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The Rover
Joseph Conrad
version 1.1: 1995-09-15
For detailed information about the source edition
and the transcription, see the notes at the end of
this text file. The Rover
Joseph Conrad
`Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.'
Spenser
------------------------------------------------------------
To
G. Jean Aubry
in friendship
this tale of the last days of a
French brother of the Coast
</h2>
<p> CHAPTER I</p>
<p> After entering at break of day the inner roadstead
of the Port of Toulon, exchanging several loud hails
with one of the guardboats of the Fleet, which directed
him where he was to take up his berth, Master-Gunner
Peyrol let go the anchor of the sea-worn and
battered ship in his charge, between the arsenal and
the town, in full view of the principal quay. The
course of his life, which in the opinion of any ordinary
person might have been regarded as full of marvellous
incidents (only he himself had never marvelled at
them), had rendered him undemonstrative to such a
degree that he did not even let out a sigh of relief at
the rumble of the cable. And yet it ended a most
anxious six months of knocking about at sea with
valuable merchandise in a damaged hull, most of the
time on short rations, always on the lookout for
English cruisers, once or twice on the verge of shipwreck
and more than once on the verge of capture.
But as to that, old Peyrol had made up his mind from
the first to blow up his valuable charge---unemotionally,
for such was his character, formed under the
sun of the Indian Seas in lawless contests with his
kind for a little loot that vanished as soon as grasped,
but mainly for bare life almost as precarious to hold
through its ups and downs, and which now had lasted
for fifty-eight years.</p>
<p> While his crew of half-starved scarecrows, hard as
nails and ravenous as so many wolves for the delights
of the shore, swarmed aloft to furl the sails nearly as
thin and as patched as the grimy shirts on their
backs, Peyrol took a survey of the quay. Groups
were forming along its whole stretch to gaze at the
new arrival. Peyrol noted particularly a good many
men in red caps and said to himself---``Here they are.''
Amongst the crews of ships that had brought the
tricolour into the seas of the East, there were hundreds
professing sans-culotte principles; boastful and
declamatory beggars he had thought them. But now
he was beholding the shore breed. Those who had
made the Revolution safe. The real thing. Peyrol,
after taking a good long look, went below into his
cabin to make himself ready to go ashore.</p>
<p> He shaved his big cheeks with a real English razor,
looted years ago from an officer's cabin in an English
East Indiaman captured by a ship he was serving in
then. He put on a white shirt, a short blue jacket
with metal buttons and a high roll-collar, a pair of
white trousers which he fastened with a red bandana
handkerchief by way of a belt. With a black, shiny
low-crowned hat on his head he made a very creditable
prize-master. He beckoned from the poop to a
boatman and got himself rowed to the quay.</p>
<p> By that time the crowd had grown to a large size.
Peyrol's eyes ranged over it with no great apparent
interest, though it was a fact that he had never in all
his man's life seen so many idle white people massed
together to stare at a sailor. He had been a rover of
the outer seas; he had grown into a stranger to his
native country. During the few minutes it took the
boatman to row him to the step, he felt like a navigator
about to land on a newly discovered shore.</p>
<p> On putting his foot on it he was mobbed. The
arrival of a prize made by a squadron of the Republic
in distant seas was not an everyday occurrence in
Toulon. The wildest rumours had been already set
flying. Peyrol elbowed himself through the crowd
somehow, but it continued to move after him. A
voice cried out, ``Where do you come from, citoyen?''
---``From the other side of the world,'' Peyrol boomed
out.</p>
<p> He did not get rid of his followers till the door of
the Port Office. There he reported himself to the
proper officials as master of a prize taken off the
Cape by Citoyen Renaud, Commander-in-Chief of
the Republican Squadron in the Indian Seas. He
had been ordered to make for Dunkerque but, said
he, having been chased by the sacr<e'>s Anglais three
times in a fortnight between Cape Verde and Cape
Spartel, he had made up his mind to run into the
Mediterranean where, he had understood from a
Danish brig he had met at sea, there were no English
men-of-war just then. And here he was; and there
were his ship's papers and his own papers and
everything in order. He mentioned also that he was
tired of rolling about the seas, and that he longed
for a period of repose on shore. But till all the legal
business was settled he remained in Toulon roaming
about the streets at a deliberate gait, enjoying general
consideration as Citizen Peyrol, and looking everybody
coldly in the eye.</p>
<p> His reticence about his past was of that kind which
starts a lot of mysterious stories about a man. No
doubt the maritime authorities of Toulon had a less
cloudy idea of Peyrol's past, though it need not
necessarily have been more exact. In the various
offices connected with the sea where his duties took
him, the wretched scribes, and even some of the chiefs,
looked very hard at him as he went in and out,
dressed very neatly, and always with his cudgel,
which he used to leave outside the door of private
offices when called in for an interview with one or
another of the ``gold-laced lot.'' Having, however,
cut off his queue and got in touch with some prominent
patriots of the Jacobin type, Peyrol cared little
for people's stares and whispers. The person that
came nearest to trying his composure was a certain
naval captain with a patch over one eye and a very
threadbare uniform coat who was doing some administrative
work at the Port Office. That officer, looking
up from some papers, remarked brusquely, ``As a
matter of fact you have been the best part of your
life skimming the seas, if the truth were known.
You must have been a deserter from the Navy at one
time, whatever you may call yourself now.''</p>
<p> There was not a quiver on the large cheeks of the
gunner Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``If there was anything of the sort it was in the time
of kings and aristocrats,'' he said steadily. ``And now
I have brought in a prize, and a service letter from
Citizen Renaud, commanding in the Indian Seas.
I can also give you the names of good republicans in
this town who know my sentiments. Nobody can
say I was ever anti-revolutionary in my life. I
knocked about the Eastern seas for forty-five years---
that's true. But let me observe that it was the
seamen who stayed at home that let the English
into the Port of Toulon.'' He paused a moment and
then added: ``When one thinks of that, citoyen
Commandant, any little slips I and fellows of my
kind may have made five thousand leagues from here
and twenty years ago cannot have much importance
in these times of equality and fraternity.''</p>
<p> ``As to fraternity,'' remarked the post-captain in
the shabby coat, ``the only one you are familiar with
is the Brotherhood of the Coast, I should say.''</p>
<p> ``Everybody in the Indian Ocean except milksops
and youngsters had to be,'' said the untroubled
Citizen Peyrol. ``And we practised republican principles
long before a republic was thought of; for the
Brothers of the Coast were all equal and elected their
own chiefs.''</p>
<p> ``They were an abominable lot of lawless ruffians,''
remarked the officer venomously, leaning back in his
chair. ``You will not dare to deny that.''</p>
<p> Citizen Peyrol refused to take up a defensive
attitude. He merely mentioned in a neutral tone
that he had delivered his trust to the Port Office all
right, and as to his character he had a certificate of
civism from his section. He was a patriot and entitled
to his discharge. After being dismissed by a nod he
took up his cudgel outside the door and walked out
of the building with the calmness of rectitude. His
large face of the Roman type betrayed nothing to the
wretched quill-drivers, who whispered on his passage.
As he went along the streets he looked as usual
everybody in the eye; but that very same evening he
vanished from Toulon. It wasn't that he was afraid
of anything. His mind was as calm as the natural
set of his florid face. Nobody could know what his
forty years or more of sea-life had been, unless he
told them himself. And of that he didn't mean to
tell more than what he had told the inquisitive captain
with the patch over one eye. But he didn't want any
bother for certain other reasons; and more than
anything else he didn't want to be sent perhaps to
serve in the fleet now fitting out in Toulon. So at
dusk he passed through the gate on the road to Fr<e'>jus
in a high two-wheeled cart belonging to a well-known
farmer whose habitation lay that way. His personal
belongings were brought down and piled up on the
tailboard of the cart by some ragamuffin patriots
whom he engaged in the street for that purpose.
The only indiscretion he committed was to pay them
for their trouble with a large handful of assignats.
From such a prosperous seaman, however, this generosity
was not so very compromising. He himself got
into the cart over the wheel, with such slow and
ponderous movements, that the friendly farmer felt
called upon to remark: ``Ah, we are not so young as
we used to be---you and I.''---``I have also an awkward
wound,'' said Citizen Peyrol, sitting down heavily.</p>
<p> And so from farmer's cart to farmer's cart, getting
lifts all along, jogging in a cloud of dust between
stone walls and through little villages well known to
him from his boyhood's days, in a landscape of stony
hills, pale rocks, and dusty green of olive trees, Citizen
Peyrol went on unmolested till he got down clumsily
in the yard of an inn on the outskirts of the town of
Hy<e`>res. The sun was setting to his right. Near a
clump of dark pines with blood-red trunks in the
sunset, Peyrol perceived a rutty track branching off
in the direction of the sea.</p>
<p> At that spot Citizen Peyrol had made up his mind
to leave the high road. Every feature of the country
with the darkly wooded rises, the barren flat expanse
of stones and sombre bushes to his left, appealed to
him with a sort of strange familiarity, because they
had remained unchanged since the days of his boyhood.
The very cartwheel tracks scored deep into
the stony ground had kept their physiognomy; and
far away, like a blue thread, there was the sea of the
Hy<e`>res roadstead with a lumpy indigo swelling still
beyond---which was the island of Porquerolles, but
he really did not know. The notion of a father was
absent from his mentality. What he remembered of
his parents was a tall, lean, brown woman in rags,
who was his mother. But then they were working
together at a farm which was on the mainland. He
had fragmentary memories of her shaking down olives,
picking stones out of a field, or handling a manure
fork like a man, tireless and fierce, with wisps of
greyish hair flying about her bony face; and of
himself running barefooted in connection with a flock
of turkeys, with hardly any clothes on his back. At
night, by the farmer's favour, they were permitted
to sleep in a sort of ruinous byre built of stones and
with only half a roof on it, lying side by side on some
old straw on the ground. And it was on a bundle of
straw that his mother had tossed ill for two days and
had died in the night. In the darkness, her silence,
her cold face had given him an awful scare. He
supposed they had buried her but he didn't know,
because he had rushed out terror-struck, and never
stopped till he got as far as a little place by the sea
called Almanarre, where he hid himself on board a
tartane that was lying there with no one on board.
He went into the hold because he was afraid of some
dogs on shore. He found down there a heap of
empty sacks, which made a luxurious couch, and
being exhausted went to sleep like a stone. Some
time during the night the crew came on board and
the tartane sailed for Marseilles. That was another
awful scare---being hauled out by the scruff of the
neck on the deck and being asked who the devil he
was and what he was doing there. Only from that
one he could not run away. There was water all
around him and the whole world, including the coast
not very far away, wobbled in a most alarming
manner. Three bearded men stood about him and
he tried to explain to them that he had been working
at Peyrol's. Peyrol was the farmer's name. The boy
didn't know that he had one of his own. Moreover,
he didn't know very well how to talk to people, and
they must have misunderstood him. Thus the name
of Peyrol stuck to him for life.</p>
<p> There the memories of his native country stopped,
overlaid by other memories, with a multitude of
impressions of endless oceans, of the Mozambique
Channel, of Arabs and negroes, of Madagascar, of
the coast of India, of islands and channels and reefs;
of fights at sea, rows on shore, desperate slaughter
and desperate thirst, of all sorts of ships one after
another: merchant ships and frigates and privateers;
of reckless men and enormous sprees. In the course
of years he had learned to speak intelligibly and think
connectedly and even to read and write after a fashion.
The name of the farmer Peyrol, attached to his
person on account of his inability to give a clear
account of himself, acquired a sort of reputation, both
openly, in the ports of the East and, secretly, amongst
the Brothers of the Coast, that strange fraternity with
something masonic and not a little piratical in its
constitution. Round the Cape of Storms, which is
also the Cape of Good Hope, the words Republic,
Nation, Tyranny, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,
and the cult of the Supreme Being came floating on
board ships from home, new cries and new ideas
which did not upset the slowly developed intelligence
of the gunner Peyrol. They seemed the invention of
landsmen, of whom the seaman Peyrol knew very
little---nothing, so to speak. Now, after nearly fifty
years of lawful and lawless sea-life, Citizen Peyrol, at
the yard gate of the roadside inn, looked at the late
scene of his childhood. He looked at it without any
animosity, but a little puzzled as to his bearings
amongst the features of the land. ``Yes, it must be
somewhere in that direction,'' he thought vaguely.
Decidedly he would go no further along the high
road. . . . A few yards away the woman of the inn
stood looking at him, impressed by the good clothes,
the great shaven cheeks, the well-to-do air of that
seaman; and suddenly Peyrol noticed her. With her
anxious brown face, her grey locks, and her rustic
appearance she might have been his mother, as he
remembered her, only she wasn't in rags.</p>
<p> ``H<e'>! La m<e`>re,'' hailed Peyrol. ``Have you got a
man to lend a hand with my chest into the house?''</p>
<p> He looked so prosperous and so authoritative that
she piped without hesitation in a thin voice, ``Mais
oui, citoyen. He will be here in a moment.''</p>
<p> In the dusk the clump of pines across the road
looked very black against the quiet clear sky; and
Citizen Peyrol gazed at the scene of his young misery
with the greatest possible placidity. Here he was
after nearly fifty years, and to look at things it seemed
like yesterday. He felt for all this neither love nor
resentment. He felt a little funny as it were, and the
funniest thing was the thought which crossed his
mind that he could indulge his fancy (if he had a
mind to it) to buy up all this land to the furthermost
field, away over there where the track lost itself
sinking into the flats bordering the sea where the
small rise at the end of the Giens peninsula had
assumed the appearance of a black cloud.</p>
<p> ``Tell me, my friend,'' he said in his magisterial
way to the farmhand with a tousled head of hair who
was awaiting his good pleasure, ``doesn't this track
lead to Almanarre?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said the labourer, and Peyrol nodded. The
man continued, mouthing his words slowly as if unused
to speech. ``To Almanarre and further too, beyond
the great pond right out to the end of the land, to
Cape Esterel.''</p>
<p> Peyrol was lending his big flat hairy ear. ``If I
had stayed in this country,'' he thought, ``I would be
talking like this fellow.'' And aloud he asked:</p>
<p> ``Are there any houses there, at the end of the
land?''</p>
<p> ``Why, a hamlet, a hole, just a few houses round a
church and a farm where at one time they would
give you a glass of wine.''<p> CHAPTER II</p>
<p> Citizen Peyrol stayed at the inn-yard gate till the
night had swallowed up all those features of the land
to which his eyes had clung as long as the last gleams
of daylight. And even after the last gleams had gone
he had remained for some time staring into the
darkness in which all he could distinguish was the
white road at his feet and the black heads of pines
where the cart track dipped towards the coast. He
did not go indoors till some carters who had been
refreshing themselves had departed with their big
two-wheeled carts piled up high with empty wine-casks,
in the direction of Fr<e'>jus. The fact that they
did not remain for the night pleased Peyrol. He ate
his bit of supper alone, in silence, and with a gravity
which intimidated the old woman who had aroused
in him the memory of his mother. Having finished
his pipe and obtained a bit of candle in a tin candle-stick,
Citizen Peyrol went heavily upstairs to rejoin
his luggage. The crazy staircase shook and groaned
under his feet as though he had been carrying a
burden. The first thing he did was to close the
shutters most carefully as though he had been afraid
of a breath of night air. Next he bolted the door of
the room. Then sitting on the floor, with the
candlestick standing before him between his widely
straddled legs, he began to undress, flinging off his
coat and dragging his shirt hastily over his head.
The secret of his heavy movements was disclosed then
in the fact that he had been wearing next his bare
skin---like a pious penitent his hair-shirt---a sort of
waistcoat made of two thicknesses of old sail-cloth
and stitched all over in the manner of a quilt with
tarred twine. Three horn buttons closed it in front.
