"Gros-Alain," said the mother.

  "They are pretty little things," said the vivandière; you seem to be somebody."

  Meanwhile, the sergeant persisted in talking.

  "Tell me, madame. Have you a house?"

  "I had one."

  "Where was it?"

  "At Azé."

  "Why are you not in your house?"

  "Because it is burned."

  "Who burned it?"

  "I don't know. There was a battle."

  "Where did you come from?"

  "From there."

  "Where are you going?"

  "I don't know."

  "Come to the point. Who are you?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know who you are?"

  "We are people who have escaped."

  "To what party do you belong?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do you belong to the Blues? Do you belong to the Whites? Whom are you with?"

  "I am with my children."

  Here was a pause. The vivandière said,—

  "I never had any children. I didn't have time."

  The sergeant began again,—

  "But your parents. Come, madame, tell us about your parents. My name is Radoub; I am a sergeant, I belong in rue du Gherche-Midi; my father and mother belonged there, too. I can tell you about my parents. Tell us about yours. Tell us who your parents were."

  "They were the Fléchards."

  "Yes; the Fléchards are the Fléchards, as the Radoubs are the Radoubs. But people have some occupation. What was the occupation of your parents? What did they do? What did they make? What did they fledge these Fledghards of yours?"

  "They were farmers. My father was infirm and unable to work, because he had been cudgelled by the seigneur, his seigneur, our seigneur, which was a kindness, for my father had poached a rabbit, and the penalty for this offence was death; but the seigneur had mercy and said; 'Give him only a hundred blows,' and my father was made a cripple."

  "Go on."

  "My grandfather was a Huguenot. The priest had him sent to the galleys. I was very young."

  "Go on."

  "My husband's father was a salt smuggler. The king had him hanged."

  "And your husband, what does he do?"

  "At the present time he is fighting."

  "For whom?"

  "For the king."

  "For whom else?"

  "Why, for his seigneur?"

  "For whom else?"

  "Why, for the priest."

  "The accursed names of brutes!" exclaimed a grenadier.

  The woman shook with fear.

  "You see, madame, we are Parisians," said the vivandière kindly.

  The woman clasped her hands and cried: "Oh, my Lord Jesus!"

  "No superstitions," resumed the sergeant.

  The vivandière sat down beside the woman and drew to her the oldest of the children, who made no resistance. Children feel confidence just as they feel afraid, without knowing why. They have a monitor within.

  "My poor good woman, you have some pretty brats, at any rate. I can guess their ages. The largest is four years old, his brother three. Indeed that nursing kid is a famous greedy-gut. You see, madame, you have nothing to fear. You shall join the battalion. You can do as I do. I call myself Houzarde; it is a nickname. But I prefer to be called Houzarde rather than Mamzelle Bicomeau, like my mother. I am the vivandière or canteen-woman, as the one is called who serves out the drink when any one is shot or killed. The devil and his train! Our feet are nearly the same size, I will give you some of my shoes. I was in Paris the tenth of August. I gave Westermann a drink. He was walking. I saw Louis XVI., Louis Capet they call him, guillotined. He didn't like it. Why, just listen. They say that the thirteenth of January he was having chestnuts cooked, and laughing with his family! When they forced him to lie down on the bascule, as they call it, he had on neither coat nor shoe; he wore only his shirt, a quilted vest, gray cloth breeches, and gray silk stockings. I saw that myself. The carriage he was brought in was painted green. You see, come with us, we have good boys in the battalion; you shall be vivandière number two; I will teach you the profession. Oh! it is very simple! You have your can and your little bell, you go about in the tumult, in the midst of the firing of the platoons, among the cannon shots, in the uproar, shouting: "Who wants a drink, children?" It is no more difficult than that. I give everybody a drink. Yes, indeed. The Whites as well as the Blues; although I am a Blue, and a good Blue too. But I give everybody a drink. The wounded are thirsty. People die without regard for opinions. When people are dying you ought to press their hands. How silly it is to fight! Come with us. If I am killed you will be my successor. You see, that is the way I seem; but I am a good woman and a brave man. Don't have any fear."

