Mr. John Turner had none of the outward signs of the discreet adviser in his person or surroundings. He had, it was currently whispered, inherited from his father an enormous clientèle of noble names. And to such as have studied the history of Paris during the whole of the nineteenth century, it will appear readily comprehensible that the careful or the penniless should give preference to an English banker.
Mr. Turner’s appearance suggested solidity, and the carpet of his private room was a good one. The room smelt of cigar smoke, while the office, through which the client must pass to reach it, was odoriferous of ancient ledgers.
Half a dozen clerks were seated in the office, which was simply furnished and innocent of iron safes. If a client entered, one of the six, whose business it was, looked up, while the other five continued to give their attention to the books before them.
One cold morning, toward the end of the year, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was admitted by the concierge. She noted that only one clerk gave heed to her entry, and, it is to be presumed, the quiet perfection of her furs.
“Of the six young men in your office,” she observed, when she was seated in the bare wooden chair placed invitingly by the side of John Turner’s writing-table, “only one appears to be in full possession of his senses.”
Turner, sitting—if the expression be allowed—in a heap in an armchair before a table provided with pens, ink, and a blotting-pad, but otherwise bare, looked at his client with a bovine smile.
“I don’t pay them to admire my clients,” he replied.
“If Mademoiselle de Montijo came in, I suppose the other five would not look up.”
John Turner settled himself a little lower into his chair, so that he appeared to be in some danger of slipping under the table.
“If the Archangel Gabriel came in, they would still attend to their business,” he replied, in his thick, slow voice. “But he won’t. He is not one of my clients. Quite the contrary.”
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence smoothed the fur that bordered her neat jacket and glanced sideways at her banker. Then she looked round the room. It was bare enough. A single picture hung on the wall—a portrait of an old lady. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence raised her eyebrows, and continued her scrutiny. Here, again, was no iron safe. There were no ledgers, no diaries, no note-books, no paraphernalia of business. Nothing but a bare table and John Turner seated at it, in a much more comfortable chair than that provided for the client, staring apathetically at a date-case which stood on a bare mantelpiece.
The lady’s eyes returned to the portrait on the wall.
“You used to have a portrait of Louis Philippe there,” she said.
“When Louis Philippe was on the throne,” admitted the banker.
“And now?” inquired this daughter of Eve, looking at the portrait.
“My maternal aunt,” replied Turner, making a gesture with two fingers, as if introducing his client to the portrait.
“You keep her, one may suppose, as a stop-gap—between the dynasties. It is so safe—a maternal aunt!”
“One cannot hang a republic on the wall, however much one may want to.”
“Then you are a Royalist?” inquired Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.
“No; I am only a banker,” replied Turner, with his chin sinking lower on his bulging waistcoat and his eyes scarcely visible beneath the heavy lids.
The remark, coupled with a thought that Turner was going to sleep, seemed to remind the client of her business.
“Will you kindly ask one of your clerks to let me know how much money I have?” she said, casting a glance not wholly innocent of scornful reproach at the table, so glaringly devoid of the bare necessities of a banking business.
“Only eleven thousand francs and fourteen sous,” replied Turner, with a promptness which seemed to suggest that he kept no diary or note-book on the table before him because he had need of neither.
“I feel sure I must have more than that,” said Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, with some spirit. “I quite thought I had.”
But John Turner only moistened his lips and sat patiently gazing at the date. His attitude dimly suggested—quite in a nice way—that the chair upon which Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence sat was polished bright by the garments of persons who had found themselves labouring under the same error.
“Well, I must have a hundred thousand francs to-morrow; that is all. Simply must. And in notes, too. I told you I should want it when you came to see me at Royan. You must remember. I told you at luncheon.”
“When we were eating a sweetbreadaux champignons.I remember perfectly. We do not get sweetbreads like that in Paris.”
And John Turner shook his head sadly. “Well, will you let me have the money to-morrow morning—in notes?”
“I remember I advised you not to sell just now; after we had finished the sweetbread and had gone on to acrême renversée—very good one, too. Yes, it is a bad time to sell. Things are uncertain in France just now. One cannot even get one’s meals properly served. Cook’s head is full of politics, I suppose.”
“To-morrow morning—in notes,” repeated Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence.
“Now, your man at Royan was excellent—kept his head all through—and a light hand, too. Got him with you in Paris?”
“No, I have not. To-morrow morning, about ten o’clock—in notes.”
And Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence tapped a neat gloved finger on the corner of the table with some determination.
“I remember—at dessert—you told me you wanted to realise a considerable sum of money at the beginning of the year, to put into some business venture. Is this part of that sum?”
“Yes,” returned the lady, arranging her veil.
“A venture of Dormer Colville’s, I think you told me—while we were having coffee. One never gets coffee hot enough in a private house, but yours was all right.”
“Yes,” mumbled Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, behind her quick finger, busy with the veil.
Beneath the sleepy lids John Turner’s eyes, which were small and deep-sunken in the flesh, like the eyes of a pig, noted in passing that his client’s cheeks were momentarily pink.
“I hope you don’t mean to suggest that there is anything unsafe in Mr. Colville as a business man?”
“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Turner. “On the contrary, he is most enterprising. And I know no one who smokes a better cigar than Colville—when he can get it. And the young fellow seemed nice enough.”
“Which young fellow?” inquired the lady, sharply.
“His young friend—the man who was with him. I think you told me, after luncheon, that Colville required the money to start his young friend in business.”
“Never!” laughed Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, who, if she felt momentarily uneasy, was quickly reassured. For this was one of those fortunate ladies who go through life with the comforting sense of being always cleverer than their neighbour. If the neighbour happen to be a man, and a stout one, the conviction is the stronger for those facts. “Never! I never told you that. You must have dreamt it.”
“Perhaps I did,” admitted the banker, placidly. “I am afraid I often feel sleepy after luncheon. Perhaps I dreamt it. But I could not hand such a sum in notes to an unprotected lady, even if I can effect a sale of your securities so quickly as to have the money ready by to-morrow morning. Perhaps Colville will call for it himself.”
“If he is in Paris.”
“Every one is in Paris now,” was Mr. Turner’s opinion. “And if he likes to bring his young friend with him, all the better. In these uncertain times it is not fair on a man to hand to him a large sum of money in notes.” He paused and jerked his thumb toward the window, which was a double one, looking down into the Rue Lafayette. “There are always people in the streets watching those who pass in and out of a bank. If a man comes out smiling, with his hand on his pocket, he is followed, and if an opportunity occurs, he is robbed. Better not have it in notes.”
“I know,” replied Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, not troubling further to deceive one so lethargic and simple. “I know that Dormer wants it in notes.”
“Then let him come and fetch it.”
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence rose from her chair and shook her dress into straighter folds, with the air of having accomplished a task which she had known to be difficult, but not impossible to one equipped with wit and self-confidence.
“You will sell the securities, and have it all ready by ten o’clock to-morrow morning,” she repeated, with a feminine insistence.
“You shall have the money to-morrow morning, whether I succeed in selling for cash or not,” was the reply, and John Turner concealed a yawn with imperfect success.
“A loan?”
“No banker lends—except to kings,” replied Turner, stolidly. “Call it an accommodation.”
Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence glanced at him sharply over the fur collar which she was clasping round her neck. Here was a banker, reputed wealthy, who sat in a bare room, without so much as a fireproof safe to suggest riches; a business man of world-wide affairs, who drummed indolent fingers on a bare table; a philosopher with a maxim ever ready to teach, as all maxims do, cowardice in the guise of prudence, selfishness masquerading as worldly wisdom, hard-heartedness passing for foresight. Here was one who seemed to see, and was yet too sleepy to perceive. Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence was not always sure of her banker, but now, as ever before, one glance at his round, heavy face reassured her. She laughed and went away, well satisfied with the knowledge, only given to women, of having once more carried out her object with the completeness which is known as twisting round the little finger.
She nodded to Turner, who had ponderously risen from the chair which was more comfortable than the client’s seat, and held the door open for her to pass. He glanced at the clock as he did so. And she knew that he was thinking that it was nearly the luncheon hour, so transparent to the feminine perception are the thoughts of men.
When he had closed the door he returned to his writing-table. Like many stout people, he moved noiselessly, and quickly enough when the occasion demanded haste.
He wrote three letters in a very few minutes, and, when they were addressed, he tapped on the table with the end of his pen-holder, which brought, in the twinkling of an eye, that clerk whose business it was to abandon his books when called.
“I shall not go out to luncheon until I have the written receipt for each one of those letters,” said the banker, knowing that until he went out to luncheon his six clerks must needs go hungry. “Not an answer,” he explained, “but a receipt in the addressee’s writing.”
