reminiscence about my Uncle Andrew and a fund of joke and anecdote whereof neither of them probably had thought me capable.
But all was useless. The signal that the Dutchman had returned was not made when Lord Clancarty rose to his feet and intimated his intention there and then of going ashore, though his manner suggested that it would have been easy to induce him to wait longer. We went on deck with him. The night was banked with clouds though a full moon was due; only a few stars shone in the spaces of the zenith; our vessel was in darkness except where a lamp swung at the bow.
“Mon Dieu! Tony, what a pitchy night! I’d liefer be safe ashore than risking my life getting there in your cockle-shell,” said Clancarty.
“‘Art all right, Lord Clancarty,” said Thurot. “Here’s a man will row you to the quay in two breaths, and you’ll be snug in bed before M. Greig and I have finished our prayers.” Then he cried along the deck for the seaman.
I felt that all was lost now the fellow’s absence was to be discovered.
What was my astonishment to hear an answering call, and see the Dutchman’s figure a blotch upon the blackness of the after-deck.
“Bring round the small boat and take Lord Clancarty ashore,” said the captain, and the seaman hastened to do so. He sprang into the small boat, released her rope, and brought her round.
“A demain, dear Paul,” cried his lordship with a hiccough. “It’s curst unkind of Tony Thurot not to let you ashore on parole or permit me to wait with you.”
The boat dropped off into the darkness of the harbour, her oars thudding on the thole-pins.
“There goes a decent fellow though something of a fool,” said Thurot. “‘Tis his kind have made so many enterprises like our own have an ineffectual end. And now you must excuse me, M. Greig, if I lock you into your cabin. There are too few of us on board to let you have the run of the vessel.”
He put a friendly hand upon the shoulder I shrugged with chagrin at this conclusion to an unfortunate day.
“Sorry, M. Greig, sorry,” he said humorously. “Qui commence mal finit mal, and I wish to heaven you had begun the day by finding Antoine Thurot at home, in which case we had been in a happier relationship to-night.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
DISCLOSES THE MANNER OF MY ESCAPE AND HOW WE SET SAIL FOR ALBION
Thurot turned the key on me with a pleasantry that was in no accordance with my mood, and himself retired to the round house on deck where his berth was situated. I sat on a form for a little, surrendered all to melancholy, then sought to remove it by reading, as sleep in my present humour was out of the question. My reading, though it lasted for an hour or two, was scarcely worth the name, for my mind continually wandered from the page. I wondered if my note to Kilbride had been delivered, and if any step on his part was to be expected therefrom; the hope that rose with that reflection died at once upon the certainty that as the Dutch seaman had not signalled as he had promised he had somehow learned the true nature of my condition in the frigate. Had he told Thurot? If he had told Thurot – which was like enough – that I had communicated with any one outside the vessel there was little doubt that the latter would take adequate steps to prevent interference by Kilbride or any one else.
We are compact of memories, a mere bundle of bygone days, childish recollections, ancient impressions, and so an older experience came to me, too, of the night I sat in the filthy cabin of Dan Risk’s doomed vessel hearing the splash of illegitimate oars, anticipating with a mind scarcely more disturbed than I had just now the step of the officer from the prison at Blackness and the clutch of the chilly fetters.
There was a faint but rising nor’-east wind. It sighed among the shrouds of the frigate. I could hear it even in the cabin, pensive like the call of the curfew at a great distance. The waves washed against the timbers in curious short gluckings and hissings. On the vessel herself not a sound was to be heard, until of a sudden there came a scratching at my cabin door!
It was incredible! I had heard no footstep on the companion, and I had ceased to hope for anything from the Dutchman!
“Who’s there?” I asked softly, and at that the key outside was turned and I was fronted by Kilbride!
He wore the most ridiculous travesty of the Dutchman’s tarry breeks and tarpaulin hat and coarse wide jumper, and in the light of my candle there was a humorous twinkle on his face as he entered, closed the door softly after him, and sat down beside me.
“My goodness!” he whispered, “you have a face on you as if you were in a graveyard watching ghosts. It’s time you were steeping the withies to go away as we say in the Language, and you may be telling me all the story of it elsewhere.”