  When the vivandière had stopped speaking, the woman murmured: " Our neighbor's name was Marie-Jean, and our servant's Maria-Claude."

  In the meantime the Sergeant Kadoub was reprimanding the grenadier,—

  "Hold your tongue. You have frightened the woman. You mustn't swear before ladies."

  "All the same, as far as an honest man can understand it, it is a genuine massacre," replied the grenadier. "The idea of these Chinese peasants having their father-in-law crippled by the seigneur, their grandfather sent to the galleys by the priest, and their father hung by the king, and then insist on fighting. In the name of common sense! And they thrust themselves into a revolt and let themselves be crushed for the seigneur the priest and the king!"

  "Silence in the ranks," cried the sergeant.

  "We'll be silent, sergeant," continued the grenadier, "but that won't prevent its being a pity for a pretty woman like that to run the risk of having her neck broken for the handsome eyes of a priest."

  "Grenadier," said the sergeant, "we are not in the Club des Piques at Paris. None of your eloquence."

  And he turned towards the woman.

  "And your husband, madame? What is he doing? What has he become?"

  "He hasn't become anything, because he has been killed."

  "Where?"

  "In the hedge."

  "When?"

  "Three days ago."

  "Who killed him?"

  "I don't know."

  "What, you don't know who killed your husband?"

  "No."

  "Was it a Blue? Was it a White?"

  "It was a bullet."

  "And three days ago?"

  "Yes."

  "From which direction?"

  "From Ernée. My husband fell. There!"

  "And since your husband is dead, what are you going to do?"

  "I am carrying away my children."

  "Where are you carrying them?"

  "Straight ahead."

  "Where do you sleep?"

  "On the ground."

  "What do you get to eat?"

  "Nothing."

  The sergeant made up the military face of touching his nose with his moustache.

  "Nothing."

  "That is to say wild plums, mulberries in the brambles, if there are any left from last year, myrtle seeds, fern shoots."

  "Yes. As much as to say nothing."

  The oldest of the children, seeming to understand, said: "I'm hungry."

  The sergeant took a piece of soldier's bread out of his pocket and handed it to the mother. The mother broke the bread in two pieces, and gave them to the children. The little ones eagerly devoured it.

  "She hasn't kept any for herself," muttered the sergeant.

  "It is because she isn't hungry," said a soldier.

  "It's because she is their mother," said the sergeant. The children interrupted them.

  "I want a drink," said one.

  "I want a drink," repeated the other.

  "Is there no brook in these devilish woods?" said the sergeant.

  The vivandière took the copper cup hanging from her belt beside her bell, turned the spigot of the keg which hung from her shoulder by a strap, let a few drops run into the cup, and held it to the children's lips.

  The first drank and made up a face.

  The second one drank and spit it out.

  "Why, it's good," said the vivandière.

  "Is it Coupe-Figure?" asked the sergeant.

  "Yes, and of the best. But they are peasants."

  And she wiped the cup.

  The sergeant continued,—

  "And you are making your escape in this way?"

  "I am obliged to."

  "Across the country in a bee line."

  "I ran with all my might, and then I walked, and then I fell down."

  "Poor creature!" said the vivandière.

  "People are fighting everywhere," stammered the woman. "I am surrounded on all sides with gunshot. I don't know what it all means. They have killed my husband. I only understand that."

  The sergeant thumped the ground with the butt of his musket, and exclaimed,—

  "In the name of a jackass, what a beastly war this is!"

  The woman continued: "Last night we slept in an émousse."

  "All four of you?"

  "All four of us."

  "Slept?"

  "Slept."

  "Then," said the sergeant, "you slept standing."

  And he turned to the soldiers.

  "Comrades, a great, old, hollow trunk of a tree, that a man would have to squeeze himself into as if 'twere a knife-case, these shy creatures call that an émousse. What do you think about it? They are not obliged to be Parisians."

