The French Prisoner. A Romance of Dartmoor and the Western Seas

Book I

— DARTMOOR. CHAP. PAGE I. INTRODUCES THE FRENCH PRISONER . . I II. THE FRENCH PRISONER BEGINS TO UNFOLD HIM- SELF . . . . .26 III. IN WHICH PIXIE JAN JOINS IN A BOAR-HUNT OF A SORT: AND MY LITTLE MAID MAKES HER FIRST APPEARANCE . . . -39 IV. THE FRENCH PRISONER STILL FURTHER UNFOLDS HIMSELF . . . . -55 V. RAUNING REVELSTONE, CAPTAIN OF THE " PRIDE OF DART," UNEXPECTEDLY VISITS POTH- ANGER . . . . -65 VI. MV SISTER MAKES A COMFORTING PROMISE . 86 VII. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE " SEVEN STARS," TOTNES '. . . . .114 BOOK H.— THE WESTERN SEAS. I. WE PUT TO SEA. - . . . 1 39 II. DEEP DAW GIVES SHREWD ADVICE . . 158 III. WE OBTAIN OUR HEART'S DESIRE , , CONTENTS. IV CHAP. PARK IV. WE RESCUE OUR SWEETHEARTS. . 199 V. CONTAINS MY SISTER'S STORY AND THE BE GINNING OF OUR ADVENTURES, COMICAL AND DANGEROUS, IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY .209 VI. TWO GREAT PERILS . . . .228 VII. TWO SHIPWRECKS .... 253 VIII. " GIVE PEACE IN OUR TIME, O LORD ! " . BOOK FIRST. DARTMOOR. A

Chapter I. Introduces The French Prisoner

People have often told me it is easy to love Devonshire, and that at first sight ; but a Devon man will hesitate to allow that any one can love his country who was not born in it. I will go further as to Dartmoor, which is the very heart of Devon — and main source of life and beauty, because of the streams that show like blue milk-veins on its innumer able nippled breasts — and assert that to love it properly you must be born on its borders. Few have that good fortune, for its confines are not thickly peopled. The land is not rich enough to support many; but here and there you will meet with a house, whose favoured inmates may make that boast with a good face. They are like the dwellers upon the shore of the sea — life has two aspects to them ; on the one hand, the enclosed country jealously divided and marked out ; on the other, the pathless wilds, upon which one moveth as one listeth.

And, as is the case with the dwellers by the sea, those who live on the edge of the moor look not a little to the waste for their living. Their best foot is not on the cultivated land. Such an one am I who purpose to tell this story in plain chimney-corner style, and with no affectation of complexity, simply jotting down the adventures, whether by sea or land, as they happened. Take me then to be striding up the north side of the valley of the infant Taw, to look after my sheep on Dartmoor. I am twenty-six years old, and the time I write of is near the end of the great war. As I reached the top of the ridge, I began to enjoy what I have always held to be the most entrancing charm of Dartmoor, its rich ness in illimitable distances. It excels, in suggestion of spaciousness, even the view over the ocean from a lofty promontory.

This constant illustration of openness is doubtless due to the great height of the moor, and to the fact that its innumerable deep cleaves, or valleys, all run downward toward lower ground; which spreads from their feet in swell after swell of ample lowland, each with its church tower to mark that it is a wide territory of itself, until the eye can see nothing more than faint blue lines against the sky. Such a cleave is that of the East Ockment now reached. On one side of the valley a succession of jutting headlands of foliage, mainly ash and birch, in beautiful variety of form, slope down to the stream ; on the other, equally lovely spurs of moorland and moss and yellow furze. The cloud-darkened middle distance is backed by a space of country marked out in an exquisite patchwork of green and yellow and pale-red fields ; while, beyond all, the blue hills of Exmoor extend league after league along the horizon, above which a crystalline streak of clearness speaks of the Bristol Channel that lies below.

Turning to the head of the valley a yet more lovely prospect met my gaze. Down from the level of the moor the river flowed in innumerable falls from one rock-shelf to another, forming at each step a deep, clear pool from which the water brimmed ; in ex quisite lace-work where the rock sloped a little, and where the rock was steep hung in little separate spouts from its eaves like iri descent icicles. The whole was as stately as a great silver staircase elaborately sculp tured, though the comparison is much too homely for the celestial sight. Being right in the eye of the morning sun the scene shimmered in rays of translucent light that interposed opalescent tints between me and the rocks and tussocks of grass and mounds of moss and heather ; the while it outlined them with emerald and pearl and amethyst ; so that, near to me as they were, they were more visionary and ethereal than the far-off aerial realms of distance I had just turned from.

