Twenty Years After Chapter 70 Summary

Summary

Mordaunt, wounded but urgent, races to Greenwich, knowing the musketeers will be coming. He signals a sailor with the agreed handkerchief code and discovers the man is Captain Groslow, a disguised Royalist ally placed by Cromwell’s post to aid the plot. Groslow brings Mordaunt aboard a small felucca, the Lightning, and prepares the vessel and a longboat for a planned rendezvous, concealing Mordaunt in a temporary captain’s cabin beneath the prow. They ready provisions and take measures to prevent discovery.

Meanwhile Groslow returns to Greenwich where D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and their followers await under cover of night, sharing mistrust about the too-easy arrangements. Groslow plays the part of a reliable pilot, explaining (in an Irish accent) that Captain Rogers is incapacitated and that he will conduct those who show the handkerchief. The musketeers cautiously accept, test the gangplank with their valets, and board the felucca. D’Artagnan inspects the ship’s hold, finds the barrels are indeed port wine—some full, some empty—and searches the compartments, discovering nothing suspicious. After assuring his friends, he secures the hatchway position and places himself as a human barricade at the cabin entrance while the others fall asleep, though unease lingers beneath their apparent calm.

Key events

1. Mordaunt rushes to Greenwich, signals and meets Captain Groslow.
2. Groslow and Mordaunt board the felucca Lightning and conceal Mordaunt below.
3. Groslow returns to fetch the musketeers; they debate and reluctantly accept his story.
4. The musketeers and their valets board; D’Artagnan inspects the hold and compartments.
5. D’Artagnan finds barrels of port wine and secures the cabin while comrades sleep.

Analysis

This chapter advances the plot’s immediate logistics while heightening suspense through close-quarter secrecy and mutual distrust. Mordaunt’s urgency and Groslow’s duplicity (or assumed duplicity) create parallel covert operations: one aiming at vengeance, the other at escape or passage. The confined setting of the felucca concentrates action and character interaction, forcing the musketeers to reveal behavioral traits—D’Artagnan’s vigilance and suspicion, Athos’s measured judgment, Porthos’s bonhomie, and Aramis’s cool reserve. The repeated use of the handkerchief signal and the felucca’s name Lightning function as motifs of clandestine communication and swift motion; the barrels of port wine serve as a plausible cover and a red herring that D’Artagnan ransacks to dispel suspicion. Dumas uses dramatic irony: readers know Mordaunt is aboard while the musketeers do not, generating tension. The narrative technique alternates close third-person focus (on Mordaunt) with a broader scene of the musketeers, which maintains pace and multiplies perspectives. The chapter emphasizes themes of loyalty and deception—who can be trusted at sea at night?—and structurally sets up the vessel as the stage for coming confrontations, making the boat itself a liminal space between safety and danger.

Important quotes

“There is the port," he murmured. "That dark point yonder is the Isle of Dogs.”

NarratorMordaunt recognizes the setting as he approaches Greenwich, indicating his haste and navigation toward the rendezvous.

“I begin to be more at my ease, however, whilst you settle yourselves, I shall make the round of the boat.”

D’ArtagnanD'Artagnan expresses guarded relaxation while deciding to inspect the vessel himself, showing his persistent vigilance.

Characters in Chapter 70

• Mordaunt
• Captain Groslow
• Captain Rogers
• D’Artagnan
• Athos
• Porthos
• Aramis
• Grimaud
• Mousqueton
• Blaisois
• Parry
• Patrick
• General Cromwell