I was sure I saw the two French officers start and glance quickly at each other at this remark; and then, for the first time, I noticed that they wore tri-coloured cockades in their hats.
“Why, those gentlemen have national cockades in their hats!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“By Jove! you are right, young gentleman, they have!” ejaculated the skipper. “What is the meaning of all this, monsieur? Are you a Nationalist, or are you a Royalist in disguise? And I beg that you will at once tell me the whereabouts of Lord Hood and his fleet. Unless I receive a distinct answer, I shall be forced to believe that treachery is meditated, and shall take the necessary precautionary steps forthwith.”
The Frenchmen looked in each other’s faces for an instant, and then the one who had called his boat’s crew on deck turned to the skipper and said, in French,—
“Calm yourself, monsieur, I have the honour to inform you that you and your ship’s company are prisoners. But the English are a good people, and we will treat you all with the utmost kindness. The English admiral went away some time ago, and Toulon is now in the hands of the Nationalists.”
The expression of mingled horror and disgust which slowly overspread the features of the skipper and the first luff, like a summer cloud sailing slowly across the disc of the full moon, would have been irresistibly laughable under other circumstances, but as matters stood nobody felt the slightest inclination to laugh.
“Prisoners!!” ejaculated Mr Annesley. He was apparently too full for further utterance, but he had already said quite enough. “We are prisoners!” flew from mouth to mouth, like wildfire, and in less than two minutes every man in the ship had become acquainted with our position. Every officer came crowding aft, to ascertain the truth of the startling rumour, and a more disgusted and dejected-looking group of mortals than we appeared, it would have been difficult to find.
The disagreeable announcement once made, the French officers hastened to place matters upon a more agreeable basis, exerting themselves to the utmost to get up a lively general conversation, and explaining how it was that we had so easily run into the trap. A very few words sufficed for this, the matter was so excessively simple.
It appeared, from the French officers’ statement, that Lord Hood, after sustaining a long and harassing siege of nearly four months, had, on the night of the 18th of the previous December, been at length compelled to evacuate Toulon, he finding it utterly impossible to hold it any longer with the small force at his command—barely 17,000 men—against the overwhelming numbers of the besiegers, who mustered close upon 50,000.
But though unable to prevent the Republicans from obtaining possession of this important place, the British admiral resolved that it should pass into their hands, comparatively speaking, valueless. Immediately, therefore, that it was finally decided to retire from the place, he set on foot preparations to destroy the arsenal, magazines, etcetera, and such of the French ships as it was deemed inexpedient to take away with him; and though he was unable to carry out in their entirety the whole of his arrangements, it was pretty evident, from our informants’ account, that the destruction actually effected was something enormous; the dockyard, with its various storehouses, the magazines, two powder-ships, and two 74-gun ships of war—the “Héros,” and “Thémistocle”—being burnt.