"The answers to questions which doubtless every countryman of yours and mine could reply to from the public papers, but which, to us here, remote from intercourse and knowledge, are matters of slow acquirement."
While the French officer spoke, he continued to search among the papers before him for some doc.u.ment, and at length, taking up a small slip of paper, resumed: "For instance, the "Moniteur" a.s.serts that you meditate sending a force from India to cross the Red Sea and the Desert, and menace us by an attack in the rear as well as in the front. This reads so like a fragment of an Oriental tale, that I can forgive the smile with which you hear it."
"Nay, sir; you have misinterpreted my meaning," said the Knight, calmly.
"I am free to confess I thought this intelligence was no secret. The form of our Government, the public discussions of our Houses, the freedom of our press, are little favorable to mystery. If you have nothing to ask of me more difficult to answer than this--"
"And the expedition of Acre,--is this also correct?"
"Perfectly so. A combined movement, which shall compel you to evacuate the country, is in preparation."
"_Parbleu_, sir," said the Frenchman, stamping his foot with impatience, "these are somewhat bold words for a man in your situation to one in mine."
"I fancy, sir, that circ.u.mstance affects the issue I allude to very slightly indeed; even though the officer to whom I address myself should be General Menou, the Commander-in-Chief."
"And if I be, sir, and if you know it," said Menou,--for it was he,--his face suffused with anger, "is it consistent with the respect due to _my_ position and to _your own_ safety, to speak thus?"
"For the first, sir, although a mere surmise on my part, I humbly hope I have made no transgression; for the last, I have very little reason to feel any solicitude, knowing that if you hurt a hair of my head, a heavy reprisal will await such of your own officers as may be taken, and the events of yesterday may have told you that a contingency of this sort is neither improbable nor remote."
Menou made no answer to this threatening speech, but with folded arms paced the apartment for several minutes. At length he turned hastily round, and fixing his eyes on the Knight, said, with a rude oath, "You are a fortunate man, sir, that you did not hold this language to my predecessor in the command. General Kleber would have had you in front of a _peloton_ of grenadiers within five minutes after you uttered it."
"I have heard as much," said the Knight, with a slight smile.
Menou rang a bell which stood beside him, and an aide-de-camp entered.
"Captain le Messurier," said he, in the ordinary tone of discipline, "this officer is under arrest. You will take the necessary steps for his safe keeping, and his due appearance when summoned before a military tribunal."
He bowed to Darcy as he spoke, and, reseating himself at the table, took up his pen to write.
"At the hazard of being thought very hardy, sir," said the Knight, as he moved towards the door, "I would humbly solicit a favor."
"A favor!" exclaimed Menou, staring in surprise.
"Yes, sir; it is that the services of a surgeon should be promptly rendered--"
"I have given orders on that score already. My own medical man shall attend to you."
"I speak not of myself, sir. It is of a Volunteer of my corps, a young man who now lies badly wounded; his case is not without hope, if speedily looked to."
"He must take his chance with others," said the general, gruffly, while he made a gesture of leave-taking; and Darcy, unable to prolong the interview, retired.
"I am sorry, sir," said the aide-de-camp, as he went along, "that my orders are peremptory, and you must, if the state of your health permit, at once leave this."
"Is it thus your prisoners of war are treated, sir?" said Darcy, scornfully, "or am I to hope--for hope I do--that the exception is created especially for me?"
The officer was silent; and although the flush of shame was on his cheek, the severe demands of duty overcame all personal feelings, and he did not dare to answer.
The Knight was not one of those on whom misfortune can press, without eliciting in return the force of resistance, and, if not forgetting, at least combating, the indignities to which he had been subjected; he resigned himself patiently to his destiny, and after a brief delay set forth for his journey to Akrish, which he now learned was to be the place of his confinement.
CHAPTER XXVIII. TIDINGS OF THE WOUNDED.
The interests of our story do not require us to dwell minutely on the miserable system of intrigue by which the French authorities sought to compromise the life and honor of a British officer. The Knight of Gwynne was committed to the charge of a veteran officer of the Republic, who, though dignified with the t.i.tle of the Governor of Akrish, was, in reality, invested with no higher functions than that of jailer over the few unhappy prisoners whom evil destiny had thrown into French hands.
By an alternate system of cruelty and concession, efforts were daily made to entrap Darcy either into some expression of violence or impatience at this outrage on all the custom of war, or induce him to join a plot for escape, submitted to him by those who, apparently prisoners like himself, were in reality the spies of the Republic.
Sustained by a high sense of his own dignity, and not ignorant of the character under which revolutionized France accomplished her triumphs, the Knight resisted every temptation, and in all the gloom of this remote fortress, ominously secluded from the world, denied access to any knowledge of pa.s.sing events, cut off from all communication with his country and his comrades, he never even for a moment forgot himself, nor became entangled in the perfidious schemes spread for his ruin. It was no common aggravation of the miseries of imprisonment to know that each day and hour had its own separate machinery of perfidy at work. At one moment he would be offered liberty on the condition of revealing the plans of the expedition; at another he would be suddenly summoned to appear before a tribunal of military law, when it was hinted he would be arraigned for having commanded a force of liberated felons,--for in this way were the Volunteers once designated,--in the hope that the insult would evoke some burst of pa.s.sionate indignation. If the torment of these unceasing annoyances preyed upon his health and spirits, already hara.s.sed by sad thoughts of home, the length of time, to which the intrigues were protracted showed Darcy that the wiles of his enemies had not met success in their own eyes; and this gleam of hope, faint and slender as it was, sustained him through many a gloomy hour of captivity.
