Major Vigoureux | Page 7

in by the gate, there, I was turning it over in
my mind that the garrison oughtn't to be beholden to a civilian----"
"Quite right, Archelaus."

"And, that bein' so, it might be dignified-like to return gift for gift. Now,
the Lord Proprietor's terrible fond of bulbs; 'tis a new craze with him;
and in spading over the border here I'd a-turned up a dozen or so of
those queer-looking Lent-lilies you set such store by----" Sergeant
Archelaus pointed towards a little heap of daffodil bulbs carelessly
strewn on the up-turned soil.
These bulbs had a history.
Close on thirty years before, a certain Dutch skipper--his name is
forgotten--happened to be sailing for Bordeaux with a general cargo,
which included some thousands of tulips, and a few almost priceless
ones, for a rich purchaser who wished to introduce tulip-culture into the
Gironde. The Dutchman's vessel was a flat-bottomed galliot, fitted with
lee-boards, but liable to fall away from the wind; and, encountering a
strong southerly gale as he attempted to round Ushant, he was blown
northward into the fogs, and, through the fogs, upon the Islands.
Against what followed, the chances were at least a thousand to one. His
vessel, blind as to her whereabouts, and helpless among the tide-races,
missed rock after rock, blundered her way past every sunken peril--to
be sure, she was flat-bottomed, but the soundings varied so from
moment to moment that the crew, after running a dozen times to the
boats in the certainty of striking, fully believed themselves bewitched;
until, in St. Lide's Pool, as they made seven fathoms and hoped for
open water, the fog lifted suddenly, and they saw Garrison Hill right
above them.
This befell them a short hour before sunset. The skipper rounded up to
the wind, dropped anchor, got out a boat, and groped his way
shoreward--for the fog had descended again, even more speedily than it
had lifted.
Groping his way, and still attended by his amazing good luck, the
Dutchman, where he had expected rocks, came plump on a pier of
hewn masonry. At the pier-head, which loomed high above them, a
man struck a light and displayed a lantern; and, looking up, the crew
were aware of many people standing there and chattering in the

dusk--chattering in the low soft tone peculiar to the Islanders. The
skipper hailed them in Dutch, and again in French, these being the only
languages he spoke. The Islanders, helping him ashore, made signs that
they could not answer, but took him and his men up the hill to the
Garrison, then commanded by a Colonel Bartlemy.
Colonel Bartlemy could speak French after a fashion, and so could his
excellent wife. Between them they entertained the wanderers hospitably
for the space of five days, at the end of which the Dutchman went his
way before a clear north wind, and in charge of an Island pilot. But
before departing he presented his hosts--it was all that either he could
give or they would permit themselves to accept--with a quantity of
remarkably fine bulbs from his cargo.
Now, possibly, being a Dutchman, he took it for granted that anyone
could recognise these bulbs for what they were. But Mrs. Bartlemy did
not; for she had spent the most of her life in various garrisons, which
afford few opportunities for gardening. None the less, she was, for a
soldier's wife, a first-rate housekeeper; and, supposing these bulbs to be
onions of peculiar rarity, she forthwith issued invitations to the elite of
the Island, and ordered over a leg of Welsh mutton from the mainland. I
will not attempt to tell of the dinner that ensued: for Miss Gabriel made
the story her own, and everyone who heard her relate it after one of
Garland Town's petits soupers--as she frequently did by special
request--declared it to be inimitable. Suffice it to say that the tulips
were boiled, but not eaten.
A few bulbs, of smaller size, escaped the pot, and Mrs. Bartlemy, in her
mortification, ordered the cook to throw them away, or (in the language
of the Islands) to "heave them to cliff." The cook cast them out upon a
bed of rubbish in a corner of the garrison garden, where by-and-by they
were covered with fresh rubbish, under which they sprouted; and, next
spring, lo! the midden heap had become a mound of glorious trumpet
daffodils!
So they were left to blossom, refreshing the eyes of successive
Commandants year after year as March came round and the March
nor'-westers set their yellow bells waving against the blue sea. Major

Vigoureux delighted in them--were they not his name-flower? But no
one took pains to cultivate them, as no one suspected their great destiny.
They bloomed year by year, and waited. Their hour was not yet.
"By