And while the clerk hurried from the room and down the stone stairs at a break-neck speed, Turner sank back into his chair, with lustreless eyes fixed on space.
“No one can wait,” he was in the habit of saying, “better than I can.”
If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo Barebone with him to the Rue Lafayette he was, in part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired carriage, of which the blinds were partially lowered.
The driver had been instructed to drive into the roomy court-yard of the house of which Turner’s office occupied the first floor. Carriages frequently waited there, by the side of a little fountain which splashed all day and all night into a circular basin.
Colville descended from the carriage and turned to speak to Loo, who was left sitting within it. Since the unfortunate night at the Hotel Gemosac, when they had been on the verge of a quarrel, a certain restraint had characterised their intercourse. Colville was shy of approaching the subject upon which they had differed. His easy laugh had not laughed away the grim fact that he had deceived Loo in such a manner that complicity was practically forced upon an innocent man.
Loo had not given his decision yet. He had waited a week, during which time Colville had not dared to ask him whether his mind was made up. There was a sort of recklessness in Loo’s manner which at once puzzled and alarmed his mentor. At times he was gay, as he always had been, and in the midst of his gaiety he would turn away with a gloomy face and go to his own room.
To press the question would be to precipitate a catastrophe. Dormer Colville decided to go on as if nothing had happened. It is a compromise with the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all resort at some crisis or another in life.
“I will not be long,” he assured Barebone, with a gay laugh. The prospect of handling one hundred thousand francs in notes was perhaps exhilarating; though the actual possession of great wealth would seem to be of the contrary tendency. There is a profound melancholy peculiar to the face of the millionaire. “I shall not be long; for he is a man of his word, and the money will be ready.”
John Turner was awaiting his visitor, and gave a large soft hand inertly into Colville’s warm grasp.
“I always wish I saw more of you,” said the new-comer.
“Is there not enough of me already?” inquired the banker, pointing to the vacant chair, upon which fell the full light of the double window. A smaller window opposite to it afforded a view of the court-yard. And it was at this smaller window that Colville glanced as he sat down, with a pause indicative of reluctance.
Turner saw the glance and noted the reluctance. He concluded, perhaps, in the slow, sure mind that worked behind his little peeping eyes, that Loo Barebone was in the carriage in the court-yard, and that Colville was anxious to return to him as soon as possible.
“It is very kind of you to say that, I am sure,” pursued Turner, rousing himself to be pleasant and conversational. “But, although the loss is mine, my dear Colville, the fault is mostly yours. You always know where to find me when you want my society. I am anchored in this chair, whereas one never knows where one has a butterfly like yourself.”
“A butterfly that is getting a bit heavy on the wing,” answered Colville, with his wan and sympathetic smile. He sat forward in the chair in an attitude antipathetic to digression from the subject in hand.
“I do not see any evidence of that. One hears of you here and there in France. I suppose, for instance, you know more than any man in Paris at the present moment of the—” he paused and suppressed a yawn, “the—er—vintage. Anything in it—eh?”
“So far as I could judge, the rains came too late; but I shall be glad to tell you all about it another time. This morning—”
“Yes; I know. You want your money. I have it all ready for you. But I must make out some sort of receipt, you know.”
Turner felt vaguely in his pocket, and at last found a letter, from which he tore the blank sheet, while his companion, glancing from time to time at the window, watched him impatiently.
“Seems to me,” said Turner, opening his inkstand, “that the vintage of 1850 will not be drunk by a Republic.”
“Ah! indeed.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, my mind was more occupied in the quality of the vintage than in its ultimate fate. If you make out a receipt on behalf of Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, I will sign it,” answered Colville, fingering the blotting-paper.
“Received on behalf of, and for, Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence, the sum of one hundred thousand francs,” muttered the banker, as he wrote.
“She is only a client, you understand, my dear Colville,” he went on, holding out his hand for the blotting-paper, “or I would not part with the money so easily. It is against my advice that Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence realises this sum.”
“If a woman sets her heart on a thing, my dear fellow—” began Colville, carelessly.
“Yes, I know—reason goes to the wall. Sign there, will you?”
Turner handed him pen and receipt, but Colville was looking toward the window sunk deep in the wall on the inner side of the room. This was not a double window, and the sound of carriage wheels rose above the gentle, continuous plash of the little fountain in the court-yard.
