The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous Volume III Part 8

With my Wife and Child I now returned to Europe, full of Years, and, I hope, notwithstanding some Ups and Downs, full of Honours too. We were in no hurry, however, to return to England; for I had wandered about Foreign Parts so long in Discredit, and Danger, and Distress, that I thought myself well ent.i.tled to see the world a little in Freedom and Independence, and with a Handsome competence at my Back. Therefore, as the Chevalier Captain John Dangerous,--I have dropped my Knightly rank of late years,--and furnished with all necessary pa.s.sports and safe-conducts, we made our way across the Black Sea to Odessa, a mean kind of place, but rising in the way of trade; and after a most affable reception by the Russian Governor of that place, journeyed at our ease through the Tauric Chersonese, now wrested from the Tartar Khans of Simpheropol, and belonging to the Muscovites. Next, in a handsome wheeled carriage-and-four, we made for the great City of Moscow,--the old Capital of the Great Dukes of Russia,--where we abode two whole years, and went among the very best people in the place; although I had an ugly Equivoque with a young gentleman of Quality that was an officer of Dragoons, and who, I declare, stole a diamond-mounted Snuff-box of mine off my wife's Harpsichord, putting the same (the Snuff-box, I mean) into the pocket of his pantaloons. Him I was compelled to expel from my house, the Toe of my Boot aiding; and meeting him subsequently at a Coffee-house, and he not seeming sufficiently impressed with the turpitude of his Offence, but the rather inclined to regard it as a venial Prank or Whimsey, I did Batoon him within an inch of his life, and until there were more wheals on his Body than bars of silver-braid on his Jacket. This led to a serious misunderstanding between Justice and myself. I was not Imprisoned, but was summoned no less than fifty-seven times before a kind of Judge they call an a.s.sessor, who addressed a number of interrogatories to me, which, at a moderate computation, reached, in the course of five weeks, three thousand seven hundred and nine questions. This might have gone on till Doomsday, but for the kind offices of a Muscovite friend, who hinted to me that if I discreetly slipped a Bank-bill for five hundred roubles into the hand of the Examining Judge, I should hear no more of the affair. This I did, and was soon after honourably acquitted; after which I gave the young Spark whom I had batooned his revenge, by allowing him to duff me out of a few score pieces at the game of Lansquenet. By and by, being tired of Moscow, we removed to the stately northern Capital, Petersburg, where I had a handsome mansion on the Fontanka Ca.n.a.l, and was on more than one occasion admitted to an audience with the Empress of Russia, the mighty Czarina Catherine; a fine, bold, strapping woman, with a great taste for Politics, Diamonds, the Fine Arts, and affairs of Gallantry. The First time I made my obeisance to her Majesty (which was at her summer residence of Peterhoff, on the River Neva), she deigned, smiling affably, to say to me:--

"_Ah, ah! vous etes le Sabreur anglais qui avez rosse mes gens, la-bas, a Moscou. Je voudrais que vous en fissiez autant pour mes faquins de Chevalier-Gardes a Petersbourg._"

I was given to understand in very high quarters that I had only to ask, to receive a lucrative and honourable Appointment in the service of the Czarina,--either as a General by Land, or as an Admiral at Sea; but I was sick of fighting, and of working too; so at last, in disgust, I gave up my House, and taking s.h.i.+pping with my family at Cronstadt, retired to Hamburg, whence, after a brief sojourn, I travelled to France.

My sainted Wife, with whom, after our reunion, I lived most happily, died in Paris, in the year 1773; and then, feeling my Days drawing to a close, and desiring to lay my Bones in my own Country, I returned to England, after an absence of more than Thirty Years. Finding that the old Mansion that had belonged to my Grandmother was for sale by Public Auction, I purchased the Freehold, repaired and beautified it, and came to reside in it, occupying my long and happy leisure by the composition of these Memoirs. And if any one of my Readers experiences one-hundredth part the pleasure in Reading these Pages (and that I dare scarcely hope) that I have experienced in Writing them, John Dangerous will indeed be amply repaid.

THE END OF THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN DANGEROUS.