Part 24

Bélître Scélérat nous traite passablement, c’est-à-dire, il ne nous menace pas. Il ne nous voit pas souvent, comme il va partout le pays, pour conférer avec ses agents, ou bien il court la mer en forban. Ses geôliers, pourtant, ont soin de nous, et ils nous gardent rigoureusement. Je n’ai jamais été hors de l’enclos, et toutes les fois que j’y vais pour aspirer de l’air frais les geôliers montent la garde pour me surveiller. Bélître Scélérat dit qu’il m’affranchira aussitôt que mon papa lui paiera une rançon énorme; mais il ajoute qu’il compte me tenir prisonnière long-temps, pour que mon papa paie la rançon promptement.

J’ai écrit cette lettre en secret, et j’ai dessein de la mettre en sûreté dans une bouteille. Puis j’essaierai de la jeter dans le ruisseau, dans l’espérance que quelqu’un la trouvera. Lecteur, ayez pitié de moi! Venez à mes secours, ou c’est fait de moi! Je vis en espoir d’être sauvée. Suivez le cours dans lequel vous trouvez cette lettre, et vous arriverez à la maison qui est ma prison. Si vous ne pourrez me délivrer, envoyez ma lettre au Duc de la Chaloupe, et il viendra avec une armée pour me sauver. Hélas! peut-être mon illustre père est-il mort!

Si le lecteur est à même de me sauver qu’il se dépêche car Bélître Scélérat ne sera pas à la maison cette semaine, et les gardes sont plus poltrons que braves. Ainsi mon élargissement se fera aisément! Mon père le duc récompensera qui que ce soit qui me sauve, j’en suis sûre. Peut-être sa majesté l’empereur desire-t-il encore un général. Voulez-vous être ce personage honoré? Mon père le duc est un de ses conseillers:--le sage entend à demi-mot!

J’écris mon placet en français, parce que je n’entends bien aucun autre langage; mais si le découvreur n’est pas en état de le prouver,--c’est-à-dire, si je suis en Amérique, où l’on ne parle point français, il ne faudra pas qu’il la détruise. Il pourra trouver aux environs quelqu’un qui sait le français, car ma langue incomparable est sue par toutes les parties de la terre.

J’attends ma liberté. Venez avec des hommes braves, et les projets de mon persécuteur seront renversés. Hâtez vous.

SAUTERELLE HIRONDELLE DE LA CHALOUPE.

This is the letter as Henry wrote it. Lest the reader should not be able to make out this “langue incomparable” as rendered by him, we give the translation which he gave to his admiring fellow-plotters next morning.

Oh reader, I am a prisoner! A wicked man has captured me and taken me away from my country. I am the daughter of one of the lords of France, the Duke de la Chaloupe, in Poitou. An enemy of my father--although he is the best man in the world he has his enemies, nevertheless, but it is because he is a favorite of our mighty emperor, Napoleon the Third--I repeat, an enemy of his, a pitiless scoundrel--a _wretch_--a DEMON, cast about to hit upon some plot to ruin him.

Seeing that he had no other means of harming my father, this monster resolved to rob him of his daughter. He hatched his plot artfully, and conspired to lay an ambush to entrap me. He bought a steam yacht, a fast sailer, and manned and equipped it. Then he anchored in a little cove, near my father’s castle. Little dreaming of danger, my tutor and I went to see this strange ship, and while we were walking along the shore, the captain invited us to go on board, to examine it. We did so; but we had scarcely got on the main deck when we were seized and shut up in two little cabins! O treacherous man! how easily he got possession of his victim! And I? From that time I have experienced many misfortunes.

His agile knaves sprang to their work; the crew weighed anchor immediately; the engine-driver flew to his engine; the sailors unfurled the sails; soon the yacht was under way; presently she sailed away under full sail. The grated window of my cabin, or prison, looked upon the home of my ancestors, and I saw our retainers running to and fro, with shrill cries of grief and horror. Too late! The villain escapes with his captive! Oh, my dear father and mother! What has become of you!

