Carette of Sark Part 32

"A month--all well, far as I know. But we--" with a gloomy shake of the head--"we are wiped out."

"Your father and brothers?"

"All in same boat--wiped out."

I would have liked to question him further, but the talking was evidently trying to him, and I had to wait. It was much to have learnt that up to a month ago all was well with those dearest to me, though his last words raised new black fears.

I hung about outside till the hospital attendant paid his belated visit, and then questioned him.

"A shot through the lung," he told me, "and a bout of fever on top of it.

Lung healing, needs nursing. Do you know him?"

"He is from my country. If you'll tell me what to do I'll see to him."

"Then I'll leave him to you. We've got our hands full over there," and he gave me simple directions as to treatment, and told me to report to him each day.

And so my work was cut out for me, and for the time being all thought of escape was put aside.

It was as much as I could do to keep Le Marchant from talking, but I insisted and bullied him into the silence that was good for him, and had my reward in his healing lung and slowly returning strength.

To keep him quiet I sat much with him, and told him by degrees pretty nearly all that had happened to me. In the matter of Torode I could not at first make up my mind whether to disclose the whole or not, and so told him only how John Ozanne and the _Swallow_ encountered Main Rouge, and came to grief, and how the privateer, having picked me up, had lodged me on board the _Josephine_.

I thought he eyed me closely while I told of it, and then doubted if it was not my own lack of candour that prompted the thought.

His recovery was slow work at best, for the wound had brought on fever, and the fever had reduced him terribly, and when the later journeying renewed the wound trouble he had barely strength to hang on. But he was an Island man, and almost kin to me for the love I bore Carette, and I spared myself no whit in his service, thinking ever of her. And the care and attention I was able to give him, and perhaps the very fact of companionship, and the hopes I held out of escape together when he should be well enough, wrought mightily in him. So much so that the hospital man, when he looked in, now and again, to see how we were getting on, told me he would want my help elsewhere as soon as my present patient was on his feet again, as I was evidently built for tending sick men.

As soon as Le Merchant's lung healed sufficiently to let him speak without ill consequences, I got out of him particulars of the disaster that had befallen them.

They were running an unusually valuable cargo into Poole Harbour when they fell into a carefully arranged trap. They flung overboard their weighted kegs and made a bolt for the open, and found themselves face to face with a couple of heavily-armed cutters converging on the harbour, evidently by signal. Under such circ.u.mstances the usual course, since flight was out of the question, would have been a quiet surrender, but Jean Le Marchant, furious at being so tricked, flung discretion after his kegs, and fought for a chance of freedom.

"But we never had a chance," said Helier bitterly, "and it was a mistake to try, though we all felt as mad about it as he did. I saw him and Martin go down. Then this cursed bullet took me in the chest, and I don't remember things very clearly after that, till I came to myself in the prison hospital at Forton, with a vast crowd of others. Then we were bustled out and anywhere to make room for a lot of wounded from the King's ships, and I thought it better to play wounded sailor than wounded smuggler, and so I kept a quiet tongue and they sent me here. The journey threw me back, but I'm glad now I came. It's good to see a Sercq face again."

"And the others?" I asked, thinking, past them all, of Carette.

"Never a word have I heard," he said gloomily. "They were taken or killed without doubt. And if they are alive and whole they are on King's ships, for they're crimping every man they can lay hands on down there."

"And Carette will be all alone, and that devil of a Torode--my G.o.d, Le Marchant!--but it is hard to sit here and think of it! Get you well, and we will be gone."

"Aunt Jeanne will see to her," he said confidently. "Aunt Jeanne is a cleverer woman than most."

"And Torode a cleverer man--the old one at all events;" and under spur of my anxiety, with which I thought to quicken his also, I told him the whole matter of the double-flag treachery, and looked for amazement equal to the quality of my news. But the surprise was mine, for he showed none.

"It's a vile business," he said, "but we saw the possibilities of it long since, and had our suspicions of Torode himself. I'm not sure that he's the only one at it either. They miscall us Le Marchants behind our backs, but honest smuggling's sweet compared with that kind of work. And so Torode is Main Rouge! That's news anyway. If ever we get home, mon beau, we'll make things hot for him. He's a treacherous devil. I'm not sure he hadn't a hand in our trouble also."

"If he had any end to serve I could believe it of him."

"But what end?"

"Young Torode wants Carette."

