The Whites and the Blues

by Alexandre Dumas

A man who was wholly unknown to them, and who acted as Guillet's secretary, brought pens, paper and ink, and began to write at that officer's dictation. He dictated a report, that, in conformity with the last orders of the Directory, the prisoners were to leave their cages only to go aboard the "Brilliant"—a brigantine fitting out at Rochefort to receive them.

Pichegru, Aubry, and Delarue, although thunderstruck by the tenor of this report, made a day ahead of time, which left no doubt as to their deportation, said nothing about it to their companions. They thought that it would be soon enough for them to learn the sad news at Rochefort.

They arrived there on the 21st of September, about three or four o'clock in the afternoon. The convoy left the main street and followed the fortification, where an immense crowd awaited them, turned the corner of the square, and went toward the bank of the Charente. There was now no longer any doubt, either for those who had heard the fatal secret, or for the thirteen who were as yet ignorant of it. They were about to be sent on shipboard, deprived of the barest necessities of life, and exposed to the dangers of a voyage whose goal was unknown to them.

At last the wagons stopped. Some hundreds of sailors and marines, disgracing the uniform of the navy, placed themselves in line with the exiles as they descended from their cages—which they almost regretted, to such extremes were they reduced. Ferocious cries welcomed them: "Down with the tyrants! Into the water with the traitors! Into the water with them!"

One of these men stepped forward, doubtless to accomplish his threat. The others pressed after him. General Villot walked straight up to him, and folding his arms, said: "Villain! you are too great a coward to render me that service!"

A boat approached, an official called to them, and, one after another, as they were named, the exiles got into the boat. The last, Barbé-Marbois, was in such a desperate condition that the official declared that if they took him aboard in that state he would not live two days.

"What is that to you?" brutally demanded Guillet; "you are only responsible for his bones."

A quarter of an hour later the exiles were on board a two-masted vessel lying at anchor in the middle of the river. It was the "Brilliant," a little privateer taken from the English. They were received there by a dozen soldiers who seemed to have been especially chosen for the position of executioners. The exiles were thrust into a little space between decks so narrow that scarcely half of them could sit down, and so low that the others could not stand upright. They were obliged to take turns in two positions between which there was not much choice.

An hour after they had been put there some one remembered that they ought to have something to eat. Two buckets were sent down, one empty, the other filled with half-cooked beans swimming in reddish water that was even more disgusting than the vessel which contained it. A loaf of bread and some water, the only things of which the prisoners partook, completed the foul repast which was destined for men whom their fellow-citizens had chosen as the most worthy among them to be their representatives.