“Where’s the Dutchman that took my letter?” I asked.
“Where,” said Kilbride, “but in the place that well befits him – at the lug of an anker of Rotterdam gin taking his honest night’s rest. I’m here guizing in his tarry clothes, and if I were Paul Greig of the Hazel Den I would be clapping on my hat gey quick and getting out of here without any more parley.”
“You left him in the hoy!” said I astonished.
“Faith, there was nothing better for it!” said he coolly. “Breuer gave him so much of the juniper for old acquaintance that when I left he was so full of it that he had lost the power of his legs and you might as well try to keep a string of fish standing.”
“And it was you took Clancarty ashore?”
“Who else? And I don’t think it’s a great conceit of myself to believe I play-acted the Dutch tarry-breeks so very well, though I was in something of a tremble in case the skipper here would make me out below my guizard’s clothes. You may thank your stars the moon was as late of rising this night as a man would be that was at a funeral yesterday.” “And where’s the other man who was on this vessel?” I asked, preparing to go.
“Come on deck and I’ll show you,” said Kilbride, checking a chuckle of amusement at something.
We crept softly on deck into the night now slightly lit by a moon veiled by watery clouds. The ship seemed all our own and we were free to leave her when we chose for the small boat hung at her stern.
“You were asking for the other one,” said Kilbride. “There he is,” and he pointed to a huddled figure bound upon the waist. “When I came on board after landing Clancarty this stupid fellow discovered I was a stranger and nearly made an outcry; but I hit him on the lug with the loom of an oar. He’ll not be observing very much for a while yet, but I was bound all the same to put a rope on him to prevent him disturbing Captain Thurot’s sleep too soon.”
We spoke in whispers for the night seemed all ear and I was for ever haunted by the reflection that Thurot was divided from us by little more than an inch or two of teak-wood. Now and then the moon peeped through a rift of cloud and lit a golden roadway over the sea, enticing me irresistibly home.
“O God, I wish I was in Scotland!” I said passionately.
“Less luck than that will have to be doing us,” said Kilbride, fumbling at the painter of the boat. “The hoy sets sail for Calais in an hour or two, and it’s plain from your letter we’ll be best to be taking her round that length.”
“No, not Calais,” said I. “It’s too serious a business with me for that. I’m wanting England, and wanting it unco fast.”
“Oh, Dhe!” said my countryman, “here’s a fellow with the appetite of Prince Charlie and as likely to gratify it. What for must it be England, loachain?”
“I can only hint at that,” I answered hastily, “and that in a minute. Are ye loyal?”
“To a fine fellow called MacKellar first and to my king and country after?”
“The Stuarts?” said I.
He cracked his thumb. “It’s all by with that,” said he quickly and not without a tone of bitterness.
“The breed of them has never been loyal to me, and if I could wipe out of my life six months of the cursedest folly in Forty-five I would go back to Scotland with the first chance and throw my bonnet for Geordie ever after like the greasiest burgess ever sold a wab of cloth or a cargo of Virginia in Glasgow.”
“Then,” I said, “you and me’s bound for England this night, for I have that in my knowledge should buy the safety of the pair of us,” and I briefly conveyed my secret.
He softly whistled with astonishment.
“Man! it’s a gey taking idea,” he confessed. “But the bit is to get over the Channel.”
“I have thought of that,” said I. “Here’s a smuggler wanting no more than a rag of sail in this wind to make the passage in a couple of days.”
“By the Holy Iron it’s the very thing!” he interrupted, slapping his leg.
It takes a time to tell all this in writing, but in actual fact our whole conversation together in the cabin and on the deck occupied less than five minutes. We were both of us too well aware of the value of time to have had it otherwise and waste moments in useless conversation.
“What is to be done is this,” I suggested, casting a rapid glance along the decks and upwards to the spars. “I will rig up a sail of some sort here and you will hasten over again in the small-boat to the hoy and give Father Hamilton the option of coming with us. He may or he may not care to run the risks involved in the exploit, but at least we owe him the offer.”