The yacht had sailed a few hours when a man entered my cabin, followed by my tutor, the good priest. I recognized Bélître Scélérat, the enemy of my father! It was he who had captured me. “Compose yourself,” said he, “I will do you no harm. I am the enemy of your father, the duke, but I am not your enemy. I will treat you well, so long as you do not attempt to escape. The priest will be your tutor the same as before; and you may be as happy here as if you were with your parents.” I implored him to return me, but I implored in vain. The priest, in his turn, reasoned with him, but the monster shrugged his shoulders and was deaf to our entreaties.

After a long voyage we landed in America--at least, I believed it was that country. An accomplice of my captor assisted him to convey the priest and me into the heart of the country, where a prison had been prepared for us. I was captured May fifth, and it is now July tenth. Sixty-six days, therefore, have passed since I saw my parents! I have spent the time in solitude and sadness. The good priest encourages me, but he is the only one on whom I can rely. Ah! I shall go mad if no one comes to help me.

It seems that I am near a railroad, because I often hear the neigh of the iron horse. The prison in which I find myself crowns the top of a low hillock, past which winds a fine stream. As for the prison, it is fortified equal to a fortress; and the priest and I are guarded like wild beasts by the remorseless turnkeys. The neighborhood is solitude itself. For greater misfortune, the place is the resort of ghosts! At home I used to laugh at the idea of ghosts, but I have seen a great number of hideous apparitions, of winged hobgoblins, in this prison.

Bélître Scélérât treats us tolerably, that is to say, he does not threaten us. We do not see him often, as he goes all over the country, to confer with his agents, or else he cruises as a pirate. His jailers, however, take care of us, and they guard us rigorously. I have never gone out of the enclosure, and whenever I go there to breathe the fresh air, the jailers mount guard to watch. Bélître Scélérât says that he will set me free as soon as my papa pays him an enormous ransom, but he adds that he intends to keep me a prisoner a long time, so that my papa shall pay the ransom promptly.

I have written this letter in secret, and I intend to secure it in a bottle. Then I shall try to throw it into the stream, in hopes that some one may find it. Reader, have pity on me! Come and help me, or it is all over with me! I live in hope of being saved. Follow the stream in which you find this letter, and you will arrive at the house which is my prison. If you cannot release me, send my letter to the Duke de la Chaloupe, and he will come with an army to save me. Alas! perhaps my illustrious father is dead!

If the reader is in a position to save me, let him make haste, for Bélître Scélérât will not be at home this week, and the watchmen are more cowardly than brave. Thus my release will come about easily! My poor father will reward whoever saves me, I am sure. Perhaps his majesty the emperor might wish one more general. Should you like to be that honored person? My father, the duke, is a counsellor of his:--a word to the wise is sufficient.

I write my petition in French, because I do not understand any other language well; but if the finder is not able to make it out--that is to say, if I am in America, where French is not spoken--he need not destroy it. He will find some one in his neighborhood who knows it, for my incomparable language is known throughout the world.

I am waiting for my freedom. Come with brave men, and the schemes of my persecutor will be overset! Hasten!

SAUTERELLE HIRONDELLE DE LA CHALOUPE.

If Henry had been an authorized translator, he would have exerted himself and made the translation entirely different from the original; as he was only a school-boy, he gave a close, but not excellent, rendering of it; and by employing the past tense instead of the present, all sublimity was lost. In fact, like everything else translated into _English_, it did not equal the original.

In the whole of this letter not a single reference is made to the beings of Mythology, to the state of affairs in France, to the goblins of the Hartz Mountains, to Macaulay’s New Zealander, nor to our own Pilgrim Fathers! This neglect is intolerable; but remembering that Henry was only a boy, we must judge him with leniency, and give him credit for writing in a straightforward and business-like style.

The boys listened with rapt attention while Henry read this letter. To them, it was grand, sublime, awful; and from that moment Henry was looked on as a superior being, as far above ordinary mortals as an average American citizen is above any “crowned head” in Europe.

Their admiration was graciously acknowledged by Henry. But he made several innovations, some of which took the embryo villains by surprise. In their wildest dreams they had never soared so high as to think of giving the imprisoned one a title--and Henry had made her a duke’s heiress! Ah! they were not so well acquainted with the ways of the world and the laws of romance as Henry.

