"'Twas a strange scene to witness, let me tell you; never can I forget the sightless, thinking sort of gaze from that head of his, after the telescope sank from his eye, when the Conqueror must have shot back with all her stately hamper into the floor of the Atlantic again!
"Once more I brought my spy-glass to bear on the place where he had been, and was almost on the point of calling out to warn him off the edge of the cliff, forgetting the distance I was away. Napoleon had stepped, with one foot before him, on the very brink, his two hands hanging loose by his side, with the glass in one of them, till the shadow of his small black cocked hat covered the hollows of his eyes, and he stood, as it were, looking down past the face of the precipice. What he thought of, no mortal tongue can say, whether he was master at the time over a wilder battle than any he'd ever fought—but just then, what was the surprise it gave me to see the head of a man, with a red tasselled cap on it, raised through amongst the ivy from below, while he seemed to have his feet on the cracks and juts of the rock, hoisting himself by one hand round the tangled roots, till no doubt he must have looked right aloft into the French Emperor's face; and perhaps he whispered something—though, for my part, it was all dumb show to me, where I knelt peering into the glass. I saw even him start at the suddenness of the thing—he raised his head upright, still glancing down over the front of the crag, with the spread hand lifted, and the side of his face half-turned toward the party within earshot behind, where the Governor and the rest apparently kept together out of respect, no doubt watching both Napoleon's back and the ship of war far beyond. The keen sunlight on the spot brought out every motion of the two in front—the one so full in my view, that I could mark his look settle again on the other below, his firm lips parting and his hand out before him, like a man seeing a spirit he knew; while a bunch of leaves on the end of a wand came stealing up from the stranger's post to Napoleon's very fingers.
"The head of the man on the cliff turned round seaward for one moment, ticklish as his footing must have been; then he looked back, pointing with his loose hand to the horizon—there was one minute between them without a motion, seemingly—the captive Emperor's chin was sunk on his breast, though you'd have said his eyes glanced up out of the shadow of his forehead; and the stranger's red cap hung like a bit of the bright-coloured cliff, under his two hands, holding amongst the leaves. Then I saw Napoleon lift his hand calmly, he gave a sign with it—it might have been refusing, it might have been agreeing, or it might be farewell, I never expect to know; but he folded his arms across his breast, with the bunch of leaves in his fingers, and stepped slowly back from the brink towards the officers. I was watching the stranger below it, as he swung there for a second or two, in a way like to let him go dash to the bottom; his face sluing wildly seaward again. Short though the glance I had of him was—his features set hard in some bitter feeling or other, his dress different, too, besides the moustache being off, and his complexion no doubt purposely darkened—it served to prove what I'd suspected: he was no other than the Frenchman I had seen in the brig, and, mad or sensible, the very look I caught was more like that he faced the thunder squall with than aught besides. Directly after, he was letting himself carefully down with his back to my glass; the party above were moving off over the brow of the crags, and the Governor riding round apparently to come once more down the hollow between us.
"In fact, the seventy-four had stood by this time so far in, that the peaks in the distance shut her out; but I ran the glass carefully along the whole horizon in my view, for signs of the schooner. The haze was too bright, however, to make sure either way; though, dead to windward, there were some streaks of cloud risen with the breeze, where I once or twice fancied I could catch the gleam of a speck in it. The Podargus was to be seen through a notch in the rocks, too, beating out in a different direction, as if the telegraph had signalled her elsewhere; after which you heard the dull rumble of the forts saluting the Conqueror down at Jamestown as she came in; and being late in the afternoon, it was high time for me to crowd sail downward, to fall in with my shipmates.
