Part 8 (1/2)

I left Cherbourg for Newfoundland on May 19th, 1841. It had been arranged that I was to go by the North Sea, to put into the Texel, and to go to the Hague to pay my respects in person to the King of the Netherlands. Almost as soon as I had disembarked at the Helder, I went on board the royal yacht, which was to take me to Alkmaar by the Noord Holland Ca.n.a.l. This yacht, commanded by a very pleasant fellow, a naval lieutenant, M. Dedel, was really charming. She had been built in the seventeenth century, and had been used by Admirals Van Ruyter and Van Tromp when they went to take up their commands. She was covered all over with gilt carvings, the deckhouse in the stern especially, and looked as if she had started freshly painted out of one of Backhuysen's pictures. Once on board her, a legion of horses towed her along, full trot, and I went to bed. When I awoke, I found the yacht moored beside the quay at Alkmaar, the city of cheeses, whence a carriage took me to Haarlem and Amsterdam, along the Haarlem Zee, which has been drained dry since then, and transformed into splendid meadow land, as the Zuider Zee will some day be. At Amsterdam I rushed to the museum, where I was received by M. Apostol, the director, who had known the Scheffers' father intimately at Rotterdam. Oh that museum! Oh those prints! But M. de Bois-le-Comte, the French Minister, was pitiless. He tore me away from all those masterpieces, and forced me to follow the millround of the programme he had laid out for me. He dragged me off to Zaandam (Saardam in French). This pretty j.a.panese-looking village, in the midst of a wide polder, surrounded by over five hundred windmills, looking like a row of gigantic sharpshooters, is a resort of pilgrims, and the holy spot is the hut of Peter the Great. The wretched wooden house, shut up in a sort of casemate, was the property of the Queen, sister of the Emperor Nicholas, and the shanty was never mentioned by her or to her but in the most feeling manner. Flectamus genua!

Leva...ate! Amongst other inscriptions there, I found the names of two French actors, Dormeuil and Monval, which recall anything but pious memories to my mind.

From Zaandam I went to the palace, to Van Ruyter's tomb, to the pelicans in the Zoological Gardens, and then I escaped from the furious Bois-le-Comte, who would have liked me never to go about except in a gla.s.s case labelled ”Ecce the Prince de Joinville.” Very kind and very witty he was, all the same, one of those finished diplomatists of the old school--a disciple of M. de Talleyrand. He had been everywhere, seen everything, observed everything, and he kept me under the charm of his conversation all through my hasty trip in Holland. During the last preceding years he had represented France in Portugal and Spain successively, and had been with the two Queens--my future sister-in-law--Dona Maria in Portugal, and the Regent Christina in Spain, through all the most violent disturbances, struggles, and dangers of the military conspiracies in those countries. He never tired of talking about the courage of these two ladies, the nature of which was very different in each case. The courage of the Queen of Portugal, he said, was resolute, but mournful and gloomy. The example she set was good, but she cast a chill on officers and men alike. Queen Christina--pa.s.sionate, a woman to her finger tips, careless of danger, but shedding tears of nervous excitement when the bullets smashed her windows and flew hither and thither about the apartments--magnetised her defenders. In the one case you cried ”Welcome, Death!” in the other you shouted ”Forward!” Very interesting indeed was the description Bois-le-Comte gave me of the La Granja conspiracy. How, having been warned in the middle of the night of the danger threatening Queen Christina and her daughters, he got up in haste to hurry to their a.s.sistance, but desired, first of all, to warn the British Minister and carry him along with him. How, when he reached the house of the minister, Mr. Villiers, afterwards Lord Clarendon, he rushed without meeting a soul into his bedroom, where the bed-curtains shook convulsively at the noise of his entrance, and the head alone of the minister appeared, saying, ”I'll follow you,” while a soft voice tried to detain him, with all the tenderest appeals in the Spanish language.

”I took myself off double quick,” said Bois-le-Comte to me; ”but I had recognised the voice.”

From Amsterdam we went to the Hague, and as soon as I got there I asked to see the King. ”Let him come at once” was the reply.

King William, young-looking still, with a graceful figure and a kindly engaging face, framed with a fringe of grizzling beard, had a loud voice and a hearty laugh. He was witty in conversation. The Queen, whom I never saw laugh, nor even smile, talked cleverly too, but she picked her words too obviously. Her daughter, the young Princess Sophia, now Grand-d.u.c.h.ess of Saxe-Weimar, was clever too. I was watching her dance at a ball one night, wearing a pretty gown, the chief adornment of which was an eastern scarf, when her father, to whom I was talking, said, ”Marmotte (her pet name in the family) looks like a Bayadere to-day.” And indeed she had all the grace and charm of one.

