Читать книгу The Gentleman - Alfred Ollivant - Страница 7

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"Succeed, and you command the Irish Expedition," said the squat fellow.

"My Emperor!" replied the tall cavalry-man, saluted, and clanked away in the gloom.

* * * * *

A sweet evening, very fresh, the tide crashing at the foot of the cliff.

In the twilight, above Boulogne, a man was standing, hands behind him.

The moon lay on the water, making a broad white road that led from his feet across the flowing darkness West.

The dusk was falling. About him the earth grew dark; above him all was purity and pale stars.

Only the tumble of the tide, white-lipped on the beach beneath, stirred the silence; while one little dodging ship, black in the wake of the moon, told of some dare-devil British sloop, bluffing the batteries upon the cliff.

The rustle of the water beneath, its crashing rhythm and hiss as of breath intaken swiftly, soothed him. He fell into a waking dream.

It seemed to his wide eyes that the sea rose, heavenward as a wall; its foot set in foam, its summit on a level with his face. Against it a silver ladder leaned. He had but to mount that ladder to pluck the island-jewel, the desire of his heart these many years.

He reached a hand into the night as though to realise his wish; and even as he did so, the sloop barked.

A mortar hard by boomed; the sea splashed; the sloop scudded seaward, laughing; and the dreamer awoke.

Behind him, hutted on the cliffs, lay the Army of England: [Footnote:

The Army of England was Napoleon's name for the Army of Invasion.]

such a sword, now two years a-tempering, as even he, the Great

Swordsman, had never wielded.

Beneath him in the dimming basin huddled 3000 gun-vessels, waiting their call.

Before him, across the moon-white waste, under the North star, lay that stubborn little land of Bibles and evening bells, of smoky cities, and hedge-rows fragrant with dog-rose and honeysuckle, of apple-cheeked children, greedy fighting-men, and still-eyed women who became the mothers of indomitable seamen—that storm-beaten land which for so long now, turn he where he would, had risen before him, Angel of the Flaming Sword, and waved him back.

Between him and it ran a narrow lane of sea, the moon-road white across it: so narrow he could almost leap it; so broad that now after years of trying he was baffled still.

Could his Admirals only stop the Westward end of that narrow lane for six hours, that he and his two-hundred-thousand might take the moon-road unmolested, he was Master of the World.

But—they could not.

In his hand, fiercely crumpled, lay the despatch that told him

Villeneuve was back in Vigo, shepherded home again.

And by whom?

That little one-eyed one-armed seaman, who for ten years now had stood between him and his destiny.

One man, the man of Aboukir Bay. [Footnote: On August 1, 1798, Nelson destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay at the Battle of the Nile.]