Looking away from the too dazzling sight, I saw that the valley below me now had a figure in it. An angler was whipping the stream ; he had come from behind a knoll. He was near enough for me to see that he was no mean per former. Kneeling, or crouching, at a short rod's length from the bank, he was making the quick, flippy casts that denote ability to fish successfully in a small clear stream like the East Ockment. Every likely part of the water was tested with workmanlike rapidity. There was no deliberation. Once the fisherman had knelt down, he began to quarter his pool almost with the mechanical precision of a conjurer performing a feat he is expert in through long practice. I could see the sun-gleamed film of gut drop like gossamer beneath the opposite bank, in each tiny eddy and stream, behind each likely stone, in fact in every place likely to hold a trout.

Every now and then, a smart stroke, followed by a spot of white, denoted that he had turned over a fish, or by a rapid flurry across the stream and jerk of a dancing bar of silver upon the turf at his feet, that he had bagged one. This was basketed with the deft rapidity displayed in the rest of his movements. I was watching this performance with proper admiration, when a thing happened that would have made me jump up and hallo to the angler, if he had not been a little too far off. A strange and monstrous animal that looked not unlike a dog, but was much bigger than the biggest I had seen at the bull-baitings at Totnes, where they understood that science if any people ever understood it, came round the corner of the bluff, about thirty feet up the slope above the fisherman, and crouched down and watched him.

As soon as the unconscious angler, intent on his sport, went to the next pool, this strange portent followed and crouched down again in a posture of grim attention. The thing gave a sort of shock to my nerves, not merely because my uncle had lately read some passages of Cary's "Dante" to me, and I had been impressed with the account of the haunting of the narrator by a fearful creature of the panther kind ; but also because, in our part of the world, when the devil appears to the country folk, which happens, according to them, not a few times in the year, he generally takes the form ofa big dog ; and if this thing really was a dog it was the biggest and the most diresome I had ever seen. There was something creepy about the matter. What was the awful brute stalking the man for ? Supposing the man turned round, and, seeing how he was beset, gave a shriek, should I have to rush to his aid?

Though by nature a very pacific person, I was six feet three inches in height, and had not up to this met my match at wrestling on the moor; and though I, being a gentleman born, was averse to going away from my own place into Cornwall to meet the great wrestlers there, yet the best of them had come to our parts at our pony drives and so on to meet me in a casual sort of way, and I had got the better of every one of them. For all that, I did not like the idea of resisting this monstrous and abnormal creature without a weapon in my hand. I am, I believe, rather imaginative, but rejoice in, I sincerely hope, a counterbalancing vein of common sense. All my life I have been writing verses, keeping them for a week in a faint hope, and then burning them in a mild despair. This made me for a moment completely a slave to the impression caused by this awful creature, who seemed to dominate the whole valley with his eeriness.

It was fear ful to note that the angler, when he turned to climb to the next pool, paid no attention whatever to the tremendous beast : could it be that he did not see it ? Then I called out, "Oh you donkey!" and burst into a roar of laughter ; for, as the angler climbed to the top of the next ridge and hurried to another pool, I recognised a third cousin of mine, by name David Chard — deep Davy Chard we called him at Blundell's — the only son of a big Bristol wine and brandy merchant. He was accustomed to come to us at Pothanger several times a year. In his last letter he had explained that, in some continental excursion after brandy, he had picked up, in some outlandish country, a pro digious boar-hound, and so was able to proudly boast himself possessed of the biggest dog in England. Here was the explanation of his portentous follower.

The amusing part of the thing was that Cousin Davy was a little, deft, clever fellow, whom I could toss in my arms like a baby. What in the name of all ridiculous contrasts did he want the biggest dogin England for ? I felt so tickled and, I admit, so relieved by this, that I got out my pipe, which I kept in a pocket of my coat made for it, and, while I waited for Davy to come up, soothed myself with a little rondeau in D by Mozart; a piece of music I had somehow, arbitrarily enough I daresay, got to associate with the sound of water welling out of deep pools, over rock ledges, the music of it rising and falling upon the wind. As I piped to the stream, and the stream to me, 'twas only natural I should think of my little maid. She had always been called so from our childhood together because I was the head of our family, and she had nearly all the money there was in it.

