She raised her head and stayed her footsteps for a moment. In the dark little place he could see the gleam of her eyes swimming in tears.
“Yes, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said in her clear seductive voice. “I have prayed and I feel answered. I entreated the merciful God to keep the heart of the man I love always true to me or else to let me die before I set my eyes on him again.”
The abbé paled under his tan of a village priest and leaned his shoulders against the wall without a word.
Afterleaving the church by the sacristy door Arlette never looked back. The abbé saw her flit past the presbytery, and the building hid her from his sight. He did not accuse her of duplicity. He had deceived himself. A heathen. White as her skin was, the blackness of her hair and of her eyes, the dusky red of her lips, suggested a strain of Saracen blood. He gave her up without a sigh.
Arlette walked rapidly towards Escampobar as if she could not get there soon enough; but as she neared the first enclosed field her steps became slower and after hesitating awhile she sat down between two olive trees, near a wall bordered by a growth of thin grass at the foot. “And if I have been possessed,” she argued to herself, “as the abbé said, what is it to me as I am now? That evil spirit cast my true self out of my body and then cast away the body too. For years I have been living empty. There has been no meaning in anything.”
But now her true self had returned matured in its mysterious exile, hopeful and eager for love. She was certain that it had never been far away from that outcast body which Catherine had told her lately was fit for no man’s arms. That was all that old woman knew about it, thought Arlette, not in scorn but rather in pity. She knew better, she had gone to heaven fortruth in that long prostration with its ardent prayers and its moment of ecstasy, before an unlighted altar.
She knew its meaning well, and also the meaning of another—of a terrestrial revelation which had come to her that day at noon while she waited on the lieutenant. Everybody else was in the kitchen; she and Réal were as much alone together as had ever happened to them in their lives. That day she could not deny herself the delight to be near him, to watch him covertly, to hear him perhaps utter a few words, to experience that strange satisfying consciousness of her own existence which nothing but Réal’s presence could give her; a sort of unimpassioned but all-absorbing bliss, warmth, courage, confidence!... She backed away from Réal’s table, seated herself facing him and cast down her eyes. There was a great stillness in the salle except for the murmur of the voices in the kitchen. She had at first stolen a glance or two, and then peeping again through her eyelashes, as it were, she saw his eyes rest on her with a peculiar meaning. This had never happened before. She jumped up, thinking that he wanted something, and while she stood in front of him with her hand resting on the table he stooped suddenly, pressed it to the table with his lips and began kissing it passionately without a sound, endlessly.... More startled than surprised at first, then infinitely happy, she was beginning to breathe quickly, when he left off and threw himself back in the chair. She walked away from the table and sat down again to gaze at him openly, steadily, without a smile. But he was not looking at her. His passionate lips were set hard now and his face had an expression of stern despair.No word passed between them. Brusquely he got up with averted eyes and went outside, leaving the food before him unfinished.
In the usual course of things, on any other day, she would have got up and followed him, for she had always yielded to the fascination that had first roused her faculties. She would have gone out just to pass in front of him once or twice. But this time she had not obeyed what was stronger than fascination, something within herself, which at the same time prompted and restrained her. She only raised her arm and looked at her hand. It was true. It had happened. He had kissed it. Formerly she cared not how gloomy he was as long as he remained somewhere where she could look at him—which she would do at every opportunity with an open and unbridled innocence. But now she knew better than to do that. She had got up, had passed through the kitchen, meeting without embarrassment Catherine’s inquisitive glance, and had gone upstairs. When she came down after a time, he was nowhere to be seen, and everybody else too seemed to have gone into hiding; Michel, Peyrol, Scevola.... But if she had met Scevola she would not have spoken to him. It was now a very long time since she had volunteered a conversation with Scevola. She guessed, however, that Scevola had simply gone to lie down in his lair, a narrow shabby room lighted by one glazed little window high up in the end wall. Catherine had put him in there on the very day he had brought her niece home, and he had retained it for his own ever since. She could even picture him to herself in there stretched on his pallet. She was capable of that now. Formerly, for years after her return, people that wereout of her sight were out of her mind also. Had they run away and left her she would not have thought of them at all. She would have wandered in and out of the empty house and round the empty fields without giving anybody a thought. Peyrol was the first human being she had noticed for years. Peyrol, since he had come, had always existed for her. And as a matter of fact the rover was generally very much in evidence about the farm. That afternoon, however, even Peyrol was not to be seen. Her uneasiness began to grow, but she felt a strange reluctance to go into the kitchen, where she knew her aunt would be sitting in the arm-chair like a presiding genius of the house taking its rest, and unreadable in her immobility. And yet she felt she must talk about Réal to somebody. This was how the idea of going down to the church had come to her. She would talk of him to the priest and to God. The force of old associations asserted itself. She had been taught to believe that one could tell everything to a priest, and that the omnipotent God who knew everything could be prayed to, asked for grace, for strength, for mercy, for protection, for pity. She had done it and felt she had been heard.
Her heart had quietened down while she rested under the wall. Pulling out a long stalk of grass, she twined it round her fingers absently. The veil of cloud had thickened over her head, early dusk had descended upon the earth, and she had not found out what had become of Réal. She jumped to her feet wildly. But directly she had done that she felt the need of self-control. It was with her usual light step that she approached the front of the house and for the firsttime in her life perceived how barren and sombre it looked when Réal was not about. She slipped in quietly through the door of the main building and ran upstairs. It was dark on the landing. She passed by the door leading into the room occupied by her aunt and herself. It had been her father and mother’s bedroom. The other big room was the lieutenant’s during his visits to Escampobar. Without even a rustle of her dress, like a shadow, she glided along the passage, turned the handle without noise and went in. After shutting the door behind her she listened. There was no sound in the house. Scevola was either already down in the yard or still lying open-eyed on his tumbled pallet in raging sulks about something. She had once accidentally caught him at it, down on his face, one eye and cheek of which were buried in the pillow, the other eye glaring savagely, and had been scared away by a thick mutter: “Keep off. Don’t approach me.” And all this had meant nothing to her then.
Having ascertained that the inside of the house was as still as the grave, Arlette walked across to the window, which, when the lieutenant was occupying the room, stood always open and with the shutter pushed right back against the wall. It was, of course, uncurtained, and as she came near to it Arlette caught sight of Peyrol coming down the hill on his return from the lookout. His white head gleamed like silver against the slope of the ground and by and by passed out of her sight, while her ear caught the sound of his footsteps below the window. They passed into the house, but she did not hear him come upstairs. He had gone into the kitchen. To Catherine. They would talk about her and Eugène. But what would they say?She was so new to life that everything appeared dangerous: talk, attitudes, glances. She felt frightened at the mere idea of silence between those two. It was possible. Suppose they didn’t say anything to each other. That would be awful.
