Ballads of Bravery

The race is hard and the way is long,
But we’ll win as twilight fades into night.
Hurrah for rider and horse to-day,
For buckle and saddle fastened tight!
We’ll win! we’re gaining! They drop away!
Our haven of rest is full in sight.

Hervé Riel

ON the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
Did the English fight the French, – woe to France!
And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue,
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,
With the English fleet in view.
’Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase,
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville.
Close on him fled, great and small,
Twenty-two good ships in all;
And they signalled to the place,
“Help the winners of a race!
Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick, – or, quicker still,
Here’s the English can and will!”

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leaped on board.
“Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?”
laughed they.
“Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred
and scored,
Shall the Formidable here, with her twelve and eighty guns,
Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
Trust to enter where ’tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,
And with flow at full beside?
Now ’tis slackest ebb of tide.
Reach the mooring? Rather say,
While rock stands or water runs,
Not a ship will leave the bay!”

Then was called a council straight;
Brief and bitter the debate:
“Here’s the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
All that’s left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
For a prize to Plymouth Sound?
Better run the ships aground!”
(Ended Damfreville his speech.)
“Not a minute more to wait!
Let the captains all and each
Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
France must undergo her fate.”

“Give the word!” But no such word
Was ever spoke or heard;
For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these,
A captain? A lieutenant? A mate, – first, second, third?
No such man of mark, and meet
With his betters to compete,
But a simple Breton sailor, pressed by Tourville for the fleet, —
A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel, the Croisickese.

And “What mockery or malice have we here?” cries Hervé Riel.
“Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell
’Twixt the offing here and Greve, where the river disembogues?
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying’s for?
Morn and eve, night and day,
Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
Burn the fleet, and ruin France? That were worse than
fifty Hogues!
Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me, there’s a way!
Only let me lead the line,
Have the biggest ship to steer,
Get this Formidable clear,
Make the others follow mine,
And I lead them most and least by a passage I know well,
Right to Solidor, past Greve,
And there lay them safe and sound;
And if one ship misbehave,
Keel so much as grate the ground, —
Why, I’ve nothing but my life; here’s my head!” cries Hervé Riel.

Not a minute more to wait.
“Steer us in, then, small and great!
Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!” cried its chief.
“Captains, give the sailor place!”
He is admiral, in brief.
Still the north-wind, by God’s grace.
See the noble fellow’s face
As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound!
See, safe through shoal and rock,
How they follow in a flock.
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
Not a spar that comes to grief!
The peril, see, is past,
All are harbored to the last;
And just as Hervé Riel halloos, “Anchor!” – sure as fate,
Up the English come, too late.