He undid them, and after he had slipped off the two
shoulder-straps which prevented this strange garment
from sagging down on his hips he started rolling it
up. Notwithstanding all his care there were during
this operation several faint chinks of some metal
which could not have been lead.</p>
<p> His bare torso thrown backwards and sustained by
his rigid big arms heavily tattooed on the white skin
above the elbows, Peyrol drew a long breath into his
broad chest with a pepper-and-salt pelt down the
breastbone. And not only was the breast of Citizen
Peyrol relieved to the fullest of its athletic capacity,
but a change had also come over his large physiognomy
on which the expression of severe stolidity
had been simply the result of physical discomfort.
It isn't a trifle to have to carry girt about your ribs
and hung from your shoulders a mass of mixed
foreign coins equal to sixty or seventy thousand francs
in hard cash; while as to the paper money of the
Republic, Peyrol had had already enough experience
of it to estimate the equivalent in cartloads. A
thousand of them. Perhaps two thousand. Enough
in any case to justify his flight of fancy, while looking
at the countryside in the light of the sunset, that what
he had on him would buy all that soil from which he
had sprung: houses, woods, vines, olives, vegetable
gardens, rocks and salt lagoons---in fact, the whole
landscape, including the animals in it. But Peyrol
did not care for the land at all. He did not want to
own any part of the solid earth for which he had no
love. All he wanted from it was a quiet nook, an
obscure corner out of men's sight where he could dig
a hole unobserved.</p>
<p> That would have to be done pretty soon, he thought.
One could not live for an indefinite number of days
with a treasure strapped round one's chest. Meantime,
an utter stranger in his native country the
landing on which was perhaps the biggest adventure
in his adventurous life, he threw his jacket over the
rolled-up waistcoat and laid his head down on it after
extinguishing the candle. The night was warm.
The floor of the room happened to be of planks, not
of tiles. He was no stranger to that sort of couch.
With his cudgel laid ready at his hand Peyrol slept
soundly till the noises and the voices about the house
and on the road woke him up shortly after sunrise.
He threw open the, shutter, welcoming the morning
light and the morning breeze in the full enjoyment
of idleness which, to a seaman of his kind, is inseparable
from the fact of being on shore. There was
nothing to trouble his thoughts; and though his
physiognomy was far from being vacant, it did not
wear the aspect of profound meditation.</p>
<p> It had been by the merest accident that he had
discovered during the passage, in a secret recess
within one of the lockers of his prize, two bags of
mixed coins: gold mohurs, Dutch ducats, Spanish
pieces, English guineas. After making that discovery
he had suffered from no doubts whatever. Loot big
or little was a natural fact of his freebooter's life.
And now when by the force of things he had become
a master-gunner of the Navy he was not going to give
up his find to confounded landsmen, mere sharks,
hungry quill-drivers, who would put it in their own
pockets. As to imparting the intelligence to his crew
(all bad characters), he was much too wise to do
anything of the kind. They would not have been
above cutting his throat. An old fighting sea-dog, a
Brother of the Coast, had more right to such plunder
than anybody on earth. So at odd times, while at
sea, he had busied himself within the privacy of his
cabin in constructing the ingenious canvas waistcoat
in which he could take his treasure ashore secretly.
It was bulky, but his garments were of an ample cut,
and no wretched customs-guard would dare to lay
hands on a successful prize-master going to the Port
Admiral's offices to make his report. The scheme
had worked perfectly. He found, however, that this
secret garment, which was worth precisely its weight
in gold, tried his endurance more than he had
expected. It wearied his body and even depressed
his spirits somewhat. It made him less active and
also less communicative. It reminded him all the
time that he must not get into trouble of any sort---
keep clear of rows, of intimacies, of promiscuous
jollities. This was one of the reasons why he had
been anxious to get away from the town. Once,
however, his head was laid on his treasure he could
sleep the sleep of the just.</p>
<p> Nevertheless in the morning he shrank from putting
it on again. With a mixture of sailor's carelessness
and of old-standing belief in his own luck he simply
stuffed the precious waistcoat up the flue of the empty
fireplace. Then he dressed and had his breakfast.
An hour later, mounted on a hired mule, he started
down the track as calmly as though setting out to
explore the mysteries of a desert island.</p>
<p> His aim was the end of the peninsula which,
advancing like a colossal jetty into the sea, divides the
picturesque roadstead of Hy<e`>res from the headlands
and curves of the coast forming the approaches of the
Port of Toulon. The path along which the sure-footed
mule took him (for Peyrol, once he had put
its head the right way, made no attempt at steering)
descended rapidly to a plain of and aspect, with the
white gleams of the Salins in the distance, bounded
by bluish hills of no great elevation. Soon all traces
of human habitations disappeared from before his
roaming eyes. This part of his native country was
more foreign to him than the shores of the Mozambique
Channel, the coral strands of India, the forests of
Madagascar. Before long he found himself on the
neck of the Giens peninsula, impregnated with salt
and containing a blue lagoon, particularly blue,
darker and even more still than the expanses of the
sea to the right and left of it from which it was
separated by narrow strips of land not a hundred
yards wide in places. The track ran indistinct,
presenting no wheel-ruts, and with patches of efflorescent
salt as white as snow between the tufts of wiry
grass and the particularly dead-looking bushes. The
whole neck of land was so low that it seemed to have
no more thickness than a sheet of paper laid on the
sea. Citizen Peyrol saw on the level of his eye, as if
from a mere raft, sails of various craft, some white
and some brown, while before him his native island
of Porquerolles rose dull and solid beyond a wide
strip of water. The mule, which knew rather better
than Citizen Peyrol where it was going to, took him
presently amongst the gentle rises at the end of the
peninsula. The slopes were covered with scanty
grass; crooked boundary walls of dry stones ran across
the fields, and above them, here and there, peeped a
low roof of red tiles shaded by the heads of delicate
acacias. At a turn of the ravine appeared a village
with its few houses, mostly with their blind walls to
the path, and, at first, no living soul in sight. Three
tall platanes, very ragged as to their bark and very
poor as to foliage, stood in a group in an open space;
and Citizen Peyrol was cheered by the sight of a dog
sleeping in the shade. The mule swerved with great
determination towards a massive stone trough under
the village fountain. Peyrol, looking round from the
saddle while the mule drank, could see no signs of
an inn. Then, examining the ground nearer to him,
he perceived a ragged man sitting on a stone. He
had a broad leathern belt and his legs were bare to
the knee. He was contemplating the stranger on the
mule with stony surprise. His dark nut-brown face
contrasted strongly with his grey shock of hair. At a
sign from Peyrol he showed no reluctance and
approached him readily without changing the stony
character of his stare.</p>
<p> The thought that if he had remained at home he
would have probably looked like that man crossed
unbidden the mind of Peyrol. With that gravity
from which he seldom departed he inquired if there
were any inhabitants besides himself in the village.
Then, to Peyrol's surprise, that destitute idler smiled
pleasantly and said that the people were out looking
after their bits of land.</p>
<p> There was enough of the peasant-born in Peyrol,
still, to remark that he had seen no man, woman, or
child, or four-footed beast for hours, and that he
would hardly have thought that there was any land
worth looking after anywhere around. But the other
insisted. Well, they were working on it all the same,
at least those that had any.</p>
<p> At the sound of the voices the dog got up with a
strange air of being all backbone, and, approaching
in dismal fidelity, stood with his nose close to his
master's calves.</p>
<p> ``And you,'' said Peyrol, ``you have no land then?''</p>
<p> The man took his time to answer. ``I have a
boat.''</p>
<p> Peyrol became interested when the man explained
that his boat was on the salt pond, the large, deserted
and opaque sheet of water lying dead between the
two great bays of the living sea. Peyrol wondered
aloud why any one should want a boat on it.</p>
<p> ``There is fish there,'' said the man.</p>
<p> ``And is the boat all your worldly goods?'' asked
Peyrol.</p>
<p> The flies buzzed, the mule hung its head, moving
its ears and flapping its thin tail languidly.</p>
<p> ``I have a sort of hut down by the lagoon and a
net or two,'' the man confessed, as it were. Peyrol,
looking down, completed the list by saying: ``And
this dog.''</p>
<p> The man again took his time to say:</p>
<p> ``He is company.''</p>
<p> Peyrol sat as serious as a judge. ``You haven't
much to make a living of,'' he delivered himself at
last. ``However! . . . Is there no inn, caf<e'>, or some
place where one could put up for a day? I have
heard up inland that there was some such place.''</p>
<p> ``I will show it to you,'' said the man, who then
went back to where he had been sitting and picked
up a large empty basket before he led the way. His
dog followed with his head and tail low, and then
came Peyrol dangling his heels against the sides of
the intelligent mule, which seemed to know before-hand
all that was going to happen. At the corner
where the houses ended there stood an old wooden
cross stuck into a square block of stone. The lonely
boatman of the Lagoon of Pesquiers pointed in the
direction of a branching path where the rises terminating
the peninsula sank into a shallow pass. There
were leaning pines on the skyline, and in the pass
itself dull silvery green patches of olive orchards below
a long yellow wall backed by dark cypresses, and the
red roofs of buildings which seemed to belong to a
farm.</p>
<p> ``Will they lodge me there'' asked Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``I don't know. They will have plenty of room,
that's certain. There are no travellers here. But as
for a place of refreshment, it used to be that. You
have only got to walk in. If he isn't there, the
mistress is sure to be there to serve you. She belongs
to the place. She was born on it. We know all
about her.''</p>
<p> ``What sort of woman is she?'' asked Citizen Peyrol,
who was very favourably impressed by the aspect of
the place.</p>
<p> ``Well, you are going there. You shall soon see.
She is young.''</p>
<p> ``And the husband?'' asked Peyrol, who, looking
down into the other's steady upward stare, detected
a flicker in the brown, slightly faded eyes. ``Why
are you staring at me like this? I haven't got a black
skin, have I?''</p>
<p> The other smiled, showing in the thick pepper-and-salt
growth on his face as sound a set of teeth as
Citizen Peyrol himself. There was in his bearing
something embarrassed, but not unfriendly, and, he
uttered a phrase from which Peyrol discovered that
the man before him, the lonely, hirsute, sunburnt and
barelegged human being at his stirrup, nourished
patriotic suspicions as to his character. And this
seemed to him outrageous. He wanted to know in a
severe voice whether he looked like a confounded
landsman of any kind. He swore also without, however,
losing any of the dignity of expression inherent
in his type of features and in the very modelling of
his flesh.</p>
<p> ``For an aristocrat you don't look like one, but
neither do you look like a farmer or a pedlar or a
patriot. You don't look like anything that has been
seen here for years and years and years. You look
like one, I dare hardly say what. You might be a
priest.''</p>
<p> Astonishment kept Peyrol perfectly quiet on his
mule. ``Do I dream?'' he asked himself mentally.
``You aren't mad?'' he asked aloud. ``Do you know
what you are talking about? Aren't you ashamed of
yourself?''</p>
<p> ``All the same,'' persisted the other innocently, ``it
is much less than ten years ago since I saw one of them
of the sort they call bishops, who had a face exactly
like yours.''</p>
<p> Instinctively Peyrol passed his hand over his face.
What could there be in it? Peyrol could not remember
ever having seen a bishop in his life. The fellow
stuck to his point, for he puckered his brow and
murmured:</p>
<p> ``Others too. . . . I remember perfectly. . . . It
isn't so many years ago. Some of them skulk amongst
the villages yet, for all the chasing they got from the
patriots.''</p>
<p> The sun blazed on the boulders and stones and
bushes in the perfect stillness of the air. The mule,
disregarding with republican austerity the neighbourhood
of a stable within less than a hundred and twenty
yards, dropped its head, and even its ears, and dozed
as if in the middle of a desert. The dog, apparently
changed into stone at his master's heels, seemed to be
dozing too with his nose near the ground. Peyrol
had fallen into a deep meditation, and the boatman
of the lagoon awaited the solution of his doubts
without eagerness and with something like a grin
within his thick beard. Peyrol's face cleared. He
had solved the problem, but there was a shade of
vexation in his tone.</p>
<p> ``Well, it can't be helped,'' he said. ``I learned to
shave from the English. I suppose that's what's the
matter.''</p>
<p> At the name of the English the boatman pricked
up his ears.</p>
<p> ``One can't tell where they are all gone to,'' he
murmured. ``Only three years ago they swarmed
about this coast in their big ships. You saw nothing
but them, and they were fighting all round Toulon
on land. Then in a week or two, crac!---nobody!
Cleared out devil knows where. But perhaps you
would know.''</p>
<p> ``Oh, yes,'' said Peyrol, ``I know all about the
English, don't you worry your head.''</p>
<p> ``I am not troubling my head. It is for you to
think about what's best to say when you speak with
him up there. I mean the master of the farm.''</p>
<p> ``He can't be a better patriot than I am, for all my
shaven face,'' said Peyrol. ``That would only seem
strange to a savage like you.''</p>
<p> With an unexpected sigh the man sat down at the
foot of the cross, and, immediately, his dog went off a
little way and curled himself up amongst the tufts of
grass.</p>
<p> ``We are all savages here,'' said the forlorn fisherman
from the lagoon. ``But the master up there is a
real patriot from the town. If you were ever to go
to Toulon and ask people about him they would tell
you. He first became busy purveying the guillotine
when they were purifying the town from all aristocrats.
That was even before the English came in.
After the English got driven out there was more of
that work than the guillotine could do. They had
to kill traitors in the streets, in cellars, in their beds.
The corpses of men and women were lying in heaps
along the quays. There were a good many of his
sort that got the name of drinkers of blood. Well,
he was one of the best of them. I am only just
telling you.''</p>
<p> Peyrol nodded. ``That will do me all right,'' he
said. And before he could pick up the reins and hit
it with his heels the mule, as though it had just waited
for his words, started off along the path.</p>
<p> In less than five minutes Peyrol was dismounting
in front of a low, long addition to a tall farmhouse
with very few windows, and flanked by walls of stones
enclosing not only the yard but apparently a field or
two also. A gateway stood open to the left, but Peyrol
dismounted at the door, through which he entered a
bare room, with rough whitewashed walls and a few
wooden chairs and tables, which might have been a
rustic caf<e'>. He tapped with his knuckles on the table.
A young woman with a fichu round her neck and a
striped white and red skirt, with black hair and a red
mouth, appeared in an inner doorway.</p>
<p> ``Bonjour, citoyenne,'' said Peyrol. She was so
startled by the unusual aspect of this stranger that
she answered him only by a murmured ``bonjour,''
but in a moment she came forward and waited
expectantly. The perfect oval of her face, the colour
of her smooth cheeks, and the whiteness of her throat
forced from the Citizen Peyrol a slight hiss through
his clenched teeth.</p>
<p> ``I am thirsty, of course,'' he said, ``but what I
really want is to know whether I can stay here.''</p>
<p> The sound of a mule's hoofs outside caused Peyrol
to start, but the woman arrested him.</p>
<p> ``She is only going to the shed. She knows the way.
As to what you said, the master will be here directly.