But perhaps what pleased the plotters more than anything was the liberal use made of notes of exclamation. Charles counted them carefully, and reported their number to the gaping boys. The more the better, in this case, at all events, thought Steve. Poor innocent! he did not know that villainy and notes of exclamation go hand in hand.

_Chapter XXXIV._

HENRY TAKES HIS BEARINGS.--A STAMPEDE.

“I must have a copy of that letter;” Charles declared, emphatically.

“Yes; as a lesson in French, it’s worth from twenty to thirty of Mr. Meadows’,” Stephen chimed in.

He, however, had no great desire to obtain a copy and buzz over it. (Steve always buzzed when he “studied.”)

“I don’t doubt that Marmaduke will believe in it,” Henry said, with pardonable conceit in his own production; “but the question is, will he act on it? I know if I should come upon such a petition, I should let somebody else do the rescuing, and fly the other way as if I were pursued by--”

“A demon!” Steve interposed, grinning foolishly.

“No,” continued Henry, “by worse than a demon--by an _algebra_!”

Stephen hated the study of algebra--hated it with deadly hatred; hence he smiled in sympathy.

“Yes,” Charles commented, “most boys would be apt to run away; but Marmaduke isn’t like most boys.”

“Henry, there is one point I don’t quite understand,” George observed. “Why do you say in the letter, ‘if you cannot rescue me, send this letter to my father’? Suppose that Marmaduke should take it into his head to send it! Then--then--”

“Well, George, I put that in to make the letter seem less like a fable. Don’t you know that a person in trouble would naturally say or write something to that effect; and besides, right under that I wrote, ‘perhaps my father is dead.’ Therefore, he will hardly send the appeal off to France; but if he speaks of it, use your wits and persuade him to hurry to the rescue.”

The plotters held their breath for admiration, and their honor for Henry increased. To them he was a wiser and greater being than any of the grave heroes who figured in their dog’s-eared, mutilated histories--wiser than the great Solon--deeper than the emissaries of Mephistopheles--more learned than--than--but here their well of eloquence ran dry, and they could not express themselves further.

Will was quite happy now; his cousin had come; the plot was well under way; the genius who was to direct it was admired, honored, reverenced. It was glory enough for him to have such a phenomenon for a near relative.

But George was bold enough to point out another irregularity. Said he: “Look here, Henry, we didn’t give any account of the journey from the coast to the prison! Marmaduke is very particular to have little things explained; and that is passed by.”

“George, don’t be foolish;” Will returned angrily. “Henry couldn’t explain everything; and the letter is long enough as it is.”

“Of course; no one can improve on it;” Charles declared.

“Leave that to Marmaduke,” said Steve. “His imagination will soon find the ways and means.”

“Yes,” chimed in Charles, “his imagination will supply all defects--but there are none. The letter is perfect perfection.”

“That about ‘the general’ is a happy thought,” Stephen remarked. “Marmaduke will snatch at that like a hungry hawk.”

“Yes, I changed your draft a good deal, and added new points,” Henry observed. “But it is greatly improved by them, I think,” he added complacently.

Alas! Henry was beginning to have a very good opinion of himself. Two days before he was not aware that he was so clever.

But the Sage, actuated by--what? seemed determined to criticize the letter still further. “Henry,” said he, poring over the letter with knitted brows, “Henry, near the end you have written, ‘if the reader is not able to make this out,’ and so on. Henry,” smiling pleasantly, “I didn’t know you were an Irishman before, but that sounds like it!”

Henry was about to reply, but Charles took up the defence, saying: “George, give me that letter; you do nothing but find fault with it. Don’t you see that Marmaduke will take that passage as a piece of refined French na--nave--_knavery_! Botheration! You know the word I mean, Henry.”

“Naïveté?” Henry suggested.

“Yes, that’s it. Marmaduke will take it for na-a-a-a--. Yes; for that;” he concluded, gulping down a sob, and becoming somewhat flushed and perturbed.

