Kitabı oku: «A Modern Telemachus», sayfa 9
‘See,’ he cried; ‘that is not the way of the Moors.’
‘Bismillah! I beg your pardon, sir,’ cried Tam, but said no more, only looked intently.
Gradually, gradually the spectacle rose on their view fuller and fuller, not the ruddy wings of the Algerine or Italian, but the square white castle-like tiers of sails rising one above another, bearing along in a south-easterly direction.
‘English or French,’ said Tam, with a long breath, for her colours and build were not yet discernible. ‘Mashallah! I beg pardon. I mean, God grant she pass us not by!’
The mast was hastily raised, with Tam’s turban unrolled, floating at the top of it; and while he and Fareek plied their oars with might and main, he bade Arthur fire off at intervals the blunderbuss, which had hitherto lain idle at the bottom of the boat.
How long the intense suspense lasted they knew not ere Arthur cried, ‘They are slackening sail! Thank God. Tam, you have saved us! English!’
‘Not so fast!’ Tam uttered an Arabic and then a Scottish interjection.
Their signal had been seen by other eyes. An unmistakable Algerine, with the crescent flag, was bearing down on them from the opposite direction.
‘Rascals. Do they not dread the British flag?’ cried Arthur. ‘Surely that will protect us?’
‘They are smaller and lighter, and with their galley slaves can defy the wind, and loup off like a flea in a blanket,’ returned Tam, grimly. ‘Mair by token, they guess what we are, and will hold on to hae my life’s bluid if naething mair! Here! Gie us a soup of the water, and the last bite of flesh. ’Twill serve us the noo, find we shall need it nae mair any way.’
Arthur fed him, for he durst not slacken rowing for a moment. Then seeing Fareek, who had borne the brunt of the fatigue, looking spent, the youth, after swallowing a few morsels and a little foul-smelling drink, took the second oar, while double force seemed given to the long arms lately so weary, and both pulled on in silent, grim desperation. Ulysse had given one scream at seeing the last of the water swallowed, but he too, understood the situation, and obeyed Arthur’s brief words, ‘Kneel down and pray for us, my boy.’
The Abyssinian was evidently doing the same, after having loaded the blunderbuss; but it was no longer necessary to use this as a signal, since the frigate had lowered her boat, which was rapidly coming towards them.
But, alas! still more swiftly, as it seemed to those terrified eyes, came the Moorish boat—longer, narrower, more favoured by currents and winds, flying like a falcon towards its prey. It was a fearful race. Arthur’s head began to swim, his breath to labour, his arms to move stiffly as a thresher’s flail; but, just as power was failing him, an English cheer came over the waters, and restored strength for a few more resolute strokes.
Then came some puffs of smoke from the pirate’s boat, a report, a jerk to their own, a fresh dash forward, even as Fareek fired, giving a moment’s check to the enemy. There was a louder cheer, several shots from the English boat, a cloud from the ship’s side. Then Arthur was sensible of a relaxation of effort, and that the chase was over, then that the British boat was alongside, friendly voices ringing in his ears, ‘How now, mates? Runaways, eh? Where d’ye hail from?’
‘Scottish! British!’ panted out Arthur, unable to utter more, faint, giddy, and astounded by the cheers around him, and the hands stretched out in welcome. He scarcely saw or understood.
‘Queer customers here! What! a child! Who are you, my little man? And what’s this? A Moor! He’s hit—pretty hard too.’
This brought back Arthur’s reeling senses in one flash of horror, at the sight of Tam, bleeding fast in the bottom of the boat.
‘O Tam! Tam! He saved me! He is Scottish too,’ cried Arthur. ‘Sir, is he alive?’
‘I think so,’ said the officer, who had bent over Tam. ‘We’ll have him aboard in a minute, and see what the doctor can do with him. You seem to have had a narrow escape.’