“But when I’m across at the hoy there, here’s you with this dovering body and Captain Thurot. Another knock might settle the one, but you would scarcely care to have knocks going in the case of an old friend like Tony Thurot, who’s only doing his duty in keeping you here with such a secret in your charge.”
“I have thought of that, too,” I replied quickly, “and I will hazard Thurot.”
Kilbride lowered himself into the small-boat, pushed off from the side of the frigate, and in silence half-drifted in the direction of the Dutch vessel. My plans were as clear in my head as if they had been printed on paper. First of all I took such provender as I could get from my cabin and placed it along with a breaker of water and a lamp in the cutter. Then I climbed the shrouds of the frigate, and cut away a small sail that I guessed would serve my purpose, letting it fall into the cutter. I made a shift at sheets and halyards and found that with a little contrivance I could spread enough canvas to take the cutter in that weather at a fair speed before the wind that had a blessed disposition towards the coast of England. I worked so fast it was a miracle, dreading at every rustle of the stolen sail – at every creak of the cutter on the fenders, that either the captain or his unconscious seaman would awake.
My work was scarcely done when the small-boat came off again from the hoy, and as she drew cautiously near I saw that MacKellar had with him the bulky figure of the priest. He climbed ponderously, at my signal, into the cutter, and MacKellar joined me for a moment on the deck of the frigate.
“He goes with us then?” I asked, indicating the priest.
“To the Indies if need be,” said Kilbride. “But the truth is that this accident is a perfect God-send to him, for England’s the one place below the firmament he would choose for a refuge at this moment. Is all ready?”
“If my sail-making’s to be relied on she’s in the best of trim,” I answered.
“And – what do ye call it? – all found?”
“A water breaker, a bottle of brandy, a bag of bread – ”
“Enough for a foray of fifty men!” he said heartily. “Give me meal and water in the heel of my shoe and I would count it very good vivers for a fortnight.”
He went into the cutter; I released the ropes that bound her to the frigate and followed him.
“Mon Dieu dear lad, ‘tis a world of most fantastic happenings,” was all the poor old priest said, shivering in the cold night air.
We had to use the oars of the frigate’s small-boat for a stroke or two so as to get the cutter round before the wind; she drifted quickly from the large ship’s side almost like a living thing with a crave for freedom at last realised; up speedily ran her sail, unhandsome yet sufficient, the friendly air filled out the rustling folds and drove her through the night into the open sea.
There is something in a moonlit night at sea that must touch in the most cloddish heart a spring of fancy. It is friendlier than the dawn that at its most glorious carries a hint of sorrow, or than the bravest sunset that reminds us life is a brief day at the best of it, and the one thing sempiternal yet will be the darkness. We sat in the well of the cutter – three odd adventurers, myself the most silent because I had the double share of dubiety about the enterprise, for who could tell how soon the doomster’s hand would be on me once my feet were again on British soil? Yet now when I think of it – of the moonlit sea, the swelling sail above us, the wake behind that shone with fire – I must count it one of the happiest experiences of my life.
The priest looked back at the low land of France receding behind us, with its scattered lights on the harbour and the shore, mere subjects to the queenly moon. “There goes poor Father Hamilton,” said he whimsically, “happy schoolboy, foolish lover in Louvain that had never but moonlit eves, parish priest of Dixmunde working two gardens, human and divine, understanding best the human where his bees roved, but loving all men good and ill. There goes the spoiled page, the botched effort, and here’s a fat old man at the start of a new life, and never to see his darling France again. Ah! the good mother; Dieu te bénisse!”
CHAPTER XL
MY INTERVIEW WITH PITT
Of our voyage across the Channel there need be no more said than that it was dull to the very verge of monotony, for the wind, though favourable, was often in a faint where our poor sail shook idly at the mast. Two days later we were in London, and stopped at the Queen’s Head above Craig’s Court in Charing Cross.
And now I had to make the speediest possible arrangement for a meeting with those who could make the most immediate and profitable use of the tidings I was in a position to lay before them, by no means an easy matter to decide upon for a person who had as little knowledge of London as he had of the Cities of the Plain.
MacKellar – ever the impetuous Gael – was for nothing less than a personal approach to his Majesty.
