The end was that the officers admitted him to their counsels, which may have been the reason that the galleys, that until now had taken but the shortest cruises, began to risk more daring expeditions, and once or twice adventured within a league of the English coast. But no occasion was found for landing and burning a town—which was the object continually debated at the officers' board. In fact, the weather did not favour it; and, moreover, the whole line of coast was guarded by patrolling parties, ready to give warning to the train-bands stationed at convenient distances, so that the crews ran no inconsiderable risk of being surprised and cut to pieces if they landed, not to speak of having their galleys taken behind them by the British cruisers. And none knew better than M. de la Pailletine that the slaves, if left without sufficient guard to coerce them, were as likely as not to murder their overseers and hand their galleys over to the first enemy they met.
Nothing of any consequence, therefore, was done for six weeks; and at the end of that time Captain Salt sought out the Commodore, and announced that he had received a letter from a friend in Paris summoning him thither on private business. The Commodore, who had really grown to like the Englishman, expressed his regret. He suspected nothing.
CHAPTER XII.
WILLIAM OF ORANGE.
On the third day after Captain Salt departed for Paris certain events befell at The Hague which demand our attention.
The campaign of 1691 in Flanders was conducted on both sides with the utmost vigour and the least possible result. Between May and September the armies marched and counter-marched, walked up to each other and withdrew with every expression of defiance. No important action was fought, though for some time less than a league divided their hostility. William, whose patience was worn out almost sooner than the shoe-leather of his subjects, left the command in Marlborough's hands, and retired to his park at Loo, whence, in the beginning of July, he posted to The Hague to attend a meeting of the States-General.
On the 17th day of that month, and at ten o'clock in the morning—at which time the King was taking the air in his famous park on the outskirts of the town—a couple of old gentlemen were advancing upon The Hague from the westward, along the old Scheveningen road. They walked slowly, by reason of their years, but with a certain solemnity of pace which indicated that, in their own opinion at least, they were bound upon an errand of importance. At intervals they paused to mop their faces; and at every pause they regarded the landscape with contempt. One of these old gentlemen was thin and wiry, with a jaw that protruded like a bulldog's. His companion, for whose sake he corrected every now and then his long stride, was a little hunchback of ferocious demeanour, who looked out on the world from a pair of terrifying green eyes. In place of a wig he wore a bandage round his scalp.
The reader will not need to be told the names of this pair of old gentlemen. After his treatment at the hands of the Earl of Marlborough's soldiers, Captain Barker had been confined to his pavilion by nothing short of main force, which Dr. Beckerleg had with difficulty prevailed on Captain Runacles to exert. The inflammation of the patient's wound increasing with his irascibility, the Doctor ended by placing a padlock of his own on the front-door and another on the garden gate, and promising the little man his liberty on the first day he was fit to travel.
Captain Barker flung a monastic herbal at the doctor's head; whereupon the bleeding broke out afresh. Then he fainted.