Yet she remained calm like a sensible person, who knows that rushing about in excitement is not the way to meet unknown dangers. She swept her eyes over the room and saw the lieutenant’s valise in a corner. That was really what she had wanted to see. He wasn’t gone then. But it didn’t tell her, though she opened it, what had become of him. As to his return, she had no doubt whatever about that. He had always returned. She noticed particularly a large packet sewn up in sail-cloth and with three large red seals on the seam. It didn’t, however, arrest her thoughts. Those were still hovering about Catherine and Peyrol downstairs. How changed they were. Had they ever thought that she was mad? She became indignant. “How could I have prevented that?” she asked herself with despair. She sat down on the edge of the bed in her usual attitude, her feet crossed, her hands lying in her lap. She felt on one of them the impress of Réal’s lips, soothing, reassuring like every certitude, but she was aware of a still remaining confusion in her mind, an indefinite weariness like the strain of an imperfect vision trying to discern shifting outlines, floating shapes, incomprehensible signs. She could not resist the temptation of resting her tired body, just for a little while.
She lay down on the very edge of the bed, the kissed hand tucked under her cheek. The faculty of thinking abandoned her altogether, but she remained open-eyed, wide awake. In that position, without hearingthe slightest sound, she saw the door handle move down as far as it would go, perfectly noiseless, as though the lock had been oiled not long before. Her impulse was to leap right out into the middle of the room, but she restrained herself and only swung herself into a sitting posture. The bed had not creaked. She lowered her feet gently to the ground, and by the time when holding her breath she put her ear against the door, the handle had come back into position. She had detected no sound outside. Not the faintest. Nothing. It never occurred to her to doubt her own eyes, but the whole thing had been so noiseless that it could not have disturbed the lightest sleeper. She was sure that had she been lying on her other side, that is with her back to the door, she would have known nothing. It was some time before she walked away from the door and sat on a chair which stood near a heavy and much-carved table, an heirloom more appropriate to a château than to a farmhouse. The dust of many months covered its smooth oval surface of dark, finely grained wood.
“It must have been Scevola,” thought Arlette. It could have been no one else. What could he have wanted? She gave herself up to thought, but really she did not care. The absent Réal occupied all her mind. With an unconscious slowness her finger traced in the dust on the table the initials E. A. and achieved a circle round them. Then she jumped up, unlocked the door and went downstairs. In the kitchen, as she fully expected, she found Scevola with the others. Directly she appeared he got up and ran upstairs, but returned almost immediately, looking as if he had seen a ghost, and when Peyrol asked him some insignificant question his lips and even his chin trembled before hecould command his voice. He avoided looking anybody in the face. The others too seemed shy of meeting each other’s eyes, and the evening meal of the Escampobar seemed haunted by the absent lieutenant. Peyrol, besides, had his prisoner to think of. His existence presented a most interesting problem, and the proceedings of the English ship was another, closely connected with it and full of dangerous possibilities, Catherine’s black and ungleaming eyes seemed to have sunk deeper in their sockets, but her face wore its habitual severe aloofness of expression. Suddenly Scevola spoke as if in answer to some thought of his own.
“What has lost us was moderation.”
Peyrol swallowed the piece of bread and butter which he had been masticating slowly, and asked:
“What are you alluding to, citoyen?”
“I am alluding to the Republic,” answered Scevola in a more assured tone than usual. “Moderation I say. We patriots held our hand too soon. All the children of the ci-devants and all the children of traitors should have been killed together with their fathers and mothers. Contempt for civic virtues and love of tyranny were inborn in them all. They grow up and trample on all the sacred principles.... The work of the Terror is undone!”
“What do you propose to do about it?” growled Peyrol. “No use declaiming here or anywhere for that matter. You wouldn’t find anybody to listen to you—you cannibal,” he added in a good-humoured tone. Arlette, leaning her head on her left hand, was tracing with the forefinger of her right invisible initials on the tablecloth. Catherine, stooping to light a four-beakedoil lamp mounted on a brass pedestal, turned her finely carved face over her shoulder. The sans-culotte jumped up, flinging his arms about. His hair was tousled from his sleepless tumbling on his pallet. The unbuttoned sleeves of his shirt flapped against his thin hairy forearms. He no longer looked as though he had seen a ghost. He opened a wide black mouth, but Peyrol raised his finger at him calmly.
“No, no. The time when your own people up La Boyère way—don’t they live up there?—trembled at the idea of you coming to visit them with a lot of patriot scallywags at your back is past. You have nobody at your back; and if you started spouting like this at large, people would rise up and hunt you down like a mad dog.”
Scevola, who had shut his mouth, glanced over his shoulder, and as if impressed by his unsupported state went out of the kitchen, reeling, like a man who had been drinking. He had drunk nothing but water. Peyrol looked thoughtfully at the door which the indignant sans-culotte had slammed after him. During the colloquy between the two men, Arlette had disappeared into the salle. Catherine, straightening her long back, put the oil lamp with its four smoky flames on the table. It lighted her face from below. Peyrol moved it slightly aside before he spoke.
“It was lucky for you,” he said, gazing upwards, “that Scevola hadn’t even one other like himself when he came here.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “I had to face him alone, from first to last. But can you see me between him and Arlette? In those days he raved terribly, but he was dazed and tired out. Afterwards I recoveredmyself and I could argue with him firmly. I used to say to him, ‘Look, she is so young, and she has no knowledge of herself.’ Why, for months the only thing she would say that one could understand was ‘Look how it spurts, look how it splashes!’ He talked to me of his republican virtue. He was not a profligate. He could wait. She was, he said, sacred to him, and things like that. He would walk up and down for hours talking of her and I would sit there listening to him with the key of the room the child was locked in, in my pocket. I temporized, and, as you say yourself, it was perhaps because he had no one at his back that he did not try to kill me, which he might have done any day. I temporized. And after all, why should he want to kill me? He told me more than once he was sure to have Arlette for his own. Many a time he made me shiver explaining why it must be so. She owed her life to him. Oh! that dreadful crazy life. You know he is one of those men that can be patient as far as women are concerned.”
Peyrol nodded understandingly. “Yes, some are like that. That kind is more impatient sometimes to spill blood. Still I think that your life was one long narrow escape, at least till I turned up here.”
“Things had settled down, somehow,” murmured Catherine. “But all the same I was glad when you appeared here, a grey-headed man, serious.”
“Grey hairs will come to any sort of man,” observed Peyrol acidly, “and you did not know me. You don’t know anything of me even now.”
“There have been Peyrols living less than half a day’s journey from here,” observed Catherine in a reminiscent tone.
“That’s all right,” said the rover in such a peculiar tone that she asked him sharply: “What’s the matter? Aren’t you one of them? Isn’t Peyrol your name?”
“I have had many names and this was one of them. So this name and my grey hair pleased you, Catherine? They gave you confidence in me, hein?”
“I wasn’t sorry to see you come. Scevola too, I believe. He heard that patriots were being hunted down, here and there, and he was growing quieter every day. You roused the child wonderfully.”
“And did that please Scevola too?”
