CHAPTER V
GEORGE RECONNOITRES
Splash through the water rushed the French soldiers in full chase.Already they were beginning to cheer, for the leading man had all butgrabbed the boat, and the prisoner was as good as retaken. Georgelooked down for something with which to strike, for he did not intendto submit without a struggle, but there was no oar on board. There hadbeen a small boat-hook, but that he had left sticking in the sand whenhe gave his lusty shove off. The pursuer, up to his neck in water,seized the boat, and for a moment his chin rested on the side. But thenext instant the lad had kicked out with the clumsy wooden shoes hewore, and the soldier fell back half stunned into the sea. The rest ofthe fellows instantly raised their guns, but George did not wince; heperceived what they in their wild scamper after him had not noticed,that they had dragged their muskets through the water, and for thetime had rendered the weapons useless. The boy laughed in spite of hispredicament, as he hastily ran up the little sail.
The breeze at once caught the canvas, and the bark moved briskly away.But two of the soldiers, who had not entered the sea, hastilyreloading--they had not done so hitherto, after the recentdischarges--levelled their pieces at the retreating prisoner. Georgeflung himself to the bottom of the boat as he saw the move, and thebullets whistled harmlessly overhead. Springing up again, he perceivedthat he was now beyond range, and with a shout of joy he waved his captriumphantly. The whole escape had been planned and successfullycarried out in the space of five minutes. He was free!
But his joy was presently tempered by the thought of what mightfollow. That the men would endeavour to give chase he well knew;indeed he could make out their forms running in search of anotherboat. However, he had gained a start; that was something. As towhither he was destined to be driven, or how he was to get food andwater, these things were for the present of less consequence than thefact that he was free.
Fortune favoured him, for within ten minutes a thickness came on, andsoon the boat was enveloped in fog. The chase was now renderedimpossible to the enemy. Hour after hour George kept his sail hoisted,driving briskly he knew not whither.
"I am bound," said he to himself, "to stumble upon either the Englishor the Dutch coast, and in either case I shall be among friends." Thusthe lad comforted himself.
The day wore on, and he was becoming ravenously hungry. He would havegiven much for a basin of even the prison _soupe maigre_. The sky wasdarkening and he began to feel drowsy; he resigned himself to a nightof hunger. All at once he heard shouts, and the hull of a big vesselloomed up within a few yards of him. He was instantly wide awake. Wasthe stranger French? Thank Heaven, no! She was Dutch built, and as herflag showed, Dutch owned. Hurrah!
His cheer attracted the attention of the crew, and much wondering thesailors drew him up on deck. "A Frenchman," was the verdict in gruffDutch. George did not understand Dutch, but he instantly guessed theirmeaning.
"Not I," he cried, in English, and was delighted to be answered in thesame tongue by the skipper.
George's account of his escape, translated by the captain, set the fatDutchmen a-rolling. And, after the lad had had the good square mealthe skipper ordered for him, he spent the evening in going over hisadventures again. The jolly-hearted English lad became an immediatefavourite with the sailors and the soldiers, for, as he soon learnt,the ship was a Dutch transport carrying troops and stores for the warin Spain.
"Where are we, sir?" George inquired of the skipper next morning whenhe came on deck, to find a clear sky, and land faintly seen on thestarboard bow.
"Off the Isle of Wight, my lad," replied the Dutchman.
"Can't you put me ashore, captain?" he pleaded.
The master smiled and shook his head.
"Impossible, boy; you must go with us to Spain. And here comes agentleman to speak with you."
An officer in military uniform approached, and the boy touched hiscap. With the skipper as interpreter the major made George an offer ofservice under him.
"We want fellows of your sort," he said. "And there will be bravedoings in Spain, and plenty of good pay, and glory to be won. Besides,you will be fighting under one of your own countrymen, most likely SirGeorge Rooke himself. Say the word, my good lad."
George's face flushed.
"I have always wanted to be a soldier, sir," he stammered.
"Of course you have, my lad. Then we may take it that the matter issettled. Good luck go with you, my boy."
Here then was George Fairburn, who ought to have been driving a quillin the office of Mr. Allan, shipping merchant, of London, sailing tojoin the allied forces in Spain, and to fight against the French. Hishead swam with the thought of it.
But what of George's friends at home all this long while? WhenFairburn learnt that his brig had not arrived in port, though she hadbeen spoken in Boston Deeps by another collier which was returning tothe Tyne, his heart misgave him. There had been a bad storm on thecoast; it seemed only too likely that the _Ouseburn Lassie_ had gonedown in it! When week after week passed without news it seemed moreand more likely that the vessel had foundered in the gale. News ofcaptures by French privateers usually filtered through sooner orlater; but for long there were no tidings of the _Ouseburn Lassie_.The Blacketts did what they could to console the bereaved parents, butfather and mother would not be comforted. At length, monthsafterwards, they learnt in a casual way that a collier had beencaptured off Yarmouth by a French privateer, about the time the_Ouseburn Lassie_ was making her trip; at least that was theconstruction the Yarmouth salts who saw the affair from the shore putupon the movements of the two vessels. So a ray of hope came toFairburn and his wife.
