The Secret of Sarek Part 14

"But they have left it."

"It's still the island all around the island. It's there that the coffins lurk and lie in wait."

"But the sea is not rough."

"There's more than the sea. It's not the sea that's the enemy."

"Then what is?"

"I don't know . . . . I don't know . . . ."

The two boats veered round at the southern point. Before them lay two channels, which Honorine pointed out by the name of two reefs, the Devil's Rock and the Sarek Tooth.

It at once became evident that Correjou had chosen the Devil's Channel.

"They're touching it," said Honorine. "They are there. Another hundred yards and they are safe."

She almost gave a chuckle:

"Ah, all the devil's machinations will be thwarted, Madame Veronique! I really believe that we shall be saved, you and I and all the people of Sarek."

Veronique remained silent. Her depression continued and was all the more overwhelming because she could attribute it only to vague presentiments which she was powerless to fight against. She had drawn an imaginary line up to which the danger threatened, would continue to threaten, and where it still persisted; and this line Correjou had not yet reached.

Honorine was shivering with fever. She mumbled:

"I'm frightened . . . . I'm frightened . . . ."

"Nonsense," declared Veronique, pulling herself together, "It's absurd!

Where can the danger come from?"

"Oh," cried the Breton woman, "what's that? What does it mean?"

"What? What is it?"

They had both pressed their foreheads to the panes and were staring wildly before them. Down below, something had so to speak shot out from the Devil's Rock. And they at once recognized the motor-boat which they had used the day before and which according to Correjou had disappeared.

"Francois! Francois!" cried Honorine, in stupefaction. "Francois and Monsieur Stephane!"

Veronique recognized the boy. He was standing in the bow of the motor-boat and making signs to the people in the two rowing-boats. The men answered by waving their oars, while the women gesticulated. In spite of Veronique's opposition, Honorine opened both halves of the window; and they could hear the sound of voices above the throbbing of the motor, though they could not catch a single word.

"What does it mean?" repeated Honorine. "Francois and M. Stephane! . . .

Why did they not make for the mainland?"

"Perhaps," Veronique explained, "they were afraid of being observed and questioned on landing."

"No, they are known, especially Francois, who often used to go with me.

Besides, the ident.i.ty-papers are in the boat. No, they were waiting there, hidden behind the rock."

"But, Honorine, if they were hiding, why do they show themselves now?"

"Ah, that's just it, that's just it! . . . I don't understand . . . and it strikes me as odd . . . . What must Correjou and the others think?"

The two boats, of which the second was now gliding in the wake of the first, had almost stopped. All the pa.s.sengers seemed to be looking round at the motor-boat, which came rapidly in their direction and slackened speed when she was level with the second boat. In this way, she continued on a line parallel with that of the two boats and fifteen or twenty yards away.

"I don't understand . . . . I don't understand," muttered Honorine.

The motor had been cut off and the motor-boat now very slowly reached the s.p.a.ce that separated the two fish-boats.

And suddenly the two women saw Francois stoop and then stand up again and draw his right arm back, as though he were going to throw something.

And at the same time Stephane Maroux acted in the same way.

Then the unexpected, terrifying thing happened.

"Oh!" cried Veronique.

She hid her eyes for a second, but at once raised her head again and saw the hideous sight in all its horror.

Two things had been thrown across the little s.p.a.ce, one from the bow, flung by Francois, the other from the stern, flung by Stephane Maroux.

And two bursts of fire at once shot up from the two boats, followed by two whirls of smoke.

The explosions re-echoed. For a moment, nothing of what happened amid that black cloud was visible. Then the curtain parted, blown aside by the wind, and Veronique and Honorine saw the two boats swiftly sinking, while their occupants jumped into the sea.

The sight, the infernal sight, did not last long. They saw, standing on one of the buoys that marked the channel, a woman holding a child in her arms, without moving: then some motionless bodies, no doubt killed by the explosion; then two men fighting, mad perhaps. And all this went down with the boats.

A few eddies, some black specks floating on the surface; and that was all.

Honorine and Veronique, struck dumb with terror, had not uttered a single word. The thing surpa.s.sed the worst that their anguished minds could have conceived.

When it was all over, Honorine put her hand to her head and, in a hollow voice which Veronique was never to forget, said:

"My head's bursting. Oh, the poor people of Sarek! They were my friends, the friends of my childhood; and I shall never see them again . . . .

The sea never gives up its dead at Sarek: it keeps them. It has its coffins all ready: thousands and thousands of hidden coffins . . . . Oh, my head is bursting! . . . I shall go mad . . . mad like Francois, my poor Francois!"

Veronique did not answer. She was grey in the face. With clutching fingers she clung to the balcony, gazing downwards as one gazes into an abyss into which one is about to fling oneself. What would her son do?

Would he save those people, whose shouts of distress now reached her ears, would he save them without delay? One may have fits of madness; but the attacks pa.s.s away at the sight of certain things.

The motor-boat had backed at first to avoid the eddies. Francois and Stephane, whose red cap and white cap were still visible, were standing in the same positions at the bow and the stern; and they held in their hands . . . what? The two women could not see clearly, because of the distance, what they held in their hands. It looked like two rather long sticks.

"Poles, to help them," suggested Veronique.

"Or guns," said Honorine.

The black specks were still floating. There were nine of them, the nine heads of the survivors, whose arms also the two women saw moving from time to time and whose cries for help they heard.

Some were hurriedly moving away from the motor-boat, but four were swimming towards it; and, of those four, two could not fail to reach it.