Part 23 (1/2)

But on the second day a party of wood-rangers attacked them with guns and captured them; and back they went, and were condemned to six years in irons.

This, as it turned out, didn't amount to much; for, while they were waiting to be marched off to the galleys, their jailor came with news that a son was born to the Emperor, and they were pardoned in honour of it. But instead of putting them back in their old quarters, he fixed them up for a fortnight in a room by themselves, being fearful that such bad characters would contaminate the other prisoners. This room was an upstairs one in a building on the edge of the ramparts, and after a few nights they broke through the ceiling into an empty chamber, which had a window looking on the roof. With a rope made of their bedclothes they lowered themselves clean over the ramparts on to the edge of the precipice over the river; and along this they pa.s.sed--having no daylight to make them giddy--and took their way northwards across the fields.

Well, it doesn't come into my tale to tell you what they went through.

Bosistow wrote out an account of it years after, and you shall read it for yourself. At one place they had to cross a river, and Billy being, like the most of our fishermen, no swimmer, his mates stuck him on a hurdle and pushed him over while they swam behind. They steered by the Pole Star (for, you understand, they could only travel by night) and also by a fine comet which they guessed to be in the north-west quarter.

You see the difference between these two fellows, and how little Providence made of it. Back in Jivvy, Abe c.u.mmins was staring at this same comet out of his prison windows, and doing his sums and thinking of Selina Johns. And here was Bosistow following it up for freedom--with the upshot that he made the coast and was taken like a lamb in the attempt to hire a pa.s.sage, and marched in irons from one jail to another, and then clean back the whole length of France, pretty well to the Mediterranean Sea. And then he was shut up in a prison on the very top of the Alps [2] and twice as far from home as he had been in Jivvy.

That's a moral against folks in a hurry if ever there was one.

Well, let alone that while he was here he received a free pardon from the Emperor, which his persecutors took no notice of, he broke out of prison again, and was caught and brought back half-starving.

And 'twasn't till Christmas of the year 'thirteen that orders came to march him right away north again, with all the prisoners, to a place in the Netherlands; and no sooner arrived than away to go again three hundred and fifty miles west-sou'-west for Tours, on the Loire river.

I've figured it out on the map, and even that is enough to make a man feel sore in his feet. But what made Bosistow glad at the time, and vicious after, was that on his way he fell in with a draft of prisoners, and, among them, with Abe c.u.mmins, who, so to say, had reached the same place by walking a tenth part of the distance. And, what's more, though a man couldn't very well get sleek in Jivvy, Abe had kept his bones filled out somehow, and knew enough navigation by this time to set a course to the Channel Fleet. 'Deed, that's what he began talking about on the first day's journey he and Billy trudged together after their meeting. And he began it after a spell of silence by asking, quiet like, ”Have you been happening to think much about Selina Johns this last year or two?”

”Most every day,” answered Billy.

”So have I,” said Abe, and seemed to be pondering to himself. ”She'll be a woman growed by this time,” he went on.

”Turnin' twenty-seven,” Billy agreed.

”That's of it,” said Abe. ”I've been thinking about her, constant.”

”Well, look'ee here,” spoke up Billy, ”our little agreement holds, don't it?--that is, if we ever get out of this here mess, and Selina hasn't gone and taken a husband. Play fair, leave it to the maid, and let the best man win; that's what we shook hands over. If that holds, seemin'

to me the rest can wait.”

”True, true,” says Abe; but after a bit he asks rather sly-like: ”And s'posin' you're the lucky one, how do'ee reckon you're going to maintain her?”

”Why, on seaman's wages, I suppose; or else at the shoe-mending.

I learnt a little of that trade in Jivvy, as you d'know.”

”Well,” says Abe, ”I was reckonin' to set up school and teach navigation. Back in Ardevora I can make between seventy and eighty pounds a year at that game easy.”

Bosistow scratched his head. ”You've been making the most of your time.

Now I've been busy in my way, too, but seemin' to me the only trade I've learned is prison-breakin'. Not much to keep a wife on, as you say.

Still, a bargain's a bargain.”

”Oh, sutt'nly,” says Abe; ”that is if your conscience allows it.”

”I reckon I'll risk that,” answers Billy, and no more pa.s.sed.

From Tours the prisoners tramped south-east again, to a town called Riou, in the middle of France, and reached it in a snowstorm on March 1.

Here they were billeted for five weeks or so, and here, one night, they were waked up and told that Bonaparty had gone scat, and they must come forth and dance with the townspeople in honour of it. You may be sure they heeled and toed it that night, and no girl satisfied unless she had an Englishman for a partner. But the next day it all turned out to be lies, and off they were marched again. To be short, 'twasn't till the end of April that they came to the river opposite Bordeaux, and were taken in charge by English red-coats, who told them they were free men.

On the 28th of that month Abe and Billy, with forty others, were put on board a sloop and dropped down the river to the _Dartmouth_ frigate, from which they were drafted on to the _Lord Wellington_, and again on to the _Suffolk_ transport. And on May 4 the _Suffolk_, with six other transports, having about fifteen hundred released prisoners on board, weighed anchor under convoy for Plymouth before a fine breeze, S.E. by S.

On Monday, May 9, at half-past two in the afternoon--the wind still steady in the same quarter, and blowing fresh--the _Suffolk_ sighted land, making out St. Michael's Mount; and fetching up to Mousehole Island, the captain hailed a mackerel boat to come alongside and take ash.o.r.e some officers with despatches.

Abe c.u.mmins and Billy Bosistow were both on deck, you may be sure, watching the boat as the fishermen brought her alongside. Not a word had been said between them on the matter that lay closest to their minds, but while they waited Billy fetched a look at the boat and another at Abe. ”The best man wins,” he said to himself, and edged away towards the ladder.

The breeze, as I said, was a fresh one, with a sea in the bay that kept the _Suffolk_ rolling like a porpoise. A heavier lurch than ordinary sent her main channels grinding down on the mackerel boat's gunwale, smas.h.i.+ng her upper strakes and springing her mizzen mast as she recovered herself.