That was another and far worse blow for Roger; but he concealed his dismay and, soon after, took his leave of the Minister.
On the following day, October 25th, a special bulletin was published in Le Moniteur. A full account of the battle of Ulm was given, then the great news that the Austrians had surrendered. On the 20th, at the foot of the great Michaels-berg that Ney, ‘the bravest of the brave’, had stormed, the Emperor sat his white charger. Behind him were his Marshals and his brilliant staff, and behind them the serried ranks of the Imperial Guard. To either side were four columns of troops each thousands strong, the standard bearers holding aloft their Eagles. From Ulm there filed out a long, sad procession headed by old General Mack. When he had handed over his sword, twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry laid down their arms before their conquerors.
No more was said, but Roger could foresee the sequel. Kutusoff and his thirty thousand Russians could have saved the day if only Mack had had the simple sense to withdraw while there was still time and fall back upon them; but on their own, they could not possibly check the advance of the Grande Armée; so they could only retreat while Napoleon, the way now open to him, entered Vienna in triumph.
Sadly, Roger contemplated the situation. In England the new Coalition, brought about by Mr. Pitt with such tireless labour and a great outpouring of British gold, must have raised high hopes. They had been shattered at the very first encounter. In Vienna Napoleon would impose a peace on Austria that would bring the war in Italy to a close, and he had troops enough to defeat both any Russian advance in Central Europe and from Swedish Pomerania.
Still more in Roger’s mind was the fact that he had sent by Georgina misleading information to England. A British fleet might now lie in wait for Villeneuve in the Channel, but he would not appear. If he, or Rosily, left port at all it would be for the Mediterranean; so both his fleet and that of Gantheaume in Brest would remain intact. That meant that when Napoleon had dealt with his enemies on the Continent, he might, after all, next Spring succeed in combining the two fleets, clear the Channel and invade England.
There was nothing more that Roger could do, and his depression was lightened only by the belief that Georgina was alive. Yet, at times, he had worrying misgivings even about that. They had been together for so short a time and all that had occurred that evening in Cadiz now seemed so improbable. He had since often wished that he had returned there, found his boat’s crew and through them verified his belief that he really had brought her off from the frigate. Even at the risk of an encounter with the infuriated Fournier, he felt now that he should have done so; for that in itself would have been proof that the whole episode was not a vivid dream.
During his long journey north he had told himself again and again that had he not seen her in the flesh he would never have relied on her taking his information to Gibraltar but have gone there himself. Yet why had no mention of her betrayal of him and of John Beefy’s death passed between them; and why had he not given her back her pearls?
Now that he had completed his mission and had nothing else to think about, these unsubstantial but worrying doubts began to obsess him and, after another day in Paris, he decided that he would have no peace of mind until he settled them. Suddenly, too, it dawned upon him that if, as he really felt sure, his encounter with Georgina had not been a dream, only a crossing of the Channel lay between them and a glorious reunion.
His mind made up, he hastened to the Tuileries, saw Duroc again and said to him, ‘Old friend, in another week it will be November. As you know, the weakness of my wretched lungs compels me each year to winter in the south of France. In your next despatch to the Emperor please be good enough to inform him that I have taken leave to go thither.’
Duroc readily agreed and later that morning Roger set out for Bordeaux. Now imbued with fresh energy he reached the city on the 28th. To his relief he found the smuggler Jubert still operating. He was not due to sail with another cargo of Bordeaux wine until November 1st but Roger, seized with impatience to be off, paid him handsomely to speed up his loading and, in spite of the weather not seeming very propitious, to set sail at midday the next day. But using his gold to overcome Jubert’s better judgment was to cost him dear.
When they put to sea it was already choppy and a few hours later when darkness fell, owing to heavy cloud that hid the moon and stars, it became black as pitch. During the night the weather worsened, the little ship rolled and pitched and Roger, lying in one of the only two bunks aft, was very ill. In the cabin it was atrociously stuffy and when morning came he staggered out on deck to get some fresh air. A bitter wind was blowing that sent showers of spray hissing over the side. White horses crested every wave and no other ship was in sight.
For a while he clung to a handrail as the lugger bucked and lurched, striving it seemed, to drag him from his hold. Rain came, at first in drifts that stung his face and forced him to close his eyes. Then the wind eased a little and it began to rain in earnest. It sheeted down so that visibility was reduced to a few feet. Within ten minutes, in spite of the oilskin cape that Jubert had lent him, he was soaked to the skin. The downpour had run off his bare head and down his neck both behind and in front so that his underclothes had become saturated and as he moved the water squelched in his boots. Yet he was loath to take cover in the frowsty cabin, so he continued to hang on there.
The deck was awash with flying spume and the torrents of rain. It had become bitterly cold but the water, pouring from side to side with each roll of the ship, had sloshed so high against the galley that it had penetrated it and put out the stove; so there was no possibility of getting a hot drink, or even luke-warm soup. Roger had a big flask of cognac and, from time to time, swallowed a mouthful. The raw spirit made him gasp but eased the pain in his heaving stomach.
