HAVRE GOSSELIN, and "The Cottage above the Chasm," which Paul Martel built for Rachel Carré.HAVRE GOSSELIN, and "The Cottage above the Chasm," which Paul Martel built for Rachel Carré.
When George Hamon told me the next part of the story of those early days, his enjoyment in the recalling of certain parts of it was undisguised. He told it with great gusto.
As he lay that night on the fern-bed in the cottage above the chasm, he thought of Rachel Carré, and what might have been if Martel's father had only been properly drowned on the Hanois instead of marrying the Guernsey woman. Rachel and he might have come together, and he would have made her as happy as the day was long. And now—his life was empty, and Rachel's was broken,—and all because of this wretched half-Frenchman, with his knowing ways and foreign beguilements. The girls had held him good-looking. Well, yes, he was good-looking in a way, but it passed his understanding why any Sercq girl should want to marry a foreigner while home lads were still to be had. He did not think there would be much marrying outside the Island for some time to come, but it was bitter hard that Rachel Carré should have had to suffer in order to teach them that lesson.
Gr-r-r! but he would like to have Monsieur Martel up before him just for ten minutes or so, with a clear field and no favour. Martel was strong and active, it was true, but there—he was a drinker, and a Frenchman at that, and drink doesn't run to wind, and a Frenchman doesn't run to fists. Very well—say twenty minutes then, and if he—George Hamon—did not make Monsieur Martel regret ever having come to Sercq, he would deserve all he got and would take it without a murmur.
He was full of such imaginings, when at last he fell asleep, and he dreamt that he and Martel met in a lonely place and fought. And so full of fight was he that he rolled off the fern-bed and woke with a bump on the floor, and regretted that it was only a dream. For he had just got Martel's head comfortably under his left arm, and was paying him out in full for all he had made Rachel Carré suffer, when the bump of his fall put an end to it.
The following night he fell asleep at once, tired with a long day's work in the fields. He woke with a start about midnight, with the impression of a sound in his ears, and lay listening doubtfully. Then he perceived that his ears had not deceived him. There was someone in the room,—or something,—and for a moment all the superstitions among which he had been bred crawled in his back hair and held his breath.
Then a hand dropped out of the darkness and touched his shoulder, and he sprang at the touch like a coiled spring.
"Diable!"
It was Martel's voice and usual exclamation, and in a moment Hamon had him by the throat and they were whirling over the floor, upsetting the tableand scattering the chairs, and George Hamon's heart was beating like a merry drum at feel of his enemy in the flesh.
But wrestling blindly in a dark room did not satisfy him. That which was in him craved more. He wanted to see what he was doing and the full effects of it.
He shook himself free.
"Come outside and fight it out like a man—if you are one," he panted. "And we'll see if you can beat a man as you can a woman."
"Allons!" growled Martel. He was in the humour to rend and tear, and it mattered little what. For the authorities in Guernsey, after due deliberation, had decided that what was not good enough for Sercq was not good enough for Guernsey, and had shipped him back with scant ceremony. He had been flung out like a sack of rubbish onto the shingle in Havre Gosselin, half an hour before, had scaled the rough track in the dark, with his mouth full of curses and his heart full of rage, and George Hamon thanked God that it was not Rachel and the boy he had found in the cottage that night.
Hamon slipped on his shoes and tied them carefully, and they passed out and along the narrow way between the tall hedges. The full moon was just showing red and sleepy-looking, but she would be white and wide awake in a few minutes. The grass was thick with dew, and there was not a sound save the growl of the surf on the rocks below.
Through a gap in the hedge Hamon led the way towards Longue Pointe.
"Here!" he said, as they came on a level piece, and rolled up the sleeves of his guernsey. "Put away your knife;" and Martel, with a curse at theimplication, drew it from its sheath at his back and flung it among the bracken.
Then, without a word, they tackled one another. No gripping now, but hard fell blows straight from the shoulder, warded when possible, or taken in grim silence. They fought, not as men fight in battle,—for general principles and with but dim understanding of the rights and wrongs of the matter; but with the bitter intensity born of personal wrongs and the desire for personal vengeance. To Hamon, Martel represented the grievous shadow on Rachel Carré's life. To Martel, Hamon represented Sercq and all the contumely that had been heaped upon him there.
Their faces were set like rocks. Their teeth were clenched. They breathed hard and quick—through their noses at first, but presently, and of necessity, in short sharp gasps from the chest.
It was a great fight, with none to see it but the placid moon, and so strong was her light that there seemed to be four men fighting, two above and two below. And at times they all merged into a writhing confusion of fierce pantings and snortings as of wild beasts, but for the most part they fought in grim silence, broken only by the whistle of the wind through their swollen lips, the light thud of their feet on the trampled ground, and the grisly sound of fist on flesh. And they fought for love of Rachel Carré, which the one had not been able to win and the other had not been able to keep.
Martel was the bigger man, but Hamon's legs and arms had springs of hate in themwhich more than counterbalanced. He was a temperate man too, and in fine condition. He played his man with discretion, let him exhaust himself to his heart's content, took with equanimity such blows as he could not ward or avoid, and kept the temper of his hatred free from extravagance till his time came.
Martel lost patience and wind. Unless he could end the matter quickly his chance would be gone. He did his best to close and finish it, but his opponent knew better, and avoided him warily. They had both received punishment. Hamon took it for Rachel's sake, Martel for his sins. His brain was becoming confused with Hamon's quick turns and shrewd blows, and he could not see as clearly as at first. At times it seemed to him that there were two men fighting him. He must end it while he had the strength, and he bent to the task with desperate fury. Then, as he was rushing on his foe like a bull, with all his hatred boiling in his head, all went suddenly dark, and he was lying unconscious with his face on the trodden grass, and George Hamon stood over him, with his fists still clenched, all battered and bleeding, and breathing like a spent horse, but happier than he had been for many a day.
Martel lay so still that a fear began to grow in Hamon that he was dead. He had caught him deftly on the temple as he came on. He had heard of men being killed by a blow like that. He knelt and turned the other gingerly over, and felt his heart beating. And then the black eyes opened on him and the whites of them gleamed viciously in the moonlight, and Hamon stood up, and, after a moment's consideration, strode away and kicked about in the bracken till he found the other's knife. Then he picked up his jacket, and went back to the cottage with the knife in one hand and his jacket in the other, and went inside and bolted the door, which was not a custom in Sercq.
George Hamon slept heavily that night while Nature repaired damages. In the morning he had his head in a bucket of water from the well, when he heard footsteps coming up the steep way from the shore, and as he shook the drops out of his swollen eyes he saw that it was Philip Carré come in from his fishing.
"Hello, George—!" and Carré stopped and stared at his face, and knew at once that what he had feared had come to pass.—"He's back then?"
"It feels like it."
"Where did you meet?"
