I will tell you no more stories, my dear friends. It is said that man is like the hare, which runs in a circle and comes back to die at the point from which it started.
Gascony has been calling to me of late. I see the blue Garonne among the vineyards and the bluer ocean toward which its waters sweep. I see the old town also, and the of masts from the side of the long stone . My heart hungers for the breath of my native air and the warm glow of my native sun.
Here in Paris are my friends, my occupations, my pleasures. There all who have known me are in their grave. And yet the southwest wind as it on my windows seems always to be the strong voice of the motherland calling her child back to that into which I am ready to sink. I have played my part in my time. The time has passed. I must pass also.
, dear friends, do not look sad, for what can be happier than a life completed in honour and made beautiful with friendship and love? And yet it is solemn also when a man approaches the end of the long road and sees the turning which leads him into the unknown. But the Emperor and all his Marshals have ridden round that dark turning and passed into the beyond. My Hussars, too—there are not fifty men who are not waiting yonder. I must go. But on this the last night I will tell you that which is more than a tale—it is a great historical secret. My lips have been sealed, but I see no reason why I should not leave behind me some account of this adventure, which must otherwise be lost, since I and only I, of all living men, have a knowledge of the facts.
I will ask you to go back with me to the year 1821.
In that year our great Emperor had been absent from us for six years, and only now and then from over the seas we heard some whisper which showed that he was still alive. You cannot think what a weight it was upon our hearts for us who loved him to think of him in eating his giant soul out upon that lonely island. From the moment we rose until we closed our eyes in sleep the thought was always with us, and we felt that he, our chief and master, should be so without our being able to move a hand to help him. There were many who would most willingly have laid down the remainder of their lives to bring him a little ease, and yet all that we could do was to sit and in our cafes and stare at the map, counting up the leagues of water which lay between us.
It seemed that he might have been in the moon for all that we could do to help him. But that was only because we were all soldiers and knew nothing of the sea.
Of course, we had our own little troubles to make us bitter, as well as the wrongs of our Emperor. There were many of us who had held high rank and would hold it again if he came back to his own. We had not found it possible to take service under the white flag of the Bourbons, or to take an oath which might turn our sabres against the man whom we loved. So we found ourselves with neither work nor money. What could we do save gather together and gossip and grumble, while those who had a little paid the score and those who had nothing shared the bottle? Now and then, if we were lucky, we managed to pick a quarrel with one of the Garde du , and if we left him on his in the Bois we felt that we had struck a blow for Napoleon once again. They came to know our haunts in time, and they avoided them as if they had been hornets' nests.
There was one of these—the Sign of the Great Man—in the Varennes, which was frequented by several of the more and younger Napoleonic officers. Nearly all of us had been colonels or aides-de-camp, and when any man of less distinction came among us we generally made him feel that he had taken a liberty. There were Captain Lepine, who had won the medal of honour at Leipzig; Colonel , aide-de-camp to Macdonald; Colonel Jourdan, whose fame in the army was hardly second to my own; Sabbatier of my own Hussars, Meunier of the Red Lancers, Le Breton of the Guards, and a dozen others.
Every night we met and talked, played dominoes, drank a glass or two, and wondered how long it would be before the Emperor would be back and we at the head of our once more. The Bourbons had already lost any hold they ever had upon the country, as was shown a few years , when Paris rose against them and they were hunted for the third time out of France. Napoleon had but to show himself on the coast, and he would have marched without firing a to the capital, exactly as he had done when he came back from Elba.
Well, when affairs were in this state there arrived one night in February, in our cafe, a most singular little man. He was short but exceedingly broad, with huge shoulders, and a head which was a deformity, so large was it. His heavy brown face was scarred with white in a most extraordinary manner, and he had grizzled whiskers such as wear. Two gold in his ears, and upon his hands and arms, told us also that he was of the sea before he introduced himself to us as Captain Fourneau, of the Emperor's navy. He had letters of introduction to two of our number, and there could be no doubt that he was to the cause. He won our respect, too, for he had seen as much fighting as any of us, and the burns upon his face were caused by his to his post upon the Orient, at the Battle of the Nile, until the blew up him. Yet he would say little about himself, but he sat in the corner of the cafe watching us all with a wonderfully sharp pair of eyes and listening intently to our talk.
One night I was leaving the cafe when Captain Fourneau followed me, and me on the arm he led me without saying a word for some distance until we reached his . “I wish to have a chat with you,” said he, and so conducted me up the stair to his room. There he lit a lamp and handed me a sheet of paper which he took from an envelope in his bureau. It was dated a few months before from the Palace of Schonbrunn at Vienna. “Captain Fourneau is in the highest interests of the Emperor Napoleon. Those who love the Emperor should obey him without question.—Marie Louise.” That is what I read. I was familiar with the signature of the Empress, and I could not doubt that this was genuine.
“Well,” said he, “are you satisfied as to my ?”
“Entirely.”
“Are you prepared to take your orders from me?”
“This document leaves me no choice.”
“Good! In the first place, I understand from something you said in the cafe that you can speak English?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Let me hear you do so.”
I said in English, “Whenever the Emperor needs the help of Etienne Gerard I am ready night and day to give my life in his service.” Captain Fourneau smiled.
“It is funny English,” said he, “but still it is better than no English. For my own part I speak English like an Englishman. It is all that I have to show for six years spent in an English prison. Now I will tell you why I have come to Paris. I have come in order to choose an agent who will help me in a matter which affects the interests of the Emperor. I was told that it was at the cafe of the Great Man that I would find the pick of his old officers, and that I could rely upon every man there being devoted to his interests. I studied you all, therefore, and I have come to the conclusion that you are the one who is most suited for my purpose.”