Nobody ever comes here. And how long would you
want to stay?''</p>
<p> The old rover of the seas looked at her searchingly.</p>
<p> ``To tell you the truth, citoyenne, it may be in a
manner of speaking for ever.''</p>
<p> She smiled in a bright flash of teeth, without gaiety
or any change in her restless eyes that roamed about
the empty room as though Peyrol had come in
attended by a mob of Shades.</p>
<p> ``It's like me,'' she said. ``I lived as a child here.''</p>
<p> ``You are but little more than that now,'' said
Peyrol, examining her with a feeling that was no
longer surprise or curiosity, but seemed to be lodged
in his very breast.</p>
<p> ``Are you a patriot?'' she asked, still surveying the
invisible company in the room.</p>
<p> Peyrol, who had thought that he had ``done with
all that damned nonsense,'' felt angry and also at a
loss for an answer.</p>
<p> ``I am a Frenchman,'' he said bluntly.</p>
<p> ``Arlette!'' called out an aged woman's voice
through the open inner door.</p>
<p> ``What do you want?'' she answered readily.</p>
<p> ``There's a saddled mule come into the yard.''</p>
<p> ``All right. The man is here.'' Her eyes, which
had steadied, began to wander again all round and
about the motionless Peyrol. She moved a step
nearer to him and asked in a low confidential tone:
``Have you ever carried a woman's head on a pike?''</p>
<p> Peyrol, who had seen fights, massacres on land and
Sea, towns taken by assault by savage warriors, who
had killed men in attack and defence, found himself
at first bereft of speech by this simple question, and
next moved to speak bitterly.</p>
<p> ``No. I have heard men boast of having done so.
They were mostly braggarts with craven hearts. But
what is all this to you?''</p>
<p> She was not listening to him, the edge of her white
even teeth pressing her lower lip, her eyes never at
rest. Peyrol remembered suddenly the sans-culotte---
the blood-drinker. Her husband. Was it possible?
. . . Well, perhaps it was possible. He could not
tell. He felt his utter incompetence. As to catching
her glance, you might just as well have tried to catch
a wild sea-bird with your hands. And altogether she
was like a sea-bird---not to be grasped. But Peyrol
knew how to be patient, with that patience that is so
often a form of courage. He was known for it. It
had served him well in dangerous situations. Once
it had positively saved his life. Nothing but patience.
He could well wait now. He waited. And suddenly
as if tamed by his patience this strange creature
dropped her eyelids, advanced quite close to him and
began to finger the lapel of his coat-something that
a child might have done. Peyrol all but gasped with
surprise, but he remained perfectly still. He was
disposed to hold his breath. He was touched by a
soft indefinite emotion, and as her eyelids remained
lowered till her black lashes seemed to lie like a
shadow on her pale cheek, there was no need for him
to force a smile. After the first moment he was not
even surprised. It was merely the sudden movement,
not the nature of the act itself, that had startled him.</p>
<p> ``Yes. You may stay. I think we shall be friends.
I'll tell you about the Revolution.''</p>
<p> At these words Peyrol, the man of violent deeds,
felt something like a chill breath at the back of his
head.</p>
<p> ``What's the good of that?'' he said.</p>
<p> ``It must be,'' she said and backed away from him
swiftly, and without raising her eyes turned round
and was gone in a moment, so lightly that one would
have thought her feet had not touched the ground.
Peyrol, staring at the open kitchen door, saw after a
moment an elderly woman's head, with brown thin
cheeks and tied up in a coloured handkerchief,
peeping at him fearfully.</p>
<h3> ``A bottle of wine, please,'' he shouted at it.</h3>
<p> CHAPTER III</p>
<p> The affectation common to seamen of never being
surprised at anything that sea or land can produce
had become in Peyrol a second nature. Having
learned from childhood to suppress every sign of
wonder before all extraordinary sights and events, all
strange people, all strange customs, and the most
alarming phenomena of nature (as manifested, for
instance, in the violence of volcanoes or the fury of
human beings), he had really become indifferent---or
only perhaps utterly inexpressive. He had seen so
much that was bizarre or atrocious, and had heard
so many astounding tales, that his usual mental
reaction before a new experience was generally formulated
in the words, ``J'en ai vu bien d'autres.'' The
last thing which had touched him with the panic of
the supernatural had been the death under a heap of
rags of that gaunt, fierce woman, his mother; and
the last thing that had nearly overwhelmed him at
the age of twelve with another kind of terror was the
riot of sound and the multitude of mankind on the
quays in Marseilles, something perfectly inconceivable
from which he had instantly taken refuge behind a
stack of wheat sacks after having been chased ashore
from the tartane. He had remained there quaking
till a man in a cocked hat and with a sabre at his
side (the boy had never seen either such a hat or such
a sabre in his life) had seized him by the arm close to
the armpit and had hauled him out from there; a
man who might have been an ogre (only Peyrol had
never heard of an ogre) but at any rate in his own
way was alarming and wonderful beyond anything
he could have imagined---if the faculty of imagination
had been developed in him then. No doubt all this
was enough to make one die of fright, but that
possibility never occurred to him. Neither did he go
mad; but being only a child, he had simply adapted
himself, by means of passive acquiescence, to the new
and inexplicable conditions of life in something like
twenty-four hours. After that initiation the rest of
his existence, from flying fishes to whales and on to
black men and coral reefs, to decks running with
blood, and thirst in open boats, was comparatively
plain sailing. By the time he had heard of a Revolution
in France and of certain Immortal Principles
causing the death of many people, from the mouths
of seamen and travellers and year-old gazettes coming
out of Europe, he was ready to appreciate contemporary
history in his own particular way. Mutiny
and throwing officers overboard. He had seen that
twice and he was on a different side each time. As
to this upset, he took no side. It was too far---too
big---also not distinct enough. But he acquired the
revolutionary jargon quickly enough and used it on
occasion, with secret contempt. What he had gone
through, from a spell of crazy love for a yellow girl to
the experience of treachery from a bosom friend and
shipmate (and both those things Peyrol confessed to
himself he could never hope to understand), with all
the graduations of varied experience of men and
passions between, had put a drop of universal scorn,
a wonderful sedative, into the strange mixture which
might have been called the soul of the returned
Peyrol.</p>
<p> Therefore he not only showed no surprise but did
not feel any when he beheld the master, in the right
of his wife, of the Escampobar Farm. The homeless
Peyrol, sitting in the bare salle with a bottle of wine
before him, was in the act of raising the glass to his
lips when the man entered, ex-orator in the sections,
leader of red-capped mobs, hunter of the ci-devants
and priests, purveyor of the guillotine, in short a
blood-drinker. And Citizen Peyrol, who had never
been nearer than six thousand miles as the crow flies
to the realities of the Revolution, put down his glass
and in his deep unemotional voice said: ``Salut.''</p>
<p> The other returned a much fainter ``Salut,'' staring
at the stranger of whom he had heard already. His
almond-shaped, soft eyes were noticeably shiny and
so was to a certain extent the skin on his high but
rounded cheekbones, coloured red like a mask of
which all the rest was but a mass of clipped chestnut
hair growing so thick and close around the lips as to
hide altogether the design of the mouth which, for all
Citizen Peyrol knew, might have been of a quite
ferocious character. A careworn forehead and a
perpendicular nose suggested a certain austerity
proper to an ardent patriot. He held in his hand a
long bright knife which he laid down on one of the
tables at once. He didn't seem more than thirty
years old, a well-made man of medium height, with
a lack of resolution in his bearing. Something like
disillusion was suggested by the set of his shoulders.
The effect was subtle, but Peyrol became aware of it
while he explained his case and finished the tale by
declaring that he was a seaman of the Republic and
that he had always done his duty before the enemy.</p>
<p> The blood-drinker had listened profoundly. The
high arches of his eyebrows gave him an astonished
look. He came close up to the table and spoke in a
trembling voice.</p>
<p> ``You may have! But you may all the same be
corrupt. The seamen of the Republic were eaten up
with corruption paid for with the gold of the tyrants.
Who would have guessed it? They all talked like
patriots. And yet the English entered the harbour
and landed in the town without opposition. The
armies of the Republic drove them out, but treachery
stalks in the land, it comes up out of the ground, it
sits at our hearthstones, lurks in the bosom of the
representatives of the people, of our fathers, of our
brothers. There was a time when civic virtue
flourished, but now it has got to hide its head. And
I will tell you why: there has not been enough
killing. It seems as if there could never be enough of
it. It's discouraging. Look what we have come
to.''</p>
<p> His voice died in his throat as though he had
suddenly lost confidence in himself.</p>
<p> ``Bring another glass, citoyen,'' said Peyrol, after a
short pause, ``and let's drink together. We will drink
to the confusion of traitors. I detest treachery as
much as any man, but . . .''</p>
<p> He waited till the other had returned, then poured
out the wine, and after they had touched glasses and
half emptied them, he put down his own and
continued:</p>
<p> ``But you see I have nothing to do with your
politics. I was at the other side of the world, therefore
you can't suspect me of being a traitor. You
showed no mercy, you other sans-culottes, to the
enemies of the Republic at home, and I killed her
enemies abroad, far away. You were cutting off
heads without much compunction. . . .''</p>
<p> The other most unexpectedly shut his eyes for a
moment, then opened them very wide. ``Yes, yes,''
he assented very low. ``Pity may be a crime.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. And I knocked the enemies of the Republic
on the head whenever I had them before me without
inquiring about the number. It seems to me that
you and I ought to get on together.''</p>
<p> The master of Escampobar farmhouse murmured,
however, that in times like these nothing could be
taken as proof positive. It behoved every patriot to
nurse suspicion in his breast. No sign of impatience
escaped Peyrol. He was rewarded for his self-restraint
and the unshaken good-humour with which he had
conducted the discussion by, carrying his point.
Citizen Scevola Bron (for that appeared to be the
name of the master of the farm), an object of fear
and dislike to the other inhabitants of the Giens
peninsula, might have been influenced by a wish to
have some one with whom he could exchange a few
words from time to time. No villagers ever came up
to the farm, or were likely to, unless perhaps in a
body and animated with hostile intentions. They
resented his presence in their part of the world
sullenly.</p>
<p> ``Where do you come from?'' was the last question
he asked.</p>
<p> ``I left Toulon two days ago.''</p>
<p> Citizen Scevola struck the table with his fist, but
this manifestation of energy was very momentary.</p>
<p> ``And that was the town of which by a decree not
a stone upon another was to be left,'' he complained,
much depressed.</p>
<p> ``Most of it is still standing,'' Peyrol assured him
calmly. ``I don't know whether it deserved the fate
you say was decreed for it. I was there for the last
month or so and I know it contains some good
patriots. I know because I made friends with them
all.'' Thereupon Peyrol mentioned a few names
which the retired sans-culotte greeted with a bitter
smile and an ominous silence, as though the bearers
of them had been only good for the scaffold and the
guillotine.</p>
<p> ``Come along and I will show you the place where
you will sleep,'' he said with a sigh, and Peyrol was
only too ready. They entered the kitchen together.
Through the open back door a large square of
sunshine fell on the floor of stone flags. Outside one
could see quite a mob of expectant chickens, while a
yellow hen postured on the very doorstep, darting her
head right and left with affectation. All old woman
holding a bowl full of broken food put it down
suddenly on a table and stared. The vastness and
cleanliness of the place impressed Peyrol favourably.</p>
<p> ``You will eat with us here,'' said his guide, and
passed without stopping into a narrow passage giving
access to a steep flight of stairs. Above the first
landing a narrow spiral staircase led to the upper
part of the farmhouse; and when the sans-culotte
flung open the solid plank door at which it ended he
disclosed to Peyrol a large low room containing a
four-poster bedstead piled up high with folded blankets
and spare pillows. There were also two wooden
chairs and a large oval table.</p>
<p> ``We could arrange this place for you,'' said the
master, ``but I don't know what the mistress will have
to say,'' he added.</p>
<p> Peyrol, struck by the peculiar expression of his face,
turned his head and saw the girl standing in the
doorway. It was as though she had floated up after
them, for not the slightest sound of rustle or footfall
had warned Peyrol of her presence. The pure complexion
of her white cheeks was set off brilliantly by
her coral lips and the bands of raven-black hair only
partly covered by a muslin cap trimmed with lace.
She made no sign, uttered no sound, behaved exactly
as if there had been nobody in the room; and Peyrol
suddenly averted his eyes from that mute and
unconscious face with its roaming eyes.</p>
<p> In some way or other, however, the sans-culotte
seemed to have ascertained her mind, for he said in
a final tone:</p>
<p> ``That's all right then,'' and there was a short
silence, during which the woman shot her dark glances
all round the room again and again, while on her lips
there was a half-smile, not so much absent-minded as
totally unmotived, which Peyrol observed with a side
glance, but could not make anything of. She did
not seem to know him at all.</p>
<p> ``You have a view of salt water on three sides of
you,'' remarked Peyrol's future host.</p>
<p> The farmhouse was a tall building, and this large
attic with its three windows commanded on one side
the view of Hy<e`>res roadstead on the first plan, with
further blue undulations of the coast as far as Fr<e'>jus;
and on the other the vast semicircle of barren high
hills, broken by the entrance to Toulon harbour
guarded by forts and batteries, and ending in Cape
C<e'>pet, a squat mountain, with sombre folds and a
base of brown rocks, with a white spot gleaming on
the very summit of it, a ci-devant shrine dedicated to
Our Lady, and a ci-devant place of pilgrimage. The
noonday glare seemed absorbed by the gemlike surface
of the sea perfectly flawless in the invincible depth of
its colour.</p>
<p> ``It's like being in a lighthouse,'' said Peyrol. ``Not
a bad place for a seaman to live in.'' The sight of
the sails dotted about cheered his heart. The people
of landsmen with their houses and animals and
activities did not count. What made for him the life
of any strange shore were the craft that belonged to
it: canoes, catamarans, ballahous, praus, lorchas,
mere dug-outs, or even rafts of tied logs with a bit of
mat for a sail from which naked brown men fished
along stretches of white sand crushed under the
tropical skyline, sinister in its glare and with a
thunder-cloud crouching on the horizon. But here
he beheld a perfect serenity, nothing sombre on the
shore, nothing ominous in the sunshine. The sky
rested lightly on the distant and vaporous outline of
the hills; and the immobility of all things seemed
poised in the air like a gay mirage. On this tideless
sea several tartanes lay becalmed in the Petite Passe
between Porquerolles and Cape Esterel, yet theirs
was not the stillness of death but of light slumber,
the immobility of a smiling enchantment, of a
Mediterranean fair day, breathless sometimes but
never without life. Whatever enchantment Peyrol
had known in his wanderings it had never been so
remote from all thoughts of strife and death, so full
of smiling security, making all his past appear to him
like a chain of lurid days and sultry nights. He
thought he would never want to get away from it, as
though he had obscurely felt that his old rover's soul
had been always rooted there. Yes, this was the
place for him; not because expediency dictated, but
simply because his instinct of rest had found its home
at last.</p>
<p> He turned away from the window and found
himself face to face with the sans-culotte, who had
apparently come up to him from behind, perhaps
with the intention of tapping him on the shoulder,
but who now turned away his head. The young
woman had disappeared.</p>
<p> ``Tell me, patron,'' said Peyrol, ``is there anywhere
near this house a little dent in the shore with a bit of
beach in it perhaps where I could keep a boat?''</p>
<p> ``What do you want a boat for?''</p>
<p> ``To go fishing when I have a fancy to,'' answered
Peyrol curtly.</p>
<p> Citizen Bron, suddenly subdued, told him that
what he wanted was to be found a couple of hundred
yards down the hill from the house. The coast, of
course, was full of indentations, but this was a perfect
little pool. And the Toulon blood-drinker's almond-shaped
eyes became strangely sombre as they gazed
at the attentive Peyrol. A perfect little pool, he
repeated, opening from a cove that the English knew
well. He paused. Peyrol observed without much
animosity but in a tone of conviction that it was very
difficult to keep off the English whenever there was a
bit of salt water anywhere; but what could have
brought English seamen to a spot like this he couldn't
imagine.</p>
<p> ``It was when their fleet first came here,'' said the
patriot in a gloomy voice, ``and hung round the coast
before the anti-revolutionary traitors let them into
Toulon, sold the sacred soil of their country for a
handful of gold. Yes, in the days before the crime
was consummated English officers used to land in
that cove at night and walk up to this very house.''</p>
<p> ``What audacity!'' commented Peyrol, who was
really surprised. ``But that's just like what they are.''