"He came in here in the middle of the night. We fought on Longue Pointe."
"Where is he now?"
"I left him in the grass with his wits out."
"She'll have no peace till he's dead and buried," said Carré gloomily.
Then they heard heavy footsteps in the narrow way between the hedges, and both turned quickly with the same thought in their minds. But it was only Philip Tanquerel coming down to see to his lobster pots, and at sight of Hamon's face he grinned knowingly and drawled, "Bin falling out o' bed, George?"
"Yes. Fell on top of the Frenchman."
"Fell heavy, seems to me. He's back then? I doubted he'd come if he wanted to."
Then more steps between the hedges, and Martel himself turned the corner and came straight for the cottage.
He made as though he would go in without speaking to the others, but George Hamon planted himself in the doorway with a curt, "No, you don't!"
"You refuse to let me into my own house?"
"Yes, I do."
"By what right?"
"By this!" said Hamon, raising his fist. "If you want any more of it you've only to say so. You're outcast. You've no rights here. Get away!"
"I claim my rights," said Martel through his teeth, and fell suddenly to his knees, and cried, "Haro! Haro! Haro! à l'aide mon prince! On me fait tort."
The three men looked doubtfully at one another for a moment, for this old final appeal to a higher tribunal, in the name of Rollo, the first old Norseman Duke, dead though he was this nine hundred years, was still the law of the Islands and not to be infringed with impunity.
All the same, when the other sprang up and would have passed into the cottage, Hamon declined to move, and when Martel persisted, he struck at him with his fist, and it looked as though the fight were to be renewed.
"He makes Clameur, George," said Philip Tanquerel remonstratively.
"He may make fifty Clameurs for me. Let him go to the Sénéchal and the Greffier and lay the matter before them. He's not coming in here as long as I've got a fist to lift against him."
"You refuse?" said Martel blackly.
"You had better go to the Greffier," said Philip Carré. "The Court will have to decide it."
"It is my house."
"I'm in charge of it, and I won't give it up till the Sénéchal tells me to. So there!" said Hamon.
Martel turned on his heel and walked away, and the three stood looking after him.
"I'm not sure—" began Tanquerel, in his slow drawling way.
"You're only a witness, anyway, Philip," said Hamon. "I'm the oppressor, and if he comes again I'll give him some more of what he had last night. He may Haro till he's hoarse, for me. Till the Sénéchal bids me go, I stop here;" and Tanquerel shrugged his shoulders and went off down the slope to his pots.
"More trouble," said Carré gloomily.
"We'll meet it—with our fists," said Hamon cheerfully. "M. le Sénéchal is not going to be browbeaten by a man he's flung out of the Island."
And so it turned out. The cutter had brought M. Le Masurier a letter from the authorities in Guernsey which pleased him not at all. It informed him that Martel, having married into Sercq and settled on Sercq, belonged to Sercq, and they would have none of him, and were accordingly sending him home again.
When Martel appeared to lodge his complaint, and claim the old Island right to cessation of oppression and trial of his cause, M. le Sénéchal was prepared for him. It was not the man's fault that he was back on their hands, and he said nothing about that. As to his complaint, however, he drew a rigid line between the past and the future. In a word, he declined to interfere in the matter of the cottage until the case should be tried and the Court should give its judgment.
"Hamon must not, of course, interfere with you any further. But neither must you interfere with him," said the wise man. "If you should do so he retains the right that every man has of defending himself, and will doubtless exercise it."
At which, when he heard it, George smiled crookedly through his swollen lips and half-closed eyes, and Martel found himself out in the cold.
He reconnoitred at a safe distance several times during the day, but each time found Hamon smoking his pipe in the doorway, with a show of enjoyment which his cut lips did not in reality permit.
He stole down in the dark and quietly tried the bolted door, but got only a sarcastic grunt for his pains.
He tried to get a lodging elsewhere, but no one would receive him.
He begged for food. No one would give him a crust, and everyone he asked kept a watchful eye on him until he was clear of the premises.
He pulled some green corn, and husked it between his hands, and tried to satisfy his complaining stomach with that and half-ripe blackberries.
He crept up to a farmsteading after dark, intent on eggs, a chicken, apigeon,—anything that might stay the clamour inside. The watch-dogs raised such a riot that he crept away again in haste.
The hay had been cut in the churchyard. That was No Man's Land, and none had the right to hunt him out of it. So he made up a bed alongside a great square tomb, and slept there that night, and scared the children as they went past to school next morning.
One of the cows at Le Port gave no milk that day, and Dame Vaudin pondered the matter weightily, and discussed it volubly with her neighbours, but did not try their remedies.
During the day he went over to Little Sercq in hopes of snaring a rabbit. But the rabbits understood him and were shy. When he found himself near the Cromlech it suggested shelter, and creeping in to curl himself up for a sleep, he came unexpectedly on a baby rabbit paralysed with fear at the sight of him. It was dead before it understood what was happening. He tore it in pieces with his fingers and ate it raw. They found its skin and bones there later on.
Under the stimulus of food his brain worked again. There was no room for him in Sercq, that was evident. He was alien, and the clan spirit was too strong for him.
He crept back across the Coupée in the dark, and passed a man there who bade him good-night, not knowing till afterwards who he was.
Next morning, when Philip Carré came in from his fishing and climbed the zigzag above Havre Gosselin, he was surprised at the sight of George Hamon smoking in the doorway of the cottage.
"Why, George, I thought you were off fishing," he said.
"Why then?"
"Your boat's away." And Hamon was leaping down the zigzag before he had finished, while Carré followed more slowly. But no amount of anxious staring across empty waters will bring back a boat that is not there. The boat was gone and Paul Martel with it, and neither was seen again in Sercq.
For many months Rachel Carré lived in instant fear of his unexpectedly turning up again. But he never came, and in time her mind found rest. The peace and aloofness of Belfontaine appealed to her, and at her father's urgent desire she stayed on there, and gave herself wholly to the care of the house and the training of her boy. The name of Martel, with its unpleasant memories, was quietly dropped, and in time came to be almost forgotten. The small boy grew up as Phil Carré, and knew no other name.
I am assured that he was a fine, sturdy little fellow, and that he took after his grandfather in looks and disposition. And his grandfather and Krok delighted in him, and fed his hungry little mind from their own hard-won experiences, and taught him all their craft as he grew able for it, so that few boys of his age could handle boat and nets and lines as he could. And Philip the elder, being of an open mind through his early travels, and believing that God was more like to help them that helped themselves than otherwise, made him a fearless swimmer, whereby the boy gained mighty enjoyment and sturdy health, and later on larger things still.
But it was his mother who led him gently towards the higher things, and opened theeyes of his understanding and the doors of his heart. She taught him more than ever the schoolmaster could, and more than most boys of his day knew. So that in time he came to see in the storms and calms, more than simply bad times and good; and in the clear blue sky and starry dome, in the magical unfoldings of the dawn and the matchless pageants of the sunset, more than mere indications of the weather.
