Chapter 38 - Page 2

and dearest selves. A bloody farce was in preparation, noble lives were to be perjured away, and above all, the only great rival in the hearts of soldiers must be turned out of France. This foul job worked--as foul Radical jobs do now--for the good of England. If the French invasion had come to pass, as it was fully meant to do, in the month of February, 1804, perhaps its history must have been written in French, for us to understand it.

So, at any rate, thought Caryl Carne, who knew the resources of either side, and the difference between a fine army and a mob. He felt quite sure that his mother's country would conquer his father's without much trouble, and he knew that his horn would be exalted in the land, when he had guided the conqueror into it. Sure enough then he would recover his ancestral property with interest and be able to punish his enemies well, and reward his friends if they deserved it. Thinking of these things, and believing that his own preparations would soon be finished, he left Widow Shanks to proclaim his merits, while under the bold and able conduct of Captain Renaud Charron he ran the gauntlet of the English fleet, and was put ashore southward of Cape Grisnez. Here is a long reach of dreary exposure, facing the west unprofitably, with a shallow slope of brown sand, and a scour of tide, and no pleasant moorings. Jotted as the coast was all along (whereon dry batteries grinned defiance, or sands just awash smiled treachery) with shallow transports, gun-boats, prames, scows, bilanders, brigs, and schooners, row-galleys, luggers, and every sort of craft that has a mast, or gets on without one, and even a few good ships of war pondering malice in the safer roadsteads, yet here the sweep of the west wind, and the long roll from the ocean following, kept a league or two, northward of the mighty defences of Boulogne, inviolate by the petty enmities of man. Along the slight curve of the coast might be seen, beyond Ambleteuse and Wimereux, the vast extent of the French flotilla, ranged in three divisions, before the great lunette of the central camp, and hills jotted with tents thick as limpets on a rock.

Carne (whose dealings were quite unknown to all of the French authorities save one, and that the supreme one) was come by appointment to meet his commander in a quiet and secluded spot. It was early February now, and although the day was waning, and the wind, which was drawing to the north of west, delivered a cold blow from the sea, yet the breath of Spring was in the air already, and the beat of her pulse came through the ground. Almost any man, except those two concerting to shed blood and spread fire, would have looked about a little at the pleasure of the earth, and felt a touch of happiness in the goodness of the sky.

Caryl Carne waited in the shelter of a tree, scarcely deserving to be called a tree, except for its stiff tenacity. All the branches were driven by the western gales, and scourged