Still, it was hard to believe. But wasn't it only a
tale?</p>
<p> The patriot flung one arm up in a strained gesture.
``I swore to its truth before the tribunal,'' he said.
``It was a dark story,'' he cried shrilly, and paused.
``It cost her father his life,'' he said in a low voice
. . . ``her mother too---but the country was in
danger,'' he added still lower.</p>
<p> Peyrol walked away to the western window and
looked towards Toulon. In the middle of the great
sheet of water within Cape Cici<e'> a tall two-decker
lay becalmed and the little dark dots on the water
were her boats trying to tow her head round the right
way. Peyrol watched them for a moment, and then
walked back to the middle of the room.</p>
<p> ``Did you actually drag him from this house to the
guillotine?'' he asked in his unemotional voice.</p>
<p> The patriot shook his head thoughtfully with downcast
eyes. ``No, he came over to Toulon just before
the evacuation, this friend of the English . . . sailed
over in a tartane he owned that is still lying here at
the Madrague. He had his wife with him. They
came over to take home their daughter who was
living then with some skulking old nuns. The victorious
Republicans were closing in and the slaves of
tyranny had to fly.''</p>
<p> ``Came to fetch their daughter,'' mused Peyrol.
``Strange, that guilty people should . . .''</p>
<p> The patriot looked up fiercely. ``It was justice,''
he said loudly. ``They were anti-revolutionists, and
if they had never spoken to an Englishman in their
life the atrocious crime was on their heads.''</p>
<p> ``H'm, stayed too long for their daughter,'' muttered
Peyrol. ``And so it was you who brought her
home.''</p>
<p> ``I did,'' said the patron. For a moment his eyes
evaded Peyrol's investigating glance, but in a moment
he looked straight into his face. ``No lessons of base
superstition could corrupt her soul,'' he declared with
exaltation. ``I brought home a patriot.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, very calm, gave him a hardly perceptible
nod. ``Well,'' he said, ``all this won't prevent me
sleeping wery well in this room. I always thought I
would like to live in a lighthouse when I got tired of
roving about the seas. This is as near a lighthouse
lantern as can be. You will see me with all my little
affairs to-morrow,'' he added, moving towards the
stairs. ``Salut, citoyen.''</p>
<p> There was in Peyrol a fund of self-command
amounting to placidity. There were men living in
the East who had no doubt whatever that Peyrol was
a calmly terrible man. And they would quote
illustrative instances which from their own point of
view were simply admirable. But all Peyrol had ever
done was to behave rationally, as it seemed to him
in all sorts of dangerous circumstances without ever
being led astray by the nature, or the cruelty, or the
danger of any given situation. He adapted himself
to the character of the event and to the very spirit of
it, with a profound responsive feeling of a particularly
unsentimental kind. Sentiment in itself was an
artificiality of which he had never heard and if he
had seen it in action would have appeared to him
too puzzling to make anything of. That sort of
genuineness in acceptance made him a satisfactory
inmate of the Escampobar Farm. He duly turned
up with all his cargo, as he called it, and was met at
the door of the farmhouse itself by the young woman
with the pale face and wandering eyes. Nothing
could hold her attention for long amongst her familiar
surroundings. Right and left and far away beyond
you, she seemed to be looking for something while
you were talking to her, so that you doubted whether
she could follow what you said. But as a matter of
fact she had all her wits about her. In the midst of
this strange search for something that was not there
she had enough detachment to smile at Peyrol.
Then, withdrawing into the kitchen, she watched, as
much as her restless eyes could watch anything,
Peyrol's cargo and Peyrol himself passing up the
stairs.</p>
<p> The most valuable part of Peyrol's cargo being
strapped to his person, the first thing he did after
being left alone in that attic room which was like the
lantern of a lighthouse was to relieve himself of the
burden and lay it on the foot of the bed. Then he
sat down and leaning his elbow far on the table he
contemplated it with a feeling of complete relief.
That plunder had never burdened his conscience. It
had merely on occasion oppressed his body; and if it
had at all affected his spirits it was not by its secrecy
but by its mere weight, which was inconvenient,
irritating, and towards the end of a day altogether
insupportable. It made a free-limbed, deep-breathing
sailor-man feel like a mere overloaded animal, thus
extending whatever there was of compassion in
Peyrol's nature towards the four-footed beasts that
carry men's burdens on the earth. The necessities of
a lawless life had taught Peyrol to be ruthless, but
he had never been cruel.</p>
<p> Sprawling in the chair, stripped to the waist, robust
and grey-haired, his head with a Roman profile
propped up on a mighty and tattooed forearm, he
remained at ease, with his eyes fixed on his treasure
with an air of meditation. Yet Peyrol was not
meditating (as a superficial observer might have
thought) on the best place of concealment. It was
not that he had not had a great experience of that
sort of property which had always melted so quickly
through his fingers. What made him meditative was
its character, not of a share of a hard-won booty in
toil, in risk, in danger, in privation, but of a piece of
luck personally his own. He knew what plunder was
and how soon it went; but this lot had come to stay.
He had it with him, away from the haunts of his
lifetime, as if in another world altogether. It couldn't
be drunk away, gambled away, squandered away in
any sort of familiar circumstances, or even given
away. In that room, raised a good many feet above
his revolutionized native land where he was more of
a stranger than anywhere else in the world, in this
roomy garret full of light and as it were surrounded
by the sea, in a great sense of peace and security,
Peyrol didn't see why he should bother his head about
it so very much. It came to him that he had never
really cared for any plunder that fell into his hands.
No, never for any. And to take particular care of
this for which no one would seek vengeance or attempt
recovery would have been absurd. Peyrol got up
and opened his big sandalwood chest secured with an
enormous padlock, part, too, of some old plunder
gathered in a Chinese town in the Gulf of Tonkin, in
company of certain Brothers of the Coast, who having
boarded at night a Portuguese schooner and sent her
crew adrift in a boat, had taken a cruise on their own
account, years and years and years ago. He was
young then, very young, and the chest fell to his share
because nobody else would have anything to do with
the cumbersome thing, and also for the reason that
the metal of the curiously wrought thick hoops that
strengthened it was not gold but mere brass. He, in
his innocence, had been rather pleased with the article.
He had carried it about with him into all sorts of
places, and also he had left it behind him---once for a
whole year in a dark and noisome cavern on a certain
part of the Madagascar coast. He had left it with
various native chiefs, with Arabs, with a gambling-hell
keeper in Pondicherry, with his various friends
in short, and even with his enemies. Once he had
lost it altogether.</p>
<p> That was on the occasion when he had received a
wound which laid him open and gushing like a
slashed wine-skin. A sudden quarrel broke out in a
company of Brothers over some matter of policy
complicated by personal jealousies, as to which he
was as innocent as a babe unborn. He never knew
who gave him the slash. Another Brother, a chum
of his, an English boy, had rushed in and hauled him
out of the fray, and then he had remembered nothing
for days. Even now when he looked at the scar he
could not understand why he had not died. That
occurrence, with the wound and the painful convalescence,
was the first thing that sobered his character
somewhat. Many years afterwards, when in consequence
of his altered views of mere lawlessness he was
serving as quartermaster on board the Hirondelle, a
comparatively respectable privateer, he caught sight
of that chest again in Port Louis, of all places in the
world, in a dark little den of a shop kept by a lone
Hindoo. The hour was late, the side street was
empty, and so Peyrol went in there to claim his
property, all fair, a dollar in one hand and a pistol
in the other, and was entreated abjectly to take it
away. He carried off the empty chest on his shoulder,
and that same night the privateer went to sea; then
only he found time to ascertain that he had made no
mistake, because, soon after he had got it first, he
had, in grim wantonness, scratched inside the lid,
with the point of his knife, the rude outline of a skull
and cross-bones into which he had rubbed afterwards
a little Chinese vermilion. And there it was, the
whole design, as fresh as ever.</p>
<p> In the garret full of light of the Escampobar farmhouse,
the grey-haired Peyrol opened the chest, took
all the contents out of it, laying them neatly on the
floor, and spread his treasure---pockets downwards---
over the bottom, which it filled exactly. Busy on his
knees he repacked the chest. A jumper or two, a
fine cloth jacket, a remnant piece of Madapolam
muslin, costly stuff for which he had no use in the
world---a quantity of fine white shirts. Nobody
would dare to rummage in his chest, he thought, with
the assurance of a man who had been feared in his
time. Then he rose, and looking round the room
and stretching his powerful arms, he ceased to think
of the treasure, of the future and even of to-morrow,
in the sudden conviction that he could make himself
very comfortable there.<p> CHAPTER IV</p>
<p> In a tiny bit of a looking-glass hung on the frame
of the east window, Peyrol, handling the unwearable
English blade, was shaving himself---for the day was
Sunday. The years of political changes ending with
the proclamation of Napoleon as Consul for life had
not touched Peyrol except as to his strong thick head
of hair, which was nearly all white now. After
putting the razor away carefully, Peyrol introduced
his stockinged feet into a pair of sabots of the very
best quality and clattered downstairs. His brown
cloth breeches were untied at the knee and the sleeves
of his shirt rolled up to his shoulders. That sea-rover
turned rustic was now perfectly at home in that farm
which, like a lighthouse, commanded the view of two
roadsteads and of the open sea. He passed through
the kitchen. It was exactly as he had seen it first,
sunlight on the floor, red copper utensils shining on
the walls, the table in the middle scrubbed snowy
white; and it was only the old woman, Aunt Catherine,
who seemed to have acquired a sharper profile. The
very hen man<oe>uvring her neck pretentiously on the
doorstep, might have been standing there for the last
eight years. Peyrol shooed her away, and going into
the yard washed himself lavishly at the pump. When
he returned from the yard he looked so fresh and hale
that old Catherine complimented him in a thin voice
on his ``bonne mine.'' Manners were changing,
and she addressed him no longer as citoyen but as
Monsieur Peyrol. He answered readily that if her
heart was free he was ready to lead her to the altar
that very day. This was such an old joke that
Catherine took no notice of it whatever, but followed
him with her eyes as he crossed the kitchen into the
salle, which was cool, with its tables and benches
washed clean, and no living soul in it. Peyrol passed
through to the front of the house, leaving the outer
door open. At the clatter of his clogs a young man
sitting outside on a bench turned his head and greeted
him by a careless nod. His face was rather long,
sunburnt and smooth, with a slightly curved nose
and a very well-shaped chin. He wore a dark blue
naval jacket open on a white shirt and a black
neckerchief tied in a slip-knot with long ends. White
breeches and stockings and black shoes with steel
buckles completed his costume. A brass-hilted sword
in a black scabbard worn on a cross-belt was lying on
the ground at his feet. Peyrol, silver-headed and
ruddy, sat down on the bench at some little distance.
The level piece of rocky ground in front of the house
was not very extensive, falling away to the sea in a
declivity framed between the rises of two barren hills.
The old rover and the young seaman with their arms
folded across their chests gazed into space, exchanging
no words, like close intimates or like distant strangers.
Neither did they stir when the master of the Escampobar
Farm appeared out of the yard gate with a
manure fork on his shoulder and started to cross the
piece of level ground. His grimy hands, his rolled-up
shirt sleeves, the fork over the shoulder, the whole of
his working-day aspect had somehow an air of being
a manifestation; but the patriot dragged his dirty
clogs low-spiritedly in the fresh light of the young
morning, in a way no real worker on the land would
ever do at the end of a day of toil. Yet there were no
signs of debility about his person. His oval face with
rounded cheek-bones remained unwrinkled except at
the corners of his almond-shaped, shiny, visionary's
eyes, which had not changed since the day when old
Peyrol's gaze had met them for the first time. A few
white hairs on his tousled head and in the thin beard
alone had marked the passage of years, and you would
have had to look for them closely. Amongst the
unchangeable rocks at the extreme end of the
Peninsula, time seemed to have stood still and idle
while the group of people poised at that southernmost
point of France had gone about their ceaseless toil,
winning bread and wine from a stony-hearted earth.</p>
<p> The master of the farm, staring straight before him,
passed before the two men towards the door of the
salle, which Peyrol had left open. He leaned his fork
against the wall before going in. The sound of a
distant bell, the bell of the village where years ago
the returned rover had watered his mule and had
listened to the talk of the man with the dog, came up
faint and abrupt in the great stillness of the upper
space. The violent slamming of the salle door broke
the silence between the two gazers on the sea.</p>
<p> ``Does that fellow never rest?'' asked the young man
in a low indifferent voice which covered the delicate
tinkling of the bell, and without moving his head.</p>
<p> ``Not on Sunday anyhow,'' answered the rover in
the same detached manner. ``What can you expect?
The church bell is like poison to him. That fellow, I
verily believe, has been born a sans-culotte. Every
`d<e'>cadi' he puts on his best clothes, sticks a red cap
on his head and wanders between the buildings like a
lost soul in the light of day. A Jacobin, if ever there
was one.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. There is hardly a hamlet in France where
there isn't a sans-culotte or two. But some of them
have managed to change their skins if nothing else.''</p>
<p> ``This one won't change his skin, and as to his
inside he never had anything in him that could be
moved. Aren't there some people that remember
him in Toulon? It isn't such a long time ago. And
yet . . .'' Peyrol turned slightly towards the young
man . . . ``And yet to look at him . . .''</p>
<p> The officer nodded, and for a moment his face wore
a troubled expression which did not escape the notice
of Peyrol who went on speaking easily:</p>
<p> ``Some time ago, when the priests began to come
back to the parishes, he, that fellow''---Peyrol jerked
his head in the direction of the salle door---``would
you believe it?---started for the village with a sabre
hanging to his side and his red cap on his head. He
made for the church door. What he wanted to do
there I don't know. It surely could not have been to
say the proper kind of prayers. Well, the people
were very much elated about their reopened church,
and as he went along some woman spied him out of
a window and started the alarm. `Eh, there! look!
The jacobin, the sans-culotte, the blood-drinker!
Look at him.' Out rushed some of them, and a man
or two that were working in their home patches
vaulted over the low walls. Pretty soon there was a
crowd, mostly women, each with the first thing she
could snatch up---stick, kitchen knife, anything. A
few men with spades and cudgels joined them by the
water-trough. He didn't quite like that. What could
he do? He turned and bolted up the hill, like a hare.
It takes some pluck to face a mob of angry women.
He ran along the cart track without looking behind
him, and they after him, yelling: `A mort! A mort
le buveur de sang!' He had been a horror and an
abomination to the people for years, what with one
story and another, and now they thought it was their
chance. The priest over in the presbytery hears the
noise, comes to the door. One look was enough for
him. He is a fellow of about forty but a wiry, long-legged
beggar, and agile---what? He just tucked up
his skirts and dashed out, taking short cuts over the
walls and leaping from boulder to boulder like a
blessed goat. I was up in my room when the noise
reached me there. I went to the window and saw
the chase in full cry after him. I was beginning to
think the fool would fetch all those furies along with
him up here and that they would carry the house by
boarding and do for the lot of us, when the priest cut
in just in the nick of time. He could have tripped
Scevola as easy as anything, but he lets him pass and
stands in front of his parishioners with his arms
extended. That did it. He saved the patron all right.
