A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 46

said old John de Carteret weightily, and would not let a boat go out till the Doctor and the Senechal came.

It was all waiting for them the moment they arrived, however, and they stepped in and swung away round Les Laches, and three other boats followed them so closely that it looked almost like a gruesome race who should get there first.

There was little talking in any of the boats, but there was some solid hard thinking, in a mazed kind of way.

Until they knew more of the facts, indeed, they scarce knew what to think yet. But more than one of them remembered disturbedly how they had gone in force two days before to fetch Gard off his lonely rock, or to make an end of him there; and here they were going in force on a very different errand--an errand which, they could not help seeing, would bring him off his rock in a very different way, if this present matter was what it looked as if it might be.

And the Doctor was not long in giving them the facts, when they had run up on to the shingle, and then crunched through it to the place where Peter's body lay under the steep black cliff--in the exact spot where Tom Hamon's had lain just eighteen days before.

But that it was undoubtedly Peter's face and body, those who had come after Tom the last time might have thought they were going through their previous experience over again. It was all so like.

They all stood round in a dark, silent group while the Doctor carefully examined the body, and the Senechal looked on with stern and troubled face.

"It is most extraordinary," said the Doctor, straightening up from his task at last, and his face, too, was knitted with perplexity, but had something else in it besides. "This man has been done to death in exactly the same way as Hamon"--a rustle of surprise shook the group of silent onlookers. "The head has been beaten in just as Hamon's was--with some blunt rounded tool, I should say. These other wounds and contusions are the results of his fall down the cliff. He has been dead at least eight hours. Lift him carefully, men. We can do nothing more here--unless by chance the one who did it flung his weapon after him, and we could find it."

They scattered, and searched the whole dark bay minutely, but found nothing. Then with rough gentleness they bore the body to the boat and laid it under the thwarts.

"Men!" said the Senechal weightily, as they were just about to climb back into their boats. "This matter brings another matter home to all our hearts. You have been persecuting another man under the belief that he killed Tom Hamon. From what some of us knew of Mr. Gard, we were certain he could have had no hand in it. This, I take it, proves it?" He looked at the Doctor.

"Undoubtedly!" nodded the Doctor. "The man who killed this one killed the other, and that man could not be Stephen Gard, for he is on L'Etat."

"It's G.o.d's mercy that you haven't Mr. Gard's blood on your heads. Some of you, I know, have done your best that way. Suppose you had killed him that other night--what would you have felt as you stood here to-day?

Take that thought home with you, and may G.o.d keep you from like misjudgment in the future!"

And they had not a word to say for themselves, but crawled silently aboard, and in silence pulled back to Creux Harbour.

Once only old John de Carteret spoke to the Senechal, soon after they had started.

"One of them"--nodding over at the boats behind--"could go to the rock and bring him off," he suggested.

"I thought of that, but there's one I want to go with me. She'll be down at the Creux, I expect, and we'll go as soon as we've disposed of this."

There was a very different feeling visible in the silent crowd that awaited them at the harbour this time from that manifested on the last occasion, Then, it was a sympathetic anger that united them all in a common feeling against the perpetrator of the deed. Now--even before the whisper had run round that Peter Mauger had been done to death in the same way as Tom Hamon--fear was among them, and doubt. Fear of they knew not exactly what, and doubt of they knew not whom.

But here were two men done to death in their midst, and the man on whom all their suspicions had settled in the first case could not possibly have had anything to do with the second, and so had most likely had nothing to do with either--in which case the man who had was still at large among them, and no man's life was safe, much less any woman's or child's.

Their thoughts did not run, perhaps, quite so clearly as that, but that was the result of it all, and their faces showed it. Furthermore, every man and woman there began at once to cast about in his and her mind for the possible murderer, and men looked at the neighbours whom they had known all their lives, with lurking suspicions in their eyes and the consideration of strange possibilities in their minds.

Tom Hamon's death had bound them closer together; Peter Mauger's set them all apart. The strange dead man up in the school-house added to their discomfort.

It was not until the hastily-constructed litter with its gruesome burden had been sent off to the Boys' School, in charge of the constables and the Doctor, that the Senechal caught sight of Nance's eager white face and anxious eyes, in the crowd that lingered still in answer to another whisper that had flown round.

If they were at once pig-headed and hot-blooded and suspicious, they were also warm-hearted and willing to atone for a mistake--once they were sure of it.

No crowd followed Peter on his last journey but one, though the whole Island had swarmed after Tom Hamon.

They wanted to see the man who would have been killed for killing Tom, though he didn't do it, but for--circ.u.mstances, and his own pluck and endurance.

And when the Senechal beckoned to one of the circ.u.mstances, and put his hand on her slim shoulder, and said--

"We are going for him. I thought you would like to come too," her face went rosy with grat.i.tude, and the brave little hands clasped up on to her breast, as she murmured--

"Oh, M. le Senechal!" and choked at anything more.

Those nearest gave her rough words of encouragement.

"Cheer up, Nance! You'll soon have him back!"

"That's a brave garche! Don't cry about it now!"

"We'll make it up to him, la.s.s. We'll all come and dance at the wedding"--and so on.

But the Senechal patted her on the shoulder and asked--

"And where is your brother? He should come, too. I hear you have both been in this matter."

"Ah, monsieur!" she said, with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes and a pathetic little lift and fall of the hand, which expressed far more than she could put into words. "We fear ... we fear he is drowned. He swam out to the rock taking food, and ... and ... we have not seen him since;" and her hand was over her face and the tears streaming through.

"Mon Dieu! Another!" said the Senechal, aghast. "When, child? When was this?"

"The night after the storm, monsieur."

"Perhaps he is there, on the rock."

"No, monsieur. I was over there myself last night. He never got there, and we fear he must be drowned."

"You were over there, child? Why, how did you get across?"

"I swam, monsieur;" and he stared at her in amazement.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! You make up for some of the others," he said bluntly. "Come then, and we will make sure of this one, anyhow;" and he led the way to John de Carteret's boat, and all the people gave them a cheer as they pulled out of the harbour to catch the breeze off the Laches.

Then the crowd waited for their return, and talked by s.n.a.t.c.hes of all these strange happenings, and discussed and discounted the chances of Bernel's being still alive.

"For, see you, the Race! And that was the first night after the storm, and it would be running like the deuce, bidemme!" "It's best not to know how to swim if it leads you to do things like that, oui-gia!" "When a man's time comes, he cuts his cleft in the water, whether he can swim or not, crais b'en!" "And that slip of a Nance had been over there last night--par made, some folks have the courage!" "All the same, it was madness--"

But behind all the broken chatter, in every mind was the grim question, "Who is it, then, that is doing these things amongst us?" And there was a feeling of mighty discomfort abroad.

All the same, they cheered vigorously as the boat came speeding back, and they saw Gard sitting between Nance and the Senechal, and crowded round as it ran up the shingle, and would have lifted him out and carried him shoulder-high through the tunnel and up the road, if he would have had it.

They saw how his imprisonment on the rock--"Ma fe, think of it!--all through that storm, too!"--had told upon him. His cheeks were hollow, and his eyes sunken, and he looked very weary--"and, man doux, no wonder, after eighteen days on L'Etat!"--though their friendly shouts had put a touch of colour in his face and a spark in his eyes for the moment.

"Now, away home, all of you!" ordered the Senechal. "We've all had enough to think about for one day. To-morrow we will see what is to be done."

"Too much!" croaked one old crone, who had something of a reputation among her neighbours. "What I want to know is--who killed Peter Mauger?"

And that was the question that occupied most minds in Sark that night.