Springhaven by Richard Doddridge Blackmore (best story books to read TXT) 📕

We shall have perfidious Albion caught in her own noose, as you shall see. You have not heard of one Captain Wright, and the landing-place at Biville. We will have our little Biville at Springhaven. There will be too many of us to swing up by a rope. Courage, my friend! The future is with you. Our regiments are casting dice for the fairest English counties. But your native county is reserved for you. You shall possess the whole of it--I swear it by the god of war--and command the Southern army. Be brave, be wise, be vigilant, and above all things be patient."

The great man held up his hand, as a sign that he wanted his horse, and then offered it to Caryl Carne, who touched it lightly with his lips, and bent one knee. "My Emperor!" he said, "my Emperor!"

"Wait until the proper time," said Napoleon, gravely, and yet well pleased. "You are not the first, and you will not be the last. Observe discretion. Farewell, my friend!"

In another minute he was gone, and the place looked empty without him. Carne stood gloomily watching the horsemen as their figures grew small in the distance, the large man behind pounding heavily away, like an English dragoon, on the scanty sod, of no importance to anybody--unless he had a wife or children--the little man in front (with the white plume waving, and the well-bred horse going easily), the one whose body would affect more bodies, and certainly send more souls out of them, than any other born upon this earth as yet, and--we hope--as long as ever it endureth.

Caryl Carne cared not a jot about that. He was anything but a philanthropist; his weaknesses, if he had any, were not dispersive, but thoroughly concentric. He gathered his long cloak round his body, and went to the highest spot within his reach, about a mile from the watch-tower at Cape Grisnez, and thence he had a fine view of the vast invasive fleet and the vaster host behind it.

An Englishman who loved his Country would have turned sick at heart and faint of spirit at the sight before him. The foe was gathered together there to eat us up on every side, to get us into his net and rend us, to tear us asunder as a lamb is torn when its mother has dropped it in flight from the wolves. For forty square miles there was not an acre without a score of tents upon it, or else of huts thrown up with slabs of wood to keep the powder dry, and the steel and iron bright and sharp to go into the vitals of England. Mighty docks had been scooped out by warlike hands, and shone with ships crowded with guns and alive with men. And all along the shore for leagues, wherever any shelter lay, and great batteries protected them, hundreds of other ships tore at their moorings, to dash across the smooth narrow line, and blacken with fire and redden with blood the white cliffs of the land they loathed.

And what was there to stop them? The steam of the multitude rose in the air, and the clang of armour filled it. Numbers irresistible, and relentless power urged them. At the beck of the hand that had called the horse, the grey sea would have been black with ships, and the pale waves would have been red with fire. Carne looked at the water way touched with silver by the soft descent of the winter sun, and upon it, so far as his gaze could reach, there were but a dozen little objects moving, puny creatures in the distance--mice in front of a lion's den. And much as he hated with his tainted heart the land of his father, the land of his birth, some reluctant pride arose that he was by right an Englishman.

"It is the dread of the English seaman, it is the fame of Nelson, it is the habit of being beaten when England meets them upon the sea--nothing else keeps this mighty host like a set of trembling captives here, when they might launch forth irresistibly. And what is a great deal worse, it will keep me still in my ruined dungeons, a spy, an intriguer, an understrapper, when I am fit to be one of the foremost. What a fool I am so to be cowed and enslaved, by a man no better endowed than myself with anything, except self-confidence! I should have looked over his head, and told him that I had had enough of it, and if he would not take advantage of my toils, I would toil for him no longer. Why, he never even thanked me, that I can remember, and my pay is no more than Charron's! And a pretty strict account I have to render of every Republican coin he sends. He will have his own head on them within six months, unless he is assassinated. His manners are not those of a gentleman. While I was speaking to him, he actually turned his back upon me, and cleared his throat! Every one hates him as much as fears him, of all who are in the rank of gentlemen. How would it pay me to throw him over, denounce my own doings, excuse them as those of a Frenchman and a French officer, and bow the knee to Farmer George? Truly if it were not for my mother, who has sacrificed her life for me, I would take that course, and have done with it. Such all-important news would compel them to replace me in the property of my forefathers; and if neighbours looked coldly on me at first, I could very soon conquer that nonsense. I should marry little Dolly, of course, and that would go half-way towards doing it. I hate that country, but I might come to like it, if enough of it belonged to me. Aha! What would my mother say, if she dreamed that I could have such ideas? And the whole of my life belongs to her. Well, let me get back to my ruins first. It would never do to be captured by a British frigate. We had a narrow shave of it last time. And there will be a vile great moon to-night."

