vitation, and pictured himself in irons. But it was all wellintentioned, and when in desperation he explained that his mistress would be in bed if he did not hasten, the captain called to the sailors to land him in the town. "Of all my adventures since the battle of Culloden," says Johnstone, "this caused me the most cruel suffering and agitation."

For two days they were detained at Harwich by contrary winds, and the attentions of the Governor of the town to Lady Jane, at the instance of the Government, were disconcerting. He called at all hours, and they were constrained to lock the door of the room in which they took their meals, so that the servant might not be discovered dining with his mistress. It was plain that he was puzzled, and suspected some mystery, but without something definite to go upon hesitated to act in the case of so highly placed a personage. The result was a report in London, after the ship sailed, that Prince Charles had escaped to Holland in the train of Lady Jane Douglas.

Even in Holland the long arm of the English government contrived to reach him. The Resident presented a petition to the States-General demanding that all the Scots who had taken refuge in the Netherlands should be delivered up. The Dutch agreed. was arrested and sent to Lon

One

don; the others fled, and Johnstone found an ingenious means of dodging the edict.

He entered himself as a student of medicine at Leyden, the privileges of the university being such that its students were exempt from arrest except for the crime of assassination. His mind was made up to return to Russia, and he was on the point of departure when Lady Jane Douglas counselled him to wait until they had ascertained the fate of the Prince. It was bad advice.

When Charles reached France Johnstone left for Paris. He would have us believe that he remained there buoyed up by false hopes of another attempt, and that his eyes were not opened till the Prince was arrested in 1748 and deported, when he had to think of his future. No doubt there was talk enough, but Johnstone could have placed little confidence in it. In truth he was content to lead an idle and gay life without much thought for the morrow, until he was thrown upon his own resources. Johnstone's belief that his father was a man of wealth, and that one day he would be rich, proved ill-founded. The paternal purse was empty. He had helped to empty it. Out of the fund set aside by Louis XV. for the subsistence of the exiled Scots, he was awarded in 1746 twelve hundred livres, augmented to two thousand two hundred in 1749. His name did not appear in the list again. He entered the French service in 1750, and was considered provided for. As captain in the Prince's army he was entitled by the King's

ratification to equal rank in the army of France, but they fobbed him off with a subaltern's commission, which at first he indignantly refused, but was induced to accept by specious promises of speedy promotion. He had lost both years and opportunity.

Ensign Johnstone was posted to Cape Breton, "the most wretched country in the universe." The ship in which he and his brother officers, with two hundred recruits, sailed from Rochelle was rotten and undermanned. The beams crumbled on being touched by the finger. From the third day out the soldiers had to take turns at the pumps, being relieved every quarter of an hour. The mizzen-mast fell in the finest of weather. The water was stinking and black as ink. In a storm off the banks of Newfoundland the captain, who was ignorant and no seaman, warned them to prepare for death, and suggested that they should join with the crew in a vow to St Nicholas for a grand mass, as the only means of preserving their existence. Fortunately the second in command was competent. When they made the port of Louisbourg, the crew went in procession to the church, with nothing on but their shirts, and a grand mass was performed. As for the master of the ship, Johnstone made him submit, as he expresses it, "to a different sort of procession." He marched him along the quay under the blows of a cudgel, much to the

satisfaction of those who had suffered from his stupidity and insolence during the voyage. Unable to live on his pay, a meagre four hundred and eighty livres per annum, he came back to Paris in the hope of obtaining a company, but the crooked ways of the Jacks-in-office more than matched his persistency. He was told he would get it at Louisbourg on his return. He returned, but there was no promotion for him, only the appointment of interpreter, which, however, brought in another four hundred livres. In 1754 the new Governor, who esteemed him and valued his services, demanded his promotion, and he received a lieutenancy; but he was far from being pleased with his prospects. He felt that he had been duped, and was meditating a change, when hostilities broke out.

Johnstone began the war with a knowledge of his profession which can have been possessed by few, if any, of the other officers of the French forces in North America. Turenne, Vauban, Montecuculi, Prince Eugene, and Cæsar were among the authors he read and studied at Louisbourg. Widely different as Wolfe and Johnstone were in many respects, they had much in common. In a brutal age both were humane men, and well read and thinking soldiers; both held in contempt the petticoat influence in high places, and refused to advance themselves by it; they had a common impatience with the mediocrity which ruled them. And the culminating point in

the career of both was the fight on the Heights of Abraham.