My stay at the Hague was one succession of gatherings, dinners, b.a.l.l.s, at which the cordiality of my reception never failed for one minute. It touched me much, and I have kept a grateful memory of it, for there was some merit, on the King's part, in its being so. Had we not largely contributed by our support of the Belgian revolution to lessening his kingdom by one half? And there had been yet another wound to his vanity. In his youth King William, then Prince of Orange, full of eager bravery, had gone to serve in Spain under the Duke of Wellington. He had been wounded in the ranks of the British army at Waterloo, and on the strength of these antecedents he had offered himself in 1815 as a candidate for the hand of Princess Charlotte, heir-presumptive to the Crown of England. He had been ousted. And by whom? By Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom we had just made King of the Belgians. In spite of these causes for coldness, at all events, the welcome I was given by the King, his family, and by every cla.s.s of that honest and well-behaved Dutch race, was marked by a constantly increasing kindliness, which filled Bois-le-Comte and his very witty secretary, La Rosiere, with delight. Just at the moment of parting, the King made me a present of an admirable copy in reduced size of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson, which hung in his study, saying, ”You are going to Newfoundland; you shall bring me back a dog in exchange,” which commission I faithfully executed.

To finish up my visit to Holland, I paid a visit to the Naval a.r.s.enal at Flus.h.i.+ng, and as I pa.s.sed through Zeeland I saw from afar, and not without emotion, the belfry towers of Bergen-op-Zoom, a town which witnessed the performance of two of the most brilliant exploits in our annals. The first--the taking of the stronghold by a.s.sault, by Marshal de Lowendal's army, in 1747. The second--the a.s.sault delivered on it on the 8th and 9th of March, 1814, by the whole English army, and triumphantly repulsed by a handful of soldiers and sailors commanded by General Bizannet. The a.s.sault under Marshal de Lowendal has been commemorated first of all in a celebrated song, and later by an admirable drawing in body colour by Van Blarenberg, which is to be seen in the Versailles Museum. But the exploit of 1814 has been almost lost sight of amid our disasters and the subsequent invasion. Very few people are aware that the British army made a forcible attack on Bergen-op-Zoom, getting into the town by the port at low tide, and scaling the ramparts, led and backed up by the inhabitants, who had risen in favour of the House of Orange, and that the enemy's columns got as far as the middle of the town, whence, after twelve hours'

fighting, they were driven over the ramparts by the resolute bravery of the defending force, leaving more prisoners in its hands than its own fighting men numbered. The details of this splendid page of military history should be read as told by Colonel Legrand of the Engineers, who commanded under General Bizannet. In them, among other dramatic incidents, will be found an episode about a bellringer, which is almost identical with the one Sardou has incorporated in his fine play Patrie.

From the Texel, or, to be more exact, from Neu-Diep to Newfoundland, by the north coast of Scotland, the pa.s.sage, though we made it without disaster, was terribly trying to both our crews and our s.h.i.+ps, which last were much damaged, and lost nearly all their sails. An incessant series of gales kept us under green seas nearly all the time. Upon these followed thick fogs, and finally we fell among numberless icebergs. So it was with a lively sense of relief that I found myself anch.o.r.ed at last within the haven of Le Croc, the headquarters of our squadron during the fis.h.i.+ng season. The haven was itself so obstructed with ice that on the very night of my arrival, with the help of my cook and some tins of jam, I was able to serve up Neapolitan ices to my staff, like Tortoni himself.

There was very near being a serious breach of discipline on board the frigate during our pa.s.sage. A sailor refused to obey, and threatened one of the mids.h.i.+pmen--a serious act of insubordination, which, according to the laws then in force, entailed corporal punishment on its perpetrator. I immediately called a court-martial, which, having heard witnesses and defendant, according to regulations, sentenced the man to a certain number of strokes with the rope's end. The hour for carrying out the sentence came, the crew was mustered, the officers in their places and under arms. I was in my cabin, just buckling on my sword, when my second in command came in like a whirlwind. ”They are going to ask for mercy,” he cried; ”it's your own fault. The men know your hatred of corporal punishment. They are going to presume on it. I beg you'll give me leave to run the first man that opens his mouth through with my sword.” Up till that time I had avoided the use of corporal punishment, a matter which had been made all the easier for me by the good feeling and quiet behaviour of the crew I had had under my command. But this time the scandal had been notorious, the punishment must be exemplary, and the law applied without mercy. What would become of the authority of an isolated handful of officers, on the high seas, among hundreds of seamen, if they had no possible recourse to force, to punishment drill, or to long terms of imprisonment? What, again, would become of that purely moral influence, which is indispensable on board a s.h.i.+p which is practically always at sea, if the maintenance of discipline was ever liable to the slightest failure? Filled as I was with even more than the ordinary sense of the imperious claims of duty on the officer in command, I rea.s.sured my subordinate. ”Make your mind easy,” I told him. ”I would be brayed in a mortar sooner than tolerate one moment's hesitation in carrying out the sentence. I shall stand at the head of the crew, and have the punishment carried out in front of me. The men will read my countenance and n.o.body will stir, I'll answer for it!” And so it was. I took my place, all eyes turned on me, and everything pa.s.sed off according to rule--To say the scene was not a painful one to me would be to tell a lie. But duty has to come first.