Yet, withal, he was a very boy, full of life and the joy of it, and in their loving watchfulness over his development his mother and grandfather lost sight almost of the darker times out of which he had come, and looked only to that which he might in time come to be.
I suppose I could fill a great book with my recollections of those wonderful days when I was a boy of twelve and Carette Le Marchant was a girl of ten, and far and away the prettiest girl in Sercq,—or in Guernsey or Jersey either, for that matter, I'll wager. And at that time I would have fought on the spot any boy not too visibly beyond me who dared to hold any other opinion.
My mother and my grandfather did not by any means approve my endless battles, I am bound to say, and I do not think I was by nature of a quarrelsome disposition, but it seems to me now that a good deal of my time was spent in boyish warfare, and as often as not Carette was in one way or another accountable for it.
Not that herself or her looks could be called in question. These spoke for themselves, though I grant you she was a fiery little person and easily provoked. If any attack was made on her looks or her doings it was usually only for my provocation, as the knights in olden times flung down their gauntlets by way of challenge. But there were other matters relating to Carette, or rather to her family, which I could defend only with my fists, and not at all with my judgment even at twelve years old, and only for her sake who had, of herself, nothing whatever to do with them.
For the Le Marchants of Brecqhou were known and held in a somewhat wholesome respect of fear, by all grown-up dwellers in the Islands, from Alderney to Jersey.
It was not simply that they were bold and successful free-traders. Free-trade—or, as some would call it, smuggling—was the natural commerce of the Islands, and there were not very many whose fingers were not in the golden pie. My grandfather, Philip Carré, was one, however, and he would have starved sooner than live by any means which did not commend themselves to his own very clear views of right and wrong. The Le Marchants had made themselves a name for reckless daring, and carelessness of other people's well-being when it ran counter to their own, which gave them right of way among their fellows, but won comment harsh enough behind their backs. Many a strange story was told of them, and as a rule the stories lost nothing in the telling.
But my boyish recollections of Carette,—Carterette in full, but shortened by everyone to Carette, unless it was Aunt Jeanne Falla under very great provocation, which did not, indeed, happen often but was not absolutely unknown,—my recollections of Carette, and of my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, and George Hamon, and Jeanne Falla, are as bright and rosy as the dawns and sunsets of those earlier days.
All these seem to have been with me from the very beginning. They made up my little world, and Carette was the sunlight,—and occasionally the lightning,—and the moonlight was my mother, and the bright stars were Jeanne Falla and George Hamon, while my grandfather was a benevolent power, always kind but rather far above me, and Krok was a mystery man, dearly loved, but held in something of awe by reason of his strange affliction.
For Krok could hear and understand all that was said to him, even in our Island tongue which was not native to him, but he had no speech. The story ran that he had been picked off a piece of wreckage, somewhere off the North African coast, by the ship in which my grandfather made his last voyage, very many years ago. He was very intelligent and quick of hearing, but dumb, and it was said that he had been captured by Algerine pirates when a boy and had his tongue cut out by them. This, however, I was in a position to contradict, for I had once got a glimpse of Krok's tongue and so knew that he had one, though his face was so covered with hair that one might have doubted almost if he even had a mouth.
He was said to be Spanish. He was said to be Scotch. Wherever he was born, he was by nature an honest man and faithful as a dog. My grandfather had taken a liking to him, and when he quitted the sea Krok followed him, and became his man and served him faithfully. He could neither read nor write at that time, and his only vocal expression was a hoarse croak like the cawing of a crow, and this, combined with ample play of head and hand and facial expression and hieroglyphic gesture, formed his only means of communication with his surroundings.
The sailors called him Krok, from the sound he made when he tried to speak, and Krok he remained, In moments of intense excitement he was said to have delivered himself of the word "Gug" also, but doubts were cast upon this. He was of a placid and obliging nature, a diligent and trustworthy worker, and on the whole a cheerful companion with whom one could never fall out—by word of mouth, at all events.
He was short and broad but very powerful, and his face, where it was not covered with hair, was seamed and meshed with little wrinkles, maybe from pinching it up in the glare of the sun as a boy. His eyes were brown and very like a dog's, and that was perhaps because he could not speak and tried to tell you things with them. At times, when he could not make you understand, they were full of a straining anxiety, the painful striving of a dumb soul for utterance, which was very pitiful.
I remember very well quite breaking down once, when I was a very little fellow and was doing my best to explain something I wanted and could not make him understand. In my haste I had probably begun in the middle and left him to guess the beginning. Something I had certainly left out, for all I could get from Krok was puzzled shakes of the head and anxious snappings of the bewildered brown eyes.
"Oh, Krok, what a stupid, stupid man you are!" I cried at last, and I can see now the sudden pained pinching of the hairy face and the welling tears in the troubled brown eyes.
I flung my little arms half round his big neck and hugged myself tight to him, crying, "Oh, Krok, I love you!" and he fondled me and patted me and soothed me, and our discussion was forgotten. And after that, boy as I was, and as wild and thoughtless as most, I do not think I ever wounded Krok's soul again, for it was like striking a faithful dog or a horse that was doing his best.
But better times came—to Krok, at all events—when my mother began to teach me my letters.
That was in the short winter days and long evenings, when all the west was a shrieking black fury, out of which hurtled blasts so overpowering that you could lean up against them as against a wall, and with no more fear of falling, and the roar of great waters was never out of our ears.
In the daytime I would creep to the edge of the cliff, and lie flat behind a boulder, and watch by the hour the huge white waves as they swept round the Moie de Batarde and came ripping along the ragged side of Brecqhou like furious white comets, and hurled themselves in thunder on our Moie de Mouton and Tintageu. Then the great granite cliffs and our house up above shook with their pounding, and Port à la Jument and Pegane Bay were all aboil with beaten froth, and the salt spume came flying over my head in great sticky gouts, and whirled away among the seagulls feeding in the fields behind. When gale and tide played the same way, the mighty strife between the incoming waves and the Race of the Gouliot passage was a thing to be seen. For the waves that had raced over a thousand miles of sea split on the point of Brecqhou, and those that took the south side piled themselves high in the great basin formedby Brecqhou and the Gouliot rocks and Havre Gosselin, and finding an outlet through the Gouliot Pass, they came leaping and roaring through, the narrow black channel in a very fury of madness, and hurled themselves against their fellows who had taken the north side of the Island, and there below me they fought like giants, and I was never tired of watching.
But in the evenings, when the lamp was lit, and the fire of dried gorse and driftwood burnt with coloured flames and lightning forks, my grandfather would get out his books with a sigh of great content, and Krok would settle silently to his work on net or lobster pot, and my mother took to teaching me my letters, which was not at all to my liking.
