Page:Royal Naval Biography Marshall v4p1.djvu/319

 order to surround us, gave the alarm: wc immediately made a resolute rush directly across, leaving our knapsacks, and every thing but the clothes on our backs, in the vessel; the summit was gained just in time to slip over on the other side unseen. We ran along the hills towards Blankenberg for about a hundred yards, when, mistaking a broad ditch for a road, I fell in, but scrambled out on the opposite side. Mansell, who was close at my heels, thinking that I had jumped in on purpose, followed; this obliged the others to jump also. Having regained the Raie-de-Chat, we related the heart-rending disaster to Madame Derikre. Fearing, from the many articles left in the vessel, that some of them would give a clue to our late abode, and be the means of causing a strict search, she was desired to destroy every thing that could lead to discovery, or suspicion; then taking all the bread in the house, and leaving Mansell there, the rest immediately set out for a wood on the other side of Bruges, where we arrived a little before daylight.

“Not having had time to dry our clothes at the Raie-de-Chat, we were in a most deplorable state, shivering with cold, and wet to the skin; the tails of our jackets solid boards of ice, and not a shoe amongst us worthy the name. In this wood we remained three days, each succeeding hour seeming to redouble the sufferings of the last.”

During the above period, the Raie-de-Chat was twice searched most minutely, by 36 gens-d’armes and police officers, but who, fortunately for Madame Derikre, found nothing to corroborate their suspicions. Speaking of his subsequent sojourn in another wood, about two miles to the eastward of that house, Mr. Boys says:

“Soon after taking up this position, the weather became intensely cold; and, literally clad in armour of ice, we lay listening to the whistling wind, and shivering with exposure to the chilling blast, which not only defied repose, but threatened the most calamitous effects: indeed, our limbs were sometimes so benumbed, that it became absolutely indispensable to shake and twist ourselves about, to promote the necessary circulation of the blood. Nor did there appear any prospect of the termination of this misery; for, as the black and ponderous clouds passed swiftly over us, the wind increased, the hail beat furiously down, and the trees trembled, until the raging violence of the storm seemed to threaten the uprooting of the very wood we occupied. In this exposed situation, with variable though piercing cold weather, we remained until the 15th. * * * * Whitehurst now suffered so severely from illness, that doubts arose as to the possibility of his continuing much longer in this state of exposure; and, had not his complaint taken a