While the Knight continued thus to live in the long sleep of a prisoner"s existence, events were hastening to their accomplishment by which his future liberty was to be secured. The victorious army of Abercrombie had already advanced and driven the French back beneath the lines of Alexandria. The action which ensued was terribly contested, but ended in the complete triumph of the British, whose glory was, however, dearly bought by the death of their gallant leader.
The Turkish forces now joined the English under General Hutchinson, and a series of combined movements commenced, by which the French saw themselves so closely hemmed in, that no course was open save a retreat upon Cairo.
Whether from the changed fortune of their arms,--for the French had now sustained one unbroken series of reverses,--or that the efforts to entrap the Knight had shown so little prospect of success, the manner of the governor had, for some time back, been altered much in his favor, and several petty concessions were permitted, which in the earlier days of his captivity were strictly denied. Occasionally, too, little hints of the campaign would be dropped, and acknowledgments made "that fortune had not been as uniformly favorable to the "Great Nation" as was her wont." These significant confessions received a striking confirmation, when, at daybreak one morning, an order arrived for the garrison to abandon the fort of Akrish, and for the prisoners, under a strong escort, to fall back upon Damanhour.
The movements indicated haste and precipitancy; so much so, indeed, that ere the small garrison had got clear of the town, the head of a retreating column was seen entering it by the road from Alexandria; and now no longer doubt remained that the British had compelled them to fall back.
As the French retired, their forces continued to come up each day, and in the long convoy of wounded, as well as in the shattered condition of gun-carriages and wagons, it was easy to read the signs of a recent defeat. Nor was the matter long doubtful to Darcy; for, by some strange anomaly of human nature, the very men who would exaggerate the smallest accident of advantage into a victory and triumph, were now just as loud iu proclaiming that they had been dreadfully beaten. Perhaps the avowal was compensated for by the license it suggested to inveigh against the generals, and, in the true spirit of a republican army, to threaten them openly with the speedy judgments of the Home Government.
Among those who occasionally halted to exchange a few-words of greeting with the officer in conduct of the prisoners, the Knight recognized with satisfaction the same officer who, in the retreat from Aboukir, had so kindly suggested caution to him. At first he seemed half fearful of addressing him, to speak his grat.i.tude, lest even so much might compromise the young captain in the eyes of his countrymen. The hesitation was speedily overcome, however, as the young Frenchman gayly saluted him, and said,--
"Ah, mon General, you had scarcely been here to-day if you had but listened to my counsels. I told you that the Republic, one and indivisible, did not admit criticism of its troops."
"I scarcely believed you could shrink from such an order," said the Knight, smiling.
"Not in the "Moniteur," perhaps," rejoined the Frenchman, laughing.
"Yours, however, had an excess of candor, which, if only listened to at your own head-quarters, might have induced grave errors.
"I comprehend," interrupted Darcy, gayly catching up the ironical humor of the other,--"I comprehend, and you would spare an enemy such an injurious illusion."
"Just so; I wish your army had been equally generous, with all my heart," added he, as coolly as before; "here we are in full retreat on Cairo."
"On Damanhour, you mean," said Darcy.
"Not a bit of it; on Cairo, General. There"s no need of mincing the matter; we need fear no eavesdropper here. Ah, by the by, your German friends were retaken, and by a detachment of their own regiment too. We saw the fellows shot the morning after the action."
"Now that you are kind enough to tell me what is going forward, perhaps you could let me know something of my poor comrades whom you took prisoners on the night of the 9th."
"Yes. They are with few exceptions dead of their wounds, two men exchanged about a week since; and then, what strange fellows your countrymen are! They sent us back a major of brigade in exchange for a wounded soldier who, when he left our camp, did not seem to have life enough to bring him across the lines!"
"Did you see him?" asked Darcy, eagerly.
"Yes; I commanded the escort. He was a young fellow of scarcely more than four-and-twenty, and must have been good-looking too."
"Of course you could not tell his name," said the Knight, despondingly.
"No; I heard it, however, but it has escaped me. There was a curious story brought back about him by our brigade-major, and one which, I a.s.sure you, furnished many a hearty laugh at your land of n.o.ble privileges and aristocratic forms"."
"Pray let me hear it."
"Oh, I cannot tell you one-half of it; the finale interested the major most, because it concerned himself, and this he repeated to us at least a dozen times. It would seem, then, that this youth--a rare thing, I believe, in your service--was a man of birth, but, according to your happy inst.i.tutions, was a man of nothing more, for he was a younger son.