What he could say to quieten them I don't know,
but these were early days and they were very fond of
their new priest. He could have turned them round
his little finger. I had my head and shoulders out of
the window---it was interesting enough. They would
have massacred all the accursed lot, as they used to
call us down there---and when I drew in, behold
there was the patronne standing behind me looking
on too. You have been here often enough to know
how she roams about the grounds and about the
house, without a sound. A leaf doesn't pose itself
lighter on the ground than her feet do. Well, I
suppose she didn't know that I was upstairs, and
came into the room just in her way of always looking
for something that isn't there, and noticing me with
my head stuck out, naturally came up to see what I
was looking at. Her face wasn't any paler than usual,
but she was clawing the dress over her chest with her
ten fingers---like this. I was confounded. Before I
could find my tongue she just turned round and went
out with no more sound than a shadow.''</p>
<p> When Peyrol ceased, the ringing of the church bell
went on faintly and then stopped as abruptly as it
had begun.</p>
<p> ``Talking about her shadow,'' said the young officer
indolently, ``I know her shadow.''</p>
<p> Old Peyrol made a really pronounced movement.
``What do you mean?'' he asked. ``Where?''</p>
<p> ``I have got only one window in the room where
they put me to sleep last night and I stood at it looking
out. That's what I am here for---to look out, am I
not? I woke up suddenly, and being awake I went
to the window and looked out.''</p>
<p> ``One doesn't see shadows in the air,'' growled old
Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``No, but you see them on the ground, pretty black
too when the moon is full. It fell across this open
space here from the corner of the house.''</p>
<p> ``The patronne,'' exclaimed Peyrol in a low voice,
``impossible!''</p>
<p> ``Does the old woman that lives in the kitchen roam,
do the village women roam as far as this?'' asked the
officer composedly. ``You ought to know the habits
of the people. It was a woman's shadow. The moon
being to the west, it glided slanting from that corner
of the house and glided back again. I know her
shadow when I see it.''</p>
<p> ``Did you hear anything?'' asked Peyrol after a
moment of visible hesitation.</p>
<p> ``The window being open I heard somebody
snoring. It couldn't have been you, you are too
high. Moreover, from the snoring,'' he added grimly,
``it must have been somebody with a good conscience.
Not like you, old skimmer of the seas, because, you
know, that's what you are, for all your gunner's
warrant.'' He glanced out of the corner of his eyes
at old Peyrol. ``What makes you look so worried?''</p>
<p> ``She roams, that cannot be denied,'' murmured
Peyrol, with an uneasiness which he did not attempt
to conceal.</p>
<p> ``Evidently. I know a shadow when I see it, and
when I saw it, it did not frighten me, not a quarter as
much as the mere tale of it seems to have frightened
you. However, that sans-culotte friend of yours must
be a hard sleeper. Those purveyors of the guillotine
all have a first-class fireproof Republican conscience.
I have seen them at work up north when I was a boy
running barefoot in the gutters. . . .''</p>
<p> ``The fellow always sleeps in that room,'' said
Peyrol earnestly.</p>
<p> ``But that's neither here nor there,'' went on the
officer, ``except that it may be convenient for roaming
shadows to hear his conscience taking its ease.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, excited, lowered his voice forcibly. ``Lieutenant,''
he said, ``if I had not seen from the first what
was in your heart I would have contrived to get rid
of you a long time ago in some way or other.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant glanced sideways again and Peyrol
let his raised fist fall heavily on his thigh. ``I am old
Peyrol and this place, as lonely as a ship at sea, is like
a ship to me and all in it are like shipmates. Never
mind the patron. What I want to know is whether
you heard anything? Any sound at all? Murmur,
footstep?'' A bitterly mocking smile touched the lips
of the young man.</p>
<p> ``Not a fairy footstep. Could you hear the fall of a
leaf---and with that terrorist cur trumpeting right
above my head? . . .'' Without unfolding his arms
he turned towards Peyrol, who was looking at him
anxiously. . . . ``You want to know, do you? Well,
I will tell you what I heard and you can make the
best of it. I heard the sound of a stumble. It wasn't
a fairy either that stubbed its toe. It was something
in a heavy shoe. Then a stone went rolling down the
ravine in front of us interminably, then a silence as of
death. I didn't see anything moving. The way the
moon was then, the ravine was in black shadow. And
I didn't try to see.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, with his elbow on his knee, leaned his head
in the palm of his hand. The officer repeated through
his clenched teeth: ``Make the best of it.''</p>
<p> Peyrol shook his head slightly. After having spoken,
the young officer leaned back against the wall, but
next moment the report of a piece of ordnance reached
them as it were from below, travelling around the
rising ground to the left in the form of a dull thud
followed by a sighing sound that seemed to seek an
issue amongst the stony ridges and rocks near by.</p>
<p> ``That's the English corvette which has been dodging
in and out of Hy<e`>res Roads for the last week,''
said the young officer, picking up his sword hastily.
He stood up and buckled the belt on, while Peyrol
rose more deliberately from the bench, and said:</p>
<p> ``She can't be where we saw her at anchor last
night. That gun was near. She must have crossed
over. There has been enough wind for that at various
times during the night. But what could she be firing
at down there in the Petite Passe? We had better
go and see.''</p>
<p> He strode off, followed by Peyrol. There was not
a human being in sight about the farm and not a
sound of life except for the lowing of a cow coming
faintly from behind a wall. Peyrol kept close behind
the quickly moving officer who followed the footpath
marked faintly on the stony slope of the hill.</p>
<p> ``That gun was not shotted,'' he observed suddenly
in a deep steady voice.</p>
<p> The officer glanced over his shoulder.</p>
<p> ``You may be right. You haven't been a gunner
for nothing. Not shotted, eh? Then a signal gun.
But who to? We have been observing that corvette
now for days and we know she has no companion.''</p>
<p> He moved on, Peyrol following him on the awkward
path without losing his wind and arguing in a steady
voice: ``She has no companion but she may have seen
a friend at daylight this morning.''</p>
<p> ``Bah!'' retorted the officer without checking his
pace. ``You talk now like a child or else you take me
for one. How far could she have seen? What view
could she have had at daylight if she was making her
way to the Petite Passe where she is now? Why, the
islands would have masked for her two-thirds of the
sea and just in the direction too where the English
inshore squadron is hovering below the horizon.
Funny blockade that! You can't see a single English
sail for days and days together, and then when you
least expect them they come down all in a crowd as
if ready to eat us alive. No, no! There was no wind
to bring her up a companion. But tell me, gunner,
you who boast of knowing the bark of every English
piece, what sort of gun was it?''</p>
<p> Peyrol growled in answer:</p>
<p> ``Why, a twelve. The heaviest she carries. She is
only a corvette.''</p>
<p> ``Well, then, it was fired as a recall for one of her
boats somewhere out of sight along the shore. With
a coast like this, all points and bights, there would be
nothing very extraordinary in that, would there?''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Peyrol, stepping out steadily. ``What
is extraordinary is that she should have had a boat
away at all.''</p>
<p> ``You are right there.'' The officer stopped suddenly.
``Yes, it is really remarkable, that she should
have sent a boat away. And there is no other way
to explain that gun.''</p>
<p> Peyrol's face expressed no emotion of any sort.</p>
<p> ``There is something there worth investigating,''
continued the officer with animation.</p>
<p> ``If it is a matter of a boat,'' Peyrol said without the
slightest excitement, ``there can be nothing very deep
in it. What could there be? As likely as not they
sent her inshore early in the morning with lines to
try to catch some fish for the captain's breakfast.
Why do you open your eyes like this? Don't you
know the English? They have enough cheek for
anything.''</p>
<p> After uttering those words with a deliberation made
venerable by his white hair, Peyrol made the gesture
of wiping his brow, which was barely moist.</p>
<p> ``Let us push on,'' said the lieutenant abruptly.</p>
<p> ``Why hurry like this?'' argued Peyrol without
moving. ``Those heavy clogs of mine are not adapted
for scrambling on loose stones.''</p>
<p> ``Aren't they?'' burst out the officer. ``Well, then,
if you are tired you can sit down and fan yourself
with your hat. Good-bye.'' And he strode away
before Peyrol could utter a word.</p>
<p> The path following the contour of the hill took a
turn towards its sea-face and very soon the lieutenant
passed out of sight with startling suddenness. Then
his head reappeared for a moment, only his head, and
that too vanished suddenly. Peyrol remained perplexed.
After gazing in the direction in which the
officer had disappeared, he looked down at the farm
buildings, now below him but not at a very great
distance. He could see distinctly the pigeons walking
on the roof ridges. Somebody was drawing water
from the well in the middle of the yard. The patron,
no doubt; but that man, who at one time had the
power to send so many luckless persons to their death,
did not count for old Peyrol. He had even ceased to
be an offence to his sight and a disturber of his
feelings. By himself he was nothing. He had never
been anything but a creature of the universal blood-lust
of the time. The very doubts about him had
died out by now in old Peyrol's breast. The fellow
was so insignificant that had Peyrol in a moment of
particular attention discovered that he cast no shadow,
he would not have been surprised. Below there he
was reduced to the shape of a dwarf lugging a bucket
away from the well. But where was she? Peyrol asked
himself, shading his eyes with his hand. He knew
that the patronne could not be very far away, because
he had a sight of her during the morning; but that
was before he had learned she had taken to roaming
at night. His growing uneasiness came suddenly to
an end when, turning his eyes away from the farm
buildings, where obviously she was not, he saw her
appear, with nothing but the sky full of light at her
back, coming down round the very turn of the path
which had taken the lieutenant out of sight.</p>
<p> Peyrol moved briskly towards her. He wasn't a
man to lose time in idle wonder, and his sabots did
not seem to weigh heavy on his feet. The fermi<e`>re,
whom the villagers down there spoke of as Arlette as
though she had been a little girl, but in a strange tone
of shocked awe, walked with her head drooping and
her feet (as Peyrol used to say) touching the ground
as lightly as falling leaves. The clatter of the clogs
made her raise her black, clear eyes that had been
smitten on the very verge of womanhood by such
sights of bloodshed and terror, as to leave in her a
fear of looking steadily in any direction for long, lest
she should see coming through the empty air some
mutilated vision of the dead. Peyrol called it trying
not to see something that was not there; and this
evasive yet frank mobility was so much a part of her
being that the steadiness with which she met his
inquisitive glance surprised old Peyrol for a moment.
He asked without beating about the bush:</p>
<p> ``Did he speak to you?''</p>
<p> She answered with something airy and provoking
in her voice, which also struck Peyrol as a novelty:
``He never stopped. He passed by as though he had
not seen me''---and then they both looked away from
each other.</p>
<p> ``Now, what is it you took into your head to watch
for at night?''</p>
<p> She did not expect that question. She hung her
head and took a pleat of her skirt between her fingers,
embarrassed like a child.</p>
<p> ``Why should I not,'' she murmured in a low shy
note, as if she had two voices within her.</p>
<p> ``What did Catherine say?''</p>
<p> ``She was asleep, or perhaps, only lying on her back
with her eyes shut.''</p>
<p> ``Does she do that?'' asked Peyrol with incredulity.</p>
<p> ``Yes.'' Arlette gave Peyrol a queer, meaningless
smile with which her eyes had nothing to do. ``Yes,
she often does. I have noticed that before. She
lies there trembling under her blankets till I come
back.''</p>
<p> ``What drove you out last night?'' Peyrol tried to
catch her eyes, but they eluded him in the usual
way. And now her face looked as though it couldn't
smile.</p>
<p> ``My heart,'' she said. For a moment Peyrol lost
his tongue and even all power of motion. The
fermi<e`>re having lowered her eyelids, all her life seemed
to have gone into her coral lips, vivid and without a
quiver in the perfection of their design, and Peyrol,
giving up the conversation with an upward fling of
his arm, hurried up the path without looking behind
him. But once round the turn of the path, he
approached the lookout at an easier gait. It was a
piece of smooth ground below the summit of the hill.
It had quite a pronounced slope, so that a short and
robust pine growing true out of the soil yet leaned
well over the edge of the sheer drop of some fifty feet
or so. The first thing that Peyrol's eyes took in was
the water of the Petite Passe with the enormous
shadow of the Porquerolles Island darkening more
than half of its width at this still early hour. He
could not see the whole of it, but on the part his
glance embraced there was no ship of any kind. The
lieutenant, leaning with his chest along the inclined
pine, addressed him irritably.</p>
<p> ``Squat! Do you think there are no glasses on
board the Englishman?''</p>
<p> Peyrol obeyed without a word and for the space of
a minute or so presented the bizarre sight of a rather
bulky peasant with venerable white locks crawling on
his hands and knees on a hillside for no visible reason.
When he got to the foot of the pine he raised himself
on his knees. The lieutenant, flattened against the
inclined trunk and with a pocket-glass glued to his
eye, growled angrily:</p>
<p> ``You can see her now, can't you?''</p>
<p> Peyrol in his kneeling position could see the ship
now. She was less than a quarter of a mile from him
up the coast, almost within hailing effort of his
powerful voice. His unaided eyes could follow the
movements of the men on board like dark dots about
her decks. She had drifted so far within Cape Esterel
that the low projecting mass of it seemed to be in
actual contact with her stern. Her unexpected nearness
made Peyrol draw a sharp breath through his
teeth. The lieutenant murmured, still keeping the
glass to his eye:</p>
<p> ``I can see the very epaulettes of the officers on the
quarter-deck.''<p> CHAPTER V</p>
<p> As Peyrol and the lieutenant had surmised from
the report of the gun, the English ship which the
evening before was lying in Hy<e`>res Roads had got
under way after dark. The light airs had taken her
as far as the Petite Passe in the early part of the night,
and then had abandoned her to the breathless moonlight
in which, bereft of all motion, she looked more
like a white monument of stone dwarfed by the
darkling masses of land on either hand than a fabric
famed for its swiftness in attack or in flight.</p>
<p> Her captain was a man of about forty, with clean-shaven,
full cheeks and mobile thin lips which he had
a trick of compressing mysteriously before he spoke
and sometimes also at the end of his speeches. He
was alert in his movements and nocturnal in his
habits.</p>
<p> Directly he found that the calm had taken complete
possession of the night and was going to last for hours,
Captain Vincent assumed his favourite attitude of
leaning over the rail. It was then some time after
midnight and in the pervading stillness the moon,
riding on a speckless sky, seemed to pour her enchantment
on an uninhabited planet. Captain Vincent
did not mind the moon very much. Of course it made
his ship visible from both shores of the Petite Passe.
But after nearly a year of constant service in command
of the extreme lookout ship of Admiral Nelson's
blockading fleet he knew the emplacement of almost
every gun of the shore defences. Where the breeze
had left him he was safe from the biggest gun of the
few that were mounted on Porquerolles. On the
Giens side of the pass he knew for certain there was
not even a popgun mounted anywhere. His long
familiarity with that part of the coast had imbued
him with the belief that he knew the habits of its
population thoroughly. The gleams of light in their
houses went out very early and Captain Vincent felt
convinced that they were all in their beds, including
the gunners of the batteries who belonged to the local
militia. Their interest in the movements of H.M.'s
twenty-two gun sloop <u>Amelia</u> a had grown stale by
custom. She never interfered with their private
affairs, and allowed the small coasting craft to go to
and fro unmolested. They would have wondered if
she had been more than two days away. Captain
Vincent used to say grimly that the Hy<e`>res roadstead
had become like a second home to him.</p>
<p> For an hour or so Captain Vincent mused a bit
on his real home, on matters of service and other
unrelated things, then getting into motion in a very
wide-awake manner, he superintended himself the
dispatch of that boat the existence of which had been
acutely surmised by Lieutenant R<e'>al and was a
matter of no doubt whatever to old Peyrol. As to
her mission, it had nothing to do with catching fish
for the captain's breakfast. It was the captain's own
gig, a very fast-pulling boat. She was already alongside
with her crew in her when the officer, who was
going in charge, was beckoned to by the captain.