“Before you came she never spoke to anybody unless first spoken to. She didn’t seem to care where she was. At the same time,” added Catherine after a pause, “she didn’t care what happened to her either. Oh, I have had some heavy hours thinking it all over, in the daytime doing my work, and at night while I lay awake, listening to her breathing. And I growing older all the time, and, who knows, with my last hour ready to strike. I often thought that when I felt it coming I would speak to you as I am speaking to you now.”
“Oh, you did think,” said Peyrol in an undertone. “Because of my grey hairs, I suppose.”
“Yes. And because you came from beyond the seas,” Catherine said with unbending mien and in an unflinching voice. “Don’t you know that the first time Arlette saw you she spoke to you and that it was the first time I heard her speak of her own accord since she had been brought back by that man, and I had to wash her from head to foot before I put her into her mother’s bed?”
“The first time,” repeated Peyrol.
“It was like a miracle happening,” said Catherine, “and it was you that had done it.”
“Then it must be that some Indian witch has given me the power,” muttered Peyrol, so low that Catherine could not hear the words. But she did not seem to care, and presently went on again:
“And the child took to you wonderfully. Some sentiment was aroused in her at last.”
“Yes,” assented Peyrol grimly. “She did take to me. She learned to talk to—the old man.”
“It’s something in you that seems to have opened her mind and unloosed her tongue,” said Catherine, speaking with a sort of regal composure down at Peyrol, like a chieftainess of a tribe. “I often used to look from afar at you two talking and wonder what she....”
“She talked like a child,” struck in Peyrol abruptly. “And so you were going to speak to me before your last hour came. Why, you are not making ready to die yet?”
“Listen, Peyrol. If anybody’s last hour is near, it isn’t mine. You just look about you a little. It was time I spoke to you.”
“Why, I am not going to kill anybody,” muttered Peyrol. “You are getting strange ideas into your head.”
“It is as I said,” insisted Catherine without animation. “Death seems to cling to her skirts. She has been running with it madly. Let us keep her feet out of more human blood.”
Peyrol, who had let his head fall on his breast, jerked it up suddenly. “What on earth are you talking about?” he cried angrily. “I don’t understand you at all.”
“You have not seen the state she was in when I got her back into my hands,” remarked Catherine.... “I suppose you know where the lieutenant is. What made him go off like that? Where did he go to?”
“I know,” said Peyrol. “And he may be back to-night.”
“You know where he is! And of course you know why he has gone away and why he is coming back,” pronounced Catherine in an ominous voice. “Well, you had better tell him that unless he has a pair of eyes at the back of his head he had better not return here—not return at all; for if he does, nothing can save him from a treacherous blow.”
“No man was ever safe from treachery,” opined Peyrol after a moment’s silence. “I won’t pretend not to understand what you mean.”
“You heard as well as I what Scevola said just before he went out. The lieutenant is the child of some ci-devant and Arlette of a man they called a traitor to his country. You can see yourself what was in his mind.”
“He is a chicken-hearted spouter,” said Peyrol contemptuously, but it did not affect Catherine’s attitude of an old sibyl risen from the tripod to prophesy calmly atrocious disasters. “It’s all his republicanism,” commented Peyrol with increased scorn. “He has got a fit of it on.”
“No, that’s jealousy,” said Catherine. “Maybe he has ceased to care for her in all these years. It is a long time since he has left off worrying me. With a creature like that I thought that if I let him be master here.... But no! I know that after the lieutenant started coming here his awful fancies havecome back. He is not sleeping at night. His republicanism is always there. But don’t you know, Peyrol, that there may be jealousy without love?”
“You think so,” said the rover profoundly. He pondered full of his own experience. “And he has tasted blood too,” he muttered after a pause. “You may be right.”
“I may be right,” repeated Catherine in a slightly indignant tone. “Every time I see Arlette near him I tremble lest it should come to words and to a bad blow. And when they are both out of my sight it is still worse. At this moment I am wondering where they are. They may be together and I daren’t raise my voice to call her away for fear of rousing his fury.”
“But it’s the lieutenant he is after,” observed Peyrol in a lowered voice. “Well, I can’t stop the lieutenant coming back.”
“Where is she? Where is he?” whispered Catherine in a tone betraying her secret anguish.
Peyrol rose quietly and went into the salle, leaving the door open. Catherine heard the latch of the outer door being lifted cautiously. In a few moments Peyrol returned as quietly as he had gone out.
“I stepped out to look at the weather. The moon is about to rise and the clouds have thinned down. One can see a star here and there.” He lowered his voice considerably. “Arlette is sitting on the bench humming a little song to herself. I really wonder whether she knew I was standing within a few feet of her.”
“She doesn’t want to hear or see anybody except one man,” affirmed Catherine, now in complete control of her voice. “And she was humming a song, did yousay? She who would sit for hours without making a sound. And God knows what song it could have been!”
“Yes, there’s a great change in her,” admitted Peyrol with a heavy sigh. “This lieutenant,” he continued after a pause, “has always behaved coldly to her. I noticed him many times turn his face away when he saw her coming towards us. You know what these epaulette-wearers are, Catherine. And then this one has some worm of his own that is gnawing at him. I doubt whether he has ever forgotten that he was a ci-devant boy. Yet I do believe that she does not want to see and hear anybody but him. Is it because she has been deranged in her head for so long?”
“No, Peyrol,” said the old woman. “It isn’t that. You want to know how I can tell? For years nothing could make her either laugh or cry. You know that yourself. You have seen her every day. Would you believe that within the last month she has been both crying and laughing on my breast without knowing why?”
“This I don’t understand,” said Peyrol.
“But I do. That lieutenant has got only to whistle to make her run after him. Yes, Peyrol. That is so. She has no fear, no shame, no pride. I myself have been nearly like that.” Her fine brown face seemed to grow more impassive before she went on much lower and as if arguing with herself: “Only I at least was never blood-mad. I was fit for any man’s arms.... But then that man is not a priest.”
The last words made Peyrol start. He had almost forgotten that story. He said to himself: “She knows, she has had the experience.”
“Look here, Catherine,” he said decisively, “the lieutenant is coming back. He will be here probably about midnight. But one thing I can tell you: he is not coming back to whistle her away. Oh no! It is not for her sake that he will come back.”
“Well, if it isn’t for her that he is coming back then it must be because death has beckoned to him,” she announced in a tone of solemn, unemotional conviction. “A man who has received a sign from death—nothing can stop him!”
Peyrol, who had seen death face to face many times, looked at Catherine’s fine brown profile curiously.
“It is a fact,” he murmured, “that men who rush out to seek death do not often find it. So one must have a sign? What sort of sign would it be?”
“How is anybody to know?” asked Catherine, staring across the kitchen at the wall. “Even those to whom it is made do not recognize it for what it is. But they obey all the same. I tell you, Peyrol, nothing can stop them. It may be a glance, or a smile, or a shadow on the water, or a thought that passes through the head. For my poor brother and sister-in-law it was the face of their child.”
Peyrol folded his arms on his breast and dropped his head. Melancholy was a sentiment to which he was a stranger; for what has melancholy to do with the life of a sea-rover, a Brother of the Coast, a simple, venturesome, precarious life, full of risks and leaving no time for introspection or for that momentary self-forgetfulness which is called gaiety. Sombre fury, fierce merriment, he had known in passing gusts, coming from outside; but never this intimate inward sense ofthe vanity of all things, that doubt of the power within himself.
