Carette of Sark Part 40

"The good G.o.d help you!"

When the night began to thin I told her I must go, though it would not be out of hearing.

"Be ready the moment I open the gate," I said, "for every second will be of consequence. Now, good-bye, dearest!" and we kissed once more through the rusty bars, and I stole away.

The pa.s.sage in the rock which led up to the gate was a continuation of the natural cleft which formed the chamber. The slope of the rocks left the gateway no more than eight or nine feet high, though, at the highest point inside, the roof of the chamber was perhaps twenty feet above the floor.

The same slope continued outside, so that the side walls of the pa.s.sage were some eight or nine feet high, and fell almost straight to the rock flooring. Both cleft and pa.s.sage were made, I think, like the clefts and caves on Sercq, by the decay of a softer vein of rock in the harder granite, so leaving, in course of time, a straight cleavage, which among the higher rocks formed the chamber, and on the lower slope formed the pa.s.sage up to it.

My very simple plan was to lie in wait, crouched flat upon the top wall of the pa.s.sage close to the gateway, and from there to spring down upon the unsuspecting warder, whoever it might be--Torode, or his wife, or any other. And by such unlooked-for attack I hoped to win the day, even though it should be Torode himself who came. But I did not believe it would be Torode, for he had his hands full down below, and Carette was to him only a very secondary matter.

I half hoped it might be young Torode, for the hurling of my hatred on him would have been grateful to me. But I thought it would be the mother, and in that case, though I would use no more violence than might be necessary, nothing should keep me from Carette.

I lay flat on the rough rock wall and waited. "Carette!" I whispered.

"Phil!"

"I am here just above you, dearest. When you hear them coming, be ready."

The thin darkness was becoming gray. In the sky up above, little clouds were forming out of the shadows, and presently they were flecked with pink, and all reached out towards the rising sun. The rocks below me began to show their heads. It was desperately hard work waiting. I hungered anxiously for someone to come and let me be doing.

What if they left her till the very last, and only came up, several of them, to hurry her on board the schooner? The possibility of that chilled me more than the morning dews. My face pinched with anxiety in accord with my heart. I felt grim and hard and fit for desperate deeds.

And now it was quite light, and I could see across the lower slope of rocks to St. Sampson's harbour and the flat lands beyond it.

Would they never come? h.e.l.l is surely an everlasting waiting for something that never comes.

I was growing sick with anxiety when at last the blessed sound of footsteps on the rocky path came to me, and in a moment I was Phil Carre again, and Carette Le Marchant, the dearest and sweetest girl in all the world, was locked behind iron bars just below me, and I was going to release her or die for it.

But my heart gave a triumphant jump, and there was no need to think of death, for the coming one was a woman, and she came up the ascent with bent head and carried food in her hands.

I let her get right to the gate, then, from my knees, launched myself onto her, and she went down against the bars in a heap, bruising her face badly.

But Carette was all my thought. Before the woman knew what had struck her, I had her hands tied behind her with twisted strips of her own ap.r.o.n, and had gagged her with a bunch of the same, and had the key in the lock, and Carette was free.

The woman was dazed still with her fall. We bound her feet with a strip of blanket and laid her on the bed, locked the gate again behind us, and sped down the rocky way till a gap let us out into the open. Then swiftly among the humps of rock, hand in hand, down the slope, towards the sh.e.l.l beach where the boat lay. I had left it close under the last of the high ground, and had drawn it well up out of reach of the tide, as I believed. But there was no boat there. The beach lay shining in the sun, bare and white, and my heart gave a jerk of dismay.

"There it is!" panted Carette, pointing the opposite way along the sh.o.r.e.

And there, among a tumbled heap of rocks, whose heads just showed above the water, I saw my boat mopping and mowing at me in the grip of the tide.

I ran along to the nearest point on the beach, calling over my shoulder to Carette, "If they come after you, take to the water; I will pick you up,"--and dashed in, as we used to do in the olden days, till the water tripped me up, and then swam my fastest for the boat, and thanked G.o.d that swimming came so natural to me.

I had the boat back to the beach and Carette aboard within a few minutes, and we each took an oar and pulled for Brecqhou with exultant hearts. We thought our perils were past--and they were but just beginning.

For as we cleared the eastern point which juts out into the sea, and opened Jethou and the dark channel between the two islands, our eyes lighted together on a boat which was just about to turn the corner into the Herm roadstead. Another minute and it would have been gone, and we should have been free.

