Carette of Sark Part 31

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW I LAY AMONG LOST SOULS

The ship we were on was the 48-gun frigate _Swiftsure_, and of our treatment we had no reason to complain. We were landed at Portsmouth two days later, drafted from one full prison to another, from Forton to the Old Mill at Plymouth, from Plymouth to Stapleton near Bristol, separated by degrees and circ.u.mstances, till at last I found myself one more lost soul in the great company that filled the temporary war prison, known among its inmates and the people of that countryside as Amperdoo.

It lay apart from humanity, in a district of fens and marshes, across which, in the winter time, the east wind swept furiously in from the North Sea, some thirty miles away. It cut like a knife--to the very bone. I hear it still of a night in my dreams, and wake up and thank G.o.d that after all it is only our own gallant south-wester, which, if somewhat unreasonably boisterous at times, and over fond of showing what it can do, is still an honest wind, and devoid of treachery. For we were but ill-clad at best, and were always lacking in the matter of fuel, and many other things that make for comfort. Whatever we might be at other times, when the east wind blew in from the sea we were, every man of us, _ames perdues_ in very truth, and I marvel sometimes that any of us saw the winter through.

The prison was a huge enclosure surrounded by a high wooden stockade.

Inside this was another stockade, and between the two armed guards paced day and night. In the inner ring were a number of long wooden houses in which we lived, if that could be called living which for most was but a weary dragging on of existence bare of hope and love, and sorely trying at times to one's faith in one's fellows and almost in G.o.d Himself. For the misery and suffering enclosed within that sharp-toothed circle of unbarked posts were enough to crush a man's spirit and sicken his heart.

In the summer pestilential fevers and agues crept out of the marshes and wasted us. In the winter the east winds wrung our bones and our hearts. And summer and winter alike, the Government contractors, or those employed by them, waxed fat on their contracts, which, if honestly carried out, would have kept us in reasonable content.

How some among my fellow-prisoners managed to keep up their hearts, and to maintain even fairly cheerful faces, was a source of constant amazement to me. They had, I think, a genius for turning to account the little things of life and making the most of them, outwardly at all events. But the cheerfulness of those who refused to break down, even though it might be but skin-deep and subject to sudden blight, was still better than the utter misery and despair which prevailed elsewhere.

Outwardly, then, when the sun shone and one's bones were warm, our company might seem almost gay at times, joking, laughing, singing, gambling. But these things covered many a sick heart, and there were times when the heart-sickness prevailed over all else, and we lay in corners apart, and loathed our fellows and wished we were dead.

I say we, but, in truth, in these, and all other matters, except the regular routine of living, I was for a considerable time kept apart from my fellows by the deafness brought on by the explosion. I lived in a little soundless world of my own with those dearest to me,--Carette, and my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, and Jeanne Falla, and George Hamon.

And if I needed further company, I could people the grim stockade with old friends out of those four most wonderful books of my grandfather's. And very grateful was I now for the insistence which had made me read them times without number, and for the scarcity which had limited me to them till I knew parts of them almost by heart.

Outwardly, indeed, I might seem loneliest of the company, for cards and dice had never greatly attracted me, and to risk upon a turn of the one or a throw of the other the absolute necessaries of life, which were the only things of value we possessed as a rule, seemed to me most incredible folly.

Possibly the personal value of the stakes added zest to the game, for they wrangled bitterly at times, and more than once fought to the death over the proper ownership of articles which would have been dearly bought for an English shilling. But the loss of even these trifling things, since they meant starvation, inside or out, made all the difference in the world to the losers, and cut them to the quick, and led to hot disputations.

And, though I strove to maintain a cheerful demeanour, which was not always easy when the wind blew from the east, my deafness relieved me of any necessity of joining in that mask of merriment, which, as I have said, as often as not covered very sick hearts. For though a merry face is better than a sad one, I take it to be the part of an honest man to bear himself simply as he is, and the honest sad faces drew me more than the merry masked ones through which the bones of our skeletons peeped grisly enough at times.

