ARRIVAL AT RENNES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 196, 19 August 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

ARRIVAL AT RENNES.

G. W. STEEVENS' STORY OP A

LOXG VIGIL.

On Saturday morning a crowd of over a hundred journalists^ who had been watching the Iteunes prison entrance with unrelaxed vigour for nearly fifty hoxirs, were still on duty, despite pouring rain and boisterous wind. Mr G. W. Steevens, the famous "special," who went over for the "Daily Mail," sends that journal a two-codumn account of the dreary waiting. Here are a few passages desciib~ ing the last hours and abortive end of the vigil: —

Three o'clock and half-past — it would be daylight in half an hour. Already the background of the sullen clouds was a little lighter. A cock crew inside the prison.

Ugh! It began to grow cold now with the keen wind of dawn. Everybody was growing silent; the wet was soaking through their boots; their feet were galled on the cobbles. Hardly anybody was walking now, hardly anybody talking.

What on earth has become of Dreyfus? The change from night to day woke everybody up to the truth that they had waited and he had not come. What does it mean? ■ Where are the leading journalists? Perhaps at the telegraph, perhaps at the station; anyhow, not here. It grows lighter and lighter; they would never bring him in by daylight. A cab drives up from the station, stops; a head is put out to speak, and instantly the whole crowd is about it. The officials at the station are bowled over; they cannot understand it. The special train was to come —has not. The prefect's secretary has gone home. And as the cab, perplexed and frantic, clatters off towards the telegraph, there stamps along the pavement the clogs of the first working-man.

Another disappointment. The merely curious had begun to drain away with the first breath of day; now the crowd melted quicker and quicker till hardly more than a score were left.

"Two nights without sleep," grum-

bles a white-faced correspondent; "five," corrects him one who can hardly keep his eyes open. Well, we must resign ourselves. And yet, and yet, there seems no doubt he started.

As I stood alone —the one left of hundreds— and watched the gate it stealthily half-opened. A gendarme put his head out, then put it back. Then it opened again; an officer put his head out and put it back. After all, what was there in that? A gendarme appeared round the street corner, knocked at the gate, went in, came out again in a moment, and went away. After all, why should not a gendarme have business in a prison? Quarter to six, nearly six, and, O Lord, I'm sleepy. This really is getting too —Hi! A yell from the watcher at the other end of the street, and he whips out of sight round the corner. As 1 am getting started after him he whips back again, a tearing crowd at his heels. Heavens, they are corning- to my corner! I tear back and round — and he is come!

Two carriages are driving rapidly towards me. And the dead - walled street, ten seconds ago so empty that you would say nobody had passed down it since it was made, is swarming full of gendarmes. Out of doors, down i'rom windows, over walls, out of the very ground, it seems, they spring and scamper. A frantic cry from one of the carriages, and both check to let the gendarmes get in front. The first dashes past me,

SCREAMING, "MOVE ON! MOVE ON!"

hardly articulate in his excitement. His fellows rush up just in time to meet the crowd rushing up from the other way. They form a line across the street, and make a barrier of carbines held athwart their bodies. Hack! Move on! Back! Back! A little man in a sweater appears behind them, in command, he, too, screaming "Back, back!" The carriages now appear again round the corner; the gate in this street is suddenly seen to be open. The first carriage rolls in; men jump from the second and rush in after it. Gendarmes still on your toes, public still on your heels, "Back, back!" still bawled down your throat —and the door is shut, and Dreyfus is inside. The gendarmes halt and are silent; their cordon bars the street. The crowd resumes its old occupation of looking intently at nothing1. Nine hours of watching, two min-j utes of seeing. But tAvo minutes of' seiug almost worth watching for—the best conceived, neatest, quickest bit of stage-management in the history of government. You rubbed your eyes and wondered if it was real; at a word you would almost have resumed watching again. Bravo, Messieurs the authorities!