Arthur was too busy endeavouring to staunch the blood which flowed fast from poor Tam’s side to make much reply, but Ulysse, perched on the officer’s knee, was answering for him in mixed English and French. ‘Moi, je suis le Chevalier de Bourke! My papa is ambassador to Sweden. This gentleman is his secretary. We were shipwrecked—and M. Arture and I swam away together. The Moors were good to us, and wanted to make us Moors; but M. Arture said it would be wicked. And Yusuf bought him for a slave; but that was only from faire la comédie. He is bon Chrétien after all, and so is poor Fareek, only he is dumb. Yusuf—that is, Tam—made me all black, and changed me for his little negro boy; and we got into the boat, and it was very hot, and oh! I am so thirsty. And now M. Arture will take me to Monsieur mon Père, and get me some nice clothes again,’ concluded the young gentleman, who, in this moment of return to civilised society, had become perfectly aware of his own rank and importance.
Arthur only looked up to verify the child’s statements, which had much struck the lieutenant. Their boat had by this time been towed alongside of the frigate, and poor Tam was hoisted on board, and the surgeon was instantly at hand; but he said at once that the poor fellow was fast dying, and that it would be useless torture to carry him below for examination.
A few words passed with the captain, and then the little Chevalier was led away to tell his own tale, which he was doing with a full sense of his own importance; but presently the captain returned, and beckoned to Arthur, who had been kneeling beside poor Tam, moistening his lips, and bathing his face, as he lay gasping and apparently unconscious, except that he had gripped hold of his broad sash or girdle when it was taken off.
‘The child tells me he is Comte de Bourke’s son,’ said the captain, in a tentative manner, as if doubtful whether he should be understood, and certainly Arthur looked more Moorish than European.
‘Yes, sir! He was on his way with his mother to join his father when we were taken by a Moorish corsair.’
‘But you are not French?’ said the captain, recognising the tones.
‘No, sir; Scottish—Arthur Maxwell Hope. I was to have gone as the Count’s secretary.’
‘You have escaped from the Moors? I could not understand what the boy said. Where are the lady and the rest?’
Arthur as briefly as he could, for he was very anxious to return to poor Tam, explained the wreck and the subsequent adventures, saying that he feared the poor Countess was lost, but that he had seen her daughter and some of her suite on a rock. Captain Beresford was horrified at the idea of a Christian child among the wild Arabs. His station was Minorca, but he had just been at the Bay of Rosas, where poor Comte de Bourke’s anxiety and distress about his wife and children were known, and he had received a request amounting to orders to try to obtain intelligence about them, so that he held it to be within his duty to make at once for Djigheli Bay.
For further conversation was cut short by sounds of articulate speech from poor Tam. Arthur turned hastily, and the captain proceeded to give his orders.
‘Is Maister Hope here?’
‘Here! Yes. O Tam, dear Tam, if I could do anything!’ cried Arthur.
‘I canna see that well,’ said Tam, with a sound of anxiety. ‘Where’s my sash?’
‘This is it, in your own hand,’ said Arthur, thinking he was wandering, but the other hand sought one of the ample folds, which was sewn over, and weighty.
‘Tak’ it; tak’ tent of it; ye’ll need the siller. Four hunder piastres of Tunis, not countin’ zeechins, and other sma’ coin.’
‘Shall I send them to any one at Eyemouth?’
Tam almost laughed. ‘Na, na; keep them and use them yersell, sir. There’s nane at hame that wad own puir Tam. The leddy, your mither, an’ you hae been mair to me than a’ beside that’s above ground, and what wad ye do wi’out the siller?’
‘O Tam! I owe all and everything to you. And now—’
Tam looked up, as Arthur’s utterance was choked, and a great tear fell on his face. ‘Wha wad hae said,’ murmured he, ‘that a son of Burnside wad be greetin’ for Partan Jeannie’s son?’
‘For my best friend. What have you not saved me from! and I can do nothing!’
‘Nay, sir. Say but thae words again.’
‘Oh for a clergyman! Or if I had a Bible to read you the promises.’
‘You shall have one,’ said the captain, who had returned to his side. The surgeon muttered that the lad seemed as good as a parson; but Arthur heard him not, and was saying what prayers came to his mind in this stress, when, even as the captain returned, the last struggle came on. Once more Tam looked up, saying, ‘Ye’ll be good to puir Fareek;’ and with a word more, ‘Oh, Christ: will He save such as I?’ all was over.