About midday, after what had seemed to Roger endless hours of torment, Jubert, skilfully judging from long practice the lurch of the vessel, crossed the deck to him and bellowed in his ear:
‘You are unlucky for us, Monsieur. The last time I took you across we were caught by the Revenue men and turned back. And now this. I said we’d meet bad weather, but you refused to heed my warning. For all your gold I’ll not take you as a passenger again.’
White, shaking, breathless and with his eyes half-closed, Roger could only mutter, ‘You could have refused. Grumbling won’t help matters now. Go look to your ship and leave me be.’ The smuggler gave a crooked grin, It’ll be worse yet, and since you’ve no stomach for it, you’d best get back to the cabin.’
As Roger’s arms were aching from holding on he knew that the advice was sound, yet he hated to lose face by admitting that he could not stand up to the storm; so he ignored Jubert’s advice and remained where he was.
The Captain proved right. During the afternoon the waves became mountain-high so that the lugger seemed to race through the sea as though she were a car on an endless switchback. For minutes on end she soared up one green slope to hit the wave crest then career like a toboggan down into another valley. Lest she be pooped, Jubert was holding the lugger head-on to the storm but, having been up all night, by late in the afternoon he was very tired. As they rushed up a great wave he made a slight miscalculation, so that instead of the bow of the ship cutting through the foaming crest she struck it at a slight angle.
At that moment Roger was holding on with only one hand. In the other he held his flask tilted high, his head thrown back, as he sucked from it the last drops of brandy. The lugger gave a frightful lurch. The tug on his arm tore his fingers from their hold. A second later he was flat on his back.
A wave swept the deck, lifting him high. With both arms outflung he made a desperate effort to seize on something by which he could save himself. The fingers of his left hand fastened on a grating. The breath driven from his body, he clung to it while the water cascaded away beneath him. The suction was terrific. Suddenly the fastenings of the grating gave and it came away. Still clutching it, he was carried across t
he deck to the low gunwhale of the lugger. It hit him in the back but was not high enough fully to check his headlong descent caused by the heavy list as the ship plunged down the far slope of the wave. His legs were flung up and with a gasp of horror he realised that he had been swept overboard.
28
But Britain Rules the Waves
As Roger went under, his mouth filled with water. The salt in it rasped his throat and nostrils. A great darkness engulfed him. Clinging desperately to the grating with both hands, he kicked out wildly. After a few moments that seemed an eternity he surfaced. Shaking the water from his eyes, he looked about him. The lugger was thirty feet away and now rocketing up another steep slope of dark green foam-flecked water. In her stern he glimpsed Jubert and another man at the wheel. Both had lashed themselves to nearby structures, but neither of them was looking in his direction.
Seized with panic, he gave a loud shout. It was drowned by the roaring of the wind. A wave slapped into his face, blinding him and again filling his mouth with water. He realised then that it was impossible for him to attract their attention. His seasickness forgotten, now that his life was in peril he made an effort to fight down his panic and assess his chances.
Although he was a strong swimmer, he knew that without the wooden grating to support him, in such a sea he could not have kept himself afloat for a quarter of an hour, if that. Only one thing was in his favour; it had been much colder in the cutting wind on deck than it was in the water, for the sea still retained a degree of the warmth it had absorbed during the long summer and autumn. But how long would it be before, tossed hither and thither by the waves and at intervals submerged as their crests broke over him, he became too exhausted any longer to keep his hold on the grating?
He had only a very vague idea of his whereabouts. On leaving Bordeaux a strong wind had favoured them and, although Jubert had put the lugger about to face the storm, it must have driven them still further to the north-westward. When Roger had gone overboard they had been close on thirty hours at sea, so he guessed himself to be somewhere in the northern end of the Bay of Biscay. There was, therefore, just a chance that he might be driven ashore on the southern coast of Brittany. But no land had been in sight all day, so that hope was a poor one. There was the possibility that before he became exhausted he might be sighted from a ship and picked up. But in such weather no fishing smacks would be at sea and the main shipping route from Spain across the Bay was, almost certainly, a considerable way further out. Grimly he faced the fact that his chances of survival were very slender.
From time to time, as the lugger mounted a big wave, or he was heaved high on one, he continued to catch glimpses of her, but after a quarter of an hour she was lost to sight. Twilight was already falling and soon darkness hid everything from him except the white foam crests in his immediate vicinity.
Every now and then he changed his grip on the grating, sometimes holding it in front of him, at others clutching it with only one hand while gently swimming beside it so as to keep his circulation going. It measured about four feet by three and to have used it as a raft was out of the question as it would have tipped over; but after he had been in the water for an hour or so he tried putting both his arms right over it so that the greater part of it was below his chest. The disadvantage to that position was that even when holding his head back wavelets slapped into his face; but, at intervals, it enabled him to relieve his arms of the strain of hanging on to it.
The wind lessened and gradually the storm went down, but the night seemed endless and towards morning he began to fear that he could not last much longer. The thought of death brought into his mind Georgina and how she had so nearly drowned in the West Indies. Again he saw the vision he had had of her, then it seemed to change and, instead of him looking down on her, she was looking down on him. A moment later her voice came clearly to him in an urgent, anxious cry:
‘Tie yourself to the grating, Roger. Tie yourself to it. Use your cravat.’