Now, when this situation had occurred before, and it had happened several times in the four centuries during which there had always been Revelstones at Poth anger, the matter had always been settled by a marriage, so, as we grew up together, Cousin Nora had always been called my little maid. I do not say that this was quite fair to me, or to her. She was a girl whom it was very difficult not to love, and this continued talk of her as my own had naturally made me centre all my hopes and desires upon her. The discovery that Nora was rich had come upon me as my first trial in life of any magnitude. My pride got a severe shock, and I was for running away to sea. But I was at Blun dell's at the time, and had the reputation of best Greek scholar there, so I determined to win as big a sum as she possessed by profici ency in Greek, which, by the estimation it was held in, I took to be a certain road to fortune.

I found this to be a mistake later on ; but for all that I would not exchange my knowledge of the great Greek writers for riches, so long as I could get my dinner by my daily labour. Another of our family, my uncle, Roger Revelstone, had been the best Greek scholar that ever studied at Blundell's. But him I had never seen. He was our black sheep. At the age of eighteen, he had gone wandering with a strange set of wild people that had lived in stone and brushwork huts on the moor. Then he had gone abroad and taken to filibuster ing and other vicious practices. At the be ginning of the war, he had appeared in our seas and taken up privateering ; his name, as the fearless and daring commander of the Pride of Dart, was better known in Devonshire than were the names of many who had distinguished themselves in a more legitimate way.

I remembered no time in which I had not loved my little maid. She was as bewitching as Dartmoor ; she had all its perennial fresh ness and purity, its rapid changes of mood. But she had none of its austerer phases. Or rather, I will say that her temper, when angered, was open and breezy ; had no sour ness about it. For, even then, her eyes sparkled with additional lustre, and her cheeks with rose ; and every inch of her was worshipful. Like the moor, she would have four or five moods in an afternoon, all charming. When the low country is steeped in fervent heat, there are always little unexpected tints, and changes, and spurts of cold wind upon the moor. She lived at Meldstone Manor, our old seat, about a mile from Pothanger. The last named, where I lived with my sister, and the uncle and aunt who had brought us up, was really named Meldstone Grange ; all our letters bore that direction ; but because the shape of the property, as it was outlined against the moor, took the form of a pothanger, which is the iron contrivance for suspending a pot over a peat fire, all our villagers and the people about the moor called the place Pothanger, and we ourselves.

Nor did we ever see any thing ludicrous in the name ; this doubtless from long accustomedness to it. I was per haps piping a little dolefully; for I mused upon the possibility that I was no longer a favourite with Nora, who had abundance of admirers, many of them cleverer and more good-looking than me. It was not becoming in me to be pointed in my attentions to her; because of our peculiar situation with regard to one another. This was another cause for sadness. Just then I was interrupted, suitably enough, by the most dolorous howling, and, looking up, I saw the monstrous beast of a boarhound, with his eyes turned up to the sky, all jaw wrenched and slobbering, as if my music was like a pair of pincers pulling at one of his great teeth. On the other side of me sat Davy Chard, who seemed to be finding matter for amusement in something or other.

"Well, David," said I, "what brings you down to these parts ? " " My present business," he answered, " is, by hook or by crook, to get brandy into Bristol, ■5 a thing that the war makes uncommonly difficult. " I know of no smugglers' caves in this valley." " There are old mine works on any part of the moor. But the smuggling here is not up to much — too far from the coast. I am on my way to Okehampton, where I have business, and thence to Totnes and Dartmouth. It is an odd thing that Government wants to buy brandy of us, under contract terms, for the troops and sailors, and yet does nothing but throw obstacles in the way of our getting it. Consider the watching by our vessels of the French coast. The blockading crews are so mad with ennui that they keep double the look out that they otherwise might do.

The war is spoiling everything. There is no money anywhere. We shall have to put up the shutters if this goes on." Davy wrinkled his face into his usual grin, and gave the two little nods that were habitual with him. Of course I knew that the firm of " Chard & Son," perhaps the first in its trade in Bristol, was solvent enough. David Chard was a middle-sized and very neatly-made man, and an active, with aquiline features, merry, twinkling steel-grey eyes, that were a little hard in expression at the rare times when they were at rest, and an enor mous amount of vitality. In this he beat me utterly. He was always at a red heat of energy. He had only one mood, and that one of vivacity and merry vitality ; but this was qualified by a prodigious knowledge of men and countries; for his father was an old man, and Davy at twenty-eight was the firm; that is to say, while the father and several old clerks sat busy at the books and so on, it was the son who controlled the business.