As my second in command had said, I had a horror of corporal punishment as laid down by the Convention, a relic of another age, when navy crews were recruited amongst a set of vagabonds picked up in all quarters. I thought it degrading. Often, among my brother officers, I had blamed the unmeasured use I had seen made of it on board s.h.i.+ps I did not command. And glad indeed I was when it was done away with. A commanding officer invested, and justly so, with unlimited authority on board his own s.h.i.+p, is sure by intelligence, firmness, and sense of duty, to find other means than the lash of making the saving law of absolute obedience to superiors respected, without going such lengths as the captain of an American wars.h.i.+p, who, on his own responsibility, hanged one of his mids.h.i.+pmen, nearly related to the Minister for Naval Affairs, who had been guilty of attempted mutiny, from the yardarm.

I will not enlarge here on what has become the Newfoundland Question, which I have naturally had to study in all its aspects. Suffice it to recall the fact that when the Island of Newfoundland became British territory, the conquerors ceded the exclusive right of fis.h.i.+ng on half the coast to France, with the reservation that we were only to remain temporarily, during the fis.h.i.+ng season, and have no permanent establishments on the island. When these fis.h.i.+ng rights were conceded to us (and they soon became very important, employing as they did over twenty thousand sailors, and turning the Newfoundland fisheries into one of the chief training grounds for our service sailors) the island was well-nigh uninhabited. There are no opportunities for conflict in a desert country. But little by little the island grew populous. On the part where we had the fis.h.i.+ng rights, the ”French Sh.o.r.e,” a very limited, almost insignificant, English population gathered, and, oddly enough, we ourselves brought it there, desirous as we were to leave caretakers to look after and keep in order, from one season to the other, the indispensable establishments for the curing, drying, and salting of the codfish, which we ourselves could not occupy permanently. Everywhere, during my cruise, I found this English population, living by us, and on excellent terms with our Newfoundlanders. To such a pitch was the excellence of these terms occasionally carried, that paying a visit one day to a worthy sea-captain from St. Malo, who had laid up his s.h.i.+p during the fis.h.i.+ng season, and settled on sh.o.r.e, in an English house, I saw two chubby children burst in, shouting ”Papa, papa!” while a young and pretty Englishwoman, sitting by, never lifted her eyes from her work. ”The little geese,” said the worthy Breton, ”see me so often, they've got into the habit of calling me papa!”

This entente cordiale would no doubt have continued indefinitely, and n.o.body would have heard any mention of a Newfoundland Question, endangering the international relations between the two countries, if the southern portion of the island, entirely English as it was, and with a temperate climate, had not increased so rapidly in population as to have a const.i.tution, liberal inst.i.tutions, a Parliament, and the consequent elections. The electioneering agents forthwith found they needed a sensational popular platform, and this platform has ended by becoming something like the ”Irredenta” movement in Italy, a claim for national rights over the national soil. ”Newfoundland for the Newfoundlanders.” There lies the whole of the Newfoundland Question.

Locally, n.o.body bothers their head about it, but in the press, and on the phantom-haunted ground of electoral politics, it has kindled many pa.s.sions, and may very likely engender ruin and bloodshed some of these days. These facts taken for granted, I return to my personal recollections. Unlike most of my brother officers, I found my stay in Newfoundland (in the summer months, during which we were stationed there, be it understood) very pleasant. The island is a hilly one, covered with pine forests. Where the woods fail, there are lakes and rivers, admirably clear, and swarming with salmon and trout. There was plenty of game, and all this in the midst of the uninhabited region where every one can enjoy the completest liberty, with no limits but those imposed by his own tastes and endurance. If there were no drawback to all these advantages, Newfoundland in the summer-time would be a paradise, and there is no such thing as that upon our globe. The drawback is the flies, little black ones, called the ”black fly,” the pest of all northern countries, against which one is quite defenceless.

They get in everywhere; no preservative stops them; no ointment nor any daubing repels them. During a hunting excursion I made to the Isle of Groix, so christened by some native of L'Orient, which is about eight miles off Le Croc, I saw some of my comrades with their heads swelled up like a hydrocephalous patient's, so that their eyes had disappeared, half mad with pain from the stings of that infernal fly, and one of our sailor servants lay on the ground, refusing to move, and begging us with tears to put a rifle to his head and end his agony.