“I wonder what the sign for me will be,” he thought: and concluded with self-contempt that for him there would be no sign, that he would have to die in his bed like an old yard dog in his kennel. Having reached that depth of despondency, there was nothing more before him but a black gulf into which his consciousness sank like a stone.
The silence which had lasted perhaps a minute after Catherine had finished speaking was traversed suddenly by a clear high voice saying:
“What are you two plotting here?”
Arlette stood in the doorway of the salle. The gleam of light in the whites of her eyes set off her black and penetrating glance. The surprise was complete. The profile of Catherine, who was standing by the table, became, if possible, harder; a sharp carving of an old prophetess of some desert tribe. Arlette made three steps forward. In Peyrol even extreme astonishment was deliberate. He had been famous for never looking as though he had been caught unprepared. Age had accentuated that trait of a born leader. He only slipped off the edge of the table and said in his deep voice:
“Why, patronne! We haven’t said a word to each other for ever so long.”
Arlette moved nearer still. “I know,” she cried. “It was horrible. I have been watching you two. Scevola came and dumped himself on the bench close to me. He began to talk to me, and so I went away. That man bores me. And here I find you people saying nothing. It’s insupportable. What has cometo you both? Say, you, Papa Peyrol—don’t you like me any more?” Her voice filled the kitchen. Peyrol went to the salle door and shut it. While coming back he was staggered by the brilliance of life within her that seemed to pale the flames of the lamp. He said half in jest:
“I don’t know whether I didn’t like you better when you were quieter.”
“And you would like best to see me still quieter in my grave.”
She dazzled him. Vitality streamed out of her eyes, her lips, her whole person, enveloped her like a halo and ... yes, truly, the faintest possible flush had appeared on her cheeks, played on them faintly rosy like the light of a distant flame on the snow. She raised her arms up in the air and let her hands fall from on high on Peyrol’s shoulders, captured his desperately dodging eyes with her black and compelling glance, put out all her instinctive seduction—while he felt a growing fierceness in the grip of her fingers.
“No! I can’t hold it in! Monsieur Peyrol, Papa Peyrol, old gunner, you horrid sea-wolf, be an angel and tell me where he is.”
The rover, whom only that morning the powerful grasp of Lieutenant Réal found as unshakable as a rock, felt all his strength vanish under the hands of that woman. He said thickly:
“He has gone to Toulon. He had to go.”
“What for? Speak the truth to me!”
“Truth is not for everybody to know,” mumbled Peyrol, with a sinking sensation as though the very ground were going soft under his feet. “On service,” he added in a growl.
Her hands slipped suddenly from his big shoulders. “On service?” she repeated. “What service?” Her voice sank and the words “Oh, yes! His service” were hardly heard by Peyrol, who as soon as her hands had left his shoulders felt his strength returning to him and the yielding earth grow firm again under his feet. Right in front of him Arlette, silent, with her arms hanging down before her with entwined fingers, seemed stunned because Lieutenant Réal was not free from all earthly connections, like a visiting angel from heaven depending only on God to whom she had prayed. She had to share him with some service that could order him about. She felt in herself a strength, a power, greater than any service.
“Peyrol,” she cried low, “don’t break my heart, my new heart, that has just begun to beat. Feel how it beats. Who could bear it?” She seized the rover’s thick hairy paw and pressed it hard against her breast. “Tell me when he will be back.”
“Listen, patronne, you had better go upstairs,” began Peyrol with a great effort and snatching his captured hand away. He staggered backwards a little while Arlette shouted at him:
“You can’t order me about as you used to do.” In all the changes from entreaty to anger she never struck a false note, so that her emotional outburst had the heart-moving power of inspired art. She turned round with a tempestuous swish to Catherine, who had neither stirred nor emitted a sound: “Nothing you two can do will make any difference now.” The next moment she was facing Peyrol again. “You frighten me with your white hairs. Come!... am I to go on my knees to you?... There!”
The rover caught her under the elbows, swung her up clear of the ground, and set her down on her feet, as if she had been a child. Directly he had let her go she stamped her foot at him.
“Are you stupid?” she cried. “Don’t you understand that something has happened to-day?”
Through all this scene Peyrol had kept his head as creditably as could have been expected, in the manner of a seaman caught by a white squall in the tropics. But at those words a dozen thoughts tried to rush together through his mind, in chase of that startling declaration. Something had happened! Where? How? Whom to? What thing? It couldn’t be anything between her and the lieutenant. He had, it seemed to him, never lost sight of the lieutenant from the first hour when they met in the morning till he had sent him off to Toulon by an actual push on the shoulder; except while he was having his dinner in the next room with the door open and for the few minutes spent in talking with Michel in the yard. But that was only a very few minutes, and directly afterwards the first sight of the lieutenant sitting gloomily on the bench like a lonely crow did not suggest either elation or excitement or any emotion connected with a woman. In the face of these difficulties Peyrol’s mind became suddenly a blank.
“Voyons, patronne,” he began, unable to think of anything else to say. “What’s all this fuss about? I expect him to be back here about midnight.”
He was extremely relieved to notice that she believed him. It was the truth. For indeed he did not know what he could have invented on the spur of the moment that would get her out of the way and induce her to goto bed. She treated him to a sinister frown and a terribly menacing “If you have lied.... Oh!”
He produced an indulgent smile. “Compose yourself. He will be here soon after midnight. You may go to sleep with an easy mind.”
She turned her back on him contemptuously, and said curtly, “Come along, aunt,” and went to the door leading to the passage. There she turned for a moment with her hand on the door handle.
“You are changed. I can’t trust either of you. You are not the same people.”
She went out. Only then did Catherine detach her gaze from the wall to meet Peyrol’s eyes. “Did you hear what she said? We! Changed! It is she herself....”
Peyrol nodded twice, and there was a long pause during which even the flames of the lamp did not stir.
“Go after her, Mademoiselle Catherine,” he said at last with a shade of sympathy in his tone. She did not move. “Allons—du courage,” he urged her deferentially as it were. “Try to put her to sleep.”
Uprightand deliberate, Catherine left the kitchen, and in the passage outside found Arlette waiting for her with a lighted candle in her hand. Her heart was filled with sudden desolation by the beauty of that young face enhaloed in the patch of light, with the profound darkness as of a dungeon for a background. At once her niece led the way upstairs muttering savagely through her pretty teeth: “He thinks I could go to sleep. Old imbecile!”
