Carette of Sark Part 37

We pressed on without a halt, for every moment was of importance, and for the most part we went in silence. For myself, I was already, in my thoughts, clasping my mother and Carette in my arms once more, and then speeding across to Peter Port to rouse them there with the news of Torode's murderous treachery.

Le Marchant was the more practical man of the two. As we pa.s.sed some windmills, and came swinging down towards the western coast, soon after midnight, he gave a cheerful "Hourra!" and in reply to my stare, cried, "The wind, man! It's as dead as St. Magloire. Monsieur Torode will never get round La Hague like this."

"It will come again with the sun, maybe," I said.

"Then the quicker we get home the better," and we hurried on.

When we came out at last on the cliffs the sea lay below us as smooth as a clouded mirror. It would mean a toilsome pa.s.sage, but toil was nothing compared with Torode. We walked rapidly along till we came to a village, which we learned, afterwards, was not Carteret but Surtainville. There were boats lying on the sh.o.r.e, and we slipped down the cliff before we reached the first house, and made our way towards them. One of those boats we had to use if we had to fight for it, but we had no desire to fight, only to get away at once without dispute and without delay.

We fixed on the one that seemed the least heavy and clumsy, though none were much to our liking, and while Le Marchant hunted up a pair of spare oars in case of accident, I found a piece of soft white stone and scrawled on a board, "Boat will be returned in two days, keep this money for hire"--and emptied all I possessed onto it. Then we ran the clumsy craft into the water and settled down to a long seven hours' pull.

But labour was nothing when so much--everything--waited at the other end of the course. We went to it with a will, and I do not suppose that old boat had ever moved so rapidly since she was built.

We had been rowing hard for, we reckoned, close on three hours when the sun rose. The gray shadows drew slowly off the face of the sea, and we stood up and scanned the northern horizon anxiously. But there was no flaw upon the br.i.m.m.i.n.g white rim. Torode had evidently not been able to get round La Hague, and a man must have been blind indeed not to see therein the hand of Providence; for a cap full of wind and he would have been down on us like a wolf on two strayed lambs. But now Sercq lay straight in front of our boat's nose, like a great gray whale nuzzling its young, and every long pull of the oars brought it nearer.

There was time indeed for catastrophe yet, and our anxieties would not be ended till Creux harbour was in sight. For, from Cherbourg to Sercq was but forty miles,--but, fortunately for us, forty miles which included La Hague and the Race,--and if Torode could pick up a fair wind he could do it in four hours--or, with all obstacles, in five, or at most six--whereas, strain as we might, and we were not fresh to begin with, we could not possibly cover the distance in less than seven hours. So, given a wind, the race might prove a tight one, and, as we rowed, our eyes were glued to the northern sky-line, where La Hague was growing dimmer with every lurch of the boat, and our hearts were strong with hope if not entirely free from fear.

We toiled like galley-slaves, for though the danger was not visible as yet, for aught we knew it might appear above the horizon at any moment, and then our chances would be small indeed. Had any eye watched our progress it must have deemed us demented, for we rowed across a lonely sea as though death and destruction followed close in our wake.

For myself, I know my heart was just one dumb prayer for help in this hour of need. We had come through so much. We had escaped so many perils; so very much depended on our winning through to Sercq; and failure at this last moment would be so heart-breaking. Yes, my heart boiled with unspoken prayers and strange vows, which I fear were somewhat in the nature of bargainings,--future conduct for present aid,--but which did not seem to me out of place at the moment, and which, in any case, did me no harm, for a man works better on prayers than on curses, I'll be bound.

Sercq at last grew large in front of us, and our hearts were high. When we jerked our heads over our shoulders we could see the long green slopes of the Eperquerie beckoning us on, and the rugged brown crests of the Grande and Pet.i.te Moies bobbing cheerfully above the tumbling waves, and Le Tas on the other side standing like a monument of Sercq's unconquerable stubbornness.

And these things spoke to us, and called to us, and braced us with hope, though our flanks clapped together with the strain of that long pull, and our legs trembled, and our hands were cramped and blistered.

Then, of a sudden, Le Marchant jerked a cry, and I saw what he saw--the topsail of a schooner rising white in the sun above the sky-line, and to our hearts there was menace in the very look of it.

We looked round at Sercq, at the cracks in the headlands, and the green slopes smiling in the sunshine, and the white tongues of the waves as they leaped up the cliffs.

"Five miles!" gasped Le Marchant.

"She must be twelve or more. We'll do it."

"Close work!"

And we bent and rowed as we had never rowed in our lives before.

The schooner had evidently all the wind she wanted. She rose very rapidly.

To our anxious eyes she seemed to sweep along like a sun-gleam on a cloudy day.... Both her topsails were clear to us.... We could see her jibs swollen with venom, and past them the great sweep of her mainsails with the booms well out over the side to take the full of the wind.... The sweat poured down us, the veins stood out of us like cords.... Once, in the frenzy of my thoughts, the gleaming white sails on our quarter, and the crisp green waves alongside, and the dingy brown boat, and Le Marchant's fiery crimson neck, all shot with red for a moment, and I loosed one hand and drew it over my brow to see if it was blood or only sweat that trickled there.

On and on she came, a marvel of beauty, though she meant death for us, and showed it in every graceful venomous line, from the sharp white curl at her forefoot to the swelling menace of her sails.

