A Change in the Cabinet

by Hilaire Belloc

He remembered having noticed upon the cross-Channel steamers exceedingly bright little brass guns, the purpose and use of which had often troubled him. Now he knew!—and he hoped against hope that no such instrument of death swivelled upon the poop of the Lily.

He dreaded every moment to catch the sharp spit of flame against the sunlight, a curl of smoke, the scream of the light shell, the ricochet, the boom that would come later sullenly upon the air, and all the rest that he had read of:—the first shot to find the range: the dreadful second that would sink him.

He was relieved, as minute after minute passed, and no such experiment in marine ballistics was tried. There was faintly borne to his ears as he was swept down the ceaseless stream of Ocean, a little clamour which, on the spot itself, was a roaring babel; he saw a group of men wrestling with the davits, but the davits were stiff, and boat-drill was not in the programme of the Lily. Indeed of all the crew but two had ever handled such a contrivance as a davit before, and of these one was an Italian.

Another man than Captain Higgins would have been profoundly grateful to see the stowaway drown; not so that conscientious servant of the Firm. The stowaway received such food and lodging as had kept him living until such time as he could be handed over to the Sheriff or his officers or any other servants or justices of our lord the King, who were competent to deal with breach of contract, tort, replevin and demurrer. The stowaway was responsible to the Law, and Captain Higgins was responsible for the stowaway; therefore must a boat be lowered. And because there was something grander in swinging out the davits in full view of a British town and harbour than in chucking the dinghy into the water, swing out the davits he would,—and he lost ten minutes over it—ten precious minutes during which the tide had carried the little speck that was the head of George Mulross Demaine almost beyond the power of his spyglass.

Captain Higgins capitulated; he left the davits as they were—one stuck fast, the other painfully screwed half round, a deplorable spectacle for the town of Parham, and one shameful to the reputation of the sailor-men aboard the Lily, and he ordered the little dinghy out over the side.

They unlashed her and let her down. Two men tumbled into her, the second officer took command, and they rowed away down tide with all the vigour that Captain Higgins’ awful discipline could inspire, directed in their course by his repeated injunctions and proceeding at a pace that must surely at last overhaul the fugitive.

When Demaine heard the beat of the oars and again floated to look backwards, he estimated the distance between himself and the shore and gave himself up for lost. Now indeed there could be no doubt of the rope’s end! He could not disappear like a whale for any appreciable time beneath the surface; the tales he had read (and believed) of heroes in the Napoleonic and other wars, who themselves, single-handed and in the water, had fought a whole ship’s crew with success, he now dismissed as idle fables. There was nothing left for him but, somewhat doggedly, to continue the overhand stroke, for now that he was discovered there was no point in the slower breast stroke that had helped to conceal him. They were making (as they said in the days of the Clippers) perhaps three feet to his one, but freedom is dear to the human heart, and he pegged away.

The Shining Goddesses of the Sea loved him more than they loved the odious denizens of the Lily; they set the tide in shore, and the Sea Lady, the Silver-Footed One, led the little waves along in his favour.

He had come to a belt of water where the tide set inward very rapidly, along a gulley or deep of the shore water. It was a godsend to him, for his pursuers were still in the outer tide. He was now not a quarter of a mile from the water-mark, and still going strong, with perhaps two hundred yards between the boat and him; he could not feel their hot breath upon his neck, but he could hear the rhythmic yell of the officer astern, criticising the moral characters of his crew with a regular emphatic cadence that followed the stroke of the oars ... when his cold, numbed right foot struck something; then his left struck sand: ... It was England! And the English statesman, like Antæus, was glad and was refreshed.

He stumbled along out of it—the water on the shelving sand was here not three feet deep. He stumbled and raced along through the splashing water. It fell to his knees, to his shins, to his ankles, and he was on dry land!