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_ Far away, over sea and land, over sunny sea again, great guns were
booming on that 7th of May, 1799.
The Mediterranean came up with a long roar on a beach glittering
white with snowy sand, and the fragments of innumerable sea-shells,
delicate and shining as porcelain. Looking at that shore from the
sea, a long ridge of upland ground, beginning from an inland depth,
stretched far away into the ocean on the right, till it ended in a
great mountainous bluff, crowned with the white buildings of a
convent sloping rapidly down into the blue water at its base.
In the clear eastern air, the different characters of the foliage
that clothed the sides of that sea-washed mountain might be
discerned from a long distance by the naked eye; the silver gray of
the olive-trees near its summit; the heavy green and bossy forms of
the sycamores lower down; broken here and there by a solitary
terebinth or ilex tree, of a deeper green and a wider spread; till
the eye fell below on the maritime plain, edged with the white
seaboard and the sandy hillocks; with here and there feathery
palm-trees, either isolated or in groups--motionless and distinct
against the hot purple air.
Look again; a little to the left on the sea-shore there are the
white walls of a fortified town, glittering in sunlight, or black in
shadow.
The fortifications themselves run out into the sea, forming a port
and a haven against the wild Levantine storms; and a lighthouse
rises out of the waves to guide mariners into safety.
Beyond this walled city, and far away to the left still, there is
the same wide plain shut in by the distant rising ground, till the
upland circuit comes closing in to the north, and the great white
rocks meet the deep tideless ocean with its intensity of blue
colour.
Above, the sky is literally purple with heat; and the pitiless light
smites the gazer's weary eye as it comes back from the white shore.
Nor does the plain country in that land offer the refuge and rest of
our own soft green. The limestone rock underlies the vegetation, and
gives a glittering, ashen hue to all the bare patches, and even to
the cultivated parts which are burnt up early in the year. In
spring-time alone does the country look rich and fruitful; then the
corn-fields of the plain show their capability of bearing, 'some
fifty, some an hundred fold'; down by the brook Kishon, flowing not
far from the base of the mountainous promontory to the south, there
grow the broad green fig-trees, cool and fresh to look upon; the
orchards are full of glossy-leaved cherry-trees; the tall amaryllis
puts forth crimson and yellow glories in the fields, rivalling the
pomp of King Solomon; the daisies and the hyacinths spread their
myriad flowers; the anemones, scarlet as blood, run hither and
thither over the ground like dazzling flames of fire.
A spicy odour lingers in the heated air; it comes from the multitude
of aromatic flowers that blossom in the early spring. Later on they
will have withered and faded, and the corn will have been gathered,
and the deep green of the eastern foliage will have assumed a kind
of gray-bleached tint.
Even now in May, the hot sparkle of the everlasting sea, the
terribly clear outline of all objects, whether near or distant, the
fierce sun right overhead, the dazzling air around, were
inexpressibly wearying to the English eyes that kept their skilled
watch, day and night, on the strongly-fortified coast-town that lay
out a little to the northward of where the British ships were
anchored.
They had kept up a flanking fire for many days in aid of those
besieged in St Jean d'Acre; and at intervals had listened,
impatient, to the sound of the heavy siege guns, or the sharper
rattle of the French musketry.
In the morning, on the 7th of May, a man at the masthead of the
_Tigre_ sang out that he saw ships in the offing; and in reply to
the signal that was hastily run up, he saw the distant vessels hoist
friendly flags. That May morning was a busy time. The besieged Turks
took heart of grace; the French outside, under the command of their
great general, made hasty preparations for a more vigorous assault
than all many, both vigorous and bloody, that had gone before (for
the siege was now at its fifty-first day), in hopes of carrying the
town by storm before the reinforcement coming by sea could arrive;
and Sir Sidney Smith, aware of Buonaparte's desperate intention,
ordered all the men, both sailors and marines, that could be spared
from the necessity of keeping up a continual flanking fire from the
ships upon the French, to land, and assist the Turks and the British
forces already there in the defence of the old historic city.
Lieutenant Kinraid, who had shared his captain's daring adventure
off the coast of France three years before, who had been a prisoner
with him and Westley Wright, in the Temple at Paris, and had escaped
with them, and, through Sir Sidney's earnest recommendation, been
promoted from being a warrant officer to the rank of lieutenant,
received on this day the honour from his admiral of being appointed
to an especial post of danger. His heart was like a war-horse, and
said, Ha, ha! as the boat bounded over the waves that were to land
him under the ancient machicolated walls where the Crusaders made
their last stand in the Holy Land. Not that Kinraid knew or cared
one jot about those gallant knights of old: all he knew was, that
the French, under Boney, were trying to take the town from the
Turks, and that his admiral said they must not, and so they should
not.
