CHAPTER XXIII.
THE "BIEN AIMÉ."
"He had fought the red English, he said,
In many a battle in Spain;
He cursed the red English, and prayed
To meet and fight them again!"—THACKERAY.
Le Bien Aimé encountered very rough weather, and beat hard against the westerly winds which always prevail in the stormy Bay of Biscay, where the broad waves of the Atlantic roll in all their full and unbroken weight.
The third night was so dark and gusty, that neither Quentin Kennedy nor Eugene de Ribeaupierre turned in, but remained at the table much later than usual, listening to the somewhat piratical yarns and experiences of M. Jehan Marin, a short, thick-set, and savage-looking fellow, who wore a tricoloured nightcap, a pea-jacket, and a broad black belt, with a square brass buckle of most melodramatic size. He viewed Quentin evidently with intense dislike, as one of those sacré Anglais, whom he hated as so many snakes or other reptiles, and to this sentiment was added a profound contempt for him as a soldier. Quentin was soon sensible of all this, but deemed it neither safe nor worth his while to notice it; besides, the life of a prisoner of war was deemed of very little value by land or sea in those days.
On this night, just as they went on deck to have a last glance at the pitchy blackness amid which Le Bien Aimé was careering, a flash broke through it, and a cannon-shot boomed across her forefoot; another flash followed, and the shot went through her foresail, which was bellying out upon the wind.
"Tonnerre de Dieu! what is that?" cried M. Marin, choking and sputtering with passion and alarm, as he jumped upon a carronade and peered to windward, from whence the assault came, but could see nothing, so intense was the darkness.
Boom! another heavy gun came, and now he could make out a strange ship, looming large and black on the larboard bow, and carrying an enormous spread of canvas, considering the nature of the night, and it was the guns of her starboard-quarter that were tickling Le Bien Aimé in this rough fashion.
"Nombril de Beelzebub!" bellowed Captain Marin, "here we are in action without seeing or knowing who the devil it is with! Beat to quarters—pipe up the hammocks and open the magazine!"
Just as he was speaking and gesticulating furiously, another shot knocked the fiddle-head of the Bien Aimé all to splinters; so matters were looking decidedly serious. By this time, and long ere the drum beat, his crew, half dressed, were all at their quarters, and the hammocks were bundled anyhow into the side nettings.
"Clear away those weather-guns—cast loose the lashings, and load!" shouted Marin; "stand by the watch to shorten sail; 'way aloft and hand the topgallant sails; small-arm men, aft, and blaze away!"
Le Bien Aimé was now hove full in the wind's eye, so that the next shot from this strange ship went no one knew where.
There were terrible confusion, growling, swearing, with lack of discipline, on board, but no lack of pluck among the crew, and fifty of the most finished ragamuffins that ever sailed from the Loire or Brest stood to their guns.
The next cannon that flashed from the strange ship made Quentin, who clung to a belaying pin on the port side, spring backwards involuntarily, the red light of the explosion seemed so close; but it enabled him to see for an instant the large ship with her lee side full of men.
"She is a frigate, at least!" exclaimed Marin, with a frightful oath, as he drew his cutlass; "we cannot fight her; she may be French, and the whole affair a mistake, though: hush, silence fore and aft—they are hailing!"
"Ho—brig ahoy!" sang out a voice in most unmistakeable English.
Jehan Marin ground his yellow teeth—those cursed English! Could he doubt that any but they would first fire and then question?
"Hallo!" he replied.
"What brig is that?" hailed the officer, through a trumpet, and Quentin felt his heart beating wildly with anxiety and anticipation. Next moment he heard Eugene and the French skipper engaged in a brief but very angry expostulation.
"What is the matter?" he asked, as Eugene joined him.
"Don't inquire," said he, "lest I blush that I am a Frenchman."
"Then your conference concerned me?"
"It certainly did, mon ami."
"How?"
"Marin wished to force you to deceive your countrymen, by replying to them in English—replying with his pistol at your head. Sangdieu! you comprehend?"
Before Quentin could reply, the question,
"What brig is that? d—n it, you had better look sharp!" came over the black surging water from the foe.
"Stand by the braces, and be ready to fill the sails to the yard-heads, and bear away right before the wind," said Marin; then, raising his voice, he shouted a deep and bitter curse through his trumpet.
"Hail again," cried the officer; "this is His Britannic Majesty's ship Medusa—send a boat off instantly with your skipper and his papers."