"The lad will be somewhere in a French prison," the father said, "andsome day he will be set free and come home to us again."
The spring of 1703 brought Matthew Blackett's seventeenth birthday,and with it an ensign's commission in a well-reputed regiment of foot.He already stood six feet one in his stockings, and mighty proud hefelt when his lanky figure was clothed in his gay uniform.
"Perhaps I shall come across George in my wanderings," he said, whenhe went to bid a very friendly adieu to the Fairburns. "Won't it bejolly if we do meet!" And the parents were constrained to smile inspite of their sadness.
One of the commonest subjects of conversation in our days is the stateof "political parties," and every child of school age can tell youwhich is "the party in power." Three hundred years ago suchexpressions would not have been understood at all, in their modernsense, and "government by party" was a thing as yet undreamed of.Usually the strongest man of his time, whether sovereign or subject,was the real ruler in England. Elizabeth, for instance, was the solemistress in her own realm, though even she was greatly helped by thefamous minister Burleigh. In later times a Strafford, a Laud, anOliver Cromwell, a Clarendon presided over the destinies of England.
But in the second half of the seventeenth century there began thatdivision of politicians into two sides or parties which has continuedever since. This division sprang, no doubt, from the civil warsbetween King and Parliament, between Cavalier and Roundhead. By thetimes of Queen Anne the terms Whig and Tory, replaced in our days forthe most part by Liberal and Conservative, had come into common use,and no one who desires to understand the history of her reign canwholly neglect the movements of these two opposing parties inpolitics. For Marlborough--with his wife--may be said to be the lastpowerful statesman who ruled England without the formal andacknowledged help of party. Since then the "party in power" hasalways, through its chief member, the Prime Minister, and his Cabinet,been the actual ruler in the State.
At the beginning of Anne's reign the Whigs were leading in matters ofstate, but presently Rochester and Nottingham, the former a verystrong Tory, came into power. Later on, in 1703, the former wasreplaced by a more moderate Tory, Harley, and in the following yearSt. John succeeded Nottingham. The truth was, Marlborough, beginningto see that he was more likely to receive support in his great warsfrom the Whig side, was working gradual
ly towards the placing of theirparty in office, though he himself had all along been a Tory. Thus itwas that he tried to rule with a coalition, or a mixture of Whigs andTories. This was in the year 1705, a little after the time to whichthis story has as yet been carried. But Marlborough and his Duchesswere still the real power in the land.
We may rejoin George Fairburn, some three weeks after the day when hehad been picked up by the Dutch transport. With others he had beenlanded in the Tagus, and at once drafted into one of the regimentsunder the Earl of Galway, a Frenchman by birth, but now, having beendriven out of France by the persecutions he and the rest of theProtestants had had to endure, a general in the English army. Georgelearned that Portugal had joined the Grand Alliance, in consequence ofthe Methuen Treaty between her and England, by which Portuguese wineswere to be admitted into English ports at a lower customs duty thanthose of other countries. This step on the part of Portugal hadgreatly enraged the French King, and he had poured his troops intoSpain. The Allies, therefore, were preparing to attack Spain from theeastern and the western sides of the Peninsula at the same time. SoGeorge and his comrades began their march eastward, while the gallantadmiral Sir George Rooke was attacking Barcelona on the oppositecoast.
It was a new life for the English lad, and the heavy marches in a hotclimate tried him. But he was growing into a stout youth, and was notafraid of a bit of hard work.
"Besides," he would say to himself, when disposed to grumble, "am Inot a soldier? And isn't that what I've always wanted to be? And Imight have been chained up in a French prison still! A thousand timesbetter be here, even in this scorching place."
If it seemed odd to the lad that the English soldiers were commandedby a Frenchman, it was still stranger that the French forces they weremarching to meet were under an Englishman. Yet so it was; thecommander of Louis's army in Spain being the Duke of Berwick, a son ofJames II and Arabella Churchill, Marlborough's sister. The twogenerals were well matched, according to the opinion that prevailedamong the troops.
Weeks passed, and as yet George Fairburn had seen no actual fighting.He was all eager to get into action, and was not much comforted by thedeclaration of the old sergeant under whom he marched.
"Bide your time, my lad," the veteran would say, "you will get yourfull share of fighting; enough to satisfy even a fire-eater such as Ican see you're going to be."