I stopped rowing and made to back in again out of sight, but it was not to be. They sighted us at the same moment, and in an instant were tugging at their oars to get their boat round, while we bent and pulled for our lives.

Fortunately for us, the tide was running swiftly between the islands, and the time it took them to get round gave us a start. Moreover, their course, till they got clear of the land, was set thick with perils, and they had to go cautiously, while nothing but clear sea lay between us and Brecqhou.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

HOW I HELD THE NARROW WAY

And so, once again I was pulling for dear life, and now indeed for more than life, with death, and more than death, coming on astern in venomous jerks and vicious leaps.

Carette's soft hands were not equal to work of this kind, and she saw it.

There were but the two oars in the boat. I bade her hand me hers, and she did it instantly, sliding it along to my rowlock and losing but a single stroke.

The odds were somewhat against us, but not so much as I feared. For, if I was single-handed against their six oars, their boat was heavier, and carried four armed men in addition to the oarsmen.

But I saw that Brecqhou would be impossible to us, and moreover must prove but a cul-de-sac if we got there, for at best there were but two sick men there, and they could give us no help. The house indeed might offer us shelter for a time, but the end would only be delayed. So I edged off from Brecqhou, thinking to run for Havre Gosselin, and then, with senses quickened to the occasion, I saw that Havre Gosselin would serve us no better.

Port es Saies, Grande Greve, Vermandes, Les Fontaines, Port Gorey,--I ran them rapidly through my mind and saw the same objection to all. For in all, the ascent to the high lands was toilsome and difficult, and one, so climbing, could be picked off with a musket from below as easily as a rabbit or a sitting gull. And that any mercy would be shown, to one of us at all events, I did not for one moment delude myself. I saw again the round hole bore itself in John Ozanne's forehead, and Helier Le Marchant's dead body lying in the boat.

But past Gorey, where the south-west gales have bitten deep into the headlands, there were places where a quick leap might carry one ash.o.r.e at cost of one's boat, and then among the ragged black rocks a creeping course might be found where bullets could not follow.

So I turned for Little Sercq, and rowed for dear life and that which was dearer still, and the venomous prow behind followed like a hound on the scent.

The black fangs of Les Dents swept past us. La Baveuse lay ahead. If I could get past Moie de Bretagne before they could cripple me I would have good hope, for thereabouts the sea was strewn with rocks and I knew my way as they did not.

They were gaining on me, but not enough for their liking. I saw the glint of a musket barrel in the sun.

"Lie down, dearest," I said sharply.

But she had seen it too, and understood.

"I will not," she said. "The wind is with us, and I help."

But in her mind she believed they would not shoot her, and she sat between me and them.

It was no time for argument. Safety for both of us lay in my arms and legs, and their power to gain a landing and get up the slope before the others could damage them. I accepted her sacrifice, and set my teeth, and strove to pull harder still.

Young Torode himself was distinguishable in the boat behind, and I knew his pa.s.sion for her and did not believe he would deliberately attempt her life.

Nor do I now. Possibly his intent was only to frighten us, but when bullets fly, lives are cheap.

Torode himself stood up in the stern of his boat, and levelled at us, and fired. But the shot went wide, and I only pulled the harder, and was not greatly in fear, for shooting from a jumping boat is easy, but hitting a jumping mark is quite another matter.

We drove past Moie de Bretagne, with the green seas leaping up its fretted sides and lacing them with rushing white threads as they fell. How often had Carette and I sat watching that white lacery of the rocks and swum out through the tumbling green to see it closer still. Good times they were, and my thought shot through them like an arrow as we swung past Rouge Cane Bay and opened Gorey.

But these times were better, even though death came weltering close behind us. For, come what might, we were man and woman, and all the man within me, and what there might be of G.o.d, clave to this sweet woman who sat before me--who sat of her own choice between me and death--and I knew that she loved me as I loved her, and my heart was full and glad in spite of the hunting Death behind.

We were in among the tumbled rocks. I knew them like a book. We swept across the dark mouth of Gorey. In among the ragged heads and weltering white surf of the Pierres-a-Beurre; past the sounding cave where the souffleur blows his spray a hundred feet into the south-west gale. We swung on a rushing green-white swirl towards a black shelf, behind which lies a deep dark pool in a mighty hollow worn smooth and round with the ceaseless grinding of the stones that no tide can ever lift.

"Ready!" I cried.

And at the next wave we leaped together, and the hand that I held in mine was steadier than my own, for mine was all of a shake with the strain.