‘Come away, you can do nothing more,’ said the doctor. ‘You want looking to yourself.’
For Arthur tottered as he tried to rise, and needed the captain’s kind hand as he gained his feet. ‘Sir,’ he said, as the tears gushed to his eyes, ‘he does deserve all honour—my only friend and deliverer.’
‘I see,’ said Captain Beresford, much moved; ‘whatever he has been, he died a Christian. He shall have Christian burial. And this fellow?’ pointing to poor Fareek, whose grief was taking vent in moans and sobs.
‘Christian—Abyssinian, but dumb,’ Arthur explained; and having his promise that all respect should be paid to poor Tam’s corpse, he let the doctor lead him away, for he had now time to feel how sun-scorched and exhausted he was, with giddy, aching head, and legs cramped and stiff, arms strained and shoulders painful after his three days and nights of the boat. His thirst, too, seemed unquenchable, in spite of drinks almost unconsciously taken, and though hungry he had little will to eat.
The surgeon made him take a warm bath, and then fed him with soup, after which, on a promise of being called in due time, he consented to deposit himself in a hammock, and presently fell asleep.
When he awoke he found that clothes had been provided for him—naval uniforms; but that could not be helped, and the comfort was great. He was refreshed, but still very stiff. However, he dressed and was just ready, when the surgeon came to see whether he were in condition to be summoned, for it was near sundown, and all hands were piped up to attend poor Tam’s funeral rites. His generous and faithful deed had eclipsed the memory that he was a renegade, and, indeed, it had been in such ignorance that he had had little to deny.
All the sailors stood as respectfully as if he had been one of themselves while the captain read a portion of the Burial Office. Such honours would never have been his in his native land, where at that time even Episcopalians themselves could not have ventured on any out-door rites; and Arthur was thus doubly struck and impressed, when, as the corpse, sewn in sail-cloth and heavily weighted, was launched into the blue waves, he heard the words committing the body to the deep, till the sea should give up her dead. He longed to be able to translate them to poor Fareek, who was weeping and howling so inconsolably as to attest how good a master he had lost.
Perhaps Tam’s newly-found or recovered Christianity might have been put to hard shocks as to the virtues he had learnt among the Moslems. At any rate Arthur often had reason to declare in after life that the poor renegade might have put many a better-trained Christian to shame.
CHAPTER X—ON BOARD THE ‘CALYPSO’
‘From when this youth?
His country, name, and birth declare!’
Scott.
‘You had forgotten this legacy, Mr. Hope,’ said Captain Beresford, taking Arthur into his cabin, ‘and, judging by its weight, it is hardly to be neglected. I put it into my locker for security.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Arthur. ‘The question is whether I ought to take it. I wished for your advice.’
‘I heard what passed,’ said the captain. ‘I should call your right as complete as if you had a will made by a half a dozen lawyers. When we get into port, a few crowns to the ship’s company to drink your health, and all will be right. Will you count it?’
The folds were undone, and little piles made of the gold, but neither the captain nor Arthur were much the wiser. The purser might have computed it, but Captain Beresford did not propose this, thinking perhaps that it was safer that no report of a treasure should get abroad in the ship.
He made a good many inquiries, which he had deferred till Arthur should be in a fitter condition for answering, first about the capture and wreck, and what the young man had been able to gather about the Cabeleyzes. Then, as the replies showed that he had a gentleman before him, Captain Beresford added that he could not help asking, ‘Que diable allait il faire dans cette galère?’
‘Sir,’ said Arthur, ‘I do not know whether you will think it your duty to make me a prisoner, but I had better tell you the whole truth.’
‘Oho!’ said the captain; ‘but you are too young! You could never have been out with—with—we’ll call him the Chevalier.’
‘I ran away from school,’ replied Arthur, colouring. ‘I was a mere boy, and I never was attainted,’ explained Arthur, blushing. ‘I have been with my Lord Nithsdale, and my mother thought I could safely come home, and that if I came from Sweden my brother could not think I compromised him.’
