Читать книгу Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815. A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings онлайн

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‘Challenge to the English! Long live French Brittany! The undersigned Bertaud, native of Saint-Brieuc, annoyed at hearing the English boast that they are the best boxers in the world, which is a lie, will fight any two of them, in any style with fists, but not to use legs.

‘He will also, in order to prove his contempt for these boasters, receive from his two adversaries ten blows with the fist before the fight wherever his adversaries choose, and afterwards he will thrash them. Simply, he stipulates that as soon as he has received the ten blows and before the fight begins he shall be paid two pounds sterling to compensate him for the teeth which shall have been broken.

‘Done on board the Prothée where Bertaud mopes himself to death!’

Garneray calls him a madman, and says that the ten blows alone will do for him. What is his game?

‘I shall pocket two pounds, and that will go into our escape fund,’ replied the Breton laughing.

Garneray and Bertaud had been saving up for some time for the escape they resolved to attempt, and, although Bertaud’s challenge was not taken up, they at last owned forty-five shillings, to which Garneray’s writing lessons at a shilling each to the little girl of the Prothée’s commander chiefly contributed. Each made himself a bag of tarred cloth to hold clothes and provisions, they had bored a hole through the ship’s side large enough to slip through, and only waited for a dark quiet night. As it was the month of July this soon came. Bertaud got through first, Garneray was on the point of following when a challenge rang out, followed by a musket-shot, and peeping through the hole, to his horror he saw poor Bertaud suspended over the water by the cord of his bag which had caught in an unnoticed nail in the ship’s side. Then was a terrible thing done. The soldiers hammered the helpless Frenchman with their musket butts, Garneray heard the fall of something heavy in the water; there was silence; then as if by magic the whole river was lit up, and boats from all the other vessels put off for the Prothée. Garneray slipped back to his hammock, but was presently turned out with all the other prisoners to be counted. His anxiety about the fate of his friend made him ask a sailor, who replied brutally, ‘Rascal, how should I know? So far as I am concerned I wish every Frenchman was at the bottom of the sea!’ For a consideration of a shilling, however, the man promised to find out, and told Garneray that the poor Breton had received three bayonet thrusts, a sabre-cut on the head, and musket-butt blows elsewhere, but that the dog still breathed! For twenty days the man gave his shilling bulletins, and then announced that the Breton was convalescent.