Peyrol did not take his eyes off Catherine’s straight back till the door had closed after her. Only then he relieved himself by letting the air escape through his pursed lips and rolling his eyes freely about. He picked up the lamp by the ring on the top of the central rod and went into the salle, closing behind him the door of the dark kitchen. He stood the lamp on the very table on which Lieutenant Réal had had his midday meal. A small white cloth was still spread on it, and there was his chair askew as he had pushed it back when he got up. Another of the many chairs in the salle was turned round conspicuously to face the table. These things made Peyrol remark to himself bitterly: “She sat and stared at him as if he had been gilt all over, with three heads and seven arms on his body”—a comparison reminiscent of certain idols he had seen in an Indian temple. Though notan iconoclast, Peyrol felt positively sick at the recollection, and hastened to step outside. The great cloud had broken up and the mighty fragments were moving to the westward in stately flight before the rising moon. Scevola, who had been lying extended full length on the bench, swung himself up suddenly, very upright.
“Had a little nap in the open?” asked Peyrol, letting his eyes roam through the luminous space under the departing rearguard of the clouds jostling each other up there.
“I did not sleep,” said the sans-culotte. “I haven’t closed my eyes—not for one moment.”
“That must be because you weren’t sleepy,” suggested the deliberate Peyrol, whose thoughts were far away with the English ship. His mental eye contemplated her black image against the white beach of the Salins describing a sparkling curve under the moon; and meantime he went on slowly, “for it could not have been noise that kept you awake.” On the level of Escampobar the shadows lay long on the ground while the side of the lookout hill remained yet black but edged with an increasing brightness. And the amenity of the stillness was such that it softened for a moment Peyrol’s hard inward attitude towards all mankind, including even the captain of the English ship. The old rover savoured a moment of serenity in the midst of his cares.
“This is an accursed spot,” declared Scevola suddenly.
Peyrol, without turning his head, looked at him sideways. Though he had sprung up from his reclining posture smartly enough, the citizen had gone slack all over and was sitting all in a heap. His shoulderswere hunched up, his hands reposed on his knees. With his staring eyes he resembled a sick child in the moonlight.
“It’s the very spot for hatching treacheries. One feels steeped in them up to the neck.”
He shuddered and yawned a long irresistible nervous yawn with the gleam of unexpected long canines in a retracted, gaping mouth giving away the restless panther lurking in the man.
“Oh yes, there’s treachery about right enough. You couldn’t conceive that, citoyen?”
“Of course I couldn’t,” assented Peyrol with serene contempt. “What is this treachery that you are concocting?” he added carelessly, in a social way, while enjoying the charm of a moonlit evening. Scevola, who did not expect that turn, managed, however, to produce a rattling sort of laugh almost at once.
“That’s a good one, ha! ha! ha!... Me!... concocting!... Why me?”
“Well,” said Peyrol carelessly, “there are not many of us to carry out treacheries about here. The women are gone upstairs; Michel is down at the tartane. There’s me, and you would not dare suspect me of treachery. Well, there remains only you.”
Scevola roused himself. “This is not much of a jest,” he said. “I have been a treason-hunter. I....”
He checked that strain. He was full of purely emotional suspicions. Peyrol was talking like this only to annoy him and to get him out of the way; but in the particular state of his feelings Scevola was acutely aware of every syllable of these offensiveremarks. “Aha,” he thought to himself, “he doesn’t mention the lieutenant.” This omission seemed to the patriot of immense importance. If Peyrol had not mentioned the lieutenant it was because those two had been plotting some treachery together, all the afternoon on board that tartane. That’s why nothing had been seen of them for the best part of the day. As a matter of fact, Scevola too had observed Peyrol returning to the farm in the evening, only he had observed him from another window than Arlette. This was a few minutes before his attempt to open the lieutenant’s door, in order to find out whether Réal was in his room. He had tiptoed away, uncertain, and going into the kitchen had found only Catherine and Peyrol there. Directly Arlette joined them a sudden inspiration made him run upstairs and try the door again. It was open now! A clear proof that it was Arlette who had been locked up in there. The discovery that she made herself at home like this in the lieutenant’s room gave Scevola such a sickening shock that he thought he would die of it. It was beyond doubt now that the lieutenant had been conspiring with Peyrol down on board that tartane; for what else could they have been doing there. But why had not Réal come up in the evening with Peyrol? Scevola asked himself, sitting on the bench with his hands clasped between his knees.... “It’s their cunning,” he concluded suddenly. “Conspirators always avoid being seen together. Ha!”
It was as if somebody had let off a lot of fireworks in his brain. He was illuminated, dazzled, confused, with a hissing in his ears and showers of sparks before his eyes. When he raised his head he saw he wasalone. Peyrol had vanished. Scevola seemed to remember that he had heard somebody pronounce the word “Good-night” and the door of the salle slam. And sure enough the door of the salle was shut now. A dim light shone in the window that was next to it. Peyrol had extinguished three of the lamp flames, and was now reclining on one of the long tables with that faculty of accommodating himself to a plank an old sea-dog never loses. He had decided to remain below simply to be handy, and he didn’t lie down on one of the benches along the wall because they were too narrow. He left one wick burning, so that the lieutenant should know where to look for him, and he was tired enough to think that he would snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before Réal could return from Toulon. He settled himself with one arm under his head as if he were on the deck of a privateer, and it never occurred to him that Scevola was looking through the panes; but they were so small and dusty that the patriot could see nothing. His movement had been purely instinctive. He wasn’t even aware that he had looked in. He went away from there, walked to the end of the building, spun round and walked back again to the other end; and it was as if he had been afraid of going beyond the wall against which he reeled sometimes. Conspiracy, conspiracy, he thought. He was now absolutely certain that the lieutenant was still hiding in that tartane, and was only waiting till all was quiet to sneak back to his room in which Scevola had proof positive that Arlette was in the habit of making herself at home. To rob him of his right to Arlette was part of the conspiracy, no doubt.
“Have I been a slave to those two women, haveI waited all those years, only to see that corrupt creature go off infamously with a ci-devant, with a conspiring aristocrat?”
He became giddy with virtuous fury. There was enough evidence there for any revolutionary tribunal to cut all their heads off. Tribunal! There was no tribunal! No revolutionary justice! No patriots! He hit his shoulder against the wall in his distress with such force that he rebounded. This world was no place for patriots.
“If I had betrayed myself in the kitchen they would have murdered me in there.”
As it was he thought that he had said too much. Too much. “Prudence! Caution!” he repeated to himself, gesticulating with both arms. Suddenly he stumbled, and there was an amazing metallic clatter made by something that fell at his feet.
“They are trying to kill me now,” he thought, shaking with fright. He gave himself up for dead. Profound silence reigned all round. Nothing more happened. He stooped fearfully to look and recognized his own stable fork lying on the ground. He remembered he had left it at noon leaning against the wall. His own foot had made it fall. He threw himself upon it greedily. “Here’s what I need,” he muttered feverishly. “I suppose that by now the lieutenant would think I am gone to bed.”
He flattened himself upright against the wall with the fork held along his body like a grounded musket. The moon clearing the hill-top flooded suddenly the front of the house with its cold light, but he didn’t know it; he imagined himself still to be ambushed in the shadow and remained motionless,glaring at the path leading towards the cove. His teeth chattered with savage impatience.
