"Oh, I met him once in England," replied Mr. Tollemache carelessly, and, as far as the bare statement went, quite truthfully. "Here, give me the tiller now! It makes a difference when you have actually known a man, you see."

For he was ashamed to avow the real motive power—his acquaintance, much more intimate and cogent, with a younger member of the family. At any rate, it was not a safe thing to let a midshipman know.

They were nearing the Pomone when the Marquis de Flavigny, his head in his compatriot's lap, began to mutter something. The middy bent down.

"The poor beggar thinks he's talking to his wife—or his sweetheart," said he, pleased at being able to recognise a word of French. "'Anne,' her name seems to be."

Mr. Tollemache, in the darkness and the sea-wind, turned away his head and smiled.

CHAPTER XXIX
Væ Victis!

(1)

All that night Fortuné de la Vireville sat in the desecrated church of St. Gildas at Auray, his back against a pillar. Hundreds of his comrades were there with him, so crowded together that it was difficult to find room to lie at length. He was fasting, as they all were, since the evening before, his wounded arm was inflamed and aching, but his thoughts were with René, stiff and stark by now, most probably, on the sandhills or the shore; with Le Goffic, helpless at St. Pierre; with his scattered and leaderless Bretons. Before his eyes, in that encumbered church, lit only by a single lamp, rushed in a stupefying panorama all the events of that long day of disaster, from his ominous waking in the early morning to the last scene in the little fort—and its aftermath. He remembered how, as the grenadiers drew up their long column of prisoners on the shore, the rain had ceased, and the sun had come out; even the wind, which had wrought them so much calamity, seemed, too late, to be abating. But by three o'clock in the afternoon, when, faint with hunger and fatigue, they arrived at Fort Penthièvre, the downpour had begun again, and it rained in torrents as they marched, for eight hours or more, towards Auray. At the head of the column walked Sombreuil, supporting the old Bishop of Dol, who, on account of his age and infirmities, had not been able to embark for the English fleet, and who, in any case, as he said, had made the sacrifice of his life. And because, before they started, every man had given his parole not to attempt escape, they marched for all those weary hours through a strongly Royalist countryside, half of the time in the friendly darkness, with an insufficient and fatigued escort, and not one broke his word. Thus, in the dead of night, they had reached Auray, and had been huddled into its various churches.

Here in St. Gildas were massed all ages and ranks, veterans and boys, officers and private soldiers alike, and the wounded, of whom there were not a few, lay in their rain-soaked clothes on the stone floor with no care but what their empty-handed companions could give them. Here was Gesril du Papeu, the brine scarcely dry in his hair, who had swum back again from safety to share the fate of his comrades; and Charles de Lamoignon, who had carried his wounded younger brother to a boat, himself forbearing to embark; and men with names like Salignac-Fénelon and Broglie, and the seventeen-year-old Louis de Talhouët, who had passed, a prisoner, through the estates of his own family on the way to Auray; and many another. . . .