He had a cutlass at his side and a brace of pistols in
his belt, and there was a businesslike air about him
that showed he had been on such service before.</p>
<p> ``This calm will last a good many hours,'' said the
captain. ``In this tideless sea you are certain to find
the ship very much where she is now, but closer
inshore. The attraction of the land---you know.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, sir. The land does attract.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. Well, she may be allowed to put her side
against any of these rocks. There would be no more
danger than alongside a quay with a sea like this.
Just look at the water in the pass, Mr. Bolt. Like
the floor of a ballroom. Pull close along shore when
you return. I'll expect you back at dawn.''</p>
<p> Captain Vincent paused suddenly. A doubt crossed
his mind as to the wisdom of this nocturnal expedition.
The hammer-head of the peninsula with its sea-face
invisible from both sides of the coast was an ideal spot
for a secret landing. Its lonely character appealed to
his imagination, which in the first instance had
been stimulated by a chance remark of Mr. Bolt himself.</p>
<p> The fact was that the week before, when the <u>Amelia</u>
was cruising off the peninsula, Bolt, looking at the
coast, mentioned that he knew that part of it well;
he had actually been ashore there a good many years
ago, while serving with Lord Howe's fleet. He
described the nature of the path, the aspect of a little
village on the reverse slope, and had much to say
about a certain farmhouse where he had been more
than once, and had even stayed for twenty-four hours
at a time on more than one occasion.</p>
<p> This had aroused Captain Vincent's curiosity. He
sent for Bolt and had a long conversation with him.
He listened with great interest to Bolt's story---how
one day a man was seen from the deck of the ship
in which Bolt was serving then, waving a white sheet
or table-cloth amongst the rocks at the water's edge.
It might have been a trap; but, as the man seemed
alone and the shore was within range of the ship's
guns, a boat was sent to take him off.</p>
<p> ``And that, sir,'' Bolt pursued impressively, ``was,
I verily believe, the very first communication that
Lord Howe had from the royalists in Toulon.''
Afterwards Bolt described to Captain Vincent the
meetings of the Toulon royalists with the officers of
the fleet. From the back of the farm he, Bolt himself,
had often watched for hours the entrance of the
Toulon harbour on the lookout for the boat bringing
over the royalist emissaries. Then he would make an
agreed signal to the advanced squadron and some
English officers would land on their side and meet
the Frenchmen at the farmhouse. It was as simple
as that. The people of the farmhouse, husband and
wife, were well-to-do, good class altogether, and
staunch royalists. He had got to know them well.</p>
<p> Captain Vincent wondered whether the same people
were still living there. Bolt could see no reason why
they shouldn't be. It wasn't more than ten years
ago, and they were by no means an old couple. As
far as he could make out, the farm was their own
property. He, Bolt, knew only very few French
words at that time. It was much later, after he had
been made a prisoner and kept inland in France
till the Peace of Amiens, that he had picked up a
smattering of the lingo. His captivity had done away
with his feeble chance of promotion, he could not
help remarking. Bolt was a master's mate still.</p>
<p> Captain Vincent, in common with a good many
officers of all ranks in Lord Nelson's fleet, had his
misgivings about the system of distant blockade from
which the Admiral apparently would not depart.
Yet one could not blame Lord Nelson. Everybody
in the fleet understood that what was in his mind was
the destruction of the enemy; and if the enemy was
closely blockaded he would never come out to be
destroyed. On the other hand it was clear that as
things were conducted the French had too many
chances left them to slip out unobserved and vanish
from all human knowledge for months. Those possibilities
were a constant worry to Captain Vincent,
who had thrown himself with the ardour of passion
into the special duty with which he was entrusted.
Oh, for a pair of eyes fastened night and day on the
entrance of the harbour of Toulon! Oh, for the
power to look at the very state of French ships and
into the very secrets of French minds!</p>
<p> But he said nothing of this to Bolt. He only
observed that the character of the French Government
was changed and that the minds of the royalist people
in the farmhouse might have changed too, since they
had got back the exercise of their religion. Bolt's
answer was that he had had a lot to do with royalists,
in his time, on board Lord Howe's fleet, both before
and after Toulon was evacuated. All sorts, men and
women, barbers and noblemen, sailors and tradesmen;
almost every kind of royalist one could think
of; and his opinion was that a royalist never changed.
As to the place itself, he only wished the captain had
seen it. It was the sort of spot that nothing could
change. He made bold to say that it would be just
the same a hundred years hence.</p>
<p> The earnestness of his officer caused Captain
Vincent to look hard at him. He was a man of about
his own age, but while Vincent was a comparatively
young captain, Bolt was an old master's mate. Each
understood the other perfectly. Captain Vincent
fidgeted for a while and then observed abstractedly
that he was not a man to put a noose round a dog's
neck, let alone a good seaman's.</p>
<p> This cryptic pronouncement caused no wonder to
appear in Bolt's attentive gaze. He only became a
little thoughtful before he said in the same abstracted
tone that an officer in uniform was not likely to be
hanged for a spy. The service was risky, of course.
It was necessary, for its success, that, assuming the
same people were there, it should be undertaken by
a man well known to the inhabitants. Then he added
that he was certain of being recognized. And while
he enlarged on the extremely good terms he had
been on with the owners of the farm, especially the
farmer's wife, a comely motherly woman, who had
been very kind to him, and had all her wits about
her, Captain Vincent, looking at the master's mate's
bushy whiskers, thought that these in themselves were
enough to insure recognition. This impression was
so strong that he asked point-blank: ``You haven't
altered the growth of the hair on your face, Mr. Bolt,
since then?''</p>
<p> There was just a touch of indignation in Bolt's
negative reply; for he was proud of his whiskers. He
declared he was ready to take the most desperate
chances for the service of his king and his country.</p>
<p> Captain Vincent added: ``For the sake of Lord
Nelson, too.'' One understood well what his Lordship
wished to bring about by that blockade at sixty
leagues off. He was talking to a sailor, and there was
no need to say any more. Did Bolt think that he
could persuade those people to conceal him in their
house on that lonely shore end of the peninsula for
some considerable time? Bolt thought it was the
easiest thing in the world. He would simply go up
there and renew the old acquaintance, but he did not
mean to do that in a reckless manner. It would have
to be done at night, when of course there would be
no one about. He would land just where he used to
before, wrapped up in a Mediterranean sailor's cloak
---he had one of his own---over his uniform, and
simply go straight to the door, at which he would
knock. Ten to one the farmer himself would come
down to open it. He knew enough French by now,
he hoped, to persuade those people to conceal him
in some room having a view in the right direction;
and there he would stick day after day on the watch,
taking a little exercise in the middle of the night,
ready to live on mere bread and water if necessary,
so as not to arouse suspicion amongst the farmhands.
And who knows if, with the farmer's help, he could
not get some news of what was going on actually
within the port. Then from time to time he could
go down in the dead of night, signal to the ship and
make his report. Bolt expressed the hope that the
<u>Amelia</u> would remain as much as possible in sight of
the coast. It would cheer him up to see her about.
Captain Vincent naturally assented. He pointed out
to Bolt, however, that his post would become most
important exactly when the ship had been chased
away or driven by the weather off her station, as
could very easily happen.---``You would be then the
eyes of Lord Nelson's fleet, Mr. Bolt---think of that.
The actual eyes of Lord Nelson's fleet!''</p>
<p> After dispatching his officer, Captain Vincent spent
the night on deck. The break of day came at last,
much paler than the moonlight which it replaced.
And still no boat. And again Captain Vincent asked
himself if he had not acted indiscreetly. Impenetrable,
and looking as fresh as if he had just come up
on deck, he argued the point with himself till the
rising sun clearing the ridge on Porquerolles Island
flashed its level rays upon his ship with her dew-darkened
sails and dripping rigging. He roused
himself then to tell his first lieutenant to get the boats
out to tow the ship away from the shore. The report
of the gun he ordered to be fired expressed simply his
irritation. The <u>Amelia</u>, pointing towards the middle
of the Passe, was moving at a snail's pace behind her
string of boats. Minutes passed. And then suddenly
Captain Vincent perceived his boat pulling back in
shore according to orders. When nearly abreast of
the ship, she darted away, making for her side.
Mr. Bolt clambered on board, alone, ordering the
gig to go ahead and help with the towing. Captain
Vincent, standing apart on the quarter-deck, received
him with a grimly questioning look.</p>
<p> Mr. Bolt's first words were to the effect that he
believed the confounded spot to be bewitched. Then
he glanced at the group of officers on the other side
of the quarter-deck. Captain Vincent led the way
to his cabin. There he turned and looked at his
officer, who, with an air of distraction, mumbled:
``There are night-walkers there.''</p>
<p> ``Come, Bolt, what the devil have you seen? Did
you get near the house at all?''</p>
<p> ``I got within twenty yards of the door, sir,'' said
Bolt. And encouraged by the captain's much less
ferocious---``Well?'' began his tale. He did not pull
up to the path which he knew, but to a little bit of
beach on which he told his men to haul up the boat
and wait for him. The beach was concealed by a
thick growth of bushes on the landward side and by
some rocks from the sea. Then he went to what he
called the ravine, still avoiding the path, so that as a
matter of fact he made his way up on his hands and
knees mostly, very carefully and slowly amongst the
loose stones, till by holding on to a bush he brought
his eyes on a level with the piece of flat ground in
front of the farmhouse.</p>
<p> The familiar aspect of the buildings, totally
unchanged from the time when he had played his
part in what appeared as a most successful operation
at the beginning of the war, inspired Bolt with great
confidence in the success of his present enterprise,
vague as it was, but the great charm of which lay, no
doubt, in mental associations with his younger years.
Nothing seemed easier than to stride across the forty
yards of open ground and rouse the farmer whom he
remembered so well, the well-to-do man, a grave
sagacious royalist in his humble way; certainly, in
Bolt's view, no traitor to his country, and preserving
so well his dignity in ambiguous circumstances. To
Bolt's simple vision neither that, man nor his wife
could have changed.</p>
<p> In this view of Arlette's parents Bolt was influenced
by the consciousness of there having been no change
in himself. He was the same Jack Bolt, and everything
around him was the same as if he had left the
spot only yesterday. Already he saw himself in the
kitchen which he knew so well, seated by the light of
a single candle before a glass of wine and talking his
best French to that worthy farmer of sound principles.
The whole thing was as well as done. He imagined
himself a secret inmate of that building, closely
confined indeed, but sustained by the possible great
results of his watchfulness, in many ways more
comfortable than on board the <u>Amelia</u> and with the
glorious consciousness that he was, in Captain
Vincent's phrase, the actual physical eyes of the fleet.</p>
<p> He didn't, of course, talk of his private feelings to
Captain Vincent. All those thoughts and emotions
were compressed in the space of not much more than
a minute or two while, holding on with one hand to
his bush and having got a good foothold for one of
his feet, he indulged in that pleasant anticipatory
sense of success. In the old days the farmer's wife
used to be a light sleeper. The farmhands who, he
remembered, lived in the village or were distributed
in stables and outhouses, did not give him any
concern. He wouldn't need to knock heavily. He
pictured to himself the farmer's wife sitting up in bed,
listening, then rousing her husband, who, as likely as
not, would take the gun standing against the dresser
downstairs and come to the door.</p>
<p> And then everything would be all right. . . . But
perhaps . . . Yes! It was just as likely the farmer
would simply open the window and hold a parley.
That really was most likely. Naturally. In his place
Bolt felt he would do that very thing. Yes, that was
what a man in a lonely house, in the middle of the
night, would do most naturally. And he imagined
himself whispering mysteriously his answers up the
wall to the obvious questions---Ami---Bolt---Ouvrez-moi
---vive le roi---or things of that sort. And in
sequence to those vivid images it occurred to Bolt that
the best thing he could do would be to throw small
stones against the window shutter, the sort of sound
most likely to rouse a light sleeper. He wasn't quite
sure which window on the floor above the ground
floor was that of those people's bedroom, but there
were anyhow only three of them. In a moment he
would have sprung up from his foothold on to the
level if, raising his eyes for another look at the front
of the house, he had not perceived that one of the
windows was already open. How he could have
failed to notice that before he couldn't explain.</p>
<p> He confessed to Captain Vincent in the course of
his narrative that ``this open window, sir, checked me
dead. In fact, sir, it shook my confidence, for you
know, sir, that no native of these parts would dream
of sleeping with his window open. It struck me that
there was something wrong there; and I remained
where I was.''</p>
<p> That fascination of repose, of secretive friendliness,
which houses present at night, was gone. By the
power of an open window, a black square in the
moon-lighted wall, the farmhouse took on the aspect
of a man-trap. Bolt assured Captain Vincent that
the window would not have stopped him; he would
have gone on all the same, though with an uncertain
mind. But while he was thinking it out, there glided
without a sound before his irresolute eyes from somewhere
a white vision---a woman. He could see her
black hair flowing down her back. A woman whom
anybody would have been excused for taking for a
ghost. ``I won't say that she froze my blood, sir, but
she made me cold all over for a moment. Lots of
people have seen ghosts, at least they say so, and I
have an open mind about that. She was a weird
thing to look at in the moonlight. She did not act
like a sleep-walker either. If she had not come out
of a grave, then she had jumped out of bed. But
when she stole back and hid herself round the corner
of the house I knew she was not a ghost. She could
not have seen me. There she stood in the black
shadow watching for something---or waiting for somebody,''
added Bolt in a grim tone. ``She looked
crazy,'' he conceded charitably.</p>
<p> One thing was clear to him: there had been changes
in that farmhouse since his time. Bolt resented them,
as if that time had been only last week. The woman
concealed round the corner remained in his full view,
watchful, as if only waiting for him to show himself
in the open, to run off screeching and rouse all the
countryside. Bolt came quickly to the conclusion
that he must withdraw from the slope. On lowering
himself from his first position he had the misfortune
to dislodge a stone. This circumstance precipitated
his retreat. In a very few minutes he found himself
by the shore. He paused to listen. Above him, up
the ravine and all round amongst the rocks, everything
was perfectly still. He walked along in the
direction of his boat. There was nothing for it but
to get away quietly and perhaps . . .</p>
<p> ``Yes, Mr. Bolt, I fear we shall have to give up our
plan,'' interrupted Captain Vincent at that point.
Bolt's assent came reluctantly, and then he braced
himself to confess that this was not the worst. Before
the astonished face of Captain Vincent he hastened
to blurt it out. He was very sorry, he could in no
way account for it, but---he had lost a man.</p>
<p> Captain Vincent seemed unable to believe his ears.
``What do you say? Lost a man out of my boat's
crew!'' He was profoundly shocked. Bolt was
correspondingly distressed. He narrated that, shortly
after he had left them, the seamen had heard, or
imagined they had heard, some faint and peculiar
noises somewhere within the cove. The coxswain
sent one of the men, the oldest of the boat's crew,
along the shore to ascertain whether their boat hauled
on the beach could be seen from the other side of the
cove. The man---it was Symons---departed crawling
on his hands and knees to make the circuit and, well
---he had not returned. This was really the reason
why the boat was so late in getting back to the ship.
Of course Bolt did not like to give up the man. It
was inconceivable that Symons should have deserted.
He had left his cutlass behind and was completely
unarmed, but had he been suddenly pounced upon
he surely would have been able to let out a yell that
could have been heard all over the cove. But till
daybreak a profound stillness, in which it seemed a
whisper could have been heard for miles, had reigned
over the coast. It was as if Symons had been spirited
away by some supernatural means, without a scuffle,
without a cry. For it was inconceivable that he
should have ventured inland and got captured there.
