“I have been to, and come from, all parts of the world since we parted, and I’ll tell you all about that another time,” he answered. “And as to being on board here, I am a prisoner like yourself. The craft I belonged to, of which I was first mate, was captured two days ago and sent into Saint Malo. I have no greater reason to be happy than you have. However, the Frenchmen treat us very civilly on board, and that is a satisfaction; we might have been much worse off.”
We might indeed, for very often the French privateers treated their prisoners with great cruelty, robbing them of their money and clothes, and half starving them. They were then sent on shore, and thrust into some wretched, dirty prison, where they were allowed to linger out their days till the end of the war. Such we had expected to be our fate.
The Frenchmen believed that the English did not treat their prisoners any better. They had a story written by one of their countrymen, a French officer, who had broken his parole and got back to France, to the effect that French prisoners were fed in England on horse-flesh and beans. He declared that on one occasion the inspecting officer of prisons rode into a court-yard of a prison, where he left his horse, and that as soon as he had disappeared, the famished prisoners set upon it, and tearing the horse to pieces, devoured it and the saddle also; and that when the officer got back, he found only the stirrup-iron and the bit in the horse’s mouth.
Whatever we may think of the digestibility of the morsels carried off by the hungry prisoners, the tale seems to have been eagerly swallowed by the countrymen of the narrator.
La Motte endeavoured to cheer me up, by talking of old times and of our adventures in the Mediterranean and elsewhere,—indeed, I felt his presence a very great comfort. He was of a most cheerful, happy disposition, and allowed nothing to put him out.
“I was on my way home from the West Indies in a fine brig, the Ann, and I had a little venture on board of my own, with which I hoped to make a good addition to my fortune, and perhaps, before long, to settle down and marry. Well, it’s all gone; but what’s the use of sighing? What has happened to me has happened to a thousand other better men much less able to bear it. So I say to myself, ‘Better luck next time.’ I never can abide those people who sigh, and moan, and groan if any mishap overtakes them, as if they were the only unfortunate people in the world. To everybody they meet they tell their woes, as if nothing else was of so much consequence. You are not one of those, Weatherhelm, I know, nor am I. Everything comes right in the mill at last, if we will but wait patiently till the mill turns round.”
La Motte rattled on in this way till he talked me into better spirits again. At all events, he prevented me from dwelling on my misfortunes.
“Now, in reality, we ought to consider ourselves very fortunate,” he continued. “We might have been captured by a set of ruffianly fellows, who would have robbed us and ill-treated us in every way. Instead of that, the crew are the best sort of privateer’s-men I ever fell in with. The captain and first mate are very good, kind-hearted men. They have both of them been made prisoners themselves, and have spent a year or more in England. They tell me that they lore the English, for that they were treated with the greatest kindness all the time they were in England, and that they wish to repay that kindness, though I must say they take an odd way to show their lore by fitting out a vessel to go and rob them on the high seas; but I suppose that is their profession, and they cannot help it.”
While La Motte was speaking, a fine-looking man came up, and, taking him by the arm, addressed him as his bon ami, and told him that dinner was ready.
La Motte thanked him, and then told him that I was an old shipmate, and hoped that he would extend the same kindness to me that he had done to him.