“Charley, listen to a little sound advice,” Henry said, with the air of a great philosopher. “In the first place, that isn’t the right word in the right place. Second place, never speak in a foreign language, nor whisper even a syllable of it, till you know it, and not then, unless you are learning it, or unless it is necessary. Some people who can write their address in French strike out in print in the village ‘Weekly’ with half-a-dozen meaningless words, that they themselves don’t understand. But the printer, who knows even _less_, and cares for no one’s feelings, always makes an interesting muddle of it all. So, Charley, take warning and steer clear of such nonsense. English is the best, as long as you are where it is spoken.”

All looked admiringly at the oracle, Charley by no means angry at being thus reproved.

“How did you manage to get the pretty French names?” Jim asked, innocently enough.

Will scowled at the boy, but Henry answered readily: “They are not real _names_, Jim; only _common nouns_. I relied on Marmaduke’s ignorance of French to bring in some rather uncommon words instead of names. Besides, I didn’t know of any names long enough, and grand enough, and sonorous enough, to suit the occasion; but still, some of these words may be family names for all I know or care. First name, _Sauterelle_, a grasshopper; second name, _Hirondelle_, a swallow; Patronymic, _de la Chaloupe_, of the longboat. Now _Bélître Scélérat_ really means _Atrocious Scoundrel_; but _Scheming Scoundrel_ sounds better in English--it has a true poetic ring. Of course, boys, when he finds the letter and you help him to make it out, you will read the words as they are in the letter, not as I have explained them.”

The plotters’ admiration knew no bounds. The substitution of _nouns_ for _names_ was, in their eyes, the very acme of wit; and Henry was no longer an ordinary hero, but a veritable demi-god.

How learned this boy must be, and how ignorant they must seem to him! In fact, this so worked on the feelings of one boy (it is immaterial which one, gentle reader,--no, we _defy_ you to guess which boy it was) that, in order to demonstrate _he_, at least, knew the difference between nouns and names, he laughed so hard, so monotonously, and so patiently, that long-headed Henry perceived the cause, and was, very rightly, disgusted.

“Well, boys,” said Henry, “I haven’t seen the prison-house yet, and if you will bundle me up in your disguises, we’ll set out for it, ‘The Wigwam of the Seven Sleepers,’ as George says Stephen calls it, and arrange everything as it should be and is to be.”

At this time they were in Mr. Lawrence’s garden. Will ran to the house and soon came back with a headgear which Charles compared to a Russian Jew’s turban, but Henry said it looked like a knight-errant’s sun-bonnet. Then Steve, not wishing to be outdone, said it was one of Father Time’s cast-off nightcaps. Then, having fitted it, whatever it may have been, to Henry’s head, and pinned it fast to his coat collar,--he had first changed coats with George, and turned his neck-tie wrong side out,--the plotters declared that he was admirably disguised, and they set forward in high spirits. However well Henry might plot, they were not adepts in the art of disguising; and this strange garb, far from concealing Henry’s features, served only to attract the attention of passers-by.

But they had not gone far when Henry pulled his Scotch cap out of his pocket and put it forcibly on his head. Then Charles mildly suggested that if a handkerchief were tied so as to pass over one eye, Henry might stroll through the streets of his native city without danger of being recognized.

“Well,” Henry said, reluctantly, “if you can tie it to give me the appearance of a wounded soldier, go ahead; but if it makes me look like an old woman sick with the neuralgia, I’ll--I’ll--no, you mus’n’t.”

A handkerchief had no sooner been tied over Henry’s eye so as to suit all concerned, than it occurred to Stephen that one amendment more was needful to make the disguise complete.

“Your ears are peculiar, Henry,” he said, “and very pretty. Now, Marmaduke always notices people’s ears,--at least, I _guess_ he does,--so let me pull the flaps of the sun-bonnet clear over them.”

But good-natured Henry was only human,--or perhaps if his ears were so pretty, and somebody else had said they were, he did not wish to hide them,--and now he turned his one blazing eye full upon the boy, and said, almost fiercely: “Stephen, let me alone! I can barely manage to work my way along the road, as it is! Don’t you know, Steve,” he added mildly, “that it is hard enough for a fellow to get along in this world with all his five senses in full play?”

“It is too bad for Henry to go all the way there and back twice in one day,” Charles kindly observed. “Couldn’t we manage it for him to go only once, say in the afternoon, and then wait till Marmaduke and the rest come on?”