Her long black hull was clear to us now, and still we had a mile to go. The breath whistled through our nostrils. Le Marchant's face when he glanced across his shoulder was twisted like a crumpled mask. We swung up from our seats and slewed half round to get every pound we could out of the thrashing oars.

We rushed in between the Moie des Burons and the Burons themselves, and drove straight for the harbour. For a moment the schooner was hid from us.

Then she came racing out again. The tide was running like a fury. We drove swirling through it.

"Ach!" burst out from both of us, as a puff of white smoke whirled from the schooner's bows and a crash behind told us that a point of rock had saved us.... The coils of the current, which runs there like a mill-race, gripped our rounded bottom and dragged at us like very devils.... It was life and death and a question of seconds.... We were level with the remnant of the old breakwater.... As we tore frantically at the oars to round it, the puff of smoke whirled out again, ... a crash behind us and chips of granite came showering into the smooth water inside, and a boat that lay just off the sh.o.r.e in a line with the opening scattered into fragments before our straining eyes.... We lay doubled over our oars, panting and sobbing and laughing. We had escaped--but as by fire.

A moment for breath, and we slipped over the side, grateful for the cold bracing of the water on our sweltering skins, struggled through the few yards to the mouth of the tunnel, and crept through to the road. We lay there p.r.o.ne till our strength came back, and one full heart, at all events,--nay, I will believe two,--thanked G.o.d fervently for escape from mighty peril. For no man may look death so closely in the face as that without being stirred to the depths.

"A close thing!" breathed Le Marchant, as we got onto our feet and found the solid earth still rolling beneath us.

"G.o.d's mercy!" I said, and we sped up the steep Creux Road, among the ferns and flowers and overhanging trees.

My heart was leaping exultantly. For Carette and my mother and home and everything lay up the climbing way, and I believed, poor fool, that I had got the better of a man like Torode of Herm.

At sight of us, one came running down from Les Laches where he had gone at sound of the firing, and greeted us with amazement.

"Bon Gyu, Phil Carre! And we thought you dead! And Helier Le Marchant!

Where do you come from? Where have you been all the time?"

"Prisoners of war. We came across from France there. There's a boat in the harbour, Elie, that we borrowed and promised to return. Will you see to it for us?" and we sped on, to meet many such welcomes, and staring eyes and gaping mouths, till we came to Beaumanoir, and walked into the kitchen.

"Oh, bon Dieu!" gasped Aunt Jeanne, and sat down suddenly on the green-bed at sight of us, believing we were spirits bearing her warning.

But I flung my arms round her neck and kissed her heartily, and asked only, "Carette?--and my mother?"

And she said, "But they are well, mon gars," and regarded me with somewhat less of doubt, but no less amazement. And I kissed her again, and said, "Helier will tell you all about it, Aunt Jeanne," and ran off across the knoll, past Vieux Port, to Belfontaine.

I looked across at Brecqhou as I came in sight of the western waters, and said to myself, "In an hour I will be over there to see Carette," and my heart leaped with joy. Away up towards Rondellerie I thought I saw my grandfather in the fields. I jumped over the green bank and came down to the house through the orchard. The door stood wide and I went in. My mother looked up in quick surprise at a visitor at so unusual an hour, and in a moment she was on my neck.

"My boy! my boy!" she cried. "Now G.o.d be praised!" and sobbed and strained me to her, and I felt all her prayers thrill through her arms into my own heart.

It was quite a while before we could settle to reasonable talk, for, in spite of her repeated a.s.sertions that she had never really given me up, she could still hardly realise that I was truly alive and come back to her, and every other minute she must fling her arms round my neck to make sure.

Then up she jumped and set food before me, in quant.i.ty equal almost to the time I had been away, as though she feared I had eaten nothing since I left home. And I had an appet.i.te that almost justified her, for the night had been a wasteful one.

And while I ate, I told her briefly where I had been, and what had kept me so long, and touched but lightly on the matter of Torode, for I saw that was not what she would care to hear.

"And Carette?" I asked. "I know she is well, for Aunt Jeanne told me so;"

and she looked up quickly, and I hastened to add,--"We had to pa.s.s Beaumanoir, and I left Helier Le Marchant there. I only stopped long enough to ask if you were all right--and Carette." If I had told her I had kissed Aunt Jeanne before herself, I really believe she would have felt hurt, though I had never thought of it so when I did it.

But her nature was too sweet, and her heart too full of grat.i.tude, to allow long harbourage to any such thoughts.

"Carette," she said with a smile, "has been much with me. But"--and her face saddened--"you do not know what has befallen them."

"Helier feared they were wiped out."

"Almost. Monsieur Le Marchant and Martin, the eldest boy, got home sorely wounded. They are still there on Brecqhou, and Carette is nursing them back to life. But I think"--and there was a touch of pride in her pleasure at it--"she has been here every time she has come across to see Jeanne Falla.

She is a good girl ...and I think she is prettier than ever." But for myself I thought that was perhaps because she saw her with new eyes.

"And my grandfather?--and Krok?"

"Both well, only much troubled about you. I do not think they ever expected to see you again, my boy. Your grandfather has blamed himself, I think, for ever letting you go, and it has aged him. Krok gave you up too, I think, but he has never ceased to keep an eye on Carette for you. I doubt if he has missed going over to Brecqhou any single day, except when the weather made it quite impossible."

"G.o.d bless him for that!"