He could not lately, of course, have been much in France, yet, by "hook or by crook" — one of his favourite expressions — he had been there clan destinely after cognac and wines ; he was familiar with the channel islands as a sort of intermediate place of intercourse, and he spoke the French language perfectly — which very soon was to prove a kind of salvation to me and others — and had all the Gallic vivacity of manner and expression. By this time my two sheep-dogs had made friends with the boar-hound, although they stood obviously in awe of him, as a creature that, albeit plainly of their kind, was of a sort they had never seen before, even in their wildest dreams. But I afterwards discovered that Rudolph was a kindly and rather equable minded animal, much given to sitting on his haunches and letting those things pass which did not concern his stomach.

Getting up, I said, " Shall I go with you to Okehampton ? " " By all means." " And then you will come to Pothanger on your way to Totnes." I said this with a kind of regret under my proper hospitality, for I knew that Davy had for the last eight years nourished a great affection for my sister Grace ; and, when she comes to be figured, it will be seen that this was absurd. And now, as I am telling what happened in a simple and direct way, not being skilled in any other, I think it right to state that had I not gone to Okehampton, and had I not invited Davy Chard to Pothanger, not one of the events that follow in this narrative would have B come to pass. But more, such is the singular way we are, so to say, dealt with, I add that although I and Chard had no tastes in common, and although we had never been in any right way comrades together before, yet, from the moment that we turned to go to Okehampton, we kept together without the fail of a single day during the whole time that the doings and adventures detailed in this narrative took place, both on sea and on land.

This I have always looked upon as almost marvellous — a chance meeting deciding so much ! We trudged along, stopping now and then for Davy to fish a likely pool, and all the time greatly diverted by the doings of the dogs. The sheep-dogs seemed to think they had a foreign nobleman to deal with, and were care ful to take him to every interesting place they knew, and await his opinion of it; as if they considered it a best-behaviour matter to fitly entertain so important a guest, the while they appeared to take a keen interest in finding out what he thought of their country. Soon we came to where East Ockment was too small to fish with fly, and saw the great mass of Yes Tor, with its flanks trending in long lines of soft green and faint amethyst against a clear opal sky flecked with gold, to meet the slopes of Black Down.

A snipe marsh full of strong-tinted mosses and brown heather and dark rushes, with its rich, dark shades and colours, drove the tender distance away into an aerial enchanted region of its own, whose keen tints, clear as faintly-stained glass, were exquisitely fine and dainty. Then, pass ing through Moor-gate, we crossed the Park and descended the slopes that led down to Okehampton. Soon we were threading the narrow streets of the little town. As my companion had business at the Vicarage — the vicar had just come into the living and was laying down his port — we went up the narrow lane toward it and came upon that distressing sight, a gang of French prisoners. They were employed, in order to earn a little money for their needs, poor fellows, in paving the steep footway that led up to the church, with little smooth, round and kidney-shaped pebble stones.

As we came up, one of the prisoners rose from his bending posture, and, clasping his hands behind his head, straightened his back, meeting at the same time my look of unpreventable commiseration with one of pleased, hearty and manly thanks, the thanks of a man who freely accepts a sudden favour and keeps his self-respect the while. He was a man of much better mien than the rest. He had the look of a gentleman, and might be a personage in his country, a man of some standing. He was between short and tall, and was rather robustly and broadly built, though he had no superfluous flesh about him. One might put him at thirty-five or thirty-six. He was, in spite of his robustness, well-made and strong, being thick and firm about the chest and neck like a lusty pony. His face was unusually broad at the cheek-bones and narrow at the temples, a defect that, singularly enough, gave him a goodhumoured appearance.

He had a mass of strong, brown hair, that stood up in thick locks. He had an ample brown moustache and full eyebrows, and a nut-brown complexion through which shone a healthy undertone of red in his cheeks. His eyes were large and of a sunny brown colour. His teeth were large, even, and very white. His expression was one of bon homie ; he smiled and showed his teeth as he stretched himself. A hearty, fine-looking man, with fire and energy in him ; a man who looked as if he faced life with a gallant front and could bear its ups and downs and laugh the while. It was difficult not to admire his bearing, and not to have a friendly pity for his hard fate. At this moment Davy, who had been following some paces behind, pushed past me, and, grasping the stranger by the hand, cried : " M. le Comte de Frontinacq, what in the name of fortune has brought you here ?