It was equally inconceivable that there should have
been on that particular night men ready to pounce
upon Symons and knock him on the head so neatly
as not to let him give a groan even.</p>
<p> Captain Vincent said: ``All this is very fantastical,
Mr. Bolt,'' and compressed his lips firmly for a
moment before he continued: ``But not much more
than your woman. I suppose you did see something
real. . . .''</p>
<p> ``I tell you, sir, she stood there in full moonlight for
ten minutes within a stone's throw of me,'' protested
Bolt with a sort of desperation. ``She seemed to have
jumped out of bed only to look at the house. If she
had a petticoat over her night-shift, that was all. Her
back was to me. When she moved away I could not
make out her face properly. Then she went to stand
in the shadow of the house.''</p>
<p> ``On the watch,'' suggested Captain Vincent.</p>
<p> ``Looked like it, sir,'' confessed Bolt.</p>
<p> ``So there must have been somebody about,'' concluded
Captain Vincent with assurance.</p>
<p> Bolt murmured a reluctant, ``Must have been.''
He had expected to get into enormous trouble over
this affair and was much relieved by the captain's
quiet attitude. ``I hope, sir, you approve of my
conduct in not attempting to look for Symons at
once?''</p>
<p> ``Yes. You acted prudently by not advancing
inland,'' said the captain.</p>
<p> ``I was afraid of spoiling our chances to carry out
your plan, sir, by disclosing our presence on shore.
And that could not have been avoided. Moreover,
we were only five in all and not properly armed.''</p>
<p> ``The plan has gone down before your night-walker,
Mr. Bolt,'' Captain Vincent declared dryly. ``But
we must try to find out what has become of our man
if it can be done without risking too much.''</p>
<p> ``By landing a large party this very next night we
could surround the house,'' Bolt suggested. ``If we
find friends there, well and good. If enemies, then
we could carry off some of them on board for exchange
perhaps. I am almost sorry I did not go back and
kidnap that wench---whoever she was,'' he added
recklessly. ``Ah! If it had only been a man!''</p>
<p> ``No doubt there was a man not very far off,'' said
Captain Vincent equably. ``That will do, Mr. Bolt.
You had better go and get some rest now.''</p>
<p> Bolt was glad to obey, for he was tired and hungry
after his dismal failure. What vexed him most was
its absurdity. Captain Vincent, though he too had
passed a sleepless night, felt too restless to remain
below. He followed his officer on deck.<p> CHAPTER VI</p>
<p> By that time the <u>Amelia</u> had been towed half a
mile or so away from Cape Esterel. This change had
brought her nearer to the two watchers on the hillside,
who would have been plainly visible to the people on
her deck, but for the head of the pine which concealed
their movements. Lieutenant R<e'>al, bestriding the
rugged trunk as high as he could get, had the whole
of the English ship's deck open to the range of his
pocket-glass which he used between the branches.
He said to Peyrol suddenly:</p>
<p> ``Her captain has just come on deck.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, sitting at the foot of the tree, made no
answer for a long while. A warm drowsiness lay over
the land and seemed to press down his eyelids. But
inwardly the old rover was intensely awake. Under
the mask of his immobility, with half-shut eyes and
idly clasped hands, he heard the lieutenant, perched
up there near the head of the tree, mutter counting
something: ``One, two, three,'' and then a loud
``Parbleu!'' after which the lieutenant in his trunk-bestriding
attitude began to jerk himself backwards.
Peyrol got up out of his way, but could not restrain
himself from asking: ``What's the matter now?''</p>
<p> ``I will tell you what's the matter,'' said the other
excitedly. As soon as he got his footing he walked
up to old Peyrol and when quite close to him folded
his arms across his chest.</p>
<p> ``The first thing I did was to count the boats in
the water. There was not a single one left on board.
And now I just counted them again and found one
more there. That ship had a boat out last night.
How I missed seeing her pull out from under the land
I don't know. I was watching the decks, I suppose,
and she seems to have gone straight up to the tow-rope.
But I was right. That Englishman had a
boat out.''</p>
<p> He seized Peyrol by both shoulders suddenly. ``I
believe you knew it all the time. You knew it, I tell
you.'' Peyrol, shaken violently by the shoulders,
raised his eyes to look at the angry face within a few
inches of his own. In his worn gaze there was no fear
or shame, but a troubled perplexity and obvious concern.
He remained passive, merely remonstrating
softly:</p>
<p> ``Doucement. Doucement.'</p>
<p> The lieutenant suddenly desisted with a final jerk
which failed to stagger old Peyrol, who, directly he
had been released, assumed an explanatory tone.</p>
<p> ``For the ground is slippery here. If I had lost my
footing I would not have been able to prevent myself
from grabbing at you, and we would have gone down
that cliff together; which would have told those
Englishmen more than twenty boats could have found
out in as many nights.''</p>
<p> Secretly Lieutenant R<e'>al was daunted by Peyrol's
mildness. It could not be shaken. Even physically
he had an impression of the utter futility of his effort,
as though he had tried to shake a rock. He threw
himself on the ground carelessly saying:</p>
<p> ``As for instance?''</p>
<p> Peyrol lowered himself with a deliberation appropriate
to his grey hairs. ``You don't suppose that out
of a hundred and twenty or so pairs of eyes on board
that ship there wouldn't be a dozen at least scanning
the shore. Two men falling down a cliff would have
been a startling sight. The English would have been
interested enough to send a boat ashore to go through
our pockets, and whether dead or only half dead we
wouldn't have been in a state to prevent them. It
wouldn't matter so much as to me, and I don't know
what papers you may have in your pockets, but there
are your shoulder-straps, your uniform coat.''</p>
<p> ``I carry no papers in my pocket, and . . .'' A
sudden thought seemed to strike the lieutenant, a
thought so intense and far-fetched as to give his
mental effort a momentary aspect of vacancy. He
shook it off and went on in a changed tone: ``The
shoulder-straps would not have been much of a
revelation by themselves.''</p>
<p> ``No. Not much. But enough to let her captain
know that he had been watched. For what else could
the dead body of a naval officer with a spyglass in
his pocket mean? Hundreds of eyes may glance
carelessly at that ship every day from all parts of the
coast, though I fancy those landsmen hardly take the
trouble to look at her now. But that's a very different
thing from being kept under observation. However
I don't suppose all this matters much.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant was recovering from the spell of
that sudden thought. ``Papers in my pocket,'' he
muttered to himself. ``That would be a perfect way.''
His parted lips came together in a slightly sarcastic
smile with which he met Peyrol's puzzled, sidelong
glance provoked by the inexplicable character of
these words.</p>
<p> ``I bet,'' said the lieutenant, ``that ever since I
came here first you have been more or less worrying
your old head about my motives and intentions.''</p>
<p> Peyrol said simply: ``You came here on service at
first and afterwards you came again because even in
the Toulon fleet an officer may get a few days' leave.
As to your intentions, I won't say anything about
them. Especially as regards myself. About ten
minutes ago anybody looking on would have thought
they were not friendly to me.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant sat up suddenly. By that time the
English sloop, getting away from under the land, had
become visible even from the spot on which they sat.</p>
<p> ``Look!'' exclaimed R<e'>al. ``She seems to be forging
ahead in this calm.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, startled, raised his eyes and saw the <u>Amelia</u>
clear of the edge of the cliff and heading across the
Passe. All her boats were already alongside, and yet,
as a minute or two of steady gazing was enough to
convince Peyrol, she was not stationary.</p>
<p> ``She moves! There is no denying that. She
moves. Watch the white speck of that house on
Porquerolles. There! The end of her jib-boom
touches it now. In a moment her head sails will
mask it to us.''</p>
<p> ``I would never have believed it,'' muttered the
lieutenant, after a pause of intent gazing. ``And
look, Peyrol, look, there is not a wrinkle on the
water.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, who had been shading his eyes from the
sun, let his hand fall. ``Yes,'' he said, ``she would
answer to a child's breath quicker than a feather, and
the English very soon found it out when they got her.
She was caught in Genoa only a few months after I
came home and got my moorings here.''</p>
<p> ``I didn't know,'' murmured the young man.</p>
<p> ``Aha, lieutenant,'' said Peyrol, pressing his finger
to his breast, ``it hurts here, doesn't it? There is
nobody but good Frenchmen here. Do you think it
is a pleasure to me to watch that flag out there at her
peak? Look, you can see the whole of her now.
Look at her ensign hanging down as if there were not
a breath of wind under the heavens. . . .'' He
stamped his foot suddenly. ``And yet she moves!
Those in Toulon that may be thinking of catching
her dead or alive would have to think hard and make
long plans and get good men to carry them out.''</p>
<p> ``There was some talk of it at the Toulon
Admiralty,'' said R<e'>al.</p>
<p> The rover shook his head. ``They need not have
sent you on the duty,'' he said. ``I have been
watching her now for a month, her and the man who
has got her now. I know all his tricks and all his
habits and all his dodges by this time. The man is a
seaman, that must be said for him, but I can tell
beforehand what he will do in any given case.''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al lay down on his back again, his
clasped hands under his head. He thought that this
old man was not boasting. He knew a lot about the
English ship, and if an attempt to capture her was to
be made, his ideas would be worth having. Nevertheless,
in his relations with old Peyrol Lieutenant
R<e'>al suffered from contradictory feelings. R<e'>al was
the son of a ci-devant couple---small provincial gentry
---who had both lost their heads on the scaffold,
within the same week. As to their boy, he was
apprenticed by order of the Delegate of the Revolutionary
Committee of his town to a poor but pure-minded
joiner, who could not provide him with shoes
to run his errands in, but treated this aristocrat not
unkindly. Nevertheless, at the end of the year the
orphan ran away and volunteered as a boy on board
one of the ships of the Republic about to sail on a
distant expedition. At sea he found another standard
of values. In the course of some eight years, suppressing
his faculties of love and hatred, he arrived
at the rank of an officer by sheer merit, and had
accustomed himself to look at men sceptically, without
much scorn or much respect. His principles were
purely professional and he had never formed a
friendship in his life---more unfortunate in that respect
than old Peyrol, who at least had known the bonds
of the lawless Brotherhood of the Coast. He was, of
course, very self-contained. Peyrol, whom he had
found unexpectedly settled on the peninsula, was the
first human being to break through that schooled
reserve which the precariousness of all things had
forced on the orphan of the Revolution. Peyrol's
striking personality had aroused R<e'>al's interest, a
mistrustful liking mixed with some contempt of a
purely doctrinaire kind. It was clear that the fellow
had been next thing to a pirate at one time or another
---a sort of past which could not commend itself to a
naval officer.</p>
<p> Still, Peyrol had broken through: and, presently,
the peculiarities of all those people at the farm, each
individual one of them, had entered through the
breach.</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al, on his back, closing his eyes to
the glare of the sky, meditated on old Peyrol, while
Peyrol himself, with his white head bare in the
sunshine, seemed to be sitting by the side of a corpse.
What in that man impressed Lieutenant R<e'>al was
the faculty of shrewd insight. The facts of R<e'>al's
connection with the farmhouse on the peninsula were
much as Peyrol had stated. First on specific duty
about establishing a signal station, then, when that
project had been given up, voluntary visits. Not
belonging to any ship of the fleet but doing shore
duty at the Arsenal, Lieutenant R<e'>al had spent
several periods of short leave at the farm, where
indeed nobody could tell whether he had come on
duty or on leave. He personally could not---or
perhaps would not---tell even to himself why it was
that he came there. He had been growing sick of
his work. He had no place in the world to go to, and
no one either. Was it Peyrol he was coming to see?
A mute, strangely suspicious, defiant understanding
had established itself imperceptibly between him and
that lawless old man who might have been suspected
to have come there only to die, if the whole robust
personality of Peyrol with its quiet vitality had not
been antagonistic to the notion of death. That rover
behaved as though he had all the time in the world
at his command.</p>
<p> Peyrol spoke suddenly, with his eyes fixed in front
of him as if he were addressing the Island of
Porquerolles, eight miles away.</p>
<p> ``Yes---I know all her moves, though I must say
that this trick of dodging close to our peninsula is
something new.''</p>
<p> ``H'm! Fish for the captain's breakfast,'' mumbled
R<e'>al without opening his eyes. ``Where is she
now?''</p>
<p> ``In the middle of the Passe, busy hoisting in her
boats. And still moving! That ship will keep her
way as long as the flame of a candle on her deck will
not stand upright.''</p>
<p> ``That ship is a marvel.''</p>
<p> ``She has been built by French shipwrights,'' said
old Peyrol bitterly.</p>
<p> This was the last sound for a long time. Then the
lieutenant said in an indifferent tone: ``You are very
positive about that. How do you know?''</p>
<p> ``I have been looking at her for a month, whatever
name she might have had or whatever name the
English call her by now. Did you ever see such a
bow on an English-built ship?''</p>
<p> The lieutenant remained silent, as though he had
lost all interest and there had been no such thing as
an English man-of-war within a mile. But all the
time he was thinking hard. He had been told
confidentially of a certain piece of service to be
performed on instructions received from Paris. Not
an operation of war, but service of the greatest importance.
The risk of it was not so much deadly as
particularly odious. A brave man might well have
shrunk from it; and there are risks (not death) from
which a resolute man might shrink without shame.</p>
<p> ``Have you ever tasted of prison, Peyrol?'' he asked
suddenly, in an affectedly sleepy voice.</p>
<p> It roused Peyrol nearly into a shout. ``Heavens!
No! Prison! What do you mean by prison? . . .
I have been a captive to savages,'' he added, calming
down, ``but that's a very old story. I was young and
foolish then. Later, when a grown man, I was a
slave to the famous Ali-Kassim. I spent a fortnight
with chains on my legs and arms in the yard of a
mud fort on the shores of the Persian Gulf. There
was nearly a score of us Brothers of the Coast in the
same predicament in consequence of a shipwreck.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. . . . The lieutenant was very languid
indeed. . . . And I daresay you all took service
with that bloodthirsty old pirate.''</p>
<p> ``There was not a single one of his thousands of
blackamoors that could lay a gun properly. But
Ali-Kassim made war like a prince. We sailed, a
regular fleet, across the gulf, took a town on the coast
of Arabia somewhere, and looted it. Then I and the
others managed to get hold of an armed dhow, and
we fought our way right through the blackamoors'
fleet. Several of us died of thirst later. All the same,
it was a great affair. But don't you talk to me of
prisons. A proper man if given a chance to fight
can always get himself killed. You understand me?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, I understand you,'' drawled the lieutenant.
``I think I know you pretty well. I suppose an English
prison . . .''</p>
<p> ``That is a horrible subject of conversation,'' interrupted
Peyrol in a loud, emotional tone. ``Naturally,
any death is better than a prison. Any death! What
is it you have in your mind, lieutenant?''</p>
<p> ``Oh, it isn't that I want you to die,'' drawled R<e'>al
in an uninterested manner.</p>
<p> Peyrol, his entwined fingers clasping his legs, gazed
fixedly at the English sloop floating idly in the Passe
while he gave up all his mind to the consideration of
these words that had floated out, idly too, into the
peace and silence of the morning. Then he asked in
a low tone:</p>
<p> ``Do you want to frighten me?''</p>
<p> The lieutenant laughed harshly. Neither by word,
gesture nor glance did Peyrol acknowledge the enigmatic
and unpleasant sound. But when it ceased the
silence grew so oppressive between the two men that
they got up by a common impulse. The lieutenant
sprang to his feet lightly. The uprising of Peyrol
took more time and had more dignity. They stood
side by side unable to detach their longing eyes from
the enemy ship below their feet.</p>
<p> ``I wonder why he put himself into this curious
position,'' said the officer.</p>
<p> ``I wonder,'' growled Peyrol curtly. ``If there had
been only a couple of eighteen-pounders placed on the
rocky ledge to the left of us, we could have unrigged
her in about ten minutes.''</p>
<p> ``Good old gunner,'' commented R<e'>al ironically.