He was so plainly visible in his deathlike rigidity that Michel, coming up out of the ravine, stopped dead short, believing him an apparition not belonging to this earth. Scevola, on his side, noticed the moving shadow cast by a man—that man!—and charged forward without reflection, the prongs of the fork lowered like a bayonet. He didn’t shout. He came straight on, growling like a dog, and lunged headlong with his weapon.
Michel, a primitive untroubled by anything so uncertain as intelligence, executed an instantaneous sideways leap with the precision of a wild animal; but he was enough of a man to become afterwards paralysed with astonishment. The impetus of the rush carried Scevola several yards down the hill, before he could turn round and assume an offensive attitude. Then the two adversaries recognized each other. The terrorist exclaimed: “Michel!” and Michel hastened to pick up a large stone from the ground.
“Hey, you, Scevola,” he cried, not very loud but very threatening. “What are these tricks?... Keep away, or I will heave that piece of rock at your head, and I am good at that.”
Scevola grounded the fork with a thud. “I didn’t recognize you,” he said.
“That’s a story. Who did you think I was? Not the other! I haven’t got a bandaged head, have I?”
Scevola began to scramble up. “What’s this?” he asked. “What head did you say?”
“I say that if you come near I will knock you over with that stone,” answered Michel. “You aren’t to be trusted when the moon is full. Not recognize! There’s a silly excuse for flying at people like this. You haven’t got anything against me, have you?”
“No,” said the ex-terrorist in a dubious tone and keeping a watchful eye on Michel, who was still holding the stone in his hand.
“People have been saying for years that you are a kind of lunatic,” Michel criticized fearlessly, because the other’s discomfiture was evident enough to put heart into the timid hare. “If a fellow cannot come up now to get a snooze in the shed without being run at with a fork, well....”
“I was only going to put this fork away,” Scevola burst out volubly. “I had left it leaning against the wall, and as I was passing along I suddenly saw it, so I thought I would put it in the stable before I went to bed. That’s all.”
Michel’s mouth fell open a bit.
“Now what do you think I would want with a stable fork at this time of night, if it wasn’t to put it away?” argued Scevola.
“What indeed!” mumbled Michel, who began to doubt the evidence of his senses.
“You go about mooning like a fool and imagine a lot of silly things, you great stupid imbecile. All I wanted to do was to ask whether everything was all right down there, and you, idiot, bound to one side like a goat and pick up a stone. The moon has affected your head, not mine. Now drop it.”
Michel, accustomed to do what he was told, opened his fingers slowly, not quite convinced but thinking there might be something in it. Scevola, perceiving his advantage, scolded on:
“You are dangerous. You ought to have your feet and hands tied every full moon. What did you say about a head just now? What head?”
“I said that I didn’t have a broken head.”
“Was that all?” said Scevola. He was asking himself what on earth could have happened down there during the afternoon to cause a broken head. Clearly, it must have been either a fight or an accident, but in any case he considered that it was for him a favourable circumstance, for obviously a man with a bandaged head is at a disadvantage. He was inclined to think it must have been some silly accident, and he regretted profoundly that the lieutenant had not killed himself outright. He turned sourly to Michel.
“Now you may go into the shed. And don’t try any of your tricks with me any more, because next time you pick up a stone I will shoot you like a dog.”
He began to move towards the yard gate which stood always open, throwing over his shoulder an order to Michel: “Go into the salle. Somebody has left a light in there. They all seem to have gone crazy to-day. Take the lamp into the kitchen and put it out, and see that the door into the yard is shut. I am going to bed.” He passed through the gateway, but he did not penetrate into the yard very far. He stopped to watch Michel obeying the order. Scevola, advancing his head cautiously beyond the pillar of the gate, waited till he had seen Michel open the door of the salle and then bounded out again across the level space, and down the ravine path. It was a matter of less than a minute. His fork was still on his shoulder. His only desire was not to be interfered with, and for therest he did not care what they all did, what they would think and how they would behave. The fixed idea had taken complete possession of him. He had no plan, but he had a principle on which to act; and that was to get at the lieutenant unawares, and if the fellow died without knowing what hand had struck him, so much the better. Scevola was going to act in the cause of virtue and justice. It was not to be a matter of personal contest at all. Meantime, Michel, having gone into the salle, had discovered Peyrol fast asleep on a table. Though his reverence for Peyrol was unbounded, his simplicity was such that he shook his master by the shoulder as he would have done any common mortal. The rover passed from a state of inertia into a sitting posture so quickly that Michel stepped back a pace and waited to be addressed. But as Peyrol only stared at him, Michel took the initiative in a concise phrase:
“He’s at it!”
Peyrol did not seem completely awake: “What is it you mean?” he asked.
“He is making motions to escape.”
Peyrol was wide awake now. He even swung his feet off the table.
“Is he? Haven’t you locked the cabin door?”
Michel, very frightened, explained that he had never been told to do that.
“No?” remarked Peyrol placidly. “I must have forgotten.” But Michel remained agitated, and murmured: “He is escaping.”
“That’s all right,” said Peyrol. “What are you fussing about? How far can he escape, do you think?”
A slow grin appeared on Michel’s face. “If he tries to scramble over the top of the rocks, he will get a broken neck in no time,” he said. “And he certainly won’t get very far, that’s a fact.”
“Well—you see,” said Peyrol.
“And he doesn’t seem strong either. He crawled out of the cabin door and got as far as the little water cask and he dipped and dipped into it. It must be half empty by now. After that he got on to his legs. I cleared out ashore directly I heard him move,” he went on in a tone of intense self-approval. “I hid myself behind a rock and watched him.”
“Quite right,” observed Peyrol. After that word of commendation, Michel’s face wore a constant grin.
“He sat on the after-deck,” he went on as if relating an immense joke, “with his feet dangling down the hold, and may the devil take me if I don’t think he had a nap with his back against the cask. He was nodding and catching himself up, with that big white head of his. Well, I got tired of watching that, and as you told me to keep out of his way, I thought I would come up here and sleep in the shed. That was right, wasn’t it?”
“Quite right,” repeated Peyrol. “Well, you go now into the shed. And so you left him sitting on the after-deck?”
“Yes,” said Michel. “But he was rousing himself. I hadn’t got away more than ten yards when I heard an awful thump on board. I think he tried to get up and fell down the hold.”
“Fell down the hold?” repeated Peyrol sharply.
“Yes, notre maître. I thought at first I would go back and see, but you had warned me against him,hadn’t you? And I really think that nothing can kill him.”
Peyrol got down from the table with an air of concern which would have astonished Michel, if he had not been utterly incapable of observing things.
“This must be seen to,” murmured the rover, buttoning the waistband of his trousers. “My cudgel there, in the corner. Now you go to the shed. What the devil are you doing at the door? Don’t you know the way to the shed?” This last observation was caused by Michel remaining in the doorway of the salle with his head out and looking to right and left along the front of the house. “What’s come to you? You don’t suppose he has been able to follow you so quick as this up here?”
“Oh no, notre maître, quite impossible. I saw that sacré Scevola promenading up and down here. I don’t want to meet him again.”