“No; I want to go now, with you all;” Henry said, firmly. “Suppose that I should take a pailful of supper with me, and not go till the afternoon--what if Marmaduke shouldn’t come, after all! Something might happen, you know, that he could not or would not come; and then,” putting on a comical smile, “I should have to stay in that dreadful haunted house for who knows how long?”

“Yes, it is better for Henry to get familiar with the old ruin while we are with him--I mean, it is better for us to go with him,” Will said. “Then to-night, about half an hour before Marmaduke and the rest of us start, he and Stephen will leave in advance of us, with a bundle of disguises and lanterns; so that when we, the rescuers, arrive, the place will be lighted and the captive clothed properly.”

“And the priest shaved,” Steve chimed in.

“Exactly,” Henry commented. “And, Steve, I can meanwhile drill you to act the part of a priest, shaved or not shaved. Don’t fret about the extra travelling, boys,” he added; “for if my boots dilapidate while I’m here, I’ll add them to the pile of rubbish in ‘Nobody’s House,’ and patronize one of your shoemakers.”

In due time the plotters arrived before the house. It was no longer the grim wreck described to the reader at the time the boys first visited it. No; thanks to their industry and ingenuity it was in much better repair; and, yes, it looked very much like--like a prison?--no! very much like a gigantic hen-coup.

“Why,” Henry cried in pleased surprise, “I wasn’t so far out of the way after all when I ventured to write about its being fortified equal to a fortress! But say, boys, where did you get the iron bars for the windows?”

“Irons!” Charles echoed, in ecstasy. “If _you_ take ’em for iron bars, Marmaduke certainly will! No, Henry; no iron there; nothing but painted laths nailed on. We had two good reasons for putting on those laths; first, because in nailing up a crack every pane of glass left shivered itself all to flinders, and therefore the empty window-frames had to be hidden; and next, we put them there to make the place look like a grated prison.”

“And they do;” declared Henry, stripping off his “disguise” and heaving a sigh of relief.

“Yes, and they made _me_ nail on all their laths,” said Stephen, “because I was foolish enough to say I could straddle a window-sill and whittle out a steamboat, or do anything else. You see that top window to the right?--Well, I was sitting there, struggling to drive an obstinate nail, when suddenly I pitched head over heels down to the ground!”

“Hurt yourself?” Henry inquired.

“No-o-o; but their hammer disappeared and lost itself ever since!” Steve chuckled.

“Stephen wouldn’t consider that he was in a post of honor,” Charles observed, “and when the hammer could not be found, he said, ‘serves you right.’”

“I guess _you_ would have said it, too, if _you_ had had _your_ best coat-pocket and flap torn off on a nail that YOU pretended to drive!” Stephen wrathfully retorted.

“What? Did you have an encounter with a nail in your way down?” Henry inquired.

“I did.”

“Steve didn’t tell us about all those losses,” Charles commented; “but he said he was going home, and he went.”

“It’s the first I’ve heard about the coat-pocket,” the Sage observed.

“Hurrah! where did you make the acquaintance of this awful door!” Henry exclaimed. “It--it looks like the door of a castle in the air.”

“No, Henry, it’s too strong for that,” Will corrected. “That door used to be our raft; but we had to make a door, and there was nothing else to make it of; so we hauled it up stream, pounced on it, and tore it all to pieces.”

This was too true. The gallant old raft, which had served so useful a purpose as a source of amusement, had been sacrificed by the remorseless plotters to fill up the gap in the front doorway. But they, in their eagerness to further their daring scheme, would not have hesitated to destroy anything to which they could lay claim.

“It was too bad to waste a good raft on this old hen-house,” Henry observed.

“Oh, a prison without a door would be rather too much for even Marmaduke;” Will replied. “And the timbers of the raft are here yet, and we can build it over again next week.”

“Henry,” said Stephen, who had quite recovered his equilibrium, “it is in front of this door that the sentries do the patrolling, and ground their muskets, and----and----what else do sentries do, George?”

“Will,” said Henry, grimly, as his eyes roved over the yard, or orchard, “I guess it would need several pretty smart and nimble sentries to prevent any one from escaping from _this_ ‘inclosure.’”