Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
The roar of guns and the yells of battle-crazed men, the shrieks of the wounded and the cries of the dying were to young Francois like the trumpeting of a storm to one who loves the sea at its maddest. He was in his element, and as he was leading the fight he led his men to victory.
Cut to pieces the Moor crew threw up their hands in surrender. Francois saw one Moslem leap down the main hatch. One would think that occupied as he was Francois would not have an eye for such a detail at a time when men leaped and fell into the sea literally by the score. But in the Moslem’s hand Francois saw a lighted fuse. Down into the hatch after him went the youth.
The Moslem was running three bounds ahead of Francois. Down through the dark passages in the hold went the pursuit. Francois had a fair idea where his man was headed. And it was with a furious effort that he threw himself on the man and cut him down with his cutlass just as the Moslem had thrown open the door to the powder magazine and was about to thrust into it the lighted match.
The danger of being blown to shreds now averted, the men of the Victoire gave the Moors the quarter and mercy they would not themselves have received had they lost. And deep down below the water line in the foulest conceivable of holes were found fifteen Christian captives who were led up to the deck.
“White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.”
Into the port of Leghorn went the Victoire with prisoners and prize. Young Francois went ashore to spend part of his prize money and to go to confessional. There was a side to the youth which was as different from the cutlass-slashing fighter in him as oil is different from water.
The deepest passion in him was love of man. If along with it went a talent for fighting to the death it is not my job to explain the contradiction. Men often are that way; and we must take Francois Misson as we find him. But now that the lust of battle was over the youth felt agonies of remorse.
Two of a Kidney
So he went to confessional to purge his conscience of murderous memories. The priest to whom he confessed was little older than himself. Caraccioli was a fiery-eyed young Italian who had made the mistake of his life when he chose a career that would confine him to a priest’s cell. As Francois told of the battles he had been through, instead of filling the priest with the sense of Francois’s guilt he infected him with restlessness.
Caraccioli was as predestined to the sea and fighting, to untrammelled thinking and restless roving as was Francois himself. The confession became instead a lure. The young Italian heard the wild music of battle, he visioned the glint of the sea and its limitless surges — and his little white-washed cell became a prison to him. Then, too, in the youth confessing to him he sensed a kinship in spirit, a comradeship it would take more than a lifetime to exhaust.
The upshot was that Caraccioli put away forever his cassock and went along with Francois back to the Victoire. The ship returned to Marseilles. Here the two young men spent a restless month while the Victoire underwent repairs.
Then the ship was ordered to Rochelle to escort a merchant fleet to Martinique. At Rochelle the two young men found that the convoy was not yet ready; that it would be perhaps another month or two before they would move.
A month or two of waiting on top of already two months of inaction was more than the two friends could endure. So they volunteered for a cruise in the English Channel on the Triomphe under Captain Le Blanc.
The Dream of Francois
It was, of course, not a pleasure cruise, this scouting around of a French frigate in the English Channel at a time when France was at war with England. Francois and Caraccioli got all the action they wanted.
First, they chased and pounded to pieces a Jamaica freighter. Here Francois saw an action on the part of Captain Le Blanc which dropped into his nature like a seed in fertile soil.
The Frenchmen had boarded the sinking Britisher and took every bit of booty they could lay hands upon. Then the search by the French crew extended to the personal belongings of the British sailors. But peremptorily the captain stopped it.
“We are not pirates,” he said, “but servants of the Grand Monarch. We do not rob the poor!”
Where the soil is deep and rich the bounty of a cornfield flows over and flowers into bluets and poppies and other gay little blooms. So it seems to me that in the hearts of great fighters there is enough richness to give soil to the bloom of chivalry, magnanimity.
Captain Le Blanc’s decent act in not letting his crew plunder the poor belongings of their prisoners chimed in Francois’s nature and woke reverberations. That was the way to treat a conquered opponent!
Two things had drawn Père Caraccioli to Francois — the man of action and the dreamer. For in rare men the two do meet and re-enforce each other; Francois was such a man.
At a time when the first of our modem democracies was yet unborn by a hundred years, when kings and despots were the rule and slaves in chains were as familiar a phenomenon as dogs on leashes to-day, Francois dreamed of a state in which all men had equal rights, shared everything like brothers, in which one race was as good as another and men would prefer living in peace together to slaughtering each other for gain.
To all this Caraccioli, with the fervency of a young Italian and a one-time priest, said a loud amen. If ever they came to power, the youths promised each other, they would bring these beautiful dreams to realization. We shall see whether they kept this promise.
When their former ship, the Victoire, was ready for its cruise the two friends rejoined it. The frigate safely delivered the merchantmen at Martinique and Guadeloupe. Then it set out to hunt down whatever British ships it should meet.
They had no difficulty in meeting their first Britisher; the difficulty lay in getting away from it. For into sight hove the Winchelsea, a mammoth warship carrying forty great guns and equipment to match. It was more than big enough to blow the Victoire out of the water; and Captain Fourbin had bitten off more than he could chew.
Victory or Death
But having started it there was no alternative but to press the fight as strongly as possible. The two ships hove broadside to each other and let fly. The Victoire had only fifteen guns on that side and the Winchelsea twenty.
When the roar of the British broadside answered the Victoire it was like a lion replying to a wild cat. At the first blast from the Britisher the tornado of lead swept the Frenchman’s deck with terrible havoc.
Among the first to be killed was Captain Fourbin himself and his three lieutenants. That left only the ship’s master alive as the commanding officer. Plunged suddenly into supreme responsibility by a catastrophe that had swept off his superiors and threatened to wipe out the rest of the crew the master laid his hands on a rope to run up a flag of surrender.
His hand never reached its destination. A strong young hand knocked it aside. Young Francois, cousin to the dead captain, and born leader that he was calmly thrust the master from his position in command.
“By your intention you lose your post!” Francois cried. “Only the man willing to lead this ship to victory or to death is entitled to command. Men!” he cried to the crew about him. “Will you follow me on with the fight?”
A Bolt from Heaven
He had to make himself heard above the roar of the Winchelsea’s cannon and his own. But they had no trouble understanding him and certainly he had no difficulty in hearing their thundering assent.
Then the Victoire proceeded apparently to commit suicide. For instead of standing away from the Winchelsea Francois steered his ship up to the Britisher. Down among his cannoneers he went keying them up to still higher pitch.