Thoughts of escape occupied some of us, but for most it was out of the question. For, even if they could have got out of the enclosure and pa.s.sed the sentries, their foreign speech and faces must have betrayed them at once outside.

To myself, however, that did not so fully apply. In appearance I might easily pa.s.s as an English sailor, and the English speech came almost as readily to my tongue as my own. It was with vague hopes in that direction, and also as a means of pa.s.sing the long dull days, that I began carving bits of bone into odd shapes, and, when suitable pieces offered, into snuffboxes, which I sold to the country-folk who came in with provisions.

At first my rough attempts produced but pence, and then, as greater skill came with practice, shillings, and so I began to acc.u.mulate a small store of money against the time I should need it outside.

In building the prison in so marshy a district, advantage had been taken of a piece of rising ground. The enclosure was built round it, so that the middle stood somewhat higher than the sides, and standing on that highest part one could see over the sharp teeth of the stockade and all round the countryside.

That wide view was not without a charm of its own, though its long dull levels grew wearisome to eyes accustomed only to the bold headlands and sharp scarps of Sercq, or to the ever-changing sea. For miles all round were marshes where nothing seemed to grow but tussocks of long wiry gra.s.s, with great pools and channels of dark water in between. Far away beyond them there were clumps of trees in places, and farther away still one saw here and there the spire of a church a great way off.

When we came there the wiry gra.s.s was yellow and drooping, like bent and rusted bayonets, and the pools were black and sullen, and the sky was gray and lowering and very dismal. And in Sercq the rocks were golden in the sunshine, the headlands were great soft cushions of velvet turf, the heather purpled all the hillsides, and the tall bracken billowed under the west wind. And on the gray rocks below, the long waves flung themselves in a wild abandon of delight, and shouted aloud because they were free.

Then the east winds came, and all the face of things blanched like the face of death, with coa.r.s.e hairs sticking up out of it here and there. The pools and ditches were white with ice, and all the countryside lay stiff and stark, a prisoner bound in chains and iron. To stand there looking at it for even five minutes made one's backbone rattle for half a day. And yet, even then, in Sercq the sun shone soft and warm, the sky and sea were blue, the fouaille was golden-brown on the hillside, the young gorse was showing pale on the Eperquerie, and the Butcher's Broom on Tintageu was brilliant with scarlet berries.

To any man--even to our warders--Amperdoo was a desolation akin to death.

To many a weary prisoner it proved death itself and so the gate to wider life. To one man it was purgatory but short removed from h.e.l.l, and that he came through it unscathed was due to that which he had at first regarded as a misfortune, but which, by shutting him into a world of his own with those he loved, kept his heart sweet and fresh and una.s.soiled.

In time, indeed, my hearing gradually returned, and long before I left the prison it was quite recovered. But before it came back the habit of loneliness had grown upon me, and there was little temptation to break through it, and I lived much within myself.

Many the nights I sought my hammock as soon as the daylight faded, and lay there thinking of them all at home. To open my eyes was to look on a mob of crouching figures by the distant fire, wrangling as it seemed--for I could not hear them--over their cards and dice. But--close my eyes, and in a moment I was in Jeanne Falla's great kitchen at Beaumanoir, with Carette perched up on the side of the green-bed, swinging her feet and knitting blue wool, and Aunt Jeanne herself, kneeling in the wide hearth in the glow of the flaming gorse, seeing to her cooking and flashing her merry wisdom at us with twinkling eyes. Or--in the glimmer of the dawn, my eyes would open drearily on the rows and rows of hammocks in the long wooden room, every single hammock a stark bundle of misery and suffering. And I would close them again and draw the blanket tight over my head, and--we were boy and girl again, splashing barefoot in the warm pools under the Autelets; or--we were lying in the sunshine in the sweet short herbs of the headlands, with kicking heels and light hair all mixed up with dark, as we laid our heads together and plotted mischiefs; or, side by side, with gleaming brown faces, and free unfettered limbs as white as our thoughts, we slipped through the writhing coils of the Gouliot, and hung panting to the honeycombed rocks while the tide hissed and whispered in the long tresses of the seaweed.