Colville rose from his seat, but to reach the window he had to pass behind Turner’s chair. Turner rose at the same moment, and pushed his chair back against the wall in doing so. This passage toward the window being completely closed by the bulk of John Turner, Colville hurried round the writing-table. But Turner was again in front of him, and, without appearing to notice that his companion was literally at his heels, he opened a large cupboard sunk in the panelling of the wall. The door of it folded back over the little window, completely hiding it.
Turning on his heel, with an agility which was quite startling in one so stout, he found Colville’s colourless face two feet from his own. In fact, Colville almost stumbled against him. For a moment they looked each other in the eyes in silence. With his right hand, John Turner held the cupboard-door over the window.
“I have the money here,” he said, “in this cupboard.” And as he spoke, a hollow rumble, echoing in the court-yard, marked the exit of a carriage under the archway into the Rue Lafayette. There had been only one carriage in attendance in the court-yard—that in which Colville had left Barebone.
“Here, in this cupboard,” repeated Turner to unheeding ears. For Dormer Colville was already hurrying across the room toward the other window that looked out into the Rue Lafayette. The house was a lofty one, with a high entresol, and from the windows of the first floor it was not possible to see the street immediately below without opening the sashes.
Turner closed the cupboard and locked it, without ceasing to watch Colville, who was struggling with the stiff fastening of the outer sash.
“Anything the matter?” inquired the banker, placidly. “Lost a dog?”
But Colville had at length wrenched open the window and was leaning out. The roar of the traffic drowned any answer he may have made. It was manifest that the loss of three precious minutes had made him too late. After a glance down into the street, he came back into the centre of the room and snatched up his hat from Turner’s bare writing-table.
He hurried to the door, but turned again, with his back against it, to face his companion, with the eyes usually so affable and sympathetic, ablaze for once with rage.
“Damn you!” he cried. “Damn you!”
And the door banged on his heels as he hurried through the outer office.
Turner was left standing, a massive incarnation of bewilderment, in the middle of the room. He heard the outer door close with considerable emphasis. Then he sat down again, his eyebrows raised high on his round forehead, and gazed sadly at the date-card.
Colville had left Leo Barebone seated in the hired carriage in a frame of mind far from satisfactory. A seafaring life, more than any other, teaches a man quickness in action. A hundred times a day the sailor needs to execute, with a rapidity impossible to the landsman, that which knowledge tells him to be the imminent necessity of the moment. At sea, life is so far simpler than in towns that there are only two ways: the right and the wrong. In the devious paths of a pavement-ridden man there are a hundred byways: there is the long, long lane of many turnings called Compromise.
Loo Barebone had turned into this lane one night at the Hotel Gemosac, in the Ruelle St. Jacob, and had wandered there ever since. Captain Clubbe had taught him the two ways of seamanship effectively enough. But the education fell short of the necessities of this crisis. Moreover, Barebone had in his veins blood of a race which had fallen to low estate through Compromise and Delay.
Let those throw the first stone at him who have seen the right way gaping before their feet with a hundred pitfalls and barriers, apparently insurmountable, and have resolutely taken that road. For the devious path of Compromise has this merit—that the obstacles are round the corner.
Barebone, absorbed in thought, hardly noticed that the driver of his carriage descended from the box and lounged toward the archway, where the hum of traffic and the passage of many people would serve to beguile a long wait. After a minute’s delay, a driver returned and climbed to the seat—but it was not the same driver. He wore the same coat and hat, but a different face looked out from the sheep-skin collar turned up to the ears. There was no one in the court-yard to notice this trifling change. Barebone was not even looking out of the window. He had never glanced at the cabman’s face, whose vehicle had happened to be lingering at the corner of the Ruelle St. Jacob when Colville and his companion had emerged from the high doorway of the Hotel Gemosac.
Barebone was so far obeying instructions that he was leaning back in the carriage, his face half hidden by the collar of his coat. For it was a cold morning in mid-winter. He hardly looked up when the handle of the door was turned. Colville had shut this door five minutes earlier, promising to return immediately. It was undoubtedly his hand that opened the door. But suddenly Barebone sat up. Both doors were open.
Before he could make another movement, two men stepped quietly into the carriage, each closing the door by which he had entered quickly and noiselessly. One seated himself beside Barebone, the other opposite to him, and each drew down a blind. They seemed to have rehearsed the actions over and over again, so that there was no hitch or noise or bungling. The whole was executed as if by clock-work, and the carriage moved away the instant the doors were closed.