At first I was but a dull scholar, and the letters had to be dinned into my careless little head many times before they stuck there, and anything was sufficient to draw me from my task,—a louder blast outside than usual, or the sight of Krok's nimble fingers, or of my grandfather's deep absorption, which at that time I could not at all understand, and which seemed to me extraordinary, and made me think of old Mother Mauger, who was said to be a witch, and who lost herself staring into her fire just as my grandfather did into his books.
My wits were always busy with anything and everything rather than their proper business, but my mother was patience itself and drilled things into me till perforce I had to learn them, and, either through this constant repetition, or from a friendly feeling for myself in trouble, Krok began to take an intelligent interest in my lessons.
He would bring his work alongside, and listen intently, and watch the book, and at times would drop his work and by main force would turn my head away from himself to that which was of more consequence,when my mother would nod and smile her thanks.
And so, as I slowly learned, Krok learned also, and very much more quickly, for he had more time than I had to think over things, because he wasted none of it in talking, and he was more used to thinking than I was. And then, to me it was still only drudgery, while to him it was the opening of a new window to his soul.
Why, in all these years, he had never learned to read and write—why my grandfather had never thought to teach him—I cannot tell. Perhaps because my mother had learned at the school; perhaps because Krok himself had shown no inclination to learn; perhaps because, in the earlier days, the scanty little farm and the fishing which eked it out took up all the men's time and attention.
However that might be, now that he had begun to learn Krok learned quickly, and the signs of his knowledge were all over the place.
He knew all that wonderful west coast of our Island as well as he knew the fingers of his hand, and before long the ground all round the house was strewn about with smooth flat stones on which were scratched the letters of the alphabet, which presently, according to the pace of my studies indoors, began to arrange themselves into words, and so I was encompassed with learning, inside and out, as it were, and sucked it in whether I would or no.
Well do I remember the puzzlement in old Krok's face when the mischief that dwells in every boy set me to changing the proper order of his stones, and the eagerness with which he awaited the evening lesson to compare the newwrong order of things with his recollections of the original correct one, and then the mild look of reproachful enquiry he would turn upon me.
But my mother, catching me at it one day, sharply forbade me meddling with Krok's studies, and showed me the smallness of it, and I never touched one of his stones again.
Both my mother and my grandfather could read and speak English, in addition to the Norman-French which was the root of our Island tongue, and that was something of a distinction in those days. He had learned it, perforce, during his early voyagings. He had been twice round the world, both times on English ships, and he was the kind of man, steady, quiet, thoughtful, to miss no opportunities of self-improvement, though I do not think there ever can have been a man less desirous of gain. His wants were very few, and so long as the farm and the fishing provided us all with a sufficient living, he was satisfied and grateful. He saw his neighbours waxing fat all about him, in pursuits which he would have starved sooner than set his hand to. To them, and according to Island standards, these things might be right or wrong, but to him, and for himself, he had no doubts whatever in the matter.
You see, long ago, in Guernsey, he had come across Master Claude Gray, the Quaker preacher, and had been greatly drawn to him and the simple high-life he proclaimed. Frequently, on still Sabbath mornings, he would put off in his boat, and, if the wind did not serve, would pull all the way to Peter Port, a good fourteen miles there and back, for the purpose of meeting his friend, and looked on it as a high privilege.
When, at times, he took me with him, I, too, looked on it as a mighty privilege; for Peter Port, even on a Sabbath morning, was, to a boy whose life was spent within the shadow of the Autelets, so to speak, a great and bustling city, full of people and houses and mysteries, and of course of wickedness, all of which excited my liveliest imaginings.
In the evening we would pull back, or run before the west wind if it served, and my grandfather would thoughtfully con over the gains of the day as another might tell the profits of his trading. Master Claude Gray was a man of parts, well read, an Englishman, and it was doubtless from him that my grandfather drew some of that love of books which distinguished him above any man I ever knew on Sercq, not excepting even the Seigneur, or the Sénéchal, or the Schoolmaster, or the Parson.
His library consisted of five books which he valued beyond anything he possessed, chiefly on account of what was in them and what he got out of them; to some extent also, in the case of three of them, for what they represented to him.
The first was a very large Bible bound in massive leather-covered boards, a present from Master Claude Gray to his friend, and brother in Christ, Philip Carré, and so stated in a very fine round-hand on the front page. It contained a number of large pictures drawn on wood which, under strict injunctions as to carefulness and clean hands and no wet fingers, I was occasionally allowed to look at on a winter's Sabbath evening, and which always sent me to bed in a melancholy frame of mind, yet drew me to their inspection with a most curious fascination when the next chance offered.
Another was Mr. John Bunyan'sPilgrim's Progress, also with woodcuts of asomewhat terrifying aspect, yet not devoid of lively fillips to the imagination.
Then there was a truly awful volume,Foxe's Book of Martyrs, with pictures which wrought so upon me that I used to wake up in the night shrieking with terror, and my mother forbade any further study of it; though Krok, when he came to be able to read, would hang over it by the hour, spelling out all the dreadful stories with his big forefinger and noting every smallest detail of the pictured tortures.
These two my grandfather had bought in Peter Port at a sale, together with a copy of Jean de la Fontaine'sFables Choisiesin French, with delightful pictures of all the talking beasts.
And—crowning glory from the purely literary point of view—a massive volume of Plays by William Shakespeare, and to this was attached a history and an inscription of which my grandfather, in his quiet way, was not a little proud.
When theValentine, East Indiaman, went ashore on Brecqhou in the great autumn gale, the year before I was born,—that was before the Le Marchants set themselves down there,—my grandfather was among the first to put out to the rescue of the crew and passengers. He got across to Brecqhou at risk of his life, and, from his knowledge of that ragged coast and its currents, managed to float a line down to the sinking ship by means of which every man got safe ashore. There was among them a rich merchant of London, a Mr. Peter Mulholland, and he would have done much for the man who had saved all their lives.
"I have done naught more than my duty," said my grandfather, and would accept nothing.
But Mr. Mulholland stopped with him for some days, while such of the cargo as had floated was being gathered from the shores—and, truth to tell, from the houses—of Sercq, that is to say some portion of it, for some went down with the ship, and in some of the houses there are silken hangings to this day. And the rich Englishman came to know what manner of man my grandfather was and his tastes, and some time after he had gone there came one day a great parcel by the Guernsey cutter, addressed to my grandfather, and in it was that splendid book of Shakespeare's Plays which, after his Bible, became his greatest delight. An inscription, too, which he read religiously every time he opened the book, though he must have known every curl of every letter by heart.
It was a wonderful book, even to look at. When I grew learned enough to read it aloud to him and my mother and Krok of a winter's night, I came by degrees, though not by any means at first, to understand what a very wonderful book it was.