  "Slept in the trunk of a hollow tree!" said the vivandière; "and with three children!"

  "And when the little ones bawled," the sergeant went on to say, "it must have been funny enough for those who were passing and saw nothing at all, to hear a tree crying: 'Papa! Mamma!'"

  "Fortunately, it is summer-time," sighed the woman.

  She looked on the ground, resigned, with an expression in her eyes of that astonishment which comes from sudden misfortune.

  The soldiers quietly formed a circle around the pitiful group.

  A widow, three orphans, flight, desertion, solitude, mutterings of war all around the horizon, hunger, thirst, no food but grass, no roof but the heavens.

  The sergeant approached the woman and looked at the nursing child. The little one left the breast, turned her head gently, looked with her beautiful blue eyes at the frightful hairy face, rough and tawny, which bent over her, and began to smile.

  The sergeant straightened himself up, and a great tear was seen to roll down his cheek and rest on the end of his moustache like a pearl.

  He raised his voice,—

  "After all this, it is my opinion that the battalion ought to become a father. Is it agreed? Let us adopt these three children."

  "Long live the Republic!" cried the grenadiers.

  "Done," said the sergeant.

  And he extended his hands above the heads of mother and children.

  "Behold," he said, "the children of the battalion of Bonnet-Rouge."

  The vivandière leaped for joy.

  "Three heads in one bonnet!" she cried.

  Then she burst into sobs, embraced the poor widow effusively, and said to her,—

  "The baby already looks like a general!"

  "Long live the Republic!" repeated the soldiers.

  And the sergeant said to the mother,—

  "Come, citoyenne."

  BOOK SECOND.— THE CORVETTE "CLAYMORE."

  CHAPTER I.

  ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

  In the spring of 1793, at the time when France, attacked on all her frontiers at once, was touchingly diverted by the fall of the Girondists, this is what took place in the Channel Islands.

  One evening, the first of June, in Jersey, in the little lonely bay of Bonne-nuit, about an hour before sunset, during one of those fogs convenient for escape, because they are dangerous for navigation, a corvette was preparing to set sail. The crew of this vessel was French, but it belonged to the English fleet stationed on the lookout at the eastern point of the island. The Prince of la Tour-d'Auvergne, who belonged to the house of Bouillon, commanded the English Fleet, and it was by his orders, and for an urgent and special service, that the corvette had been detached.

  This corvette, enrolled at Trinity House as the "Claymore," was to all appearances a merchant ship, but in reality was a sloop of war. She had the clumsy, peaceful aspect of a merchantman; this was a mere blind, however. She had been built for a double purpose, deception and strength: to deceive, if possible; to fight, if necessary. For the service that she had to perform this night, her cargo between decks had been replaced by thirty carronades of heavy calibre. Either because a storm was in prospect, or to give an innocent appearance to the vessel, these thirty carronades were shut in, that is securely fastened within by triple chains, and the mouths pushed up against the closed port-holes; there was nothing to be seen from the outside; the port-holes were concealed; the lids closed; it was as if the corvette wore a mask. These carronades had wheels with bronze spokes, an ancient model, called " modèle radié."

  Corvettes usually have no cannons except on the upper deck; this one, constructed for surprise and stratagem, had no guns on the upper deck and as we have just seen, had been built in such a way as to be able to carry a battery between decks.

  The "Claymore" was of a heavy, dumpy build, and yet she was a good sailor. Her hull was one of the most solid in all the English navy, and in battle she was almost equal to a frigate, although her mizzen-mast was small, with merely a brigantine rig. Her rudder, of rare scientific shape, had a uniquely curved frame, which had cost fifty pounds sterling in the dockyards of Southampton.

  The crew, all French, was composed of emigrant officers and deserted sailors. They were picked men, not one of them was not a good seaman, good soldier, and good royalist. They had a threefold fanaticism: the ship, the sword, and the king.

  Half a battalion of marines, which could be disembarked in case of necessity, was scattered among the crew.

