It was mid-winter and bitterly cold, so the two adventurers prepared themselves by rubbing themselves with oil saved from the little lamp by which Garneray taught his pupils. Without attracting notice they slipped overboard, and swam for the muddy shore of an island. This they crossed on patins which Bertaud had provided, and reached the river by Gosport. Only occasional pulls at the rum flask prevented them from perishing with cold, and their second swim nearly cost both of them their lives. Each in turn had to support the other, and they were on the point of giving up when they reached an anchored vessel. Here a watchdog greeted them, and kept up his barking until he aroused the crew, who hailed them in what they thankfully recognized to be broken English. Alas! Their joy was short-lived. The skipper of the vessel was a Dane, and so far from promising to help them declared he would send them back to the hulk, abusing them violently. This was too much for the fiery Breton, who, seizing a knife, sprang upon the Dane and bore him to the ground. They tied and gagged him, and, said Bertaud, ‘Now let us be off!’
But Garneray declared himself too exhausted to attempt another swim, even for liberty, and said he would go back to the hulk. The prospect of this was too horrible for Bertaud. ‘Better be drowned and be done with it,’ said he, ‘than live to be killed by inches,’ and before Garneray could remonstrate, to the amazement of the Danish sailors, he sprang overboard.
At four the next morning the Danes brought Garneray back to the Prothée. Instantly, although he was wet through and half dead with cold, he was put into the cachot, and but for the fact that the carpenters had been working there and had left a pile of shavings, amongst which he nestled, he could not have lived through the night. Next day he was released and sent back to the battery, but no fresh clothes were issued to him, and but for the charity of his fellow prisoners he would have gone naked.
Seeing all the prisoners peering excitedly through the grated port-holes, Garneray, sick in his hammock, asked the reason: ‘See, the crows!’ was the reply.
He joined the onlookers, and describes his feelings when he saw stretched on the mud of the Portchester river the body of Bertaud, already an attraction for the crows. On the brutal scene which followed, the dragging of the body to the ship, and the utterly inhuman response made to Garneray’s prayer for the decent treatment of his friend’s remains, it is as unnecessary as it is distasteful to dwell.
Garneray was now changed from the Prothée to the Crown—a ship with a bad reputation among the prisoners.
Captain R—— of the Crown was a brute in every sense of the word, and the prisoners maddened him by winning for the Crown the reputation of being the most unmanageable, because the worst managed, hulk in Portchester River. Bully, sot, and coward as he was, he by no means had his own way. On one occasion five prisoners escaped. Although it was mid-winter and snowing, R—— had the muster of half-clad wretches made in the open. The number could never be made right, and count after count was made, during a space of three days. The whole affair was a cleverly concocted device to gain for the escaped men time to get safely away. A master-carpenter among the prisoners had cut a means of communication between two of the batteries, through which, unseen by the authorities, men could slip from one to the other, get on deck, and so swell or diminish the muster roll as arranged. The trick was not discovered, but that there was a trick was evident, and R—— was determined to be revenged. He summoned the floating fire-engines in harbour, and, although it was mid-winter, actually pumped icy water into the lower deck and batteries until they were drenched, as well as the prisoners, their hammocks, and their clothes.
The Crown Hulk, seen from the Stern.
(After Louis Garneray.)
On another occasion when for counting purposes those on the Crown were transferred en masse on board the San Antonio, they returned to find that during their temporary absence R—— had actually, ‘as a measure of precaution,’ he said, destroyed all the tools and implements and books which the prisoners used in their poor little occupations and trades, and among them Garneray’s canvases, easels, brushes, and colours. The immediate result was a stupor of impotent rage; this gave way to open insubordination, insult, and such a universal paroxysm of indignation that even R—— was cowed, and actually made a show of leniency, offering terms of mediation which were scornfully rejected.