‘Your brother?’
‘Lord Burnside. He is at Court, in favour, they say, with King George. He is my half-brother; my mother is a Maxwell.’
‘There is a Hope in garrison at Port Mahon—a captain,’ said the captain. ‘Perhaps he will advise you what to do if you are sick of Jacobite intrigue and mystery, and ready to serve King George.’
Arthur’s face lighted up. ‘Will it be James Hope of Ryelands, or Dickie Hope of the Lynn, or—?’
Captain Beresford held up his hands.
‘Time must show that, my young friend,’ he said, smiling. ‘And now I think the officers expect you to join their mess in the gunroom.’
There Arthur found the little Chevalier strutting about in an adaptation of the smallest midshipman’s uniform, and the centre of an admiring party, who were equally diverted by his consequential airs and by his accounts of his sports among the Moors. Happy fellow, he could adapt himself to any society, and was ready to be the pet and plaything of the ship’s company, believing himself, when he thought of anything beyond the present, to be full on the road to his friends again.
Fareek was a much more difficult charge, for Arthur had hardly a word that he could understand. He found the poor fellow coiled up in a corner, just where he had seen his former master’s remains disappear, still moaning and weeping bitterly. As Arthur called to him he looked up for a moment, then crawled forward, striking his forehead at intervals against the deck. He was about to kiss the feet of his former fellow-slave, the glittering gold, blue, and white of whose borrowed dress no doubt impressed him. Arthur hastily started back, to the amazement of the spectators, and called out a negative—one of the words sure to be first learnt. He tried to take Fareek’s hand and raise him from his abject attitude; but the poor fellow continued kneeling, and not only were no words available to tell him that he was free, but it was extremely doubtful whether freedom was any boon to him. One thing, however, he did evidently understand—he pointed to the St. George’s pennant with the red cross, made the sign, looked an interrogation, and on Arthur’s reply, ‘Christians,’ and reiteration of the word ‘Salem,’ peace, he folded his arms and looked reassured.
‘Ay, ay, my hearty,’ said the big boatswain, ‘ye’ve got under the old flag, and we’ll soon make you see the difference. Cut out your poor tongue, have they, the rascals, and made a dummy of you? I wish my cat was about their ears! Come along with you, and you shall find what British grog is made of.’
And a remarkable friendship arose between the two, the boatswain patronising Fareek on every occasion, and roaring at him as if he were deaf as well as dumb, and Fareek appearing quite confident under his protection, and establishing a system of signs, which were fortunately a universal language. The Abyssinian evidently viewed himself as young Hope’s servant or slave, probably thinking himself part of his late master’s bequest, and there was no common language between them in which to explain the difference or ascertain the poor fellow’s wishes. He was a slightly-made, dexterous man, probably about five and twenty years of age, and he caught up very quickly, by imitation, the care he could take of Arthur’s clothes, and the habit of waiting on him at meals.
Meantime the Calypso held her course to the south-east, till the chart declared the coast to be that of Djigheli Bay, and Arthur recognised the headlands whither the unfortunate tartane had drifted to her destruction. Anchoring outside the hay, Captain Beresford sent the first lieutenant, Mr. Bullock, in the long-boat, with Arthur and a well-armed force, with instructions to offer no violence, but to reconnoitre; and if they found Mademoiselle de Bourke, or any others of the party, to do their best for their release by promises of ransom or representations of the consequences of detaining them. Arthur was prepared to offer his own piastres at once in case of need of immediate payment. He was by this time tolerably versed in the vernacular of the Mediterranean, and a cook’s boy, shipped at Gibraltar, was also supposed to be capable of interpreting.
The beautiful bay, almost realising the description of Æneas’ landing-place, lay before them, the still green waters within reflecting the fantastic rocks and the wreaths of verdure which crowned them, while the white mountain-tops rose like clouds in the far distance against the azure sky. Arthur could only, however, think of all this fair scene as a cruel prison, and those sharp rocks as the jaws of a trap, when he saw the ribs of the tartane still jammed into the rock where she had struck, and where he had saved the two children as they were washed up the hatchway. He saw the rock where the other three had clung, and where he had left the little girl. He remembered the crowd of howling, yelling savages, leaping and gesticulating on the beach, and his heart trembled as he wondered how it had ended.
