In the Day of Adversity

by John Bloundelle-Burton

He cast one more hurried glance at De Roquemaure, who seemed quite dead now. But, dead or alive, what mattered it? If dead, so much the better; if alive, he would be blown to atoms in a few more moments—as he would himself if he tarried longer. He must go at once.

"Farewell, dog!" he muttered, with one look downward at his enemy. "Farewell. Your account is made!" And without wasting another moment—for his fear of being hurled into eternity himself the next moment had gained terrible hold on him—he rushed to the main cabin door and seized the handle.

An awful sweat of fear—a cold, clammy sweat—broke out all over him as he did so; he knew now how dear life was to him—dearer than he had ever dreamed before that it would be; or was it rather the fear of an awful death than death itself? Was it that which caused him to almost faint with horror as he recognised that the door was either locked or jammed, so that it would not open?

He was doomed—the fire was spreading—he heard one great gun explode by itself—a gun on the lower deck near where the powder room must be—beneath him—he was doomed! In another few moments—perhaps not more than four or five at most—the bulkheads would fly asunder, the deck split like matchwood, he and the dead bodies of De Roquemaure and the others be flung to the elements, be blown into portions of the elements themselves.

Drenched with sweat, paralyzed with terror—it was the terror of an awful death and not of death itself; livid with horror—though he was not aware such was the case; his lips parched and glued together; not knowing whether his limbs were shaking beneath him or the deck of the cabin quivering before its impending upheaval, his starting eyes glared round the prison he was in. And as he so glared he saw—if God gave him a moment more—his opportunity. The great square ports—an invention of but the last few years and superseding the old small round ones—furnished that opportunity.

With a gasp—nay, almost a cry—he clambered on the locker beneath the nearest one—again it seemed as though the ship was quivering with the impending explosion!—thrust his head and shoulders through, dragged the sword by his side carefully after him, seized a top chain hanging down into the water, and was himself in the water a moment later. Then a nervous, hurried thrust of one foot against the hull, with an impetus obtained thereby which propelled him a dozen feet from the vessel, a few masterful strokes made boldly, all trembling with fear and horror as he was, and he plunged into a puff of black smoke, the cinders among which hissed on his face as he struck it, and he was saved—saved from that most awful death, even though countless other deaths surrounded and loomed up before him; saved, at least, from being dismembered and flung piecemeal in a million atoms on the bosom of the ocean.

The smoke drifting in his face recalled to him that he was swimming toward the English fleet; the current still making toward the shore told him that he could never reach that fleet. Even as he swam away from the doomed transport he knew that the powerful tide beneath was carrying him back; he must change his course, or another moment would carry his body against the after part of the ship he had but now escaped from, the ship which must now ere long be hurled out of the sea! It was easy to do so, however; to turn himself away from her so that, even though borne back to the coast of Cotentin, he would pass far astern of her. He had enough strength for that, enough left to haul himself far out from where she lay—but not much more. He was sore spent now with all he had gone through, and was borne down also with the double weight of clothes upon him; as he glided by, or was carried back—though some forty yards adrift of the transport—he could do nothing more than tread water and so manage to keep himself afloat.

Borne through the murky grime, along that water there came now the swish of oars and the voices of men speaking in French—French strongly accentuated and in the Manche patois. What were they doing, he wondered. Had they come out to save some of the burning transports and boats, to endeavour to stop the flames and also the firing of the guns by the heat—their own guns that, as they fired, hurled their charges on their own shore? Were they going to meet their dooms unknowingly by venturing on that very place of death which he had just escaped from?

It might be—might well be so; and though he had fought against them—though they were Frenchmen and his enemies, too, he must warn them, save them, if he could: they were men, human beings; he could not let them go unwittingly to such an awful end as this, could not let them board that ship and meet the fate he had avoided. Therefore he hailed them as loudly as he was able, screamed to them, besought them to enter no vessel near; above all to avoid the burning transport. But whether they understood him, even if they heard, he could not guess; he caught still the beat of the oars upon the waves, heard their chattering voices, even one or two of their expressions; and then, as the tide took him nearer and nearer to the shore, he lost sound of those voices altogether.

"Strange," he muttered, "strange she blows not up—many minutes have elapsed since I quitted her—twenty at the least, and yet the explosion has not come. They may have boarded her, those men, have extinguished the flames: there may have been no powder left in the mag—Ah!"