One evening, to his intense delight, the lad was sent forward with askirmishing party, a report having come in that the enemy wasconcealed somewhere in one of the wooded valleys of the neighbourhood.After a cautious march of three or four miles, the little company,commanded by a lieutenant of foot, dropped down into a dingle, at thebottom of which ran a stream almost everywhere hidden by the thickgrowth of trees. The men were startled, on turning a corner in thebreak-neck path, to see below them the French flag flying from whatappeared to be an old mill. Scattered about were the roofs of a dozencottages, and at the doors could be perceived a number of soldierslolling at their ease.
"The enemy, by Jove!" whispered George, who was leading in his usualeager fashion, pointing out the flag and the hamlet to the lieutenant."Wouldn't it be a good joke to whip off their flag from that old mill,sir!"
The officer laughed at the notion; he was not much more than a boyhimself.
"My lad," said he, "we must know how many the enemy are first."
"I'll climb to the roof there, and from it I can see right down intothe village and command a view of everything in it."
"Do you mean to say, youngster, that you would risk it?" the officerasked in surprise.
"Oh, wouldn't I, sir," the lad replied with flushed face. "Say theword, sir, please."
The lieutenant nodded, saying, "It's worth it. But be cautious."
The soldiers looked on while the boy carried out his freak, for suchthey judged his bit of reconnoitring to be. Cautiously George crepttowards the mill, the sloping roof of which came almost down to thevery hill side. Tying a wisp of long grass and weeds round each boot,he crawled noiselessly up till within a foot or two of the ridge. Hepaused a moment to gaze down the dingle. There, well seen from hisvantage point, a couple of miles away, ran a far larger valley, whichwas filled with tents. "The enemy's main body!" he thought. He wavedhis arm in the direction of the camp, but his comrades did notunderstand the action, as they stood peering down upon the lad fromamong the trees higher up the slope.
Now flat on his face the boy ventured to peep over the roof ridge downinto the village street at no great distance below. Not an eye wasdirected upwards, so far as he could see, the men laughing andchattering gaily as they drank. Then the temptation seized him, and ina moment he had lifted the flag from the old chimney in which thestaff was loosely set. "I'm in for it now!" he cried to himself, as heslid like an avalanche down the roof, leapt to the ground, and madeoff up the steep slope towards his comrades, the flag triumphantly inhis hand.
He had reached a spot half way up when suddenly wild shouts were heardfrom below, and at the same instant a bullet whistled close past hisear. A little turn in the path had discovered his head to the enemy.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," shouted the lieutenant, and theEnglishmen prepared to receive the French soldiers dashing up to theattack. George stumbled on unhurt, but fell at his officer's feet,utterly breathless. There he lay, unable to rise, while shots wererapidly exchanged. For a minute's space it was hot work, but then theFrench began to fall back, and with a shout the English handfulfollowed. Fairburn pulled himself together and stood on the edge ofthe rock-shelf where he had fallen breathless. To his horror, he saw aFrenchman on the shelf below, taking deliberate aim at the lieutenant.
With a loud cry, the lad sprang down upon the enemy, regardless of thesteepness of the place, and in an instant the man was locked in hisarms, just as the musket report came. Down the two fell, bounding overtwo or three shelves of rock, and then pitching headlong some twentyor thirty feet into the thick brushwood below.
"You have saved my life, my lad; you are an Englishman worth knowing,"were the next words the boy heard.
They came buzzing into George's ears some ten minutes later, when, thebrush with the French over, the Englishmen were hastening back toreport to the General.
"What happened when I fell, sir?" George asked with curiosity, as theofficer walked by the side of the litter. He was astounded to learnthat the Frenchman had been found still held in tight grip, his neckbroken. The enemy had been put to the rout and had fled, leaving theirflag behind them. Moreover, the French camp a couple of miles away hadbeen spied.
"You have three ribs broken, Fairburn," the officer went on, "andyou've got about as many bruises as there are days in a year. But whatof that. By Jerusalem! I wish the honour had fallen to me!"
"I don't mind the wounds a bit, sir," George answered, cheerfully, "solong as I've been of some use."
The next day no less a person than the great Earl of Galway himselfcame to speak to the wounded lad.
"I have heard from your lieutenant here the tale of your doingsyesterday," he said, with a smile. "You are a boy of pluck. You aredone for so far as the present campaign is concerned, and must be sentback to hospital. But there's work cut out yet for a lad of yourmettle."
George heard all this praise as if in a dream. He was never sure inafter years whether the Earl had really said so much. But LieutenantFieldsend, who was destined to become his comrade on many ahard-fought field, and his warm friend for life, was always preparedto tell the full and correct story.
With Marlborough to Malplaquet: A Story of the Reign of Queen Anne Page 5