When one's reading is limited to four books it is well that they should be good books. Every one of those books I read through aloud from beginning to end, not once, but many times, except indeed the long lists of names in the Bible, which my grandfather said were of no profit to us, and some other portions which he said were beyond me, and which I therefore made a point of reading to myself, but got little benefit from.
But to these books, and to the habit of reading them aloud, which impressed them greatly on my memory, and to my own observation of men and things and places through the eyes which these books helped to open, and to the wise words of my grandfather, and the quiet faithful teaching of my mother, and to all that old Krok taught me without ever speaking one word—I know that I owe everything, and that is why it was necessary to tell you so much about them.
If the telling has wearied you, I am sorry. For myself, I like to think back upon it all, and to trace the beginnings of some things of which I have seen the endings, and of some which are not ended yet, thank God!—and to find, in all that lies between, the signs of a Power that is beyond any power of man's, and is, indeed, and rightly I think, beyond even the power of any man's full understanding.
And Carette—
I recall her in those days in a thousand different circumstances, and always like the sunlight or the lightning, gleaming, sparkling, flashing. For she could be as steadily radiant as the one and as unexpectedly fickle as the other, and I do not know that I liked her any the less on that account, though truly it made her none too easy to deal with at times. Her quick changes and childish vagaries kept one, at all events, very much alive and in a state of constant expectation. And whenever I think of her I thank God for Jeanne Falla, and all that that wisest and sharpest and tenderest of women was able to do for her.
For, you see, Carette was peculiarly circumstanced, and might have gone to waste but for her aunt Jeanne.
Her mother died when she was six years old, after four years' life on Brecqhou, and Carette was left to be utterly spoiled by her father and six big brothers, wild and reckless men all of them, but all, I am sure, with tender spots in their hearts for the lovely child who seemed so out ofplace among them, though for anyone outside they had little thought or care.
My own thoughts delight to linger back among these earlier scenes before the more trying times came. If you will let me, I will try to picture Carette to you as I see her in my mind's eye, and I can see her as she was then as clearly as though it were yesterday.
I see a girl of ten, of slight, graceful figure, and of so active a nature that if you found her quite still you feared at once that something was wrong with her.
Her face was very charming, browned richly with the kiss of sun and wind, and without a freckle, yet not so brown as to hide the rich colour of her feelings, which swept across her face as quickly as the cloud-shadows across the sparkling face of the sea.
Her eyes were large and dark—all alight with the joy of life; sparkling with fun and mischief; blazing forked lightnings at some offence, fancied as often as not; big with entreaty that none could refuse; more rarely—in those days—deep with sober thought; but always—shining, sparkling, blazing, entreating—the most wonderful and fascinating eyes in the world to the boy at her side, on whom they shone and sparkled and blazed and entreated, and moulded always to her imperious little will.
A sturdy boy of twelve, short if anything for his age at that time, though later he grew to full Sercq height and something over; but strong and healthy, with a pair of keen blue eyes, and nothing whatever distinctive about his brown face, unlessit was a touch of the inflexible honesty which had been diligently instilled into him from the time he was three years old. Perhaps also some little indication of the stubborn determination which must surely have come from his grandfather, and which some people called obstinacy.
Anyway the girl trusted him implicitly, ruled him imperiously, quarrelled with him at times but never beyond reason, and always quickly made it up again, and in so delightful a fashion that one remembered the quarrel no more but only the making-up,—beamed upon him then more graciously than before, and looked to him for certain help in every time of need.
Inseparables these two, except when the Gouliot waters were in an evil humour and rendered the passage impossible, for her home was on Brecqhou and his was on Sercq. Fortunately for their friendship, Aunt Jeanne Falla lived on Sercq also, and Carette was as often to be found at Beaumanoir as at her father's house on Brecqhou, and it was to her father's liking that it should be so. For he and the boys were often all away for days at a time, and on such occasions, as they started, they would drop Carette on the rough shore of Havre Gosselin, or set her hands and feet in the iron rings that scaled the bald face of the rock, and up she would go like a goat, and away to the welcome of the house that was her second and better home. What Carette would have been without Aunt Jeanne I cannot imagine; and so—all thanks to the sweet, sharp soul who took her mother's place.
See these two, then, as they lay in the sweet short herbage of Tintageu or Moie de Mouton, chins on fist, crisp light hair close up alongside floating brown curls, caps or hats scorned impediments to rapid motion, bare heelskicking up emotionally behind, as they surveyed their little world, and watched the distant ships, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
Very clear in my memory is one such day, by reason of the fact that it was the beginning of a new and highly satisfactory state of matters between the boy and the girl.
Carette, you understand, was practically prisoner on Brecqhou except at such times as the higher powers, for good reasons of their own, put her ashore on Sercq. And, often as this happened, there were still many times when she would have been there but could not.
She had startled her companion more than once by wild threats of swimming the Gouliot, which is a foolhardy feat even for a man, for the dark passage is rarely free from coiling undercurrents, which play with a man as though he were no more than a piece of seaweed, and try even a strong swimmer's nerve and strength. And when she spoke so, the boy took her sharply to task, and drew most horrible pictures of her dead white body tumbling about among the Autelets, or being left stranded in the rock pools by Port du Moulin, nibbled by crabs and lobsters and pecked by hungry gulls; or, maybe, lugged into a sea-cave by a giant devil-fish and ripped into pieces by his pitiless hooked beak.
At all of which the silvery little voice would say "Pooh!" But all the same the slim little figure would shiver in the hot sunshine inside its short blue linsey-woolsey frock, and the dark eyes would grow larger than ever at the prospect, especially at the ripping by the giant pieuvre, in which they both believed devoutly, and eventually she would promise not to throw her young life away.
TINTAGEU. The great detached rock in foreground is TINTAGEU; to the left, the altar rock on which Phil used to lie; the bay behind is PORT A LA JUMENT with BELFONTAINE in the cliffs at the head of it; in the foreground THE GOULIOT ROCKS and PASSAGE; on the right BRECQHOU.TINTAGEU. The great detached rock in foreground is TINTAGEU; to the left, the altar rock on which Phil used to lie; the bay behind is PORT A LA JUMENT with BELFONTAINE in the cliffs at the head of it; in the foreground THE GOULIOT ROCKS and PASSAGE; on the right BRECQHOU.
"But all the same, Phil, I do feel like trying it when I want over and they won't let me."
