Carette of Sark Part 22

"No, sir. It is this. I have decided to go privateering, and I want to go with the best man. I am told Torode of Herm is the best, and that you can tell me more about him than anyone else."

"Ah--Torode! Yes, he is a very clever man is Torode--a clever man, and very successful. And privateering is undoubtedly the game nowadays. Honest free-trading isn't in it compared with the privateering, though even that isn't what it was, they say. Like everything else, it is overdone, and many mouths make scant faring. And so you want to go out with Torode?" he asked musingly.

"That is my idea. You see, monsieur, I have spent nearly four years in the trading to the Indies, and I am about as well off as when I started--except in experience. Now I want to make something--all I can, and as quickly as I can. And," I said, plunging headlong at my chief object in coming, "my reasons stand there," and I pointed to Carette, who jumped at the suddenness of it, and coloured finely, and bit her lip, and sped away on some household duty which she had not thought of till that moment.

Monsieur Le Marchant smiled, and the two young men laughed out.

"Ma foi!" said the old man. "You are frank, mon gars."

"It is best so. I wanted you to know, and I wanted Carette to know, though I think she has known it always. I have never thought of any but Carette, and as soon as I am able I will ask her to marry me."

"Whether I have other views for her or not?" said her father.

"No other could possibly love Carette as I do,"--at which he smiled briefly and the others grinned. "I have only one wish in life, and that is to care for her and make her happy."

"That is for the future, so we need not talk about it now. If you make a fortune at the privateering--who knows?"

"And what can you tell me of Torode, monsieur? Is he the best man to go out with?"

"He has been more successful than most, without doubt," and the keen cold eyes rested musingly on me, while he seemed to be turning deep thoughts in his mind. "Yes. Why not try him? And after your first voyage come across again, and we will talk it over. Martin,"--to the man who had given me good-morning with his musket,--"you are too long away from your post.

Allez!"

"There was nothing in sight till Monsieur Carre came round the corner,"

said Martin, and went off to his look-out.

"These preventive men, with their constant new regulations, are an annoyance," said the old man quietly. "Some of them will be getting hurt one of these days. It is a pity the Government can't leave honest traders alone. They worry you also on Sercq, I suppose?"

"I hear of them. But we have nothing to do with the trading at Belfontaine, so they don't trouble us."

"Ah no, I remember. Well, come across again after your first voyage and tell us how you get on, Monsieur Carre."

Helier sauntered back with me towards the landing-place. Carette had disappeared. I wondered if my plain speaking had offended her, but I was glad she had heard.

I pulled out of the little bay and ran up my lug and sped straight across to Herm. Every rock was known to me, even though it showed only in a ring of widening circles or a flattening of the dancing waves into a straining coil, for we had been in the habit of fishing and vraicking here regularly until Torode took possession. And many was the time I had hung over the side of the rocking boat and sought in the depths for the tops of the great rock-pillars which once held up the bridge that joined Brecqhou to Herm and Jethou. But now the fishing and vraicking were stopped, for Torode liked visitors as little as did Jean Le Marchant.

And as I went I thought of Carette and how she looked when I spoke about her to her father. And one minute I thought I had seen in her a brief look which was not entirely discontent, and the next minute I was in doubt.

Perhaps it was a gleam of anger and annoyance. I could not tell, for the chief thing I had seen in her face was undoubtedly a vast confusion at the publicity of my declaration. In my mind also was the contradiction of Helier Le Marchant's a.s.sertion that Torode would take no Island man into his crew, and his fathers advice to go and try him. I was inclined to think that Helier would prove right, for, even with my four years' experience of men and things, I saw that Monsieur Le Marchant was beyond my understanding.

My boat swirled into the narrow way between Herm and Jethou, where the water came up lunging and thrusting like great black jelly-fish. I dropped my sail and took the oars, and stood with my face to the bows and pulled cautiously among the traps and snares that lay thick on every side and still more dangerously out of sight. So I crept round the south of Herm and drew into the little roadstead on the west.

And the first thing I saw, and saw no other for a while, was the handsomest ship I had ever set eyes on. A long low black schooner, with a narrow beading of white at deck level, and masts that tapered off into fishing-rods. She was pierced for six guns a-side, and a great tarpaulin cover on the forecastle and another astern hinted at something heavier there. Her lines and finish were so graceful that I felt sure she was French built, for English builders ever consider strength before beauty. A very fast boat, I judged, but how she would behave in dirty weather I was not so sure. Anyway, a craft to make a sailor's heart hungry to see her loosed and free of the seas. She sat the water like a gull, so lightly that one half expected a sudden unfolding of wings and a soaring flight into the blue.

I was still gazing with all my eyes, and drifting slowly in, when a sharp hail brought me round facing a man who leaned with his arms on a wall of rock and looked over and down at me.

"h.e.l.lo there!"

"h.e.l.lo!" I replied, and saw that it was young Torode himself.

From my position I could see little except the rising ground in the middle of the island, but I got the impression, chiefly no doubt from what I had heard, and from the thin curls of smoke that rose in a line behind him, that there was quite a number of houses there. In fact the place had all the look of a fortified post.

"Tiens! It is Monsieur Carre, is it not? And what may Monsieur Carre want here?" His tone was somewhat masterful, if not insolent. I felt an inclination to resent it, but bethought me in time that such could be no help to my plans, and that, moreover, nothing was to be gained by concealment.

"I came to see your father. Is he to be seen?"

"So? What about?"

"I want to join his ship there for the privateering. She's a beauty."

"Oh-ho! Tired of honest trading?"

"I didn't know privateering had become dishonest."

"Bit different from what you've been accustomed to, isn't it?"

"Bit more profitable anyway, so they say. Are you open for any hands?"

But Torode had turned and was in conversation with someone inside the rampart. I heard my own name mentioned, and presently he disappeared and his place was taken by an older man whom I knew instinctively for the great Torode himself.

A ma.s.sive black head, and a grim dark face with a week's growth of bristling black hair about it, and a dark moustache,--a strong lowering face, and a pair of keen black eyes that bored holes in one; that was Torode of Herm as I first set eyes on him.

He stared at me so long and fixedly, as if he had never seen anything like me before, that at last, out of sheer discomfort, I had to speak.

"Monsieur Torode?" I asked, and after another staring pause, he said gruffly--

"B'en! I am Torode. What is it you want?"

"A berth on your ship there."

"And why? Who are you, then?"

"Your son knows me. My name is Carre,--Phil Carre. I come from Sercq."

"Where there?"

"Belfontaine."

"Does your father live there?"

"He's dead these twenty years. I live with my mother and my grandfather."

He seemed to be turning this over in his mind, and presently he asked--

"And they want you to go privateering?"

"I don't say they want me to. It's I want to go. They are willing--at all events they don't object."

"And why do you go against their wishes?"