Chapter 118
"And for this I can render nothing in return?" said I, sadly.
"Yes. It may be that in your own country you will hear the followers of our king scoffed at and derided,--called fools or fanatics, perhaps worse. I would only ask of you to bear witness that they are at least ardent in the cause they have sworn to uphold, and firm to the faith to which they have pledged themselves. This is the only service you can render us, but it is no mean one. And now, farewell!"
"Farewell, De Beauvais! But ere we separate forever, let me hear from your lips that you bear me no enmity; that we are friends, as we used to be."
"Here is my hand. I care not if you injured me once; we can be friends now, for we are little likely to meet again as enemies. Adieu!"
While De Beauvais left the room to order the horses to be in readiness, the landlord entered it, and seemed to busy himself most eagerly in preparing my knapsack for the road.
"I trust you will be many a mile hence ere the day breaks," said he, with an anxiety I could ill comprehend, but which at the time I attributed to his desire for the safety of one intrusted with an important mission. "And now, here come the horses.'"
A moment more, and I was seated in the saddle. A brief word at parting was all De Beauvais spoke, and turned away; and the minute after I was hurrying onward towards Beudron.
CHAPTER x.x.xII. THE FALAISE DE BIVILLE.
Everything occurred as De Beauvais had predicted. The authorities in the little villages we pa.s.sed glanced at my pa.s.sport, and as instantaneously handed it back, and we journeyed like couriers of the Emperor, without halt or impediment.
We reached Lisieux early in the evening, where, having dismissed the servant and horses, I took my way on foot towards a small fis.h.i.+ng village, called La Hupe, where at a certain cabaret I was to find my guide to Biville.
The address of the sailor written on a card, and marked with a peculiar cipher by De Beauvais, was at once recognized by the old Norman, who welcomed me with a rude but kindly hospitality.
"Thou art more like a man to make this venture than the last three who came down here," said he, as he slowly measured me with his eye from head to foot. "These priests they sent us never dared even to look at the coast, much less to descend the cliffs; but thou hast a look about thee of another fas.h.i.+on. And now, the first thing is to have something to eat, and I promise thee a _goutte_ of brandy will not be amiss to prepare thee for what is before thee."
"Is there, then, so much of danger in the descent?"
"Not if a man's head be steady and his hand firm; but he must have both, and a stout heart to guide them, or the journey is not over-pleasant.
Art thou cool enough in time of peril to remember what has been told thee for thy guidance?"
"Yes; I hope I can promise so much."
"Then thou art all safe; so eat away, and leave the rest to me."
Although the sailor's words had stimulated my curiosity in the highest degree, I repressed every semblance of the feeling, and ate my supper with a well-feigned appearance of easy indifference; while he questioned me about the hopes of the Bourbon party in their secret machinations, with a searching inquisitiveness that often nearly baffled all my ingenuity in reply.
"Ah! _par Saint Denis!_" said he, with a deep sigh, "I see well thou hast small hope now; and, in truth, I feel as thou dost. When George Cadoudal and his brave
I mind well the night he supped here."
"Here, said you?"
"Ay, where you sit now,--on the same seat. There was an English officer with him. He wore a blue uniform, and sat yonder, beneath that fis.h.i.+ng-net; the others were hid along the sh.o.r.e."
"Was it here they landed, then?"
"Yes, to be sure, at the Falaise; there is not another spot to land on for miles along the coast."
The old sailor then began a circ.u.mstantial account of the arrival of George and his accomplices from England; and told how they had one by one scaled the cliffs by means of a cord, well known in these parts, called the "smuggler's rope." "Thou shalt see the spot now," added he, "for there's the signal yonder."
He pointed as he spoke to an old ruined tower, which crowned a cliff about half a mile distant, and from a loophole in which I could see a branch of ivy waving, as though moved by the wind.
"And what may that mean?"
"The cutter is in sight; as the wind is off sh.o.r.e, she 'll be able to come in close to-night. Indeed, if it blew from the westward, she dared not venture nearer, nor thou, either, go down to meet her. So, now let's be moving."