He and his men landed on that sandy shore, and entered the town by
the water-port gate; he was singing to himself his own country
song,--
Weel may the keel row, the keel row, &C.
and his men, with sailors' aptitude for music, caught up the air,
and joined in the burden with inarticulate sounds.
So, with merry hearts, they threaded the narrow streets of Acre,
hemmed in on either side by the white walls of Turkish houses, with
small grated openings high up, above all chance of peeping
intrusion.
Here and there they met an ample-robed and turbaned Turk going along
with as much haste as his stately self-possession would allow. But
the majority of the male inhabitants were gathered together to
defend the breach, where the French guns thundered out far above the
heads of the sailors.
They went along none the less merrily for the sound to Djezzar
Pacha's garden, where the old Turk sate on his carpet, beneath the
shade of a great terebinth tree, listening to the interpreter, who
made known to him the meaning of the eager speeches of Sir Sidney
Smith and the colonel of the marines.
As soon as the admiral saw the gallant sailors of H.M.S. _Tigre_, he
interrupted the council of war without much ceremony, and going to
Kinraid, he despatched them, as before arranged, to the North
Ravelin, showing them the way with rapid, clear directions.
Out of respect to him, they had kept silent while in the strange,
desolate garden; but once more in the streets, the old Newcastle
song rose up again till the men were, perforce, silenced by the
haste with which they went to the post of danger.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon. For many a day these very men
had been swearing at the terrific heat at this hour--even when at
sea, fanned by the soft breeze; but now, in the midst of hot smoke,
with former carnage tainting the air, and with the rush and whizz of
death perpetually whistling in their ears, they were uncomplaining
and light-hearted. Many an old joke, and some new ones, came brave
and hearty, on their cheerful voices, even though the speaker was
veiled from sight in great clouds of smoke, cloven only by the
bright flames of death.
A sudden message came; as many of the crew of the _Tigre_ as were
under Lieutenant Kinraid's command were to go down to the Mole, to
assist the new reinforcements (seen by the sailor from the masthead
at day-dawn), under command of Hassan Bey, to land at the Mole,
where Sir Sidney then was.
Off they went, almost as bright and thoughtless as before, though
two of their number lay silent for ever at the North
Ravelin--silenced in that one little half-hour. And one went along
with the rest, swearing lustily at his ill-luck in having his right
arm broken, but ready to do good business with his left.
They helped the Turkish troops to land more with good-will than
tenderness; and then, led by Sir Sidney, they went under the shelter
of English guns to the fatal breach, so often assailed, so gallantly
defended, but never so fiercely contested as on this burning
afternoon. The ruins of the massive wall that here had been broken
down by the French, were used by them as stepping stones to get on a
level with the besieged, and so to escape the heavy stones which the
latter hurled down; nay, even the dead bodies of the morning's
comrades were made into ghastly stairs.
When Djezzar Pacha heard that the British sailors were defending the
breach, headed by Sir Sidney Smith, he left his station in the
palace garden, gathered up his robes in haste, and hurried to the
breach; where, with his own hands, and with right hearty good-will,
he pulled the sailors down from the post of danger, saying that if
he lost his English friends he lost all!
But little recked the crew of the _Tigre_ of the one old man--Pacha
or otherwise--who tried to hold them back from the fight; they were
up and at the French assailants clambering over the breach in an
instant; and so they went on, as if it were some game at play
instead of a deadly combat, until Kinraid and his men were called
off by Sir Sidney, as the reinforcement of Turkish troops under
Hassan Bey were now sufficient for the defence of that old breach in
the walls, which was no longer the principal object of the French
attack; for the besiegers had made a new and more formidable breach
by their incessant fire, knocking down whole streets of the city
walls.
'Fight your best Kinraid!' said Sir Sidney; 'for there's Boney on
yonder hill looking at you.'
And sure enough, on a rising ground, called Richard Coeur de Lion's
Mount, there was a half-circle of French generals, on horseback, all
deferentially attending to the motions, and apparently to the words,
of a little man in their centre; at whose bidding the aide-de-camp
galloped swift with messages to the more distant French camp.