And—"Don't be a silly," the boy would say. "If you go and get yourself drowned, in any stupid way like that, Carette, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
They were lying so one day on the altar rock behind Tintageu, the boy gazing dreamily into the vast void past the distant Casquets, where, somewhere beyond and beyond, lay England, the land of many wonders,—England, where the mighty folks had lived of whom he had read in his grandfather's great book of plays,—and strange, wild notions he had got of the land and the people; England, where they used to burn men and women at the stake, and pinch them with hot irons, and sting them to death with bees, and break them in pieces on wheels—a process he did not quite understand, though it seemed satisfactorily horrible; England, which was always at war with France, and was constantly winning great fights upon the sea; England, of whom they were proud to be a part, though—somewhat confusingly to twelve years old—their own ordinary speech was French; a wonderful place that England, bigger even than Guernsey, his grandfather said, and so it must be true. And sometime, maybe, he would sail across the sea and see it all for himself, and the great city of London, which was bigger even than Peter Port, though that, indeed, seemed almost past belief and the boy had his doubts.
He told Carette of England and London at times, and drew so wildly on his imagination—yet came so very far from the reality—that Carette flatly denied the possibilities of such things, and looked upon him as a romancer of parts, though she put it more briefly.
She herself lay facing west, gazing longingly at Herm and Jethou, with the long line of Guernsey behind. Guernsey bounded her aspirations. Sometime she was to go with Aunt Jeanne to Guernsey, and then she would be level with Phil, and be able to take him down when he boasted too wildly of its wonderful streets and houses and shops.
Suddenly she stiffened, as a cat does at distant sight of a mouse, gazed hard, sat up, jumped to her feet and began to dance excitedly as was her way.
"Phil! Phil!" and the boy's eyes were on the object at which her dancing finger pointed vaguely.
"A boat!" said he, jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so lawful prey and treasure-trove if they could secure it.
"Oh, Phil! Get it! I want it! It's just what I've been wanting all my life!"
It was a mere yellow cockleshell of a thing, almost round, and progressing, with wind and tide, equally well bow or stern foremost, its holding capacity a man and a half maybe, or say two children.
It came joggling slowly along, like a floating patch of sunlight, among the sun-glints, and every joggle brought it nearer to the grip of the current that was swirling south through the Gouliot. Once caught in the foaming Race, ten chances to one it would be smashed like an eggshell on some black outreaching fang of the rocks.
The boy took in all the chances at a glance, and sped off across the narrow neck to the mainland, tore along the cliff round Pegane and Port à la Jument, then away past the head of Saut de Juan, and down the cliff-side to where the black shelves overhang the backwater of the Gouliot.
He shed his guernsey during the safe passage between Jument and Saut de Juan. The rest of his clothing, one garment all told, he thoughtfully dropped at the top of the cliff before he took to the shelves. The girl gathered his things as she ran, and danced excitedly with them in her arms as she saw his white body launch out from the lowest shelf far away below her, and go wrestling through the water like a tiny white frog.
They had travelled quicker than the careless boat, and he was well out among the first writhings of the Race before it came bobbing merrily towards him. She saw his white arm flash up over the yellow side, and he hung there panting. Then slowly he worked round to the fat stern, and hauled himself cautiously on board, and stood and waved a cheerful hand to her.
Then she saw him pick up a small piece of board from the flooring of the boat and try to paddle back into the slack water. And she saw, too, that it was too late. The Race had got hold of the cockleshell, and a piece of board would never make it let go. Oars might, but there were no oars.
She danced wildly, saw him give up that attempt and paddle boldly out, instead, into the middle of the coiling waters, saw him turn the cockleshell's blunt nose straight for the Pass, and stand watchfully amidships with his board poised to keep her to a true course if that might be.
The passage of the Race is no easy matter even with oars and strong men's hands upon them. A cockleshell and a board were but feeble things, and the girl knew it, and, dancing wildly all the time because she could not stand still, looked each second to see the tiny craft flung aside and cracked on the jagged rocks.
But, with a great raking pull here, and a mighty sweep there, kneeling now, and now standing with one foot braced against the side for leverage, the boy managed in some marvellous way to keep his cockleshell in midstream. The girl watched them go rocking down the dark way, and then sped off across the headland towards Havre Gosselin. She got there just in time to see a boat with two strong rowers plunging out into the Race past Pierre au Norman, and knew that the boy was safe, and then she slipped and tumbled down the zigzag to meet them when they came in. The boy would want his clothes, and she wanted to see her boat. For of course it would be hers, and now she would be able to come across from Brecqhou whenever she wished.
The matter was not settled quite so easily as that, however.
She was dancing eagerly among the big round stones on the shore of Havre Gosselin, when the boat came in, with the cockleshell in tow and the small boy sitting in it, with his chin on his knees and shaking still with excitement and chills.
"All the same, mon gars, it was foolishness, for you might have been drowned," said the older man of the two, as they drew in to the shore, and the other man nodded agreement.
"I—w-w-wanted it for C-C-Carette," chittered the boy.
"Yes, yes, we know. But—And then there is M. le Seigneur, you understand."
"But, Monsieur Carré," cried the small girl remonstratively, "it would never have come in if Phil had not gone for it. It would have got smashed in the Gouliot or gone right past and been lost. And, besides, I do so want it."
"All the same, little one, the Seigneur's rights must be respected. You'd better go and tell him about it and ask him—"
"I will, mon Gyu!" and she was off up the zigzag before he had finished.
And it would have been a very different man from Peter le Pelley who could refuse the beguilement of Carette's wistful dark eyes, when her heart was set on her own way, as it generally was.
The Seigneur, indeed, had no special liking for the Le Marchants, who had sat themselves down in his island of Brecqhou without so much as a by-your-leave or thank you. Still, the island was of little use to him, and to oust them would have been to incur the ill-will of men notorious for the payment of scores in kind, so he suffered them without opposition.
Carette told us afterwards that the Seigneur stroked her hair, when she had told all her story and proffered her request, assuring him at the same time that the little boat would be of no use to him whatever, as it could not possibly hold him.
"And what do you want with it, little one?" he asked.
"To come over from Brecqhou whenever I want, M. le Seigneur, if you please."
"My faith, I think you will be better on Sercq than on Brecqhou. But youwill be getting yourself drowned in the Gouliot, and that would be a sad pity," said the Seigneur.
"But I can swim, M. le Seigneur, and I will be very, very careful."
"Well, well! You can have the boat, child. But if any ill comes of it, remember, I shall feel myself to blame. So be careful for my sake also."
And so the yellow cockleshell became Carette's golden bridge, and thereafter her comings and goings knew no bounds but her own wilful will and the states of the tides and the weather.
Krok's ideas in the matter of seigneurial rights of flotsam and jetsam were by no means as strict as his master's, especially where Carette was concerned. In his mute, dog-like way he worshipped Carette. In case of need, he would, I believe, have given his left hand in her service; and the right, I think he would have kept for himself and me. He procured from somewhere a great beam of ship's timber, and with infinite labour fixed it securely in a crevice of the rocks, high up by the Galé de Jacob, with one end projecting over the shelving rocks below. Then, with rope and pulley from the same ample storehouse, he showed Carette how she could, with her own unaided strength, hitch on her cockleshell and haul it up the cliff side out of reach of the hungriest wave. He made her a pair of tiny sculls too, and thenceforth she was free of the seas, and she flitted to and fro, and up and down that rugged western coast, till it was all an open book to her. But so venturesome was she, and so utterly heedless of danger, that we all went in fear for her, and she laughed all our fears to scorn.