“Was he promenading outside,” asked Peyrol, with annoyance. “Well, what do you think he can do to you? What notions have you got in your silly head? You are getting worse and worse. Out you go.”
Peyrol extinguished the lamp and, going out, closed the door without the slightest noise. The intelligence about Scevola being on the move did not please him very much, but he reflected that probably the sans-culotte had fallen asleep again, and after waking up was on his way to bed when Michel caught sight of him. He had his own view of the patriot’s psychology and did not think the women were in any danger. Nevertheless he went to the shed and heard the rustling of straw as Michel settled himself for the night.
“Debout,” he cried low. “Sh, don’t make anynoise. I want you to go into the house and sleep at the bottom of the stairs. If you hear voices, go up, and if you see Scevola about, knock him down. You aren’t afraid of him, are you?”
“No, if you tell me not to be,” said Michel, who, picking up his shoes, a present from Peyrol, walked barefoot towards the house. The rover watched him slipping noiselessly through the salle door. Having thus, so to speak, guarded his base, Peyrol proceeded down the ravine with a very deliberate caution. When he got as far as the little hollow in the ground from which the mastheads of the tartane could be seen, he squatted and waited. He didn’t know what his prisoner had done or was doing, and he did not want to blunder into the way of his escape. The day-old moon was high enough to have shortened the shadows almost to nothing and all the rocks were inundated by a yellow sheen, while the bushes by contrast looked very black. Peyrol reflected that he was not very well concealed. The continued silence impressed him in the end. “He has got away,” he thought. And yet he was not sure. Nobody could be sure. He reckoned it was about an hour since Michel had left the tartane; time enough for a man, even on all fours, to crawl down to the shore of the cove. Peyrol wished he had not hit so hard. His object could have been attained with half the force. On the other hand all the proceedings of his prisoner, as reported by Michel, seemed quite rational. Naturally the fellow was badly shaken. Peyrol felt as though he wanted to go on board and give him some encouragement, and even active assistance.
The report of a gun from seaward cut his breath short as he lay there meditating. Within a minutethere was a second report, sending another wave of deep sound among the crags and hills of the peninsula. The ensuing silence was so profound that it seemed to extend to the very inside of Peyrol’s head, and lull all his thoughts for a moment. But he had understood. He said to himself that after this his prisoner, if he had life enough left in him to stir a limb, would rather die than not try to make his way to the seashore. The ship was calling to her man.
In fact those two guns had proceeded from theAmelia. After passing beyond Cape Esterel, Captain Vincent dropped an anchor underfoot off the beach just as Peyrol had surmised he would do. From about six o’clock till nine theAmelialay there with her unfurled sails hanging in the gear. Just before the moon rose the captain came up on deck and after a short conference with his first lieutenant, directed the master to get the ship under way and put her head again for the Petite Passe. Then he went below, and presently word was passed on deck that the captain wanted Mr. Bolt. When the master’s mate appeared in his cabin, Captain Vincent motioned him to a chair.
“I don’t think I ought to have listened to you,” he said. “Still, the idea was fascinating, but how it would strike other people it is hard to say. The losing of our man is the worst feature. I have an idea that we might recover him. He may have been captured by the peasants or have met with an accident. It’s unbearable to think of him lying at the foot of some rock with a broken leg. I have ordered the first and second cutters to be manned, and I propose that you should take command of them and enter the cove and, if necessary, advance a little inland to investigate. Asfar as we know there have never been any troops on that peninsula. The first thing you will do is to examine the coast.”
He talked for some time, giving more minute instructions, and then went on deck. TheAmelia, with the two cutters towing alongside, reached about half-way down the Passe and then the boats were ordered to proceed. Just before they shoved off two guns were fired in quick succession.
“Like this, Bolt,” explained Captain Vincent, “Symons will guess that we are looking for him; and if he is hiding anywhere near the shore he will be sure to come down where he can be seen by you.”
Themotive force of a fixed idea is very great. In the case of Scevola it was great enough to launch him down the slope and to rob him for the moment of all caution. He bounded amongst the boulders, using the handle of the stable fork for a staff. He paid no regard to the nature of the ground, till he got a fall and found himself sprawling on his face, while the stable fork went clattering down until it was stopped by a bush. It was this circumstance which saved Peyrol’s prisoner from being caught unawares. Since he had got out of the little cabin, simply because after coming to himself he had perceived it was open, Symons had been greatly refreshed by long drinks of cold water and by his little nap in the fresh air. Every moment he was feeling in better command of his limbs. As to the command of his thoughts, that was coming to him too, rather quickly. The advantage of having a very thick skull became evident in the fact that as soon as he had dragged himself out of that cabin he knew where he was. The next thing he did was to look at the moon, to judge of the passage of time. Then he gave way to an immense surprise at the fact of being alone aboard the tartane. As he sat with his legs dangling into the open hold he tried to guess how it came about that the cabin had been left unlocked and unguarded.
He went on thinking about this unexpected situation. What could have become of that white-headed villain? Was he dodging about somewhere watching for a chance to give him another tap on the head? Symons felt suddenly very unsafe sitting there on the after-deck in the full light of the moon. Instinct rather than reason suggested to him that he ought to get down into the dark hold. It seemed a great undertaking at first, but once he started he accomplished it with the greatest ease, though he could not avoid knocking down a small spar which was leaning up against the deck. It preceded him into the hold with a loud crash which gave poor Symons an attack of palpitation of the heart. He sat on the keelson of the tartane and gasped, but after a while reflected that all this did not matter. His head felt very big, his neck was very painful and one shoulder was certainly very stiff. He could never stand up against that old ruffian. But what had become of him? Why! He had gone to fetch the soldiers! After that conclusion Symons became more composed. He began to try to remember things. When he had last seen that old fellow it was daylight, and now—Symons looked up at the moon again—it must be near six bells in the first watch. No doubt the old scoundrel was sitting in a wine shop drinking with the soldiers. They would be here soon enough! The idea of being a prisoner of war made his heart sink a little. His ship appeared to him invested with an extraordinary number of lovable features which included Captain Vincent and the first lieutenant. He would have been glad to shake hands even with the corporal, a surly and malicious marine acting as master-at-arms of the ship. “I wonder where she is now,” he thought dismally, feelinghis distaste for captivity grow with the increase of his strength.
It was at this moment that he heard the noise of Scevola’s fall. It was pretty close; but afterwards he heard no voices and footsteps heralding the approach of a body of men. If this was the old ruffian coming back, then he was coming back alone. At once Symons started on all fours for the fore end of the tartane. He had an idea that ensconced under the foredeck he would be in a better position to parley with the enemy and that perhaps he could find there a handspike or some piece of iron to defend himself with. Just as he had settled himself in his hiding-place Scevola stepped from the shore on to the after-deck.
At the very first glance Symons perceived that this one was very unlike the man he expected to see. He felt rather disappointed. As Scevola stood still in full moonlight Symons congratulated himself on having taken up a position under the foredeck. That fellow, who had a beard, was like a sparrow in body compared with the other; but he was armed dangerously with something that looked to Symons either like a trident or fishgrains on a staff. “A devil of a weapon that,” he thought, appalled. And what on earth did that beggar want on board? What could he be after?