Instead of complying, Marin daringly gave orders to fire his three 12-pounders on the portside, to fill his yards, and bear right away before the western breeze; but on the appearance of the first portfire glittering on his deck, bang came another shot from this pugnacious stranger, which took his foreyard right in the sling; it came crashing down on deck, breaking the arm of one man and the leg of another; and before M. Marin had made up his mind what to do next, the Medusa, a fifty-gun ship, forged a little way ahead of him, as if she meant to sweep his deck or sink him; but neither was her object, for a boat's crew of those "pestilent Englishmen," with pistols in their belts and cutlasses in their teeth, were alongside in a moment, holding on with boat-hooks to the forechains, as the now partly unmanageable brig rose and fell heavily on the black waves of that stormy midnight sea. Another boat-load clung like leeches to the starboard quarter, and in less than five minutes the Bien Aimé was the lawful prize of the British frigate, Medusa.
Her crew were all disarmed and placed under a guard of marines; a strong hawser was run on board and made fast to the capstan or windlass, the yard heads were trimmed, a jury fore-yard rigged in a trice, and the privateer in tow of the Medusa stood off towards the coast of "perfidious Albion." The weather was so rough, however, that they were compelled to slack off or let go the towline; but lanterns were hoisted at the foreyard, and thus they kept company till daylight.
"Fortune changes," said Eugene, laughing with all the nonchalance of a Frenchman; "you are now free, and I am a prisoner."
The prize-master, a rough and somewhat elderly man for a middy—one of those hardworking fellows whose boast it used to be that they came into the service through the hawse-holes, questioned the cabin passengers sharply and categorically.
"You, sir," said he, looking at Eugene, cutlass in hand; "what are you?"
"Eugene de Ribeaupierre, sous-lieutenant in the French service, and ready to give my parole."
"Keep it till we are at Spithead; and you, sir," he added, turning furiously to Quentin, "are an Englishman, I see, and in the French service too—eh?"
"No, sir; I happen to be a Scotsman, and in the British service."
"Where are your papers?"
"I have none."
"Oho; d—n me! you have none?" said he, suspiciously.
"No; but my name is recorded in the ship's books as a prisoner of war, a lieutenant in the 7th Fusiliers, proceeding to Paris on parole."
The mid shook Quentin's hand on hearing this, and ordered a jorum of grog, in which Eugene good-naturedly joined him, remarking—
"Ma foi, monsieur, don't be too sure of having us at the Spithead."
"Why not, if the wind holds good?"
"Some of our ships may retake us—aha!"
"No fear of that, mounseer; the sea at present is only open to us," was the composed reply.
Marin, who sat in a corner, imprecated his fate bitterly; he cursed what he considered Eugene's squeamishness, which prevented him from availing himself compulsorily of Quentin's aid to deceive the Medusa; but consoled himself by the hope that "he would yet take it out of the hides of those 'sacré Anglais,' in some fashion or other."
"Take up the slack of your jawing-tackle, Johnny," said the mid; "drink your grog, shut up, and turn in; your ill luck to-night may be mine to-morrow."
Madame de Ribeaupierre was greatly concerned by the turn her affairs had taken; but at a time when the whole sea was covered by the cruisers of the largest fleet in the world, it was strange that she did not anticipate some such catastrophe.
When it was reported to the captain of the Medusa that the wife of General de Ribeaupierre was in the Bien Aimé, he politely offered her the use of a cabin on board his ship; but having no wish to be separated from Eugene, she continued in the privateer, with which the frigate kept company for several days, until she saw her close in shore under the white cliffs of Old England, when she brought her starboard tacks on board, and, like a great eagle in search of fresh prey, stood over towards the coast of France. Thus, on the evening of the 16th of March, exactly two months after the battle of Corunna, Quentin found the Bien Aimé safely anchored at Spithead, close by the guns of a line-of-battle ship.
There Eugene gave his parole, and Quentin found himself a free man!
The news spread rapidly in Portsmouth and in the Isle of Wight that the wife and son of Bonaparte's favourite cavalry officer, the Governor of Corunna, had been brought in as prisoners; and thus, on the very day they were preparing to go on shore, escorted by Quentin, a staff-officer, in full uniform, came fussily on board in a boat pulled by marines.
Quentin recognised in him Lloyd Conyers, the aide-de-camp, whom he had frequently seen in Spain.
He had come, he stated, "by direction of the General commanding in the Isle of Wight, to invite Madame de Ribeaupierre, with her friends and attendants, to share the hospitality of his house—to consider it as her home, in fact, until she could make such arrangements as she wished."
"Is the general married, monsieur?" asked madame, smiling; "for I am not so very old."
"Madame, the general is married, and is nearer seventy than sixty," replied Conyers, laughing behind his great staff plume. "A boat is in readiness, and a carriage awaits you on the beach. The general lives at Minden Lodge, St. Helen's—we dine at half-past six."
Madame de Ribeaupierre, who was considerably crushed and crestfallen, accepted the general's offer; and accompanied by her maid, who had many misgivings and vague terrors of the natives, by her son and her aide-de-camp, as she laughingly styled Quentin, landed in the Isle of Wight; and for the first time in her life found herself treading English ground.