With these reflections--which were upon the whole more to his credit than the wonted web of thought--Carne with his long stride struck into a path towards the beach where his boat was waiting. Although he knew where to find several officers who had once been his comrades, he kept himself gladly to his loneliness; less perhaps by reason of Napoleon's orders than from the growing charm which Solitude has for all who begin to understand her.


CHAPTER XXXIX


RUNNING THE GAUNTLET

Though Carne had made light, in his impatient mood, of the power of the blockading fleet, he felt in his heart a sincere respect for its vigilance and activity. La Liberte (as the unhappy Cheeseman's schooner was called within gunshot of France) was glad enough to drop that pretentious name, and become again the peaceful London Trader, when she found herself beyond the reach of French batteries. The practice of her captain, the lively Charron, was to give a wide berth to any British cruiser appearing singly; but whenever more than one hove in sight, to run into the midst of them and dip his flag. From the speed of his schooner he could always, in a light wind, show a clean pair of heels to any single heavy ship, and he had not yet come across any cutter, brig of war, or light corvette that could collar the Liberte in any sort of weather. Renaud Charron was a brave young Frenchman, as fair a specimen as could be found, of a truly engaging but not overpowering type, kindly, warm-hearted, full of enterprise, lax of morals (unless honour--their veneer--was touched), loving excitement, and capable of anything, except skulking, or sulking, or running away slowly.

"None of your risky tricks to-night!" said Carne, as he stood on the schooner's deck, in the dusk of the February evening, himself in a dark mood growing darker--for his English blood supplied the elements of gloom, and he felt a dull pleasure in goading a Frenchman, after being trampled on by one of French position. "You will just make straight, as the tide and shoals allow, for our usual landing-place, set me ashore, and follow me to the old quarters. I have orders to give you, which can be given only there."

"My commanding officer shall be obeyed," the Frenchman answered, with a light salute and smile, for he was not endowed with the power of hating, or he might have indulged that bad power towards Carne; "but I fear that he has not found things to his liking."

"What concern is that of yours? Your duty is to carry out my orders, to the utmost of your ability, and offer opinion when asked for."

The light-hearted Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. "My commanding officer is right," he said; "but the sea is getting up, and there will be wind, unless I mistake the arising of the moon. My commanding officer had better retire, until his commands are needed. He has been known to feel the effects of high tossing, in spite of his unequalled constitution. Is it not so, my commander? I ask with deference, and anxiety."

Carne, who liked to have the joke on his side only, swore at the moon and the wind, in clear English, which was shorter and more efficacious than French. He longed to say, "Try to keep me out of rough water," but his pride, and the fear of suggesting the opposite to this sailor who loved a joke, kept him silent, and he withdrew to his little cuddy, chewing a biscuit, to feed, if it must be so, the approaching malady.

"We shall have some game, and a fine game too," said Renaud Charron to himself, as he ordered more sail to be made. "Milord gives himself such mighty airs! We will take him to the cross-run off the Middle Bank, and offer him a basin through the key-hole. To make sea-sick an Englishman--for, after all, what other is he?--will be a fine piece of revenge for fair France."

Widow Shanks had remarked with tender sorrow--more perhaps because she admired the young man, and was herself a hearty soul, than from any loss of profit in victualling him--that "he was one of they folk as seems to go about their business, and do their jobs, and keep their skins as full as other people, without putting nort inside of them." She knew one of that kind before, and he was shot by the Coast-guard, and when they postmartyred him, an eel twenty foot long was found inside him, doubled up for all the world like a love-knot. Squire Carne was of too high a family for that; but she would give a week's rent to know what was inside him.

There was no little justice in these remarks, as is pretty sure to be the case with all good-natured criticism. The best cook that ever was roasted cannot get out of a pot more than was put in it; and the weight of a cask, as a general rule, diminishes if the tap is turned, without any redress at the bung-hole. Carne ran off his contents too fast, before he had arranged for fresh receipts; and all who have felt what comes of that will be able to feel for him in the result.

But a further decrease was in store for him now. As the moon arose, the wind got higher, and chopped round to one point north of west, raising