Rousing from the lethargy that was overcoming him, he attempted to undo his cravat. As the long strip of white linen was soaking wet it proved a veritable struggle to get it off. At length he succeeded. Terrified, now that he had to use both his hands, that he would be washed away from the grating, he half lay on it while, in fits and starts, he made slip knots in both ends of the cravat. Next he was faced with the hardest task of all—to get both the slip knots under the grating and up through holes in it that were well apart. Again and again he failed and had to lie panting for a few minutes until he had recovered sufficiently to try again. By sheer dogged persistence he eventually had about fifteen inches of the stock stretched under the grating near the far edge, and the two ends protruding above it. With a final effort he wriggled both his hands through the slip knots and the next roll of the grating pulled them tight over his wrists. Now, with his arms stretched out, he lay face down with his head between them while the lower half of his body and legs dangled in the water. Then he lost consciousness.
When he came to he saw Georgina again and she was bending over him. He smiled feebly, thinking it to be another vision. Then it dawned upon him that he was in a ship’s cabin, lying in a bunk wrapped in blankets with hot bottles packed all round him. Still he could not believe that he was not the victim of a fantasy, or dead, and that it was his spirit that was looking up into her lovely face.
Tears of happiness were running down her cheeks as she kissed him and said, ‘Roger, my heart, just as you saved me, the dear Lord has enabled me to save you. Early this morning I woke and had a vision. I saw you there alone and drowning and knew you to be about to abandon hope. I called to you to tie yourself to the grating you were holding. Then the vision faded. But something told me you were not far off. I pulled on my robe and rushed out to find the Captain of this frigate. He would not believe me, but on my insistence humoured me by agreeing that a special look-out should be kept. When he had called the watch on deck I offered a thousand guineas reward for the man who first sighted you. While I waited, scanning the vast, empty waters for a speck, I thought I’d die of suspense. At last a man in the mizzen top saw you, for the others had failed to catch a sight of you as we passed nearly a mile off. A boat was lowered and they picked you up. To my utter horror, when they brought you aboard I thought it was too late and that you were already a corpse. I pray that never again may I go through such a half hour as that while they were forcing the water from your lungs. Twice they would have given up had I not begged and insisted that they continued. At last you breathed again but were still unconscious and it is two hours since they carried you to my cabin with the sweet assurance that you would live.’
Although Roger’s mind took in all that she had said, he was still half bemused and his thoughts went back to their last meeting. In a croaking voice he said, ‘There have been times when I could not really credit that we had been together in Cadiz.’
‘I’ve felt that, too,’ she agreed, ‘but knew it must be so; for else how could I have come to be in Gibraltar?’
He smiled, ‘I had no such means of proving to myself that our meeting was not a dream. ’Twas to set my awful doubts at rest that I was on my way to England. Since then I have cursed myself a thousand times for failing to take the opportunity to ask you two questions.’
‘What were they?’
‘From the joy you showed at seeing me again and your reluctance that we should part I have good hopes but…’ He hesitated a moment, ‘well … I beg you to give me reassurance that you have at last forgiven me for … for robbing you of John Beefy.’
‘Dear Roger,’ the tears again welled up into her splendid eyes. ‘About that it is I who should crave forgiveness. On that terrible night you were as drunk as a lord, mad with jealousy of George Gunston and bitterly angry with me for declaring that I would not let you come again to Stillwaters. Poor John was the cause of that and you clearly held him in contempt. All this combined to make me believe that the ruthlessness without which, at times, you could not
carry out your missions when abroad, had come uppermost in your drink-addled brain, and you had deliberately swept him from your path. In that I did you a great injustice. But I did not know it until shortly before I sailed for the Indies. I chanced to meet Gunston again, and John’s death then being long past we talked of it. He made no pretence of being any friend of yours, but had the honesty to tell me that when two men fight as you and he did, both must watch each other’s eyes. That even to look away for a second could mean receiving a deadly thrust. So as your eyes were fixed on his, your lunge could not have been aimed at John.’
‘Thank God you realise the truth, my sweet; for, as I’ve always sworn, it was an accident. Though seeing the state I was in and all that led up to it, I cannot greatly blame you for disbelieving me. But tell me now—why on that day when I escaped from prison and hid in the stable loft at Stillwaters, instead of bringing me money as you had promised, did you betray me to the tipstaff?’
‘Betray you!’ Georgina’s eyes grew round and her mouth fell open. ‘I… No! Oh, Roger, how could you ever have believed that I would do such a thing. It was that dastardly new groom of mine whom I sent in to Guildford for the money. When he reached the town he heard the town crier ringing his bell and crying a reward for your capture. ’Twas he who brought the tipstaffs to the stable. When I heard what had occurred I was shaking mad with rage. I took my whip to him and lashed him until he fell writhing on the ground. I’d not have stopped there had not others who witnessed the scene restrained me.’
‘Oh, Georgina,’ Roger hung his head and his voice was very low. ‘For having such thoughts of you can you ever forgive me?’
The Wanton Princess Page 47
