Part 24 (1/2)

”My G.o.d!” In that moment there came back to him a memory. The lad, Gaston, had his arm in a sling the morning he learned the child was missing; the woman, who lived in the hut and saw the child taken from Pierre, had said, ”His arm hung straight by his side, as though stiff with pain.”

Had he found the truth at last?

”Go on,” he said.

”The bishop's man--had--got it safe. Aurelie and Gaston--caught--slew him--took the child. She--knew--your birth--and--hated you--and would gain--as much as--as I. Seek her--if you--would-know----”

He fell p.r.o.ne on the lid and spoke no more.

And St. Georges, reeling back against the opposite bulkhead, stared down at him, forgetting all that was taking place around the burning transport in his misery at that revelation.

”Aurelie,” he whispered, ”Aurelie! Hated me, too, and hated her. O G.o.d, pity me!”

And again above all else there rose the triumphant shout:

”Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, G.o.d save the king!”

NOTE.--The description of the battle of La Hogue is taken from many sources, but princ.i.p.ally from the narrative of the chaplain on board the Centurion. It is the most full and complete, especially as regards the s.h.i.+ps engaged, which I know of. The worthy divine was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and this seems to have been his first cruise. He returned ”home” afterward, viz., to Oxford, and has left very fervent expressions of grat.i.tude at having been able to do so.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH.

As he staggered back after that revelation, St. Georges noticed that the great chant sounded less strongly and more distantly in his ears, and, seized with a sudden apprehension, he rushed to the cabin porthole.

Then he knew that what he had dreaded, that the idea which had sprung into his mind a second before, as the st.u.r.dy English voices became more hushed and subdued, was indeed an absolute fact--the flotilla was retiring. It had finished its work of destruction--it was returning to the man-of-war.

And he was left behind!

Behind! to fall into the hands of the French, who, he knew very well, would come forth from the fort and batteries directly the conquerors had withdrawn. He was in a trap from which there was no escape. He would be found there, and his doom be swift.

Yet, in a moment, even as he glanced down at his enemy at his feet and noted the set features--handsome as in life--the white face, the blood at either side of the mouth, looking as before like two small down-turned horns, he asked himself if he was indeed doomed? Also, why stay there to be taken like a rat in a trap? The sea was beneath him; a mile off was the English fleet. If he could swim to that, even halfway to it, he could make signs and, perhaps, be seen and rescued; at the worst it would but be death. And a more fearful death than any the sea could bring awaited him if he remained here.

He cast one more look at De Roquemaure lying with his head upon the locker. At last he was done for! He would never cross his path again.

If he himself could live, if he could escape out of this burning pandemonium, could again stand a free man on an English deck, he would have to contend with him no more. There would be but one thing further to do then--to stand face to face with Aurelie de Roquemaure, to ask her if this charge against her was true--as St. Georges never doubted!--to demand his child, and, if she would not restore it to him, to--to--what? His mind was full of deeds of savagery now; the last few days, filled with slaughter and spent amid the arousal of men's fiercest pa.s.sions, had made him fierce too. At this moment if Aurelie could appear before him he knew that he should slay her--send her to join her brother and all the other victims of his own aroused pa.s.sions. It would be dangerous for her if she were face to face with him at this moment and refused to acknowledge where she had hidden Dorine.

She was not there, however; at the present moment he had to take steps to free himself, to escape from the burning transport. ”'Twill be time enough,” he muttered, ”to tax her with her perfidy when I stand once more before her to punish her for it. And my own hour is too near, may be too close at hand, for me to think of that. But when it comes, then----”

He heard an explosion in another part of the vessel--he knew another tier of guns had been reached by the flames; he was tarrying too long.

The magazine must be close to the cabin in which he was, might be, indeed, beneath the cabin floor--at any moment he risked being blown to atoms. He must lose no time. To be caught there was death, instant and certain!

Lying at the door of the main cabin where he had been slain was one of the officers of the transport; near him another man of lower rank, the one shot through the back the other cut down by Rooke's sailors as he fled into the cabin; and as his eye rested on them a thought struck him. None of Bellefonds and James's forces on land could say who were or were not officers of the transports--what was there to prevent him from being one for the time being? All was fair in war!--and he was as much French as any who might come out from the forts or batteries to the sinking and exploding s.h.i.+ps--if any dared to come at all. Once in the garb of either of these lying here, officer or petty officer, and he would be able to get safely ash.o.r.e, and could avoid question by disappearing a moment afterward, or as soon as might be.

And he would be in France--would be so much nearer to the reckoning with Aurelie de Roquemaure!

He drew on the jacket of the officer as the thoughts of all this chased one another through his mind, threw his own sword down and took up that of the dead man, placed on his head the hat he had worn--bearing in it a gold c.o.c.kade on which a glittering sun was stamped--and then, glancing through the square porthole that gave on the sh.o.r.e, he looked to see if, yet, any of the French were coming out to save some of their vessels from the conflagration. But the wind was blowing off the sea to the land and carrying with it the smoke from the burning s.h.i.+ps; between those s.h.i.+ps and the sh.o.r.e all was obscured.