This Isle of Groix swarmed with creatures that had come over the ice from the mainland in the winter season. Its steep edges, covered with an impenetrable arborescent growth, enclosed a great treeless plateau, a ”lande.” We used to get on to this lande by walking up the bed of a rivulet, and once on it we had perfect ma.s.sacres of winged game, especially of that sort of gray grouse called ptarmigan by the English.

It was these birds' pairing season. They never flew away, and when we killed one the other would ruffle up its feathers in a fury and fly pecking at our legs. The wooded sides of the island must have been full of reindeer, to judge by the quant.i.ties of tracks to be seen on every side. If we had had one or two hounds to send into the thickets we might have made hecatombs of them.

From Le Croc I went round all our neighbouring fis.h.i.+ng stations--Saint Julien, the Baie Rouge, &c. Cod were extraordinarily numerous that year. One haul of the seine at the Baie Rouge brought in eighty-four thousand cod-fish in one day. It was the golden age of the fishery. Now the fish have deserted the eastern coast of Newfoundland. Our fishermen have to take their boats and anchor on the big bank, and there they stay for months, tossed about by every tempest. They go out line-fis.h.i.+ng in small boats, which are frequently lost in the fog and never heard of again. Often, too, the fis.h.i.+ng vessel herself is cut in two, in fog or darkness, by some transatlantic liner steaming seventeen knots an hour, which is out of sight in a few seconds, while the unlucky boat founders with all hands. A hard and a risky life our bank fishermen lead. But they come back men, and well-seasoned men too!

From the eastern coast of the island the Bette-Poule took her way to the western side, pa.s.sing through the Straits of Belleisle, a narrow channel which parts Newfoundland from Labrador. The amount of difficult navigation we met with going through the straits was really extraordinary. The channel was full of ice-floes, either stranded or driven about by the currents. A thick fog came down on us, with zenithal aurora borealis, the electric action of which threw out every compa.s.s, standard and otherwise, on board. No seeing, no steering!

After having been in a very critical position at the entrance of Forteau Bay, a point on the Labrador coast celebrated for wrecks, I took the frigate into the haven of Ingornachoix, where we made some considerable stay, necessitated by the condition of my crew's health.

For some time it had been suffering from the exceptional fatigues of the cruise. During our stay in Le Croc, in spite of its being a breathing time, and of every kind of care, many men had been ailing, and the sickness ended by taking the form of a somewhat serious epidemic of smallpox. The best thing we could do to stop the mischief and prevent it from increasing and becoming permanent (which would have resulted in closing almost all foreign ports to us) was to isolate the sick. I therefore lost no time in having a hospital constructed on a pretty wooded isle, which lay just at the entrance to the place where we were anch.o.r.ed, and in it I settled all my sick men, doing everything in my power to dry and disinfect the frigate meanwhile. This double measure was successful, and when we left the bay my crew was completely restored to health and vigour.

I learnt several things during this long period in harbour, the first of which was the discovery of the immense quant.i.ty of lobsters frequenting the coast. The first day my men went to walk on sh.o.r.e they brought back nine hundred, which they had caught among the rocks, and that without the least difficulty. I do not know whether the Ingornachoix lobster was like Bayard, without reproach, but without fear he most certainly was. It was quite enough, when one caught sight of him in shallow water, to poke a stick at him. He instantly sprang furiously forth, laid hold of it with his claws, and absolutely refused to let go. This abundance of lobsters, turned to commercial account later, when it became known, gave rise to the Lobster Fisheries Question, one of the stalking-horses of the English Irredentists.

Furthermore, I discovered that since the codfish were becoming rare on the French Sh.o.r.e of the Straits of Belleisle, our fishermen, to remedy the scarcity, went over and poached on the English coast of Labrador--the princ.i.p.al drawback to which contravention of the agreement was that it gave the English a pretext for doing the same thing. As the English cruisers not unnaturally shut their eyes to irregularities which created precedents that might be harmful to us, our s.h.i.+ps of war had either to sanction them by their presence, or, by opposing them, to exercise in a foreign country a right of keeping order which was questionable, to say the least of it; both of them things to be avoided, if possible. And our orders, in fact, were never to be seen at Labrador. This regulation I conformed to; but behold, one fine day, a schooner from our local station at St. Pierre Miquelon casts anchor alongside of me, and the following colloquy ensues between the lieutenant in command and myself:--

”Where are you going?”

”To Labrador.”

”But you know the state of things. There are the gravest objections to taking one of our wars.h.i.+ps there.”

”I know; but I have special and precise orders from the Minister for Naval Affairs.”

”What orders?”

”I have been ordered to go to Labrador to buy a dog for one of the secretaries to the minister.”