Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

After a moment, she added with a smile, 'But I am over the shock now and back in dear Paris. You must come to see me.'

He returned her smile and thanked her, but he had no intention of accepting her invitation. As he bowed himself away, he wondered if he would ever again want to make love to a woman. The long succession of them through the years had been only substitutes for Georgina, and it seemed that, somehow, her death had destroyed in him all desire to make love.

Soon after the Coronation there came a new development in the European situation that gave him great concern for Britain. While at Stillwaters he had learned that early in October Mr. Pitt's instructions had been carried out and the Admiralty had despatched four frigates to intercept the Spanish treasure ships. When they appeared, the Spanish squadron consisted of four slightly smaller frigates and, numbers being even, the gallant Spanish commander refused to surrender. During the ensuing fight one of the Spanish ships blew up and only then did the other three lower their colours.

Clearly the Admiralty had blundered badly in not having sent a larger force which the Spaniards would have decided they had no hope of resisting. But the damage had been done. Britain was indignantly accused of having committed both an act of war against a nation with whom she was at peace, and piracy. Godoy, as Mr. Pitt had anticipated, had done his utmost to avoid making this a cause for hostilities but the British Prime Minister had left Napoleon out of his calcu­lations.

The Emperor had insisted that Spain must fight. Godoy had still resisted. Determined to make him, Napoleon had then charged Spain with being unfriendly to France, and had threatened to send an army to invade the Peninsula. The Spaniards had caved in and, on December 12th, declared war on Britain.

This brought about the very thing that Mr. Pitt had dreaded. The combined fleets of France and Spain out­numbered that of Britain. Now, at last, Napoleon had a real chance of achieving command of the seas, sweeping the Channel and, almost unopposed, launching his invasion.

It was two days after Spain had declared war that on entering the Tuileries to go on duty Roger was handed a letter. It was inscribed, 'M. le Colonel Breuc, Aide de Camp a Sa Majeste L’Empereur des Francois, Palais de Tuileries, Paris' And the franks upon it showed that it had come via Cologne from Hamburg. Roger had a vague feeling that he knew the writing but could not imagine who would have written to him from the German port.

Tearing the packet open he saw that it contained several sheets of close writing in French. Then he recognized the hand of Colonel Thursby. Evidently the Colonel had had something urgent to communicate, sent the letter by the Cap­tain of some neutral ship and had written in French so that, should it fall into the wrong hands, Roger would not be compromised as being in correspondence with an English­man.

Quickly Roger carried the letter over to the embrasure of a window. As he skimmed the first line his heart missed a beat. It read:

'I felt I must endeavour to let you know that Jenny has returned to us...."

Roger's mind reeled. He gave a gasp and clutched at the heavy curtain for support. If Jenny was alive Georgina might be too.

24

Jenny's Story

Roger's hands were trembling so much that it was a few mo­ments before he could steady them sufficiently to read the letter. Even then his eyes skipped from passage to passage, hoping for definite news of Georgina. Bit by bit he swiftly took in the main facts.

On the evening of March 20th when 'Enterprise' was a day's run to the north-east of the exit to the Windward Passage, she had been attacked by a buccaneer. The Captain and crew of 'Enterprise' had fought her gallantly but she had been outgunned and a fire started in her that could not be brought under control. Fearing that the fire would reach her magazine the order had been given to abandon ship. Several of the boats had already been rendered useless by the can­nonade from the attacking ship, the Captain had been killed and there was an unseemly rush to get into the three that remained serviceable, during which Jenny had become parted from her mistress.

One of the three, in charge of the First Mate, had been overloaded and sank within a few minutes of being lowered. The other two, in an attempt to avoid capture, which would have meant their occupants being held to ransom, had headed for a small island about a mile away. The sun was setting and a calm had fallen; so the buccancjr, her sails hanging slack, was unable to go in pursuit but began to fire upon them. The boat containing Georgina, Lord Rockhurst and the Skiflingtons, was hit, several people in it were killed and it sank, leaving the others struggling in the water.

Jenny, in the remaining boat, had been near enough to see that Georgina and Lord Rockhurst were among the half dozen or so who were swimming towards the shore. The boat she was in was a jollyboat in charge of Mr. Small, the bos'n. She had pleaded with him to go to the rescue of her mistress and the others, but in vain. Shots were still falling round Mr. Small's boat and the six men in it were pulling desperately to get out of range; moreover, by turning away from the island they would stand a better chance of doing so and with that object he had just altered course. Had they turned back it seemed certain that they too would have been sunk before they could pick up the swimmers and get clear of the whistling cannon balls. So poor Jenny could only weep and pray as distance obscured the bobbing heads and soon after­wards the tropic night had descended, blacking out the scene.

During the night the jollyboat was carried a considerable distance by the current and when morning dawned there was no land in sight. Under the torrid tropical sun they had spent a gruelling day, but Mr. Small had cheered them by saying that to the northward, in which direction they were heading, there were hundreds of small islands; so their chances of coming upon one before their water ran out were good. And he had proved right.

At dawn on the second morning they had found themselves within a mile of a long, low, sandy spit, some way inland from which there was a good-sized grove of palm trees. Having rowed round to a small inlet that ran nearly up to the vegetation they drew the boat up well above the tide mark and, dividing into two parties, set about exploring the island. It proved to be about five miles long by two at its widest part, and more than half of it was sandy cay. But on the higher ground, as well as palms there were other trees and shrubs and several springs of fresh water. It was uninhabited but a herd of wild pigs was rooting in the undergrowth and quite a number of the trees bore tropical fruit; so they considered themselves very lucky.

Apart from her distress about her mistress Jenny had, at first, been very worried on her own account—as a pretty woman marooned with seven seamen. But Mr. Small, a stalwart, handsome man with a head of ginger curls, had had his blue eyes on Jenny from the day she had gone aboard 'Enterprise', and on the first evening they spent in a rough camp they had made he had addressed his shipmates in the following sense:

That they should be grateful to their Maker for having preserved them from the perils of the sea, and guided them to a piece of land on which there was not only fresh water but meat and fruit as well as fish to be had; but it might be many weeks before a ship passed close enough for them to signal her, and during that time some of them might get thoughts of a kind he would not tolerate. In short, if any one of them so much as laid a finger on Miss Jenny he would belt the life out of him.

He had proved right in his prediction that they might remain marooned for a considerable time. Although they erected a flagstaff on the shore, from which to fly a shirt, lit a bonfire each night and kept a constant watch, it was not until July that the fifth ship they had sighted passed close enough to sec their distress signals and send in a boat.