Another scene stands out very sharply in my recollection of the boy and girl of those early days, from the fact that it gave our Island folk a saying which lasted a generation, and whenever I heard the saying it brought the whole matter back to me.
"Show him the way to the Boutiques," became, in those days, equivalent to "mislead him—trick him—deceive him"—and this was how it came about.
I can see the boy creeping slowly along the south side of Brecqhou in a boat which was big enough to make him look very small. It was the smaller of the two boats belonging to the farm, but it was heavily laden with vraic. There had been two days of storm, the port at Brecqhou was full of the floating seaweed, and the fields at Belfontaine hungered for it. Philip Carré and Krok and the small boy had been busy with it since the early morning, and many boat-loads had been carried to Port à la Jument as long as the flood served for the passage of the Gouliot, and since then, into Havre Gosselin for further transport when the tide turned.
The weather was close and heavy still, sulky-looking, as though it contemplated another outbreak before settling to its usual humour. There was no sun, and now and again drifts of ghostly haze trailed over the long sullen waves.
But the small boy knew every rock on the shore of Brecqhou, and the more deadly ones that lay in the tideway outside, just below the surface, and whuffed and growled at him as he passed. His course shaped itself like that of bird or fish, without apparent observation.
The boat was heavy, but his bare brown arms worked the single oar over the stern like tireless little machines, and his body swung rhythmically from side to side to add its weight to his impulse.
He kept well out round Pente-à-Fouille with its jagged teeth and circles of sweltering foam. The tide was rushing south through the Gouliot Pass like a mill-race. It drove a bold furrow into the comparatively calm waters beyond, a furrow which leaped and writhed and spat like a tortured snake with the agonies of the narrow passage. And presently it sank into twisting coils, all spattered and marbled with foam, and came weltering up from conflict with the rocks below, and then hurried on to further torment along the teeth of Little Sark.
At the first lick of the Race on his boat's nose, the small boy drew in his oar without ever looking round, dropped it into the rowlock, fitted the other oar, and bent his sturdy back to the fight.
The twisting waters carried him away in a long swirling slant. He pulled steadily on and paid no heed, and in due course was spat out on the other side of the Race into the smooth water under lee of Longue Pointe. Then he turned his boat's nose to the north, and pulled through the slack in the direction of Havre Gosselin.
He was edging slowly round Pierre au Norman, where a whip of the current caught him for a moment, when a merry shout carried his chin to his shoulder in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, a small white body flash from a black ledge above the surf into the coiling waters beyond. He stood up facing the bows and held the boat, till a brown head bobbed up among the writhing coils. Then a slim white arm with a little brown hand swept the long hair away from a pair of dancing eyes, and the swimmer came slipping through the water like a seal.
But suddenly, some stronger coil of the waters below caught the glancing white limbs. They sprawled awry from their stroke, a startled look dimmed the dancing eyes with a strain of fear.
"Phil!"
And in a moment the boy in the boat had drawn in his oars, and kicked off his shoes, and was ploughing sturdily through the belching coils.
"You're all right, Carette," he cried, as he drove up alongside, and the swimmer grasped hurriedly at his extended arm. "We've done stiffer bits than this. Now—rest a minute!—All right?—Come on then for the boat. Here you are!—Hang on till I get in!"
He drew himself up slowly, and hung for a moment while the water poured out of his clothes. Then, with a heave and a wild kick in the air, he was aboard, and turned to assist his companion. He grasped the little brown hands and braced his foot against the gunwale. "Now!" and she came up over the side like a lovely white elf, and sank panting among the golden-brown coils of vraic.
"It was silly of you to jump in there, you know," said the boy over hisshoulder, as he sat down to his oars and headed for Pierre au Norman again. "The Race is too strong for you. I've told you so before."
"You do it yourself," she panted.
"I'm a boy and I'm stronger than you."
"I can swim as fast as you."
"But I can last longer, and the Race is too strong for me sometimes."
"B'en! I knew you'd pick me up."
"Well, don't you ever do it when I'm not here, or some day the black snake will get you and you'll never come up again."
He was pulling steadily now through the backwater of Havre Gosselin;—past the iron clamps let into the face of the rock, up and down which the fishermen climbed like flies;—past the moored boats;—avoiding hidden rocks by the instinct of constant usage, till his boat slid up among the weed-cushioned boulders of the shore, and he drew in his oars and laid them methodically along the thwarts.
The small girl jumped out and wallowed in the warm lip of the tide, and finally squatted in it with her brown hands clasped round her pink-white knees,—unabashed, unashamed, absolutely innocent of any possible necessity for either,—as lovely a picture as all those coasts could show.
Her long hair, dark with the water, hung in wet rats' tails on her slim white shoulders, which were just flushed with the nip of the sea. The clear drops sparkled on her pretty brown face like pearls and diamonds, and seemed loth to fall. Her little pink toes curled up out of the creamy wash to look at her.
"Where are your things?" asked the boy.
"In the cave yonder."
"Go and get dressed," he said, looking down at her with as little thought of unseemliness as she herself.
"Not at all. I'm quite warm."
"Well, I'm going to dry my things," and he began to wriggle out of his knitted blue guernsey. "Also," he said, following up a previous train of thought, "let me tell you there are devil-fish about here. One came up with one of our pots yesterday."
"Pooh! I killed one with a stick this morning. They're only baby ones; comme ça," and she measured about two inches between her little pink palms.
"This one was so big," and he indicated a yard or so, between the flapping sleeves of the guernsey in which his head was still involved.
"I don't believe you, Phil Carré," she said with wide eyes. "You're just trying to frighten me."
"All right! Just you wait till one catches hold of your leg when you're out swimming all by yourself. If I'd known you'd be so silly I'd never have taught you."
"You didn't teach me. You only dared me in and showed me how."
"Well then! And if I hadn't you'd never have learnt."
"Maybe I would. Someone else would have taught me."
"Who then?"
And to that she had no answer. For if the good God intends a man to drown it is going against His will to try to thwart him by learning to swim,—such, at all events, was the very prevalent belief in those parts, and is to this day.
As soon as the boy was free of his clothes, he spread them neatly to the sun on a big boulder, and with a whoop went skipping over the stones into the water, till he fell full length with a splash and began swimming vigorously seawards. The small girl sat watching him for a minute and then skipped in after him, and the cormorants ceased their diving and the seagulls their wheelings and mewings, and all gathered agitatedly on a rock at the farther side of the bay, and wondered what such shouts and laughter might portend.