When Louisbourg capitulated in 1758, Johnstone, to avoid falling into the hands of the British, slipped away to Quebec, where he was warmly welcomed by De Levis and Montcalm. He planned and fortified the position which Wolfe failed to carry on the 31st July 1759. Montcalm made him his aidede-camp. Then the fortune of war went against him. The death of Montcalm was an irreparable loss for Johnstone, as for France, and the subsequent capitulation placed him in jeopardy. There was uncertainty about the treatment he would receive from the British.

His name was given as M. de la Montagne, but General Murray, when confided in, said he had long known Johnstone was in Canada, and that if he kept out of his way they would not seek him. The British officers showed him every civility, taking care always to call him M. de la Montagne, and no one remarked on the fact that he spoke English so well.

On the 5th of December 1760, from a transport beached in the mud at Maraine, Johnstone stepped on to French soil as he left it ten years before, a subaltern. He was the senior lieutenant, and there were three companies vacant, but he did not get one of them. Three young officers junior to him, and without merit, were promoted over his head. "I own," he says, "that I could never have formed a

just idea of the abuses in the service in France had I not experienced them." We may

be sure that he was not a silent witness to this injustice. Eventually, by reason doubtless of his importunity, the Cross of St Louis was conferred on him, and when he left the service he was granted a pension.

Some time between 1772 and 1778, when Viscount Stormont was Ambassador at Paris, Johnstone visited Edinburgh with a letter of introduction from his lordship to Mr John Young, Writer to the Signet, "for the purpose of examining into the rights of an estate to which he laid claim." Another activity of his advancing years was the writing of his memoirs. These he lodged in the Scots College at Paris. Curiously enough he wrote them in French. His pension, "merely sufficient to supply the necessaries of life," had been retrenched by onethird; and he asks sadly, "After having been so often miraculously saved from destruction, shall I escape perishing of hunger in my old age? "

That may have been his fate. The Revolution swept away his pension, small as it was. In 1791 he petitioned the Assembly, which voted him five hundred livres on the ground of his age, and of his having "lost all his property in Scotland." The Colonial archives at Paris contain several of his petitions. No one knows how or when he died. If he lived till 1800, as is thought, he must have been in dire straits.

turned out, it looks as if I'd got to let you into the thing. I've got the knowledge and you've got the schooner. I can't do much without a schooner, and I'll own up to it. But don't you forget it, you can't do anything either without me. So it'll have to be halves. Share and share alike, and I owe you something anyway for picking me up. I'll just have to trust you and risk getting left with the dirty end of the stick; but, if you'll shake hands on the half share business-well, I'll chance it and tell you.

Right! That's fine. Now we're partners. And how about another drink on the strength of it. And I want to tell you, pard, you've just done the best bit of business you'll ever do in your life. You don't know it, and I'll admit I don't look much like it now; but when you picked me up yesterday you picked up a fine fat fortune too. And if a lagoon that nobody knows of but me, and that's chock-full of pearl oysters-well, if that isn't a fortune, I'll trouble you to tell me what is. Yes. It's a

pile all right, and half of it's yours if you'll take me back there.

Well, blow me! if you don't take the thing pretty cool. I suppose, though, you don't believe me. And that's natural enough when I come to think of it, for a man doesn't get a virgin pearl lagoon handed to

But

him on a plate like this every day, and that's a fact. that's just what I'm handing you now. A half of it anyway. But I see I'll have to tell you the whole thing-how it happened, and how I came to find the place. I'll tell it you right from the start, and then I'll bet you believe me all right.

I'm Body, I am. Jim Body, and-before I piled her up on the atoll I'm telling you about -I was owner and skipper of the schooner Tropic Bird. It's well over two years now since we left Rapa, and I was full right up to the beams that trip with shell and copra. We were bound for Auckland, but I kept away to the nor'ard a bit at first, meaning to run my westing down on the edge of the Trades in about 24° S. At the start we did fine. The Trade was fresh and well out of the sou'-east, right over the quarter, so in five days we'd run nearly 800 miles. That put us right in the middle of nowhere, as you'll see if you look at the chart. There's no land round there at all, except Rarotonga, away and gone to the north, and those blame Haymet Rocks that nobody knows where they are for certain, and are even down on the charts E.D. Well, doubtful or not, I didn't want to chance hitting 'em, so I looked up the Admiralty Sailing Directions to see what they'd got to say. They said a lot, but it didn't help me much, because