" " Fortune of war, my friend ; I am prisoner." " The owner of Chateau Frontinacq, the best brandy-producing estate in the West of France, working on Okehampton church pathway ! " cried my cousin, as if this was the most moving and pathetic thing that had ever come within his observation. "For one thing only, I cannot live without my tobacco." " But why not have written to us ? " " I have done so, as the nearest that know me. Do not take me for a martyr ; I have been here but a few days, not long enough for the reply of your firm. Ah, M. Chard, why it is nothing, nothing at all. Cervantes was prisoner in Algiers amongst the cruel Moors ; your people are good children enough. I find in Devon soft air and douce manners. As for me, I like to see all kinds of life, and live in all its phases that are out of dishonour ; and when my poor compatriots came to do this, for a few sous to ease their lot, I came too.

Same time, the owner of Chateau Frontinacq has not a sou in his pocket." "We'll soon put that right, M. de Fron tinacq." "Well, M. Chard, my passion for ex periencing all kinds of life was never more easily satisfied than by this affair of putting in one little round stone after another. It has not the charm of variety about it, this putting in one stone after another. I shall be glad to take off my hat to it, and part in a friendly way, but not to meet him where one parts no more. That is a little gaucherie, as I see by your faces, although I speak your language well enough for the old bat who pronounced upon me to suspect me to be renegado. But what is renegado? Why, the man who has no money in his pocket is renegado, and all other bad things thrown in. That was my case. Your jack-tars took care of that ; but 'tis the custom of war.

I got separated from my friends. And how to make people believe ! There is a man on this gang who will swear he is Marshal of France, and it is quite in my heart's certainty he is Breton onion-seller." I was in a little taking all this time in that David Chard did not at once assure M. de Frontinacq of our good feeling and desire to better his condition. Davy now said : " We hope you will consider us your sym pathisers, M. le Comte, and that we are turning over in our minds ways to help you. This is my friend Mr. Ralph Revelstone ; he is of great family in these parts, and knows all and is known by all — " " And is wholly at M. de Frontinacq's service." " The kindness is too great," said the count, " I have great pleasure in having won the sympathy of so gallant a man ! " " The word of a Revelstone," put in Davy, somewhat bombastically, "is of some account about here.

He knows the people who look after you, be sure of that. We will both do what we can with the proper authorities. Meanwhile, there is nothing like money, and M. de Frontinacq is a rich man in his own country." ' " Money matters not — your firm knows me well." " Yes, but that is not all. I mean to intro duce you to a man who will advance what you want, and is at the same time well in accord with our naval authorities." " Simeon Chard of Dartmouth," I said drily; " forty per cent. ! " " What is that ? " said the Frenchman. " It is fair to say," I replied, rather red in the face, for this Simeon was a remote con nection by marriage of our family, and was the manager of Meldstone Manor, my little maid's estate, " that he will probably charge you, at least, a thousand pounds. He will assert that it is for the naval officials, with what justice I know not — I mean in the event of your desiring to get exchanged."

" Ah, M. Revelstone, what is money when freedom is concerned ; I only hope he will not charge me two. At the same time, I am no longer so desirous as just now to leave a country where I have found two so generous friends." " Simeon Chard knows your name, M. le Comte ; he is a bit of a big smuggler, and has smuggled brandy with the name of your chateau upon it before now. I will make it all right with him. Meantime, if you will go with Mr. Revelstone; he will arrange things for you. I have business just at present, but will join you at the White Hart in an hour." Then Davy took me aside and said : " Order a good dinner, Ralph, will you ? There are trout in my basket, and the cook can do veal cutlets. She can't put a boiled fowl on table, but she can a roast ; so we must have two brown things, but be sure and tell her to serve it with watercress, as I once showed her.

No cream with the tart ; it destroys one's palate for wine." With this Davy bustled off to the Vicarage to talk over the port wine, and I took my new acquaintance down to the White Hart ; of course first assuring the man who had to do with the prisoners that this one was a proper man to be allowed parole, and that I would vouch for him.

Chapter II. The French Prisoner Begins To Unfold Himself

It was not long before I and my new acquaint ance were sitting before a good bottle of claret, in a private room of the White Hart. Pouring out a couple of bumpers, I said : " Here's to an end of the war, and, in any case, your speedy return to your own country, monsieur." He drank the toast readily enough, for the reasonable of both nations were, by this time, heartily sick of the conflict ; and we in Devon shire were tired enough of the French prisoners and had resented so many being thrust on us, though this had much to do with Plymouth standing where it did ; while there could not be much doubt that the poor creatures them selves were still more tired of us. " Ah, well," he replied, " I drink willingly to the end of the war. It is doing no good to our country, but only to one man is it of any use.