He laughed as though he deemed my horizon bounded by Carette, as indeed it was. "No need for him to make away with the whole of her family in order to get her," he said. "It would not commend him to her."

And presently, after musing over the matter, he said, "All the same, Carre, what I can't understand is why you're alive. In Torode's place now I'd surely have sunk you with the rest. Man! his life is in your hands."

"I understand it no more than you do. I can only suppose he thought he'd finally disposed of me by shipping me aboard the _Josephine_."

"A sight easier to have shipped you into the sea with a shot at your heels, and a sight safer too."

"It is so," I said. "And how I come to be here, and alive, I cannot tell."

As soon as the lung healed, and he was able to get about in the fresh air, he picked up rapidly, and we began to plan our next move.

We grew very friendly, as was only natural, and our minds were open to one another. The only point on which I found him in any way awanting was in a full and proper appreciation of his sister. He conceded, in brotherly fashion, that she was a good little girl, and pretty, as girls went, and possessed of a spirit of her own. And I, who had never had a sister, nor indeed much to do with girls as a cla.s.s, could only marvel at his dullness, for to me Carette was the very rose and crown of life, and the simple thought of her was a cordial to the soul.

I confided to him my plans for escape, and we laid our heads together as to the outer stockade, but with all our thinking could not see the way across it. That open s.p.a.ce between, with its hedge of sentries, seemed an impa.s.sable barrier.

We were also divided in opinion as to the better course to take if we should get outside. Le Marchant favoured a rush straight to the east coast, which was not more than thirty miles away. There he felt confident of falling in with some of the free-trading community who would put us across to Holland or even to Dunkerque, where they were in force and recognised.

I, on the other hand, stuck out for the longer journey right through England to the south coast, whence it should be possible to get pa.s.sage direct to the Islands. Whichever way we went we were fully aware that our troubles would only begin when the prison was left behind us, and that they would increase with every step we took towards salt water. For so great had been the waste of life in the war that the fleets were short-handed, and anything in the shape of a man was pounced on by the pressgangs as soon as seen, and flung aboard ship to be licked into shape to be shot at.

Le Marchant urged, with some reason, that on the longer tramp to the south his presence with me would introduce a danger which would be absent if I were alone. For his English was not fluent, and he spoke it with an accent that would betray him at once. He even suggested our parting, if we ever did succeed in getting out--he to take his chance eastward, while I went south, lest he should prove a drag on me. But this I would not hear of, and the matter was still undecided when our chance came suddenly and unexpectedly.

CHAPTER XXV

HOW WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO AMPERDOO

We were well into the summer by the time Le Marchant was fully fit to travel, and we had planned and pondered over that outer stockade till our brains ached with such unusual exercise, and still we did not see our way.

For the outer sentries were too thickly posted to offer any hopes of overcoming them, and even if we succeeded in getting past any certain one, the time occupied in scaling the outer palisades would be fatal to us.

Then our chance came without a moment's warning, and we took it on the wing.

It was a black oppressive night after a dull hot day. We had been duly counted into our long sleeping-room, and were lying panting in our hammocks, when the storm broke right above us. There came a blinding blue glare which lit up every corner of the room, and then a crash so close and awful that some of us, I trow, thought it the last crash of all. For myself, I know, I lay dazed and breathless, wondering what the next minute would bring.

It brought wild shouts from outside and the rush of many feet, the hurried clanging of a bell, the beating of a drum, and then everything was drowned in a furious downpour of rain which beat on the roof like whips and flails.

What was happening I could not tell, but there was confusion without, and confusion meant chances.

I slipped out of my hammock, unhitched it, and stole across to Le Marchant.

"Come! Bring your hammock!" I whispered, and within a minute we were outside in the storm, drenched to the skin but full of hope.

One of the long wooden houses on the other side of the enclosure was ablaze, but whether from the lightning or as cover to some larger attempt at escape we could not tell. Very likely the latter, I have since thought, for the soldiers were gathering there in numbers, and the bell still rang and the drum still beat.

Without a word, for all this we had discussed and arranged long since, we crept to the palisade nearest to us. I took my place solidly against it. Le Marchant climbed up onto my shoulders, flung the end of his hammock over the spiked top till it caught with its cordage, and in a moment he was sitting among the teeth up above. Another moment, and I was alongside him, peering down into the danger ring below, while the rain thrashed down upon us so furiously that it was all we could do to see or hear. We could, indeed, see nothing save what was right under our hands, for the dead blackness of the night was a thing to be felt.