It was seven o'clock in the morning when they sailed. There was a gentle October breeze from the north, which carried them slowly along the shore, and in the afternoon the Isle of Wight came fully into view. There were four men and a boy on board the ship, constituting the crew. The master came to the king in the cabin, and proposed to him, as a measure of additional security, and to prevent the possibility of any opposition on the part of the sailors to the proposed change in their course which it would now soon be necessary to make, that the king and Lord Wilmot should propose the plan of going to France to them, asking their interest with the captain in obtaining his consent, as it had not yet been mentioned to the captain at all; for the sailors had of course understood that the voyage was only the usual coastwise trip to the port of Pool, and that these strangers were ordinary travelers, going on that voyage. The master, therefore, thought that there would be less danger of difficulty if the king were first to gain the sailors over himself, by promises or rewards, and then all come together to gain the captain's consent, which could then, at last, with apparent reluctance, be accorded.
This plan was pursued. The two travelers went to the sailors upon the forecastle, and told them, with an air of honest confidence, that they were not what they seemed. They were merchants, they said, and were unfortunately a little in debt, and under the necessity of leaving England for a time. They had some money due to them in Rouen, in France, and they wanted very much to be taken across the Channel to Dieppe, or some port near Rouen. They made known their condition to the sailors, they said, because they wanted their intercession with the captain to take them over, and they gave the sailors a good generous present in money for them to spend in drink; not so generous, however, as to cast suspicion upon their story of being traders in distress.
Sailors are easily persuaded by arguments that are enforced by small presents of money. They consented to the plan, and then the king and Lord Wilmot went to express their wishes to the captain. He made many objections. It would delay him on his voyage, and lead to many inconveniences. The passengers, however, urged their request, the sailors seconding them. The wind was fair, and they could easily run across the Channel, and then, after they landed, the captain could pursue his course to the place of his destination. The captain finally consented; the helm was altered, the sails were trimmed, and the little vessel bore away toward its new destination on the coast of France.
It was now five o'clock in the afternoon. The English coast soon disappeared from the horizon, and the next morning, at daylight, they could see the French shore. They approached the land at a little port called Fecamp. The wind, however, failed them before they got quite to the land, and they had to anchor to wait for a turn of the tide to help them in. In this situation, they were soon very much alarmed by the appearance of a vessel in the offing, which was coming also toward the shore. They thought it was a Spanish privateer, and its appearance brought a double apprehension. There was danger that the privateer would capture them, France and Spain being then at war. There was danger, also, that the master of their vessel, afraid himself of being captured, might insist on making all haste back again to the English coast; for the wind, though contrary so long as they wished to go on into their harbor, was fair for taking them away. The king and Lord Wilmot consulted together, and came to the conclusion to go ashore in the little boat. They soon made a bargain with the sailors to row them, and, hastily descending the vessel's side, they entered the boat, and pushed off over the rolling surges of the Channel.
They were two miles from the shore, but they reached it in safety. The sailors went back to the vessel. The privateer turned out to be a harmless trader coming into port. The English vessel recrossed the Channel, and went on to its original port of destination; and Lord Wilmot and the king, relieved now of all their anxieties and fears, walked in their strange English dress up into the village to the inn.
CHAPTER IX. THE RESTORATION.
As the readers of a tale are generally inclined to sympathize with the hero of it, both in his joys and in his sorrows, whether he is deserving of sympathy or not, they who follow the adventures of Charles in his wanderings in England after the unfortunate battle of Worcester, feel ordinarily quite a strong sensation of pleasure at finding him at last safely landed on the French shore. Charles himself doubtless experienced at first an overwhelming emotion of exultation and joy at having thus saved himself from the desperate dangers of his condition in England. On cool reflection, however, he soon perceived that there was but little cause for rejoicing in his condition and prospects. There were dangers and sufferings enough still before him, different, it is true, from those in which he had been involved, but still very dark and threatening in character. He had now, in fact, ten years of privation, poverty, and exile before him, full of troubles from beginning to end.
The new series of troubles began to come upon him, too, very soon. When he and his companion went up to the inn, on the morning of their landing, dressed as they were in the guise of Englishmen of humble rank, and having been put ashore, too, from a vessel which immediately afterward sailed away, they were taken for English thieves, or fugitives from justice, and refused admission to the inn. They sent to some gentlemen of the neighborhood, to whom they made themselves known, so that this difficulty was removed, their urgent wants were supplied, and they were provided with the means of transportation to Paris. Of course, the mother of the fugitive monarch, yet almost a boy, was rejoiced to welcome him, but he received no very cordial welcome from any one else. Now that Charles had finally abandoned England, his adherents there gave up his cause, of course, as totally lost. The Republicans, with Cromwell at their head, established a very firm and efficient government, which the nations of the Continent soon began to find that it would be incumbent on them to respect. For any foreign court to harbor a pretender to the British crown, when there was an established government in England based on a determination of the people to abrogate royalty altogether, was to incur very considerable political danger. Charles soon found that, under these circumstances, he was not likely to be long a very welcome guest in the French palaces.
He remained, however, in Paris for a short time, endeavoring to find some way to retrieve his ruined fortunes. Anne Maria was still there, and he attempted to renew his suit to her. She listened to the entertaining stories which he told of his dangers and escapes in England, and for a time, as Charles thought, encouraged his attentions. In fact, at one time he really believed that the affair was all settled, and began to assume that it was so in speaking with her upon the subject. She, however, at length undeceived him, in a conversation which ended with her saying that she thought he had better go back to England, and "either get his head broken, or else have a crown upon it." The fact was, that Anne Maria was now full of a new scheme for being married to Louis XIV. himself, who, though much younger than she, had attained now to a marriageable age, and she had no intention of regarding Charles in any other light than as one of the ordinary crowd of her admirers. She finally extinguished all his hopes by coolly requesting him not to visit her so frequently.