But suddenly the boy broke off short in his sporting, and paddled noiselessly, with his face straining seawards.
"What is it then, Phil? Has the big pieuvre got hold of your leg?" cried the girl, as she splashed up towards him.
He raised a dripping hand to silence her, and while the dark eyes were still widening with surprise, a dull boom came rolling along the wind over the cliffs of Brecqhou.
"A gun," said the boy, and turned and headed swiftly for the shore.
"Wait for me, Phil!" cried the girl, as she skipped over the stones like a sunbeam and disappeared into the black mouth of the cave.
"Quick then!" as he wrestled with his half-dried clothes, still sticky with the sea-water.
He was fixing the iron bar, which served as anchor for his boat, under a big boulder, when she joined him, still buttoning her skirt, and they sped together up the hazardous path which led up to La Frégondée. He gave her a helping hand now and again over difficult bits, but they had no breath for words. They reached the top panting like hounds, but the boy turned at once through the fields to the left and never stopped till he dropped spent on the short turf of the headland by Saut de Juan.
"Ah!" he gasped, and sighed with vast enjoyment, and the girl stared wide-eyed.
Down Great Russel, between them and Herm, two great ships were driving furiously, with every sail at fullest stretch and the white waves boiling under their bows. Farther out, beyond the bristle of reefs and islets which stretch in a menacing line to the north of Herm, another stately vessel was manoeuvring in advance of—
"One—two—three—four—five—six," counted the boy, "and each one as big as herself."
Every now and again came the sullen boom of her guns and answering booms from her pursuers.
"Six to one!" breathed the boy, quivering like a pointer. "And she's terrible near the rocks. Bon Gyu! but she'll be on them! She'll be on them sure," and he jumped up and danced in his excitement. "You can't get her through there!—Ay-ee!" and he funnelled his hands to shout a warning across three miles of sea in the teeth of a westerly breeze.
"Silly!" said the girl from the turf where she sat with her hands round her knees. "They can't hear you!"
"Oh, guyabble! Oh, bon Gyu!" and he stood stiff and stark, as the great ship narrowed as she turned towards them suddenly, and came threading her way through the bristling rocks, in a way that passed belief and set the hair in the nape of the boy's neck crawling with apprehension.
"Platte Boue!" he gasped, as she came safely past that danger. "Grand Amfroque!" and he began to dance.
"Founiais!" and she came out into Great Russel with a glorious sweep, shook herself proudly to the other tack, and went foaming past the Equêtelées and the Grands Bouillons, swept round the south of Jethou, and began short tacking for Peter Port in wake of her consorts.
Since the guns, the drama out there had unfolded itself in silence, and silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward. The small boy danced and waved his arms and cheered frantically. The ships beyond the reefs were streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.
The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial understanding of it all in her looks.
"Why are you so crazy about it?" she asked.
"Because we've won, you silly!"
"Of course! We're English. But all the same we ran away."
"We're English"—and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.
"Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates! And let me tell you there's not many men could have brought that ship through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in theCrescentoff Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who received a large gold medal for the feat.]
His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise. It was a stout, heavily-built man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have cared to wear.
"Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?" he asked, in a tongue that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no conviction to the boy's mind.
But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was too busy thinking to speak.
"Come then! Art dumb?" and he shook the boy roughly.
"Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!" said Carette, dancing round them with apprehension for her companion. "He's dumb."
"He was shouting loud enough a minute ago," and he pinched the boy's ear smartly between his big thumb and finger.
"It's only sometimes," said Carette lamely. "You let him go and maybe he'll speak."
"See, my lad," said the burly one, letting go the boy's ear but keeping a grip on his shoulder. "I'm not going to harm you. All I want to know is whether you've seen any sizable ships banging about here lately.—You know what I mean!"
The small boy knew perfectly what he meant, and his lip curled at thought of being mistaken for the kind of boy who would open his mouth to a preventive man. He shook his head, however.
"Not, eh? Well, you know the neighbourhood anyway. Take me to the Boutiques."
"The Boutiques?" cried Carette.
"Ah! The Boutiques. You know where the Boutiques are, I can see."
They both knew the Boutiques. It would be a very small child on Sercq who did not know that much. The small boy knew, too, that both the Boutiques and the Gouliot caves had nooks and niches in their higher ranges, boarded off and secured with stout padlocked doors, where goods were stored for transfer to the cutters and chasse-marées as occasion offered, just as they were in the great warehouses of the Guernsey merchants. He had vague ideas that so long as the goods were on dry land the preventive men could not touch them, but of that he was not perfectly certain. These troublesome Customs' officers were constantly having new powers conferred on them. He had overheard the men discussing them many a time, and the very fact of this man trying to find the Boutiques was in itself suspicious. But the man was a stranger. That was evident from his uncouth talk and foolish ways, and the small boy's mind was made up in a moment.
Carette was watching anxiously, with a wild idea in her mind that if she flung herself at the preventive man's feet and held them tightly, the boy might wriggle away and escape.
But the boy had a brighter scheme than that. He turned and led the way inland, and dropped a wink to Carette as he did so, and her anxious little brain jumped to the fact that the stranger was to be misled.
Her sharpened faculties perceived that the best way to second his efforts was to pretend a vehement objection to his action and so lend colour to it.
"Don't you do it, Phil!" she cried, dancing round them. "Don't you do it, or I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
Phil marched steadily on with the heavy hand gripping his shoulder.
"Sensible boy!" said the preventive man.
As everyone knows, the Boutiques lie hid among the northern cliffs by the Eperquerie. But, once lose sight of the sea, amid the tangle of wooded lanes which traverse the Island, and, without the guidance of the sun, it needs a certain amount of familiarity with the district to know exactly where one will come out.
The small boy stolidly led the way past Beaumanoir, and Carette wailed like a lost soul alongside. Jeanne Falla looked out as they passed and called out to know what was happening.
"This wicked man is making Phil show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette, and the wicked man chuckled, and so did Jeanne Falla.
They passed the cottages at La Vauroque. The women and children crowded the doors.
"What is it then, Carette?" they cried. "Where is he taking him?"
"He is making him show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette, crumpling her pretty face into hideous grimaces by way of explanation.
"Oh, my good!" cried the women, and the procession passed on along the road that led past Dos d'Ane. The steamy haze lay thicker here. The wind drove it past in slow coils, but its skirts seemed to cling to the heather and bracken as though reluctant to loose its hold on the Island.
They passed down a rough rock path with ragged yellow sides, and stood suddenly looking out, as it seemed, on death.
In front and all around—a fathomless void of mist, which curled slowly past in thin white whorls. The only solid thing—the raw yellow path on which they stood. It stretched precariously out into the void and seemed to rest on nothing. From somewhere down below came the hoarse low growl of sea on rock. Otherwise the stillness of death.—The Coupée!