The new-comer acted strangely at first. He stood stock still, craning his neck here and there, peering along the whole length of the tartane, then crossing the deck he repeated all those performances on the other side. “He has noticed that the cabin door is open. He’s trying to see where I’ve got to. He will be coming forward to look for me,” said Symons tohimself. “If he corners me here with that beastly pronged affair I am done for.” For a moment he debated within himself whether it wouldn’t be better to make a dash for it and scramble ashore; but in the end he mistrusted his strength. “He would run me down for sure,” he concluded. “And he means no good, that’s certain. No man would go about at night with a confounded thing like that if he didn’t mean to do for somebody.”
Scevola, after keeping perfectly still, straining his ears for any sound from below where he supposed Lieutenant Réal to be, stooped down to the cabin scuttle and called in a low voice: “Are you there, lieutenant?” Symons saw these motions and could not imagine their purport. That excellent able seaman of proved courage in many cutting-out expeditions broke into a slight perspiration. In the light of the moon the prongs of the fork, polished by much use, shone like silver, and the whole aspect of the stranger was weird and dangerous in the extreme. Who could that man be after, but him, himself.
Scevola, receiving no answer, remained in a stooping position. He could not detect the slightest sound of breathing down there. He remained in this position so long that Symons became quite interested. “He must think I am still down there,” he whispered to himself. The next proceeding was quite astonishing. The man, taking up a position on one side of the cuddy scuttle and holding his horrid weapon as one would a boarding pike, uttered a terrific whoop and went on yelling in French with such volubility that he quite frightened Symons. Suddenly he left off, moved away from the scuttle and looked at a loss what to do next.Anybody who could have then seen Symons’ protruded head with his face turned aft would have seen on it an expression of horror. “The cunning beast,” he thought. “If I had been down there, with the row he made, I would have surely rushed on deck and then he would have had me.” Symons experienced the feeling of a very narrow escape; yet it brought not much relief. It was simply a matter of time. The fellow’s homicidal purpose was evident. He was bound before long to come forward. Symons saw him move, and thought, “Now he’s coming,” and prepared himself for a dash. “If I can dodge past these blamed prongs I might be able to take him by the throat,” he reflected, without, however, feeling much confidence in himself.
But to his great relief Scevola’s purpose was simply to conceal the fork in the hold in such a manner that the handle of it just reached the edge of the after-deck. In that position it was of course invisible to anybody coming from the shore. Scevola had made up his mind that the lieutenant was out of the tartane. He had wandered away along the shore and would probably be back in a moment. Meantime it had occurred to him to see if he could discover anything compromising in the cabin. He did not take the fork down with him because in that confined space it would have been useless and rather a source of embarrassment than otherwise should the returning lieutenant find him there. He cast a circular glance around the basin and then prepared to go down.
Every movement of his was watched by Symons. He guessed Scevola’s purpose by his movements, and said to himself: “Here’s my only chance, and not asecond to be lost either.” Directly Scevola turned his back on the forepart of the tartane in order to go down the little cabin ladder, Symons crawled out from his concealment. He ran along the hold on all fours for fear the other should turn his head round before disappearing below, but directly he judged that the man had touched bottom, he stood on his feet and catching hold of the main rigging swung himself on the after-deck and, as it were in the same movement, flung himself on the doors of the cabin, which came together with a crash. How he could secure them he had not thought, but as a matter of fact he saw the padlock hanging on a staple on one side; the key was in it, and it was a matter of a fraction of a second to secure the doors effectually.
Almost simultaneously with the crash of the cabin door there was a shrill exclamation of surprise down there, and just as Symons had turned the key the man he had trapped made an effort to break out. That, however, did not disturb Symons. He knew the strength of that door. His first action was to get possession of the stable fork. At once he felt himself a match for any single man, or even two men, unless they had fire-arms. He had no hope, however, of being able to resist the soldiers and really had no intention of doing so. He expected to see them appear at any moment led by that confounded marinero. As to what the farmer man had come for on board the tartane he had not the slightest doubt about it. Not being troubled by too much imagination, it seemed to him obvious that it was to kill an Englishman and for nothing else. “Well, I am jiggered,” he exclaimed mentally. “The damned savage! I haven’t done anything to him. They must be a murderous lot hereabouts.” He looked anxiously up the slope. He would have welcomed the arrival of soldiers. He wanted more than ever to be made a proper prisoner, but a profound stillness reigned on the shore and a most absolute silence down below in the cabin. Absolute. No word, no movement. The silence of the grave. “He’s scared to death,” thought Symons, hitting in his simplicity on the exact truth. “It would serve him jolly well right if I went down there and ran him through with that thing. I would do it for a shilling, too.” He was getting angry. It occurred to him also that there was some wine down there too. He discovered he was very thirsty and he felt rather faint. He sat down on the little skylight to think the matter over while awaiting the soldiers. He even gave a friendly thought to Peyrol himself. He was quite aware that he could have gone ashore and hidden himself for a time, but that meant in the end being hunted among the rocks and, certainly, captured; with the additional risk of getting a musket ball through his body.
The first gun of theAmelialifted him to his feet as though he had been snatched up by the hair of his head. He intended to give a resounding cheer, but produced only a feeble gurgle in his throat. His ship was talking to him. They hadn’t given him up. At the second report he scrambled ashore with the agility of a cat—in fact, with so much agility that he had a fit of giddiness. After it passed off he returned deliberately to the tartane to get hold of the stable fork. Then, trembling with emotion, he staggered off quietly and resolutely with the only purpose of getting down to the seashore. He knew that as long as he kept downhillhe would be all right. The ground in this part being a smooth rocky surface and Symons being barefooted, he passed at no great distance from Peyrol without being heard. When he got on rough ground he used the stable fork for a staff. Slowly as he moved, he was not really strong enough to be sure-footed. Ten minutes later or so Peyrol, lying ensconced behind a bush, heard the noise of a rolling stone far away in the direction of the cove. Instantly the patient Peyrol got on his feet and started towards the cove himself. Perhaps he would have smiled if the importance and gravity of the affair in which he was engaged had not given all his thoughts a serious cast. Pursuing a higher path than the one followed by Symons, he had presently the satisfaction of seeing the fugitive, made very noticeable by the white bandages about his head, engaged in the last part of the steep descent. No nurse could have watched with more anxiety the adventure of a little boy than Peyrol the progress of his former prisoner. He was very glad to perceive that he had had the sense to take what looked like the tartane’s boathook to help himself with. As Symons’ figure sank lower and lower in his descent Peyrol moved on, step by step, till at last he saw him from above sitting down on the seashore, looking very forlorn and lonely, with his bandaged head between his hands. Instantly Peyrol sat down too, protected by a projecting rock. And it is safe to say that with that there came a complete cessation of all sound and movement on the lonely head of the peninsula for a full half-hour.