In the twilight, within the carriage, the two men grasped Loo Barebone, each by one arm, and held him firmly against the back of the carriage.
“Quietly,mon bon monsieur; quietly, and you will come to no harm.”
Barebone made no resistance, and only laughed.
“You have come too soon,” he said, without attempting to free his arms, which were held, as if by a vice, at the elbow and shoulder. “You have come too soon, gentlemen! There is no money in the carriage. Not so much as a sou.”
“It is not for money that we have come,” replied the man who had first spoken—and the absolute silence of his companion was obviously the silence of a subordinate.
“Though, for a larger sum than monsieur is likely to offer, one might make a mistake, and allow of escape—who knows?”
The remark was made with the cynical honesty of dishonesty which had so lately been introduced into France by him who was now Dictator of that facile people.
“Oh! I offer nothing,” replied Barebone. “For a good reason. I have nothing to offer. If you are not thieves, what are you?”
The carriage was rattling along the Rue Lafayette, over the cobble-stones, and the inmates, though their faces were close together, had to shout in order to be heard.
“Of the police,” was the reply. “Of the high police. I fancy that monsieur’s affair is political?”
“Why should you fancy that?”
“Because my comrade and I are not engaged on other cases. The criminal receives very different treatment. Permit me to assure you of that. And no consideration whatever. The common police is so unmannerly. There!—one may well release the arms—since we understand each other.”
“I shall not try to escape—if that is what you mean,” replied Barebone, with a laugh.
“Nothing else—nothing else,” his affable captor assured him.
And for the remainder of a long drive through the noisy streets the three men sat upright in the dim and musty cab in silence.
A large French fishing-lugger was drifting northward on the ebb tide with its sails flapping idly against the spars. It had been a fine morning, and the Captain, a man from Fécamp, where every boy that is born is born a sailor, had been fortunate in working his way in clear weather across the banks that lie northward of the Thames.
He had predicted all along in a voice rendered husky by much shouting in dirty weather that the fog-banks would be drifting in from the sea before nightfall. And now he had that mournful satisfaction which is the special privilege of the pessimistic. These fog-banks, the pest of the east coast, are the materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across the face of the sky. They roll across the North Sea from their home in the marshes of Holland on the face of the waters, and the mariner, groping his way with dripping eyelashes and a rosy face through them, can look up and see the blue sky through the rifts overhead. When the fog-bank touches land it rises, slowly lifted by the warm breath of the field. On the coast-line it lies low; a mile inland it begins to break into rifts, so that any one working his way down one of the tidal rivers, sails in the counting of twenty seconds from sunshine into a pearly shadow. Five miles inland there is a transparent veil across the blue sky slowly sweeping toward the west, and rising all the while, until those who dwell on the higher lands of Essex and Suffolk perceive nothing but a few fleecy clouds high in the heavens.
The lugger was hardly moving, for the tide had only turned half an hour ago.
“Provided,” the Captain had muttered within the folds of his woollen scarf rolled round and round his neck until it looked like a dusky life-belt—“provided that they are ringing their bell on the Shipwash, we shall find our way into the open. Always sea-sick, this traveller, always sea-sick!”
And he turned with a kindly laugh to Loo Barebone, who was lying on a heap of old sails by the stern rail, concealing as well as he could the pangs of a consuming hunger.
“One sees that you will never be a sailor,” added the man from Fécamp, with that rough humour which sailors use.
“Perhaps I do not want to be one,” replied Barebone, with a ready gaiety which had already made him several friends on this tarry vessel, although the voyage had lasted but four days.
“Listen,” interrupted the Captain, holding up a mittened hand. “Listen! I hear a bell, or else it is my conscience.”
Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River. But he did not deem it necessary for one who was a prisoner on board, and no sailor, to interfere in the navigation of a vessel now making its way to the Faröe fisheries for the twentieth time.
“My conscience,” he observed, “rings louder than that.”
The Captain took a turn round the tiller with a rope made fast to the rail for the purpose, and went to the side of the ship, lifting his nose toward the west.
“It is the land,” he said. “I can smell it. But it is only the Blessed Virgin who knows where we are.”
He turned and gave a gruff order to a man half hidden in the mist in the waist of the boat to try a heave of the lead.
The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now—the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway—with its melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint “tap-tap” was now audible. Barebone knew it to be the sound of a caulker’s hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side. They were drifting past the mouth of the Harwich River.
The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could have told without the help of line or lead. For he had served a long apprenticeship on these coasts under a captain second to none in the North Sea.