My clearest and dearest recollections were of those earlier days, before any fixed hopes and ideas had brought with them other possibilities. But I thought too of Jeanne Falla's party, and of young Torode, and I wondered and wondered what might be happening over there, with me given up for dead and Torode free to work his will so far as he was able.

Some comfort I found in thought of Aunt Jeanne, in whose wisdom I had much faith; and in George Hamon, who knew my hopes and hated Torode; and in my mother and my grandfather and Krok, who would render my love every help she might ask, but were not so much in the way of it as the others. But, if they all deemed me dead,--as by this time I feared they must, though, indeed, they had refused to do so before,--my time might already be past, and that which I cherished as hope might be even now but dead ashes.

At times I wondered if Jean Le Marchant had not had his suspicions of Torode's treacheries, and how he would regard the young Torode as suitor for Carette in that case. I was sure in my own mind that her father and brothers would never yield her to anything but what they deemed the best for her. But their ideas on that head might differ widely from my own, and I drew small comfort from the thought.

And Carette herself? I hugged to myself the remembrance of her last farewell. I lived on it. It might mean nothing more than the memory of our old friendship. It might mean everything. I chose to believe it meant everything. And I knew that even if I were dead she would never listen to young Torode if a glimmer of the truth came to her ears, for she was the soul of honour.

Then came a matter which at once added to my anxieties, and set work to my hands which kept my mind from dwelling too darkly on its own troubles.

So crowded were all the war prisons up and down the land, and so continuous was the stream of captives brought in by the war-ships, that death no sooner made a vacancy amongst us than it was filled at once from the overflowing quarters elsewhere.

We had fevers and agues constantly with us, and one time so sharp an epidemic of small-pox that every man of us, will he nil he, had to submit to the inoculation then newly introduced as a preventive against that most horrible disease. Some of us believed, and rightly I think, that as good a preventive as any against this or any ailment was the keeping of the body in the fittest possible condition, and to that end we subjected ourselves to the hardest exercise in every way we could contrive, and suffered I think less than the rest.

As the long hard winter drew slowly past, and spring brightened the land and our hearts, and set new life in both, my mind turned again to thoughts of escape. While that bleak country lay in the grip of ice and snow it had seemed certain death to quit the hard hospitality of the prison. It was better to be alive inside than dead outside. But now the stirrings of life without stirred the life within towards freedom, and I began to plan my way.

CHAPTER XXIV

HOW I CAME ACROSS ONE AT AMPERDOO

I had worked hard at my carvings, and had become both a better craftsman and a keener bargainer, and so had managed to acc.u.mulate a small store of money. I could see my way without much difficulty over the first high wooden stockade, but so far I could not see how to pa.s.s the numberless sentries that patrolled constantly between it and the outer fence.

And while I was still striving to surmount this difficulty in my own mind, which would I knew be still more difficult in actual fact, that occurred which upset all my plans and tied me to the prison for many a day.

Among the new-comers one day was one evidently sick or sorely wounded. His party, we heard, had come up by barge from the coast. The hospital was full, and they made a pallet for the sick man in a corner of our long room.

He lay for the most part with his face to the wall, and seemed much broken with the journey.

I had pa.s.sed him more than once with no more than the glimpse of a white face. An attendant from the hospital looked in now and again, at long intervals, to minister to his wants. The sufferer showed no sign of requiring or wishing anything more, and while his forlornness troubled me, I did not see that I could be of any service to him.

It was about the third day after his arrival that I caught his eye fixed on me, and it seemed to me with knowledge. I went across and bent over him, then fell quickly to my knees beside him.

"Le Marchant! Is it possible?"

It was Carette's youngest brother, Helier.

"All that's left of him,--hull damaged," he said, with a feeble show of spirit.

"What's wrong?"

"A shot 'twixt wind and water--leaking a bit."

"Does it hurt you to talk?"

He nodded to save words, but added, "Hurts more not to. Thought you were dead."

"I suppose so. Now you must lie quiet, and I'll look after you. But tell me--how were they all in Sercq the last you heard--my mother and grandfather--and Carette? And how long is it since?"