I acknowledged the compliment. “What is it that you wish me to do?” I asked.
“Merely to keep me company for a few months,” said he. “You must know that after my release in England I settled down there, married an English wife, and rose to command a small English merchant ship, in which I have made several voyages from Southampton to the Guinea coast. They look on me there as an Englishman. You can understand, however, that with my feelings about the Emperor I am lonely sometimes, and that it would be an advantage to me to have a companion who would sympathize with my thoughts. One gets very bored on these long voyages, and I would make it worth your while to share my cabin.”
He looked hard at me with his shrewd grey eyes all the time that he was uttering this rigmarole, and I gave him a glance in return which showed him that he was not with a fool. He took out a canvas bag full of money.
“There are a hundred pounds in gold in this bag,” said he. “You will be able to buy some comforts for your voyage. I should recommend you to get them in Southampton, whence we will start in ten days. The name of the vessel is the Black Swan. I return to Southampton to-morrow, and I shall hope to see you in the course of the next week.”
“Come now,” said I. “Tell me what is the destination of our voyage?”
“Oh, didn't I tell you?” he answered. “We are bound for the Guinea coast of Africa.”
“Then how can that be in the highest interests of the Emperor?” I asked.
“It is in his highest interests that you ask no indiscreet questions and I give no indiscreet replies,” he answered, sharply. So he brought the interview to an end, and I found myself back in my lodgings with nothing save this bag of gold to show that this singular interview had indeed taken place.
There was every reason why I should see the adventure to a conclusion, and so within a week I was on my way to England. I passed from St. Malo to Southampton, and on at the docks I had no difficulty in finding the Black Swan, a neat little vessel of a shape which is called, as I learned afterward, a brig. There was Captain Fourneau himself upon the deck, and seven or eight rough fellows hard at work her and making her ready for sea. He greeted me and led me down to his cabin.
“You are plain Mr. Gerard now,” said he, “and a Channel Islander. I would be obliged to you if you would forget your military ways and drop your swagger when you walk up and down my deck. A beard, too, would seem more sailor-like than those moustaches.”
I was by his words, but, after all, there are no ladies on the high seas, and what did it matter? He rang for the .
“Gustav,” said he, “you will pay every attention to my friend, Monsieur Etienne Gerard, who makes this voyage with us. This is Gustav Kerouan, my Breton steward,” he explained, “and you are very safe in his hands.”
This steward, with his harsh face and stern eyes, looked a very warlike person for so peaceful an employment.
I said nothing, however, though you may guess that I kept my eyes open. A had been prepared for me next the cabin, which would have seemed comfortable enough had it not contrasted with the extraordinary splendour of Fourneau's quarters. He was certainly a most person, for his room was new-fitted with and silver in a way which would have suited the yacht of a noble better than a little West African trader.
So thought the mate, Mr. Burns, who could not hide his amusement and contempt whenever he looked at it.
This fellow, a big, solid, red-headed Englishman, had the other berth connected with the cabin. There was a second mate named Turner, who in the middle of the ship, and there were nine men and one boy in the crew, three of whom, as I was informed by Mr. Burns, were Channel Islanders like myself. This Burns, the first mate, was much interested to know why I was coming with them.
“I come for pleasure,” said I.
He stared at me.
“Ever been to the West Coast?” he asked.
I said that I had not.
“I thought not,” said he. “You'll never come again for that reason, anyhow.”
Some three days after my arrival we the ropes by which the ship was tethered and we set off upon our journey. I was never a good sailor, and I may confess that we were far out of sight of any land before I was able to venture upon deck. At last, however, upon the fifth day I drank the soup which the good Kerouan brought me, and I was able to crawl from my and up the stair. The fresh air revived me, and from that time I accommodated myself to the motion of the vessel. My beard had begun to grow also, and I have no doubt that I should have made as fine a sailor as I have a soldier had I chanced to be born to that branch of the service. I learned to pull the ropes which the sails, and also to haul round the long sticks to which they are attached. For the most part, however, my duties were to play ecarte with Captain Fourneau, and to act as his companion. It was not strange that he should need one, for neither of his mates could read or write, though each of them was an excellent .
If our captain had died suddenly I cannot imagine how we should have found our way in that waste of waters, for it was only he who had the knowledge which enabled him to mark our place upon the chart. He had this upon the cabin wall, and every day he put our course upon it so that we could see at a glance how far we were from our destination. It was wonderful how well he could calculate it, for one morning he said that we should see the Verd light that very night, and there it was, sure enough, upon our left front the moment that darkness came. Next day, however, the land was out of sight, and Burns, the mate, explained to me that we should see no more until we came to our port in the of Biafra. Every day we flew south with a favouring wind, and always at noon the pin upon the chart was moved nearer and nearer to the African coast. I may explain that palm oil was the which we were in search of, and that our own lading consisted of coloured cloths, old , and such other trifles as the English sell to the .
At last the wind which had followed us so long died away, and for several days we drifted about on a calm and oily sea, under a sun which brought the pitch bubbling out between the upon the deck. We turned and turned our sails to catch every wandering , until at last we came out of this belt of calm and ran south again with a brisk breeze, the sea all round us being alive with flying fishes. For some days Burns appeared to be uneasy, and I observed him continually shading his eyes with his hand and staring at the horizon as if he were looking for land. Twice I caught him with his red head against the chart in the cabin, gazing at that pin, which was always approaching and yet never reaching the African coast. At last one evening, as Captain Fourneau and I were playing ecarte in the c............