He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, at which the Captain had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and glanced over his shoulder toward the ship’s dinghy towing astern. The rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from him. The boat itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength and weight. It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain steps of infancy.
The face of the water was glassy and of a yellow green. Although the scud swept in toward the land at a fair speed, there was not enough wind to fill the sails. Moreover, the bounty of Holland seemed inexhaustible. There was more to come. This fog-bank lay on the water halfway across the North Sea, and the brief winter sun having failed to disperse it, was now sinking to the west, cold and pale.
“The water seems shallow,” said Barebone to the Captain. “What would you do if the ship went aground?”
“We should stay there,mon bon monsieur, until some one came to help us at the flood tide. We should shout until they heard us.”
“You might fire a gun,” suggested Barebone.
“We have no gun on board, mon bon monsieur,” replied the Captain, who had long ago explained to his prisoner that there was no ill-feeling.
“It is the fortune of war,” he had explained before the white cliffs of St. Valérie had faded from sight. “I am a poor man who cannot afford to refuse a good offer. It is a Government job, as you no doubt know without my telling you. You would seem to have incurred the displeasure or the distrust of some one high placed in the Government. ‘Treat him well,’ they said to me. ‘Give him your best, and see that he comes to no harm unless he tries to escape. And be careful that he does not return to France before the mackerel fishing begins.’ And when we do return to Fécamp, I have to lie to off Notre Dame de la Garde and signal to the Douane that I have you safe. They want you out of the way. You are a dangerous man, it seems.Salut!”
And the Captain raised his glass to one so distinguished by Government. He laughed as he set his glass down on the little cabin table.
“No ill-feeling on either side,” he added. “C’est entendu.”
He made a half-movement as if to shake hands across the table and thought better of it, remembering, perhaps, that his own palm was not innocent of blood-money. For the rest they had been friendly enough on the voyage. And had the “Petite Jeanne” been in danger, it is probable that Barebone would have warned his jailer, if only in obedience to a seaman’s instinct against throwing away a good ship.
He had noted every detail, however, of the dinghy while he lay on the deck of the “Petite Jeanne”; how the runner fitted to the mast; whether the halliards were likely to run sweetly through the sheaves or were knotted and would jamb. He knew the weight of the gaff and the great tan-soddened sail to a nicety. Some dark night, he had thought, on the Dogger, he would slip overboard and take his chance. He had never looked for thick weather at this time of year off the Banks, so near home, within a few hours’ sail of the mouth of Farlingford River.
If a breeze would only come up from the south-east, as it almost always does in these waters toward the evening of a still, fine day! Without lifting his head he scanned the weather, noting that the scud was blowing more northward now. It might only be what is known as a slant. On the other hand, it might prove to be a true breeze, coming from the usual quarter. The “tap-tap” of the caulker’s hammer on the slip-way in Harwich River was silent now. There must be a breeze in-shore that carried the sound away.
The topsail of the “Petite Jeanne” filled with a jerk, and the Captain, standing at the tiller, looked up at it. The lower sails soon took their cue, and suddenly the slack sheets hummed taut in the breeze. The “Petite Jeanne” answered to it at once, and the waves gurgled and laughed beneath her counter as she moved through the water. She could sail quicker than her dinghy: Barebone knew that. But he also knew that he could handle an open boat as few even on the Côtes-du-Nord knew how.
If the breeze came strong, it would blow the fog-bank away, and Barebone had need of its covert. Though there must be many English boats within sight should the fog lift—indeed, the guardship in Harwich harbour would be almost visible across the spit of land where Landguard Fort lies hidden—Barebone had no intention of asking help so compromising. He had but a queer story to tell to any in authority, and on the face of it he must perforce appear to have run away with the dinghy of the “Petite Jeanne.”
He desired to get ashore as unobtrusively as possible. For he was not going to stay in England. The die was cast now. Where Dormer Colville’s persuasions had failed, where the memory of that journey through Royalist France had yet left him doubting, the incidents of the last few days had clinched the matter once for all. Barebone was going back to France.
He moved as if to stretch his limbs and lay down once more, with his shoulders against the rail and his elbow covering the stanchion round which the dinghy’s painter was made fast.
The proper place for the dinghy was on deck should the breeze freshen. Barebone knew that as well as the French Captain of the “Petite Jeanne.” For seamanship is like music—it is independent of language or race. There is only one right way and one wrong way at sea, all the world over. The dinghy was only towing behind while the fog continued to be impenetrable. At any moment the Captain might give the order to bring it inboard.
