I had a call to board the San Margarita. Not a boat could be had in St. Jean de Luz for love or money; the passage from the sea into the harbour is narrow, and the fishermen, though hardy navigators, are shy of facing the current when the sea is rough. Leader and myself walked by the goat-path on the crags leading to the southern side of the harbour so as to avoid the bar, and succeeded in chartering a skiff at Socoa. A quarter of an hour's pull brought us alongside the yacht, and on sending up our cards we were at once invited on board by the owner. To my surprise I discovered that the entire crew was British, as reckless a set of dare-devils as ever cut out a craft from under an enemy's guns. The skipper, Mr. Travers, was a Cork man, an ex-officer of the Indian Navy, who had lost a finger during the Mutiny; but the life and soul of the enterprise was an ex-officer of the Austrian and Mexican armies, Charles-Edward Stuart, Count d'Albanie, great-grandson of "the Young Pretender." His uncle, John Sobieski Stuart, had resigned his claim to the throne of England on his behalf,[C] so that I actually shook the hand of the man who under other circumstances might be wielding the sceptre of that empire on which the sun never sets. Instead of a crown he wore the genuine old Highland bonnet—not that modern innovation, the military feather-bonnet. In face this descendant of royalty was an unmistakable Stuart, with the characteristic aquiline nose, and a proud dignity of expression. He might have sat for the portrait of Charles the Martyr-King, by Vandyck, in Windsor. He was a convinced and earnest supporter of the claims of Cárlos Séptimo, whom he regarded as a cousin, and a sort of modern counterpart of the young Chevalier, the "darling Charlie" of Jacobite minstrelsy. He received us with the hospitality of his nation, and we had a long chat as we paced the deck briskly, the Count discussing the prospects of the rising, and then verging off into gay anecdotes of his military career in Austria, and inquiries after mutual acquaintances in London. By-and-by Captain Travers made his appearance, a tall weather-beaten navigator in orthodox naval dress, with a glass in his eye. He bowed severely to the Stuart, who as coldly returned his salute. It was easy to perceive that there was a restraint in the demeanour of the men on both sides; but there was a tacit armistice for the occasion. I heard afterwards that they did not talk to each other, except on strict matters of duty, and when taking their short walks on deck, one confined himself religiously to the larboard, the other to the starboard. Travers took me in tow, while the alert Count with his quick manner strode to and fro with Leader, and kept up a jerky fire of conversation nearly all to himself, occasionally twirling his peaked beard. Travers and I lolled over the bulwarks, and laughed and sampled the contents of an aqua-vitæ bottle, "Special Jury" whisky from Ireland, and I learned that this ill-assorted pair had been sharing some close hazards on their audacious cruiser.
A few days previously they had been chased by El Aspirante, a Spanish gun-boat, which gave them eight shots. One caught them on the port quarter, and shivered some timbers, but effected no more serious damage.
"I wish we had only an Armstrong twenty-four pounder close handy," said the mate, "and we'd have saved them 'ere dons the price of a coffin, I'd take my davy!"
From what I saw of the seamen, I think this was no empty boast. Some of them had served with one Captain Semmes on a certain craft called the Alabama, and had been picked up after the fight with the Keasarge, off Cherbourg, by Mr. John Lancaster's yacht, the Deerhound. There is no need for concealment now, so that I may freely admit that the Deerhound and the San Margarita were one and the same. Travers, who was in love with the yacht, told me if he had another blade to the screw he could give leg-bail to the fastest ship in the Spanish navy. At leaving, I was asked to take a trip with them; they were about to visit their floating arsenal in the Bay of Biscay, load, and try to run another cargo. I respectfully declined—fortunately for myself; my orders were to get to the Carlist headquarters, not to go playing Paul Jones.
Leader and Smith Sheehan were about to cross the border, and readily acceded to my request to form one of the party. We rose at daybreak next morning and looked out of window for the San Margarita. The roadstead of Socoa was a blank. She had steamed away during the night. After the customary chocolate we started blithely, in a light basket-carriage with a pair of fast-trotting ponies, that whisked us in less than two hours to the foot of the Pyrenees. Here we had to alight, the road up the mountain being impracticable for vehicles. A boy guide was in waiting to show us over the border by the smuggler's path—a wild short-cut through a labyrinth of brushwood. The guide was a remarkable youth in his way; he understood not a syllable of French or Spanish, and spoke only Basque which none of us comprehended, so that our parley with him was somewhat uninteresting. Yet I was anxious to elicit the opinions of that guide. A lad who could strike the path up the mountain with such truth might, by some instinct, have seen his way through Spanish politics. Our walk was a trial of endurance. I had traversed the Pyrenees in snow, and that was fatiguing enough in all conscience; but now the sun was beating cruelly on the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me, with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a pile of planking fresh from the woodcutter's axe. There was no further need to be wary, for this was Spain. We were over the border, and now my companions could breathe freely in every sense. Before they had passed the imaginary line they were liable to be arrested by the gendarmes, conducted back and interned, for they had that about their persons which betrayed that they were no innocent travellers. At every noise ahead, a scud was made to the cover of the tall ferns and brambles by the wayside, and an advance party of one was thrown out to reconnoitre. The precautions were superfluous, if we knew but all. From the 15th of July, the French patrols had got the hint to be blind. So lax was the cordon on the day we crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in his belt, might have gone into Spain and never have had their sight offended by a solitary French uniform.
The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped on a sunny day, repays all the toil and trouble of the ascent; and looking round, one begins to realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. On one side extend the plains of France, washed by the greenish-blue waves of the Bay of Biscay, and studded as with pearls by the coast-towns of Fontarabia, St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, and so on northwards till the vision fails. On the other side rise in convoluting swells the mountains of Navarre and Guipúzcoa, their slopes dyed in every shade of green from grass and lichen, shrub and tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting with ore, expose themselves. Iron, lead, silver, are all to be found in the bosom of the earth in this richest and most beautiful of lands. Nature has been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead of using her gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for generations to the purposes of guerrilla warfare and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this high moral tone hardly sits well on a man who was aiding and abetting the entry of a couple of foreign free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent, and perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own account. We suffered no molestation; but others might not have escaped unpleasantness. The agent of a Hatton Garden jeweller might have had to pay toll, if the story were true that a few of the dispersed "Black Legion" had got off with their rifles and started a joint-stock company in the bush-whacking line, and were doing a pretty fair business.
The descent on the Spanish side was almost precipitous, and had to be effected with exceeding care. At times we ran down the track, rugged with sharp crags, almost head foremost, and only saved ourselves from falling by clinging to the nearest sapling. But there is an end to everything, and at last we came on the road that dips into the village of Echalar, in the district of Pampeluna, province of Navarre. Here we dismissed our guide, and here I encountered, for the first time, a regularly organized Carlist company, detached from the fifth battalion of Navarre, which was in garrison at Vera, some eight miles distant; but as I shall have opportunity to speak of the entire battalion soon, I defer comment on its appearance.
My companions were desirous of pushing forward, and the provisional alcalde of the village gave us a trap to take us on. There is an excellent road by the mountain-side, until a tunnel to the right is reached, when we entered a most picturesque, well-wooded defile, through which the Bidassoa pours its waters. We dashed along gaily until we came in sight of the steeple of the church of Vera at twilight.
A cry of "Who goes there?" from the gloom arrested us at the entrance of the town.
Leader sung out, "España."