About twenty minutes' walking brought us to the old signal-tower, on looking from the window of which I beheld the sea plas.h.i.+ng full three hundred feet beneath. The dark rocks, fissured by time and weather, were abrupt as a wall, and in some places even overhung the waves that rolled heavily below. Ma.s.ses of tangled seaweed and sh.e.l.ls, which lay in the crevices of the cliffs, showed where in times of storm the wild waters were thrown; while lower down, amid fragments of rocks, the heavy beams and planks of s.h.i.+pwrecked vessels surged with every motion of the tide.
"You cannot see the cutter now," said the old sailor,--"the setting sun leaves a haze over the sea; but in a few minutes more we shall see her."
"I am rather looking for the pathway down this bold cliff," replied I, as I strained my eyes to catch something like a way to descend by.
"Then throw thine eyes in this direction," said the sailor, as he pointed straight down beneath the window of the tower. "Seest thou that chain there? Well, follow it a little farther, and thou may'st mark a piece of timber jutting from the rock."
"Yes, I see it plainly."
"Well, the path thou asketh for is beneath that spar. It is a good rope of stout hemp, and has carried the weight of many a brave fellow before now."
"The smuggler's rope?"
"The same. Art afraid to venture, now thou seest the place?"
"You'll not find me so, friend. I have seen danger as close before now, and did not blink it."
"Mark me well, then," said he, laying his hand on my arm. "When thou readiest that rope, thou wilt let thyself cautiously down to a small projecting point of rock; we cannot see it here, but thou wilt soon discern it in the descent. The rope from this goes no farther, for that spot is nigh sixty fathom below us. From thence the cliff slopes sharply down about thirty or forty feet. Here thou must creep cautiously,--for the moss is dry and slippery at this season,--till thou nearest the edge. Mark me well, now: near the edge thou'lt find a large stone fast-rooted in the ground; and around that another rope is fastened, by which thou may'st reach the bottom of the precipice. There is but one place of peril in the whole."
"The sloping bank, you mean?"
"Yes; that bit will try thy nerve. Remember, if thy foot slip, there's nothing to stop thy fall; the cliff is rounded over the edge, and the blue sea beats two hundred feet below it. And see! look yonder, far away there! Seest thou the twinkling, as of a small star, on the water?"
"The cutter will throw up a rocket, will she not?"
"A rocket!" repeated he, contemptuously; "that's some landsman's story thou hast been listening to. A rocket would bring the whole fleet of boats from Treport on her. No, no; they know better than that: the faintest glimmer of a fis.h.i.+ng-craft is all they 'll dare to show. But see how steadily it burns now! we must make the signal seawards."
"Halloo, Joseph! a light there."
A boy's voice answered from the upper part of the tower,--the same figure who made the signal towards the sh.o.r.e, and whose presence there I had altogether forgotten; and in a few minutes a red glare on the rocks below showed that the old man's command was obeyed, and the beacon lighted.
"Ah! they see it already," cried he, triumphantly, pointing seawards; "they've extinguished the light now, but will show it again, from time to time."
"But tell me, friend, how happens it that the marines of the Guard, who line this coast, do not perceive these signals?"
"And who tells thee that they do not? They may be looking, as we are now, at that same craft, and watching Her as she beats in sh.o.r.e; but they know better than to betray us. Ah, _ma foi!_ the 'contrebande'
is better than the Government. Enough for them if they catch some poor English prisoner now and then, and have him shot; that contents the Emperor, as they call him, and he thinks the service all that is brave and vigilant. But as to us, it is our own fault if we fall in with them; it would need the rocket you spoke of a while ago to shame them into it.
There, look again,--thou seest how far in sh.o.r.e they've made already; the cutter is stealing fast along the water. Answer the signal, Joseph."
The boy replenished the fire with some dry wood, and it blazed up brilliantly, illuminating the gray cliffs and dark rocks, on which the night was fast falling, but leaving all beyond its immediate sphere in deepest blackness.
"I see not, friend, by what means I am to discover this sloping cliff, much less guide my way along it," said I, as I gazed over the precipice, and tried to penetrate the gloomy abyss below me.