The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 222: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET. 165 the ditch, into which, it appeared, he had fallen by accident, in an attempt to leap it. _ Thus did the gendarme recover possession of the person of the second fugitive, whom he speedily conducted back again to the spot where he had left the first. The captain was, however, in a most de- plorable plight: his clothes were covered with mud, and of course entirely saturated with water; and-the broiling hot sun now fell ver- tically upon the uncovered heads of himself and companion. The gendarme was not, however, devoid of kindness, in spite of the trick which his prisoners had endeavoured to play him; and he accordingly consented to stop at a neighbouring cottage, in order to allow the cap- tain an opportunity of cleansing his person, and bargaining for a change of clothes, as there was not time to wait while those in which he had suffered the immersion were dried and brushed. The peasants who inhabited the cottage gave the captain a complete suit of rustic attire—viz. canvas trousers and a biouse—in exchange for his own; but there was not a hat in the place which would in any shape or way fit the head of either of our travellers. A: further bargain was there- fore struck for two cotton nighteaps. Some food was then served up to them and the gendarme, for all of which the captain paid liberally ; and in a short time the little party was once more on its way towards Calais. _ The appearance of the two prisoners was now more remarkable than it had been before—and we may also say, more ludicrous. The fian- nel dressing-gown and cotton nightcap on one side—the rustic suit and ditto head-dress on the other—and the lugubrious looks on the eountenances of both, with the fierce-looking gendarme in the middle, formed a picture which could not fail to make an impression upon the most superficial beholder. Accordingly, when the party entered Calais at four o’clock in the afternoon, the inhabitants of the Rue Royale, along which it passed, hurried to door and window to catch a glimpse of the prisoners. Some declared that they were Russians in disguise, sent by the Czar to murder the King of the French: others ventured an opinion that they were Belgian smugglers: a third set hazarded a eonjecture that they were French deserters: a fourth clique made up their minds that they were Polish refugees; and only one or two for a moment thought that they could be English swindlers. Mean- time the object of these surmises traversed the Grande Place, and speedily stopped at the Hotel de Ville, or Town-hall, where they were introduced into the presence of the Commissary of Police. That functionary had not put one single question to the prisoners who stood before him, but was still engaged in listening to the narra- eo , | GComicbooks (E(0)