The two ravelins which Kinraid and his men had to occupy, for the
purpose of sending a flanking fire upon the enemy, were not ten
yards from that enemy's van.
But at length there was a sudden rush of the French to that part of
the wall where they imagined they could enter unopposed.
Surprised at this movement, Kinraid ventured out of the shelter of
the ravelin to ascertain the cause; he, safe and untouched during
that long afternoon of carnage, fell now, under a stray musket-shot,
and lay helpless and exposed upon the ground undiscerned by his men,
who were recalled to help in the hot reception which had been
planned for the French; who, descending the city walls into the
Pacha's garden, were attacked with sabre and dagger, and lay
headless corpses under the flowering rose-bushes, and by the
fountain side.
Kinraid lay beyond the ravelins, many yards outside the city walls.
He was utterly helpless, for the shot had broken his leg. Dead
bodies of Frenchmen lay strewn around him; no Englishman had
ventured out so far.
All the wounded men that he could see were French; and many of
these, furious with pain, gnashed their teeth at him, and cursed him
aloud, till he thought that his best course was to assume the
semblance of death; for some among these men were still capable of
dragging themselves up to him, and by concentrating all their
failing energies into one blow, put him to a speedy end.
The outlying pickets of the French army were within easy rifle shot;
and his uniform, although less conspicuous in colour than that of
the marines, by whose sides he had been fighting, would make him a
sure mark if he so much as moved his arm. Yet how he longed to turn,
if ever so slightly, so that the cruel slanting sun might not beat
full into his aching eyes. Fever, too, was coming upon him; the pain
in his leg was every moment growing more severe; the terrible thirst
of the wounded, added to the heat and fatigue of the day, made his
lips and tongue feel baked and dry, and his whole throat seemed
parched and wooden. Thoughts of other days, of cool Greenland seas,
where ice abounded, of grassy English homes, began to make the past
more real than the present.
With a great effort he brought his wandering senses back; he knew
where he was now, and could weigh the chances of his life, which
were but small; the unwonted tears came to his eyes as he thought of
the newly-made wife in her English home, who might never know how he
died thinking of her.
Suddenly he saw a party of English marines advance, under shelter of
the ravelin, to pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls
for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could
hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay
within range of the French picket's fire.
For one moment he could not resist raising his head, to give himself
a chance for life; before the unclean creatures that infest a camp
came round in the darkness of the night to strip and insult the dead
bodies, and to put to death such as had yet the breath of life
within them. But the setting sun came full into his face, and he saw
nothing of what he longed to see.
He fell back in despair; he lay there to die.
That strong clear sunbeam had wrought his salvation.
He had been recognized as men are recognized when they stand in the
red glare of a house on fire; the same despair of help, of hopeless
farewell to life, stamped on their faces in blood-red light.
One man left his fellows, and came running forwards, forwards in
among the enemy's wounded, within range of their guns; he bent down
over Kinraid; he seemed to understand without a word; he lifted him
up, carrying him like a child; and with the vehement energy that is
more from the force of will than the strength of body, he bore him
back to within the shelter of the ravelin--not without many shots
being aimed at them, one of which hit Kinraid in the fleshy part of
his arm.
Kinraid was racked with agony from his dangling broken leg, and his
very life seemed leaving him; yet he remembered afterwards how the
marine recalled his fellows, and how, in the pause before they
returned, his face became like one formerly known to the sick senses
of Kinraid; yet it was too like a dream, too utterly improbable to
be real.
Yet the few words this man said, as he stood breathless and alone by
the fainting Kinraid, fitted in well with the belief conjured up by
his personal appearance. He panted out,--
'I niver thought you'd ha' kept true to her!'
And then the others came up; and while they were making a sling of
their belts, Kinraid fainted utterly away, and the next time that he
was fully conscious, he was lying in his berth in the _Tigre_, with
the ship surgeon setting his leg. After that he was too feverish for
several days to collect his senses. When he could first remember,
and form a judgment upon his recollections, he called the man
especially charged to attend upon him, and bade him go and make
inquiry in every possible manner for a marine named Philip Hepburn,
and, when he was found, to entreat him to come and see Kinraid.
The sailor was away the greater part of the day, and returned
unsuccessful in his search; he had been from ship to ship, hither
and thither; he had questioned all the marines he had met with, no
one knew anything of any Philip Hepburn.
Kinraid passed a miserably feverish night, and when the doctor
exclaimed the next morning at his retrogression, he told him, with
some irritation, of the ill-success of his servant; he accused the
man of stupidity, and wished fervently that he were able to go
himself.
