The chamber they had lately quitted was certainly poor accommodation for an old lord and a young lady; for it was not a dozen feet long or much over half a dozen feet wide, and was lighted only by a very small barred window near the vaulted roof, and paved with dirty flagstones. It was indeed a sort of strong store-room, generally used for provisions of a less perishable kind, and a few barrels were still about, on one of which Katherine had stood while she was waving her handkerchief—the prearranged signal.
“Kitty is as good as a boy, after all, Will,” said his Lordship, with the greatest pride, and to Will’s pride too, though he was so disconcerted. “First she stood the fire of the great guns lately mounted on your works down there, and they knocked our feeble walls about to some tune; and then she first held her handkerchief, and then bound it to the bars under a dropping fire of musketry from those gallant gentry you have out there. With my legs you know I could no more reach the top of a barrel than a masthead.”
Will’s eyes were full of pride and admiration.
“Do you mind telling me how you got here, my Lord?” asked Captain Troubridge.
“I’m d—d if I quite know, except how we got into this last hole. We were put there as a favour.”
“A curious sort of favour,” said Captain Troubridge.
“Oh, we haven’t been locked up here for a month on the bread and water of affliction,” retorted Katherine gaily. “The fact is, Captain Troubridge,” she said, suddenly growing serious, “that our lives have been saved, and we have been spared not only outrages but discomforts by the chivalrousness of the gentleman who brought the flag of truce to you; and I was hoping that you would have come to terms with him, so that we could have informed you in his presence of all he has done for us.”
The Captain was moved, but silent. He had obeyed his orders; and it was not his way to throw the blame on them.
“You tell him the rest, father,” said Katherine, a little nettled, perhaps: “people always suspect a woman of putting a better or worse complexion on everything.”
“Well, d—n it,” he said, “there isn’t much to say, except that at first every one hoped to be at war with the French without the French knowing it, and then found the French at war with him without his knowing it. And that’s how we were in for it. That miserable shilly-dallying Emperor thought he could avoid war with the the French, but he was only letting them choose their own time; and when they chose it we were at Vienna, for the doctors had recommended a change for Kitty. How we were to get out of it was the puzzle, for the French seemed to be everywhere between us and England. We stayed on for weeks to find out; and last of all there seemed no better way than to make our way to Trieste—that was all through territory at present unoccupied by the enemy—and take ship there for Naples (which we were told had been recovered and was under the guns of the British fleet); and from thence make our way to England by the first of His Majesty’s ships which was going home. We did not attempt the Strait of Messina, because there was no sea room to cut and run if we met an enemy, and we gave Sicily a wide berth for the same reason; and finally we made the Bay of Naples at the very time when you had called the blockading squadron off to Maritimo from the intelligence of the French fleet having passed the Straits. There were a few small English craft patrolling, but in the thick weather we missed them, and ran into the midst of Commodore Caracciolo’s gunboats. Fortunately we fell into the hands of the Count of Tanagra, who came to see you this morning, a very brave and chivalrous man reduced to a great state of hopelessness from having been induced to embrace the pernicious revolutionary doctrines of the wicked French by the frightful abuses which have been going on in these kingdoms unknown to their Majesties. But he has found that no country in the world could be in so vile a state, under the worst of kings, as under these robbers and murderers; and he and the best of those with him would gladly have left the French and rejoined their Majesties if they could have come to terms.”