At any moment Barebone might have to make a dash for the boat.
He watched the Captain, who continued to steer in silence. To drift on the tide in a fog is a very different thing to sailing through it at ten miles an hour on a strong breeze, and the steersman had no thought to spare for anything but his sails. Two men were keeping the look-out in the bows. Another—the leadsman—was standing amidships peering over the side into the mist.
Still Barebone waited. Captain Clubbe had taught him that most difficult art—to select with patience and a perfect judgment the right moment. The “Petite Jeanne” was rustling through the glassy water northward toward Farlingford.
At a word from the Captain the man who had been heaving the lead came aft to the ship’s bell and struck ten quick strokes. He waited and repeated the warning, but no one answered. They were alone in these shallow channels. Fortunately the man faced forward, as sailors always do by instinct, turning his back upon the Captain and Barebone.
The painter was cast off now and, under his elbow, Barebone was slowly hauling in. The dinghy was heavy and the “Petite Jeanne” was moving quickly through the water. Suddenly Barebone rose to his feet, hauled in hand over hand, and when the dinghy was near enough, leaped across two yards of water to her gunwale.
The Captain heard the thud of his feet on the thwart, and looking back over his shoulder saw and understood in a flash of thought. But even then he did not understand that Loo was aught else but a landsman half-recovered from sea-sickness. He understood it a minute later, however, when the brown sail ran up the mast and, holding the tiller between his knees, Barebone hauled in the sheet hand over hand and steered a course out to sea.
He looked back over the foot of the sail and waved his hand. “Sans rancune!” he shouted. “C’est entendu!” The Captain’s own words.
The “Petite Jeanne” was already round to the wind, and the Captain was bellowing to his crew to trim the sails. It could scarcely be a chase, for the huge deep-sea fishing-boat could sail half as fast again as her own dinghy. The Captain gave his instructions with all the quickness of his race, and the men were not slow to carry them out. The safe-keeping of the prisoner had been made of personal advantage to each member of the crew.
The Captain hailed Barebone with winged words which need not be set down here, and explained to him the impossibility of escape.
“How can you—a landsman,” he shouted, “hope to get away from us? Come back and it shall be as you say ‘sans rancune.’ Name of God! I bear you no ill-will for making the attempt.”
They were so close together that all on board the “Petite Jeanne” could see Barebone laugh and shake his head. He knew that there was no gun on board the fishing-boat. The lugger rushed on, sailing quicker, lying up closer to the wind. She was within twenty yards of the little boat now—would overhaul her in a minute.
But in an instant Barebone was round on the other tack, and the Captain swore aloud, for he knew now that he was not dealing with a landsman. The “Petite Jeanne” spun round almost as quickly, but not quite. Every time that Barebone put about, the “Petite Jeanne” must perforce do the same, and every time she lost a little in the manoeuvre. On a long tack or running before the wind the bigger boat was immeasurably superior. Barebone had but one chance—to make short tacks—and he knew it. The Captain knew it also, and no landsman would have possessed the knowledge. He was trying to run the boat down now.
Barebone might succeed in getting far enough away to be lost in the fog. But in tacking so frequently he was liable to make a mistake. The bigger boat was not so likely to miss stays. He passed so close to her that he could read the figures cut on her stern-post indicating her draught of water.
There was another chance. The “Petite Jeanne” was drawing six feet; the dinghy could sail across a shoal covered by eighteen inches of water. But such a shoal would be clearly visible on the surface of the water. Besides, there was no shallow like that nearer than the Goodwins. Barebone pressed out seaward. He knew every channel and every bank between the Thames and Thorpeness. He kept on pressing out to sea by short tacks. All the while he was peeping over the gunwale out of the corner of his eye. He was near, he must be near, a bank covered by five feet of water at low tide. A shoal of five feet is rarely visible on the surface.
Suddenly he rose from his seat on the gunwale, and stood with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other, half turning back to look at “Petite Jeanne” towering almost over him. And as he looked, her bluff black bows rose upward with an odd climbing movement like a horse stepping up a bank. With a rattle of ropes and blocks she stood still.
Barebone went about again and sailed past her.
“Sans rancune!” he shouted. But no one heeded him, for they had other matters to attend to. And the dinghy sailed into the veil of the mist toward the land.