  The captain of the corvette "Claymore" was a chevalier of Saint-Louis, the Count de Boisberthelot, one of the best officers of the old Royal Navy; the second officer was the chevalier de la Vieuville, who had commanded the company of the French guards, in which Hoche was the sergeant, and her pilot was Philip Gacquoil, the most intelggent sailor in Jersey.

  It was evident that this vessel had some extraordinary service before her. Indeed, a man had just gone on board, who had every appearance of starting on an adventure. He was a tall old man, straight and sturdy, with a stern face, whose age it would have been difficult to tell exactly. because he seemed at once old and young; one of those men, full of years and strength, with white locks on his brow and fire in his eye; forty years in point of vigor, and eighty in point of authority.

  At the moment he set foot on the corvette, his seacloak flew open, and it could be seen that underneath this cloak he was dressed in the wide breeches called ' bragoubras, top boots, and a vest of goat-skin, showing the upper side of the leather embroidered with silk, and the under side with the hair in its rough, natural state, the complete costume of the Breton peasant.

  These old-fashioned Breton vests served a double purpose, being worn for festivals as well as work days, and were reversible, showing as was desirable either the hairy or the embroidered side; goat-skin all the week, gala dress on Sunday.

  As if to add a studied and exact truthfulness to the peasant costume worn by the old man, it was threadbare at the elbows and knees, and appeared to have been in use a long time, and his cloak, made of coarse material, resembled that of a fisherman. This old man had on the round hat of the day, with high crown and broad brim, which when turned down gives it a rustic appearance, and when caught up with a cord and cockade has a military air. He wore this hat after the peasant fashion with the rim flattened out, without cord or cockade.

  Lord Balcarras, governor of the island, and the Prince of la Tour-d'Auvergne, had accompanied him in person and installed him on board the vessel. Gélambre, the secret agent of the princes, and formerly one of the bodyguard of the Count d'Artois, had himself seen to the arrangement of his cabin, extending his care and attention, although himself an excellent gentleman, so far as to carry the old man's valise. On leaving him to go ashore again, M. de Gélambre had made a profound bow to this peasant; Lord Balcarras had said to him: " Good luck, general," and the Prince of la Tour-d'Auvergne had said: " Au revoir, cousin."

  "The peasant" was the name by which the crew began at once to designate their passenger, in the short conversations seamen have together; but without knowing more about him, they understood that this peasant was no more a peasant than the man-of-war was a merchant man.

  There was little wind. The "Claymore" left Bonnenuit, passed in front of Boulay Bay, and was for some ttme in sight, running along the shore, then she became dim in the increasing darkness, and was lost to view.

  An hour later, Gélambre, having returned home to Saint-Hélier, despatched by the Southampton express to the Count d'Artois, at the Duke of York's headquarters, the following four lines,—

  "Monseigneur, she has just sailed. Success certain. In a week the whole coast will be on fire from Granville to Saint-Malo."

  Four days before, Prieur, the representative of Marne, on a mission to the army on the coast of Cherbourg, and for the time being residing at Granville, had received a message in the same handwriting as the preceding despatch, reading thus,—

  "Citizen representative, June 1st, at flood-tide the sloop of war, "Claymore," with masked battery, will set sail, to carry to the coast of France a man whose description is as follows: tall, old, white hair, peasant's dress, aristocratic hands. I will send you more details to-morrow. He will land on the second, in the morning. Send word to the cruisers, capture the corvette, have the man guillotined."

  CHAPTER II.

  A NIGHT ON SHIPBOARD, AND CONCERNING THE PASSENGER.

  The corvette, instead of going to the south and steering towards Saint-Catherine's, bore to the north, then turned to the west and ran resolutely into the arm of the sea between Sark and Jersey, called the passage de la Déroute. There was at that time no lighthouse on any point along these two coasts.

  The sun had set, the night was dark, more so than usual in summer; there was a moon, but heavy clouds more like autumn than summer covered the sky like a ceiling, and to judge from all appearances the moon would not be visible till she touched the horizon just before setting. Clouds hung low over the sea, and covered it with fog.