Where were the Cabeleyzes who had thus greeted them? The bay seemed perfectly lonely. Not a sound was to be heard but the regular dip of the oars, the cry of a startled bird, and the splash of a flock of seals, which had been sunning themselves on the shore, and which floundered into the sea like Proteus’ flock of yore before Ulysses. Would that Proteus himself had still been there to be captured and interrogated! For the place was so entirely deserted that, saving for the remains of the wreck, he must have believed himself mistaken in the locality, and the lieutenant began to question him whether it had been daylight when he came ashore.
Could the natives have hidden themselves at sight of an armed vessel? Mr. Bullock resolved on landing, very cautiously, and with a sufficient guard. On the shore some fragments of broken boxes and packing cases appeared; and a sailor pointed out the European lettering painted on one—sse de B–. It plainly was part of the address to the Comtesse de Bourke. This encouraged the party in their search. They ascended the path which poor Hébert and Lanty Callaghan had so often painfully climbed, and found themselves before the square of reed hovels, also deserted, but with black marks where fires had been lighted, and with traces of recent habitation.
Arthur picked up a rag of the Bourke livery, and another of a brocade which he had seen the poor Countess wearing. Was this all the relic that he should ever be able to take to her husband?
He peered about anxiously in hopes of discovering further tokens, and Mr. Bullock was becoming impatient of his lingering, when suddenly his eye was struck by a score on the bark of a chestnut tree like a cross, cut with a feeble hand. Beneath, close to the trunk, was a stone, beyond the corner of which appeared a bit of paper. He pounced upon it. It was the title-page of Estelle’s precious Télémaque, and on the back was written in French, If any good Christian ever finds this, I pray him to carry it to M. the French Consul at Algiers. We are five poor prisoners, the Abbé de St. Eudoce, Estelle, daughter of the Comte de Bourke, and our servants, Jacques Hébert, Laurent Callaghan, Victorine Renouf. The Cabeleyzes are taking us away to their mountains. We are in slavery, in hunger, filth, and deprivation of all things. We pray day and night that the good God will send some one to rescue us, for we are in great misery, and they persecute us to make us deny our faith. O, whoever you may be, come and deliver us while we are yet alive.’
Arthur was almost choked with tears as he translated this piteous letter to the lieutenant, and recollected the engaging, enthusiastic little maiden, as he had seen her on the Rhone, but now brought to such a state. He implored Mr. Bullock to pursue the track up the mountain, and was grieved at this being treated as absurdly impossible, but then recollecting himself, ‘You could not, sir, but I might follow her and make them understand that she must be saved—’
‘And give them another captive,’ said Bullock; ‘I thought you had had enough of that. You will do more good to this flame of yours—’
‘No flame, sir. She is a mere child, little older than her brother. But she must not remain among these lawless savages.’
‘No! But we don’t throw the helve after the hatchet, my lad! All you can do is to take this epistle to the French Consul, who might find it hard to understand without your explanations. At any rate, my orders are to bring you safe on board again.’
Arthur had no choice but to submit, and Captain Beresford, who had a wife and children at home, was greatly touched by the sight of the childish writing of the poor little motherless girl; above all when Arthur explained that the high-sounding title of Abbé de St. Eudoce only meant one who was more likely to be a charge than a help to her.
France was for the nonce allied with England, and the dread of passing to Sweden through British seas had apparently been quite futile, since, if Captain Beresford recollected the Irish blood of the Count, it was only as an additional cause for taking interest in him. Towards the Moorish pirates the interest of the two nations united them. It was intolerable to think of the condition of the captives; and the captain, anxious to lose no time, rejoiced that his orders were such as to justify him in sailing at once for Algiers to take effectual measures with the consul before letting the family know the situation of the poor Demoiselle de Bourke.