"I was just getting near the turn into Side Path, accordingly, after a couple of mortal hours' hard riding, and once more in sight of the harbour beneath, when the three of them overtook me, having managed to reach the top of Diana's Peak, as they meant. The first lieutenant was full of the grand views on the way, with the prospect of the peak, where one saw the sea all round St Helena like a ring, and the sky over you as blue as blue water. 'But what do you think we saw on the top, Mr Collins?' asked one of the urchins of me—a mischievous imp he was himself, too, pock-marked, with hair like a brush, and squinted like a ship's two hawse-holes. 'Why, Mister Snelling,' said I, gruffly—for I knew him pretty well already, and he was rather a favourite with me for his sharpness, though you may suppose I was thinking of no trifles at the moment—'why, the devil, perhaps.' 'I must say I thought at first it was him, sir,' said the reefer, grinning; ''twas a black nigger, though, sir, sitting right on the very truck of it, with his hands on his two knees, and we'd got to shove him off before we could dig our knives into it!' 'By the Lord Harry!' I rapped out, 'the very thing that——' ''Twas really the case, though, Mr Collins,' said the first lieutenant; 'and I thought it curious; but there are so many negroes in the island.' 'If you please, sir,' put in the least of the mids, 'perhaps they haven't all of 'em room to meditate, sir!' 'Or sent to the mast-head, eh, Roscoe?' said Snelling. 'Which you'll be, sirrah,' broke in the first lieutenant, 'the moment I get aboard, if you don't keep a small helm.' We were clattering down over Jamestown by this time, the sun blazing red off the horizon, into it and the doors of the houses, and the huge hull and spars of the Conqueror almost blocking up the harbour, as she lay anchored outside the Indiaman. The evening gun fired as we pulled aboard the Hebe, which immediately got under weigh by order, although Lord Frederick was not come down yet; but it fell to her turn that night to supply a guard-boat to windward, and she stood up under full sail round Sugarloaf Point, just as the dusk fell like a shadow over the island.
"The Newcastle's boat was on the leeward coast that night, and one of our cutters was getting ready to lower, nearly off Prosperous Bay, to windward, while the frigate herself would hold farther out to sea. One of the master's mates should have taken the cutter; but after giving the first lieutenant a few hints as far as I liked to go, I proposed to go in charge of her that time, myself—which was laid to the score of my freshness on the station; and the mate being happy to get rid of a tiresome duty, I got leave at once.
"The sharp midshipman, Snelling, took it into his ugly head to keep me company, and away we pulled into hearing of the surf. The moment things took the shape of fair work, in fact, I lost all thoughts of a late kind. In place of seeing the ragged heights against the sky, and musing all sorts of notions about the French Emperor, there was nothing but the broad bulk of the island high over us, the swell below, and the sea glimmering wide from our gunwale to the stars; so no sooner did we lose sight of the Hebe slowly melting into the gloom, than I lit a cheroot, gave the tiller to the mid, and sat stirring to the heart at the thought of something to come, I scarce knew what. As for Bonaparte, with all that belonged to him, 'twas little to me in that mood, in spite of what I'd seen during the day, compared with a snatch of old Channel times; the truth was, next morning I'd feel for him again.
"The night for a good while was pretty tolerably starlit, and in a sort of way you could make out a good distance. One time we pulled right round betwixt the two points, though slowly enough; then again the men lay on their oars, letting her float in with the long swells, till the surf could be heard too loud for a safe berth. Farther on in the night, however, it got to be dark—below at least—the breeze holding steady, and bringing it thicker and thicker; at last it was so black all round that on one side you just knew the rocks over you, with the help of a faint twinkle of stars right aloft. On the other side there was only, at times, the two lights swinging at the mast-head of the Podargus and Hebe, far apart, and one farther to sea than the other; or now and then their stern-window and a port, when the heave of the water lifted them, or the ships yawed a little. One hour after another, it was wearisome enough waiting for nothing at all, especially in the key one was in at the time, and with a long tropical night before you.
"All of a sudden, fairly between the brig and the frigate, I fancied I caught a glimpse for one moment of another twinkle; then it was out again, and I had given it up, when I was certain I saw it plainly once more, as well as a third time, for as short a space as before. We were off a cove in the coast, inside Prosperous Bay, where a bight in the rocks softened the force of the surf, not far from the steep break where one of these same narrow gullies came out—a good deal short of the shore, indeed; but I knew by this time it led up somewhere toward the Longwood side. Accordingly the idea struck me of a plan to set agoing, whether I hit upon the right place or not; if it was the schooner, she would be coming down right from windward, on the look-out for a signal, as well as for the spot to aim at; the thing was to lure her boat ashore there before their time, seize her crew, and take the schooner herself by surprise, as if we were coming back all right; since signal the ships we couldn't, and the schooner would be wary as a dolphin.
"No sooner said than done. I steered cautiously for the cove, fearfully though the swell bore in, breaking over the rocks outside of it; and the reefer and I had to spring one after the other for our lives, just as the bowman prized her off into the back-wash.