Carette of Sark Part 7

"Quick then!" as he wrestled with his half-dried clothes, still sticky with the sea-water.

He was fixing the iron bar, which served as anchor for his boat, under a big boulder, when she joined him, still b.u.t.toning her skirt, and they sped together up the hazardous path which led up to La Fregondee. He gave her a helping hand now and again over difficult bits, but they had no breath for words. They reached the top panting like hounds, but the boy turned at once through the fields to the left and never stopped till he dropped spent on the short turf of the headland by Saut de Juan.

"Ah!" he gasped, and sighed with vast enjoyment, and the girl stared wide-eyed.

Down Great Russel, between them and Herm, two great ships were driving furiously, with every sail at fullest stretch and the white waves boiling under their bows. Farther out, beyond the bristle of reefs and islets which stretch in a menacing line to the north of Herm, another stately vessel was manoeuvring in advance of--

"One--two--three--four--five--six," counted the boy, "and each one as big as herself."

Every now and again came the sullen boom of her guns and answering booms from her pursuers.

"Six to one!" breathed the boy, quivering like a pointer. "And she's terrible near the rocks. Bon Gyu! but she'll be on them! She'll be on them sure," and he jumped up and danced in his excitement. "You can't get her through there!--Ay-ee!" and he funnelled his hands to shout a warning across three miles of sea in the teeth of a westerly breeze.

"Silly!" said the girl from the turf where she sat with her hands round her knees. "They can't hear you!"

"Oh, guyabble! Oh, bon Gyu!" and he stood stiff and stark, as the great ship narrowed as she turned towards them suddenly, and came threading her way through the bristling rocks, in a way that pa.s.sed belief and set the hair in the nape of the boy's neck crawling with apprehension.

"Platte Boue!" he gasped, as she came safely past that danger. "Grand Amfroque!" and he began to dance.

"Founiais!" and she came out into Great Russel with a glorious sweep, shook herself proudly to the other tack, and went foaming past the Equetelees and the Grands Bouillons, swept round the south of Jethou, and began short tacking for Peter Port in wake of her consorts.

Since the guns, the drama out there had unfolded itself in silence, and silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward. The small boy danced and waved his arms and cheered frantically. The ships beyond the reefs were streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.

The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial understanding of it all in her looks.

"Why are you so crazy about it?" she asked.

"Because we've won, you silly!"

"Of course! We're English. But all the same we ran away."

"We're English"--and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.

"Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates!

And let me tell you there's not many men could have brought that ship through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the _Crescent_ off Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who received a large gold medal for the feat.]

His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise. It was a stout, heavily-built man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have cared to wear.

"Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?" he asked, in a tongue that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no conviction to the boy's mind.

But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was too busy thinking to speak.

"Come then! Art dumb?" and he shook the boy roughly.

"Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!" said Carette, dancing round them with apprehension for her companion. "He's dumb."

"He was shouting loud enough a minute ago," and he pinched the boy's ear smartly between his big thumb and finger.

"It's only sometimes," said Carette lamely. "You let him go and maybe he'll speak."

"See, my lad," said the burly one, letting go the boy's ear but keeping a grip on his shoulder. "I'm not going to harm you. All I want to know is whether you've seen any sizable ships banging about here lately.--You know what I mean!"

The small boy knew perfectly what he meant, and his lip curled at thought of being mistaken for the kind of boy who would open his mouth to a preventive man. He shook his head, however.

"Not, eh? Well, you know the neighbourhood anyway. Take me to the Boutiques."

"The Boutiques?" cried Carette.

"Ah! The Boutiques. You know where the Boutiques are, I can see."

They both knew the Boutiques. It would be a very small child on Sercq who did not know that much. The small boy knew, too, that both the Boutiques and the Gouliot caves had nooks and niches in their higher ranges, boarded off and secured with stout padlocked doors, where goods were stored for transfer to the cutters and cha.s.se-marees as occasion offered, just as they were in the great warehouses of the Guernsey merchants. He had vague ideas that so long as the goods were on dry land the preventive men could not touch them, but of that he was not perfectly certain. These troublesome Customs' officers were constantly having new powers conferred on them. He had overheard the men discussing them many a time, and the very fact of this man trying to find the Boutiques was in itself suspicious. But the man was a stranger. That was evident from his uncouth talk and foolish ways, and the small boy's mind was made up in a moment.

Carette was watching anxiously, with a wild idea in her mind that if she flung herself at the preventive man's feet and held them tightly, the boy might wriggle away and escape.

But the boy had a brighter scheme than that. He turned and led the way inland, and dropped a wink to Carette as he did so, and her anxious little brain jumped to the fact that the stranger was to be misled.

Her sharpened faculties perceived that the best way to second his efforts was to pretend a vehement objection to his action and so lend colour to it.

"Don't you do it, Phil!" she cried, dancing round them. "Don't you do it, or I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."

Phil marched steadily on with the heavy hand gripping his shoulder.

"Sensible boy!" said the preventive man.

As everyone knows, the Boutiques lie hid among the northern cliffs by the Eperquerie. But, once lose sight of the sea, amid the tangle of wooded lanes which traverse the Island, and, without the guidance of the sun, it needs a certain amount of familiarity with the district to know exactly where one will come out.

The small boy stolidly led the way past Beaumanoir, and Carette wailed like a lost soul alongside. Jeanne Falla looked out as they pa.s.sed and called out to know what was happening.

"This wicked man is making Phil show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette, and the wicked man chuckled, and so did Jeanne Falla.

They pa.s.sed the cottages at La Vauroque. The women and children crowded the doors.

"What is it then, Carette?" they cried. "Where is he taking him?"

"He is making him show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette, crumpling her pretty face into hideous grimaces by way of explanation.

"Oh, my good!" cried the women, and the procession pa.s.sed on along the road that led past Dos d'Ane. The steamy haze lay thicker here. The wind drove it past in slow coils, but its skirts seemed to cling to the heather and bracken as though reluctant to loose its hold on the Island.

They pa.s.sed down a rough rock path with ragged yellow sides, and stood suddenly looking out, as it seemed, on death.

In front and all around--a fathomless void of mist, which curled slowly past in thin white whorls. The only solid thing--the raw yellow path on which they stood. It stretched precariously out into the void and seemed to rest on nothing. From somewhere down below came the hoa.r.s.e low growl of sea on rock. Otherwise the stillness of death.--The Coupee!

Sorely trying to stranger nerves at best of times was that wonderful narrow bone of a neck which joins Little Sercq to Sercq,--six hundred feet long, three hundred feet high, four feet wide at its widest at that time, and in places less, and with nothing between the crumbling edges of the path and the growling death below but ragged falls of rock, almost sheer on the one side and little better on the other. On a clear day the unaccustomed eye swam with the welter of the surf below on both sides at once; the unaccustomed brain reeled at thought of so precarious a pa.s.sage; and the unaccustomed body, unless tenanted by a fool, or possessed of nerves beyond the ordinary or of no nerves at all, turned as a rule at the sight and thanked G.o.d for the feel of solid rock behind, or else went humbly down on hands and knees and so crossed in safety with lowered crest.

To the eyes of the rat-faced man the path seemed but a wavering line in the wavering mist. His hand gripped the boy's shoulder, grateful for something solid to hang on to. And gripped it the harder when Carette skipped past them and disappeared along that knife-edge of a dancing path.

"Come on!" said the boy,--the first words he had spoken.