Partly to soothe him, the doctor promised that he would undertake
the search for Hepburn, and he engaged faithfully to follow all
Kinraid's eager directions; not to be satisfied with men's careless
words, but to look over muster-rolls and ships' books.
He, too, brought the same answer, however unwillingly given.
He had set out upon the search so confident of success, that he felt
doubly discomfited by failure. However, he had persuaded himself
that the lieutenant had been partially delirious from the effects of
his wound, and the power of the sun shining down just where he lay.
There had, indeed, been slight symptoms of Kinraid's having received
a sun-stroke; and the doctor dwelt largely on these in his endeavour
to persuade his patient that it was his imagination which had endued
a stranger with the lineaments of some former friend.
Kinraid threw his arms out of bed with impatience at all this
plausible talk, which was even more irritating than the fact that
Hepburn was still undiscovered.
'The man was no friend of mine; I was like to have killed him when
last I saw him. He was a shopkeeper in a country town in England. I
had seen little enough of him; but enough to make me able to swear
to him anywhere, even in a marine's uniform, and in this sweltering
country.'
'Faces once seen, especially in excitement, are apt to return upon
the memory in cases of fever,' quoth the doctor, sententiously.
The attendant sailor, reinstalled to some complacency by the failure
of another in the search in which he himself had been unsuccessful,
now put in his explanation.
'Maybe it was a spirit. It's not th' first time as I've heared of a
spirit coming upon earth to save a man's life i' time o' need. My
father had an uncle, a west-country grazier. He was a-coming over
Dartmoor in Devonshire one moonlight night with a power o' money as
he'd got for his sheep at t' fair. It were stowed i' leather bags
under th' seat o' th' gig. It were a rough kind o' road, both as a
road and in character, for there'd been many robberies there of
late, and th' great rocks stood convenient for hiding-places. All at
once father's uncle feels as if some one were sitting beside him on
th' empty seat; and he turns his head and looks, and there he sees
his brother sitting--his brother as had been dead twelve year and
more. So he turns his head back again, eyes right, and never say a
word, but wonders what it all means. All of a sudden two fellows
come out upo' th' white road from some black shadow, and they
looked, and they let th' gig go past, father's uncle driving hard,
I'll warrant him. But for all that he heard one say to t' other,
"By----, there's _two_ on 'em!" Straight on he drove faster than
ever, till he saw th' far lights of some town or other. I forget its
name, though I've heared it many a time; and then he drew a long
breath, and turned his head to look at his brother, and ask him how
he'd managed to come out of his grave i' Barum churchyard, and th'
seat was as empty as it had been when he set out; and then he knew
that it were a spirit come to help him against th' men who thought
to rob him, and would likely enough ha' murdered him.'
Kinraid had kept quiet through this story. But when the sailor began
to draw the moral, and to say, 'And I think I may make bold to say,
sir, as th' marine who carried you out o' th' Frenchy's gun-shot was
just a spirit come to help you,' he exclaimed impatiently, swearing
a great oath as he did so, 'It was no spirit, I tell you; and I was
in my full senses. It was a man named Philip Hepburn. He said words
to me, or over me, as none but himself would have said. Yet we hated
each other like poison; and I can't make out why he should be there
and putting himself in danger to save me. But so it was; and as you
can't find him, let me hear no more of your nonsense. It was him,
and not my fancy, doctor. It was flesh and blood, and not a spirit,
Jack. So get along with you, and leave me quiet.'
All this time Stephen Freeman lay friendless, sick, and shattered,
on board the _Thesus_.
He had been about his duty close to some shells that were placed on
her deck; a gay young midshipman was thoughtlessly striving to get
the fusee out of one of these by a mallet and spike-nail that lay
close at hand; and a fearful explosion ensued, in which the poor
marine, cleaning his bayonet near, was shockingly burnt and
disfigured, the very skin of all the lower part of his face being
utterly destroyed by gunpowder. They said it was a mercy that his
eyes were spared; but he could hardly feel anything to be a mercy,
as he lay tossing in agony, burnt by the explosion, wounded by
splinters, and feeling that he was disabled for life, if life itself
were preserved. Of all that suffered by that fearful accident (and
they were many) none was so forsaken, so hopeless, so desolate, as
the Philip Hepburn about whom such anxious inquiries were being made
at that very time. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXXIX - CONFIDENCES
Read previous: CHAPTER XXXVII - BEREAVEMENT
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