``And what afterwards? Swim off, you and I, with
our cutlasses in our teeth and take her by boarding,
what?''</p>
<p> This sally provoked in Peyrol an austere smile.
``No! No!'' he protested soberly. ``But why not let
Toulon know? Bring out a frigate or two and catch
him alive. Many a time have I planned his capture
just to ease my heart. Often I have stared at night
out of my window upstairs across the bay to where I
knew he was lying at anchor, and thinking of a little
surprise I could arrange for him if I were not only
old Peyrol, the gunner.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. And keeping out of the way at that, with a
bad note against his name in the books of the
Admiralty in Toulon.''</p>
<p> ``You can't say I have tried to hide myself from
you who are a naval officer,'' struck in Peyrol quickly.
``I fear no man. I did not run. I simply went away
from Toulon. Nobody had given me an order to
stay there. And you can't say I ran very far either.''</p>
<p> ``That was the cleverest move of all. You knew
what you were doing.''</p>
<p> ``Here you go again, hinting at something crooked
like that fellow with big epaulettes at the Port Office
that seemed to be longing to put me under arrest just
because I brought a prize from the Indian Ocean,
eight thousand miles, dodging clear of every Englishmen
that came in my way, which was more perhaps
than he could have done. I have my gunner's
warrant signed by Citizen Renaud, a chef d'escadre.
It wasn't given me for twirling my thumbs or hiding
in the cable tier when the enemy was about. There
were on board our ships some patriots that weren't
above doing that sort of thing, I can tell you. But
republic or no republic, that kind wasn't likely to get
a gunner's warrant.''</p>
<p> ``That's all right,'' said R<e'>al, with his eyes fixed on
the English ship, the head of which was swung to the
northward now. . . . ``Look, she seems to have lost
her way at last,'' he remarked parenthetically to
Peyrol, who also glanced that way and nodded. . . .
``That's all right. But it's on record that you managed
in a very short time to get very thick with a lot of
patriots ashore. Section leaders. Terrorists. . . .''</p>
<p> ``Why, yes. I wanted to hear what they had to say.
They talked like a drunken crew of scallywags that
had stolen a ship. But at any rate it wasn't such as
they that had sold the Port to the English. They
were a lot of bloodthirsty landlubbers. I did get out
of town as soon as I could. I remembered I was born
around here. I knew no other bit of France, and I
didn't care to go any further. Nobody came to look
for me.''</p>
<p> ``No, not here. I suppose they thought it was too
near. They did look for you, a little, but they gave
it up. Perhaps if they had persevered and made an
admiral of you we would not have been beaten at
Aboukir.''</p>
<p> At the mention of that name Peyrol shook his fist
at the serene Mediterranean sky. ``And yet we were
no worse men than the English,'' he cried, ``and there
are no such ships as ours in the world. You see,
lieutenant, the republican god of these talkers would
never give us seamen a chance of fair play.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant looked round in surprise. ``What
do you know about a republican god?'' he asked.
``What on earth do you mean?''</p>
<p> ``I have heard of and seen more gods than you
could ever dream of in a long night's sleep, in every
corner of the earth, in the very heart of forests, which
is an inconceivable thing. Figures, stones, sticks.
There must be something in the idea. . . . And
what I meant,'' he continued in a resentful tone, ``is
that their republican god, which is neither stick nor
stone, but seems to be some kind of lubber, has never
given us seamen a chief like that one the soldiers have
got ashore.''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al looked at Peyrol with unsmiling
attention, then remarked quietly, ``Well, the god of
the aristocrats is coming back again and it looks as if
he were bringing an emperor along with him. You've
heard something of that, you people in the farmhouse?
Haven't you?''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Peyrol. ``I have heard no talk of an
emperor. But what does it matter? Under one
name or another a chief can be no more than a chief,
and that general whom they have been calling consul
is a good chief---nobody can deny that.''</p>
<p> After saying those words in a dogmatic tone, Peyrol
looked up at the sun and suggested that it was time to
go down to the farmhouse ``pour manger la soupe.''
With a suddenly gloomy face R<e'>al moved off, followed
by Peyrol. At the first turn of the path they got the
view of the Escampobar buildings with the pigeons
still walking on the ridges of the roofs, of the sunny
orchards and yards without a living soul in them.
Peyrol remarked that everybody no doubt was in the
kitchen waiting for his and the lieutenant's return.
He himself was properly hungry. ``And you, lieutenant?''</p>
<p> The lieutenant was not hungry. Hearing this
declaration made in a peevish tone, Peyrol gave a
sagacious movement of his head behind the lieutenant's
back. Well, whatever happened, a man had
to eat. He, Peyrol, knew what it was to be altogether
without food; but even half-rations was a poor show,
very poor show for anybody who had to work or to
fight. For himself he couldn't imagine any conjuncture
that would prevent him having a meal as
long as there was something to eat within reach.</p>
<p> His unwonted garrulity provoked no response, but
Peyrol continued to talk in that strain as though his
thoughts were concentrated on food, while his eyes
roved here and there and his ears were open for the
slightest sound. When they arrived in front of the
house Peyrol stopped to glance anxiously down the
path to the coast, letting the lieutenant enter the caf<e'>.
The Mediterranean, in that part which could be seen
from the door of the caf<e'>, was as empty of all sail as
a yet undiscovered sea. The dull tinkle of a cracked
bell on the neck of some wandering cow was the only
sound that reached him, accentuating the Sunday
peace of the farm. Two goats were lying down on
the western slope of the hill. It all had a very
reassuring effect and the anxious expression on Peyrol's
face was passing away when suddenly one of the goats
leaped to its feet. The rover gave a start and became
rigid in a pose of tense apprehension. A man who
is in such a frame of mind that a leaping goat makes
him start cannot be happy. However, the other goat
remained lying down. There was really no reason
for alarm, and Peyrol, composing his features as near
as possible to their usual placid expression, followed
the lieutenant into the house.<p> CHAPTER VII</p>
<p> A single cover having been laid at the end of a
long table in the salle for the lieutenant, he had his
meal there while the others sat down to theirs in the
kitchen, the usual strangely assorted company served
by the anxious and silent Catherine. Peyrol, thoughtful
and hungry, faced Citizen Scevola in his working
clothes and very much withdrawn within himself.
Scevola's aspect was more feverish than usual, with
the red patches on his cheekbones very marked above
the thick beard. From time to time the mistress of
the farm would get up from her place by the side of
old Peyrol and go out into the salle to attend to the
lieutenant. The other three people seemed unconscious
of her absences. Towards the end of the meal
Peyrol leaned back in his wooden chair and let his
gaze rest on the ex-terrorist who had not finished yet,
and was still busy over his plate with the air of a man
who had done a long morning's work. The door
leading from the kitchen to the salle stood wide open,
but no sound of voices ever came from there.</p>
<p> Till lately Peyrol had not concerned himself very
much with the mental states of the people with whom
he lived. Now, however, he wondered to himself
what could be the thoughts of the ex-terrorist patriot,
that sanguinary and extremely poor creature occupying
the position of master of the Escampobar Farm.
But when Citizen Scevola raised his head at last to
take a long drink of wine there was nothing new on
that face which in its high colour resembled so much
a painted mask. Their eyes met.</p>
<p> ``Sacrebleu!'' exclaimed Peyrol at last. ``If you
never say anything to anybody like this you will forget
how to speak at last.''</p>
<p> The patriot smiled from the depths of his beard, a
smile which Peyrol for some reason, mere prejudice
perhaps, always thought resembled the defensive grin
of some small wild animal afraid of being cornered.</p>
<p> ``What is there to talk about?'' he retorted. ``You
live with us; you haven't budged from here; I suppose
you have counted the bunches of grapes in the
enclosure and the figs on the fig-tree on the west wall
many times over. . . .'' He paused to lend an ear
to the dead silence in the salle, and then said with a
slight rise of tone, ``You and I know everything that
is going on here.''</p>
<p> Peyrol wrinkled the corners of his eyes in a keen,
searching glance. Catherine clearing the table bore
herself as if she had been completely deaf. Her face,
of a walnut colour, with sunken cheeks and lips, might
have been a carving in the marvellous immobility of
its fine wrinkles. Her carriage was upright and her
hands swift in their movements. Peyrol said: ``We
don't want to talk about the farm. Haven't you
heard any news lately?''</p>
<p> The patriot shook his head violently. Of public
news he had a horror. Everything was lost. The
country was ruled by perjurers and renegades. All
the patriotic virtues were dead. He struck the table
with his fist and then remained listening as though
the blow could have roused an echo in the silent
house. Not the faintest sound came from anywhere.
Citizen Scevola sighed. It seemed to him that he
was the only patriot left, and even in his retirement
his life was not safe.</p>
<p> ``I know,'' said Peyrol. ``I saw the whole affair
out of the window. You can run like a hare, citizen.''</p>
<p> ``Was I to allow myself to be sacrificed by those
superstitious brutes?'' argued Citizen Scevola in a
high-pitched voice and with genuine indignation
which Peyrol watched coldly. He could hardly catch
the mutter of ``Perhaps it would have been just as
well if I had let those reactionary dogs kill me that
time.''</p>
<p> The old woman washing up at the sink glanced
uneasily towards the door of the salle.</p>
<p> ``No!'' shouted the lonely sans-culotte. ``It isn't
possible! There must be plenty of patriots left in
France. The sacred fire is not burnt out yet.''</p>
<p> For a short time he presented the appearance of a
man who is sitting with ashes on his head and
desolation in his heart. His almond-shaped eyes
looked dull, extinguished. But after a moment he
gave a sidelong look at Peyrol as if to watch the effect
and began declaiming in a low voice and apparently
as if rehearsing a speech to himself: ``No, it isn't
possible. Some day tyranny will stumble and then
it will be time to pull it down again. We will come
out in our thousands and-<c,>a ira!''</p>
<p> Those words, and even the passionate energy of the
tone, left Peyrol unmoved. With his head sustained
by his thick brown hand he was thinking of something
else so obviously as to depress again the feebly
struggling spirit of terrorism in the lonely breast of
Citizen Scevola. The glow of reflected sunlight in
the kitchen became darkened by the body of the
fisherman of the lagoon, mumbling a shy greeting
to the company from the frame of the doorway.
Without altering his position Peyrol turned his eyes
on him curiously. Catherine, wiping her hands on
her apron, remarked: ``You come late for your dinner,
Michel.'' He stepped in then, took from the old
woman's hand an earthenware pot and a large hunk
of bread and carried them out at once into the yard.
Peyrol and the sans-culotte got up from the table.
The latter, after hesitating like somebody who has
lost his way, went brusquely into the passage, while
Peyrol, avoiding Catherine's anxious stare, made for
the back-yard. Through the open door of the salle
he obtained a glimpse of Arlette sitting upright with
her hands in her lap gazing at somebody he could not
see, but who could be no other than Lieutenant
R<e'>al.</p>
<p> In the blaze and heat of the yard the chickens,
broken up into small groups, were having their siesta
in patches of shade. But Peyrol cared nothing for
the sun. Michel, who was eating his dinner under
the pent roof of the cart shed, put the earthenware
pot down on the ground and joined his master at the
well encircled by a low wall of stones and topped by
an arch of wrought iron on which a wild fig-tree had
twined a slender offshoot. After his dog's death the
fisherman had abandoned the salt lagoon, leaving his
rotting punt exposed on the dismal shore and his
miserable nets shut up in the dark hut. He did not
care for another dog, and besides, who was there to
give him a dog? He was the last of men. Somebody
must be last. There was no place for him in the life
of the village. So one fine morning he had walked
up to the farm in order to see Peyrol. More correctly,
perhaps, to let himself be seen by Peyrol.
That was exactly Michel's only hope. He sat down
on a stone outside the gate with a small bundle,
consisting mainly of an old blanket, and a crooked
stick lying on the ground near him, and looking the
most lonely, mild and harmless creature on this earth.
Peyrol had listened gravely to his confused tale of the
dog's death. He, personally, would not have made a
friend of a dog like Michel's dog, but he understood
perfectly the sudden breaking up of the establishment
on the shore of the lagoon. So when Michel had
concluded with the words, ``I thought I would come
up here,'' Peyrol, without waiting for a plain request,
had said: ``Tr<e`>s bien. You will be my crew,'' and
had pointed down the path leading to the seashore.
And as Michel, picking up his bundle and stick,
started off, waiting for no further directions, he had
shouted after him: ``You will find a loaf of bread
and a bottle of wine in a locker aft, to break your
fast on.''</p>
<p> These had been the only formalities of Michel's
engagement to serve as ``crew'' on board Peyrol's
boat. The rover indeed had tried without loss of
time to carry out his purpose of getting something of
his own that would float. It was not so easy to find
anything worthy. The miserable population of
Madrague, a tiny fishing hamlet facing towards
Toulon, had nothing to sell. Moreover, Peyrol looked
with contempt on all their possessions. He would
have as soon bought a catamaran of three logs of
wood tied together with rattans as one of their boats;
but lonely and prominent on the beach, lying on her
side in weather-beaten melancholy, there was a
two-masted tartane with her sun-whitened cordage
hanging in festoons and her dry masts showing long
cracks. No man was ever seen dozing under the
shade of her hull on which the Mediterranean gulls
made themselves very much at home. She looked a
wreck thrown high up on the land by a disdainful
sea. Peyrol, having surveyed her from a distance,
saw that the rudder still hung in its place. He ran
his eye along her body and said to himself that a craft
with such lines would sail well. She was much bigger
than anything he had thought of, but in her size, too,
there was a fascination. It seemed to bring all the
shores of the Mediterranean within his reach, Baleares
and Corsica, Barbary and Spain. Peyrol had sailed
over hundreds of leagues of ocean in craft that were
no bigger. At his back in silent wonder a knot of
fishermen's wives, bareheaded and lean, with a swarm
of ragged children clinging to their skirts, watched
the first stranger they had seen for years.</p>
<p> Peyrol borrowed a short ladder in the hamlet (he
knew better than to trust his weight to any of the
ropes hanging over the side) and carried it down to
the beach followed at a respectful distance by the
staring women and children: a phenomenon and a
wonder to the natives, as it had happened to him
before on more than one island in distant seas. He
clambered on board the neglected tartane and stood
on the decked forepart, the centre of all eyes. A gull
flew away with an angry scream. The bottom of the
open hold contained nothing but a little sand, a few
broken pieces of wood, a rusty hook, and some few
stalks of straw which the wind must have carried for
miles before they found their rest in there. The
decked after-part had a small skylight and a companion,
and Peyrol's eyes rested fascinated on an
enormous padlock which secured its sliding door.
It was as if there had been secrets or treasures inside
---and yet most probably it was empty. Peyrol
turned his head away and with the whole strength
of his lungs shouted in the direction of the fishermen's
wives who had been joined by two very old men
and a hunchbacked cripple swinging between two
crutches:</p>
<p> ``Is there anybody looking after this tartane, a
caretaker?''</p>
<p> At first the only answer was a movement of recoil.
Only the hunchback held his ground and shouted
back in an unexpectedly strong voice:</p>
<p> ``You are the first man that has been on board her
for years.''</p>
<p> The wives of the fishermen admired his boldness,
for Peyrol indeed appeared to them a very formidable
being.</p>
<p> ``I might have guessed that,'' thought Peyrol.
``She is in a dreadful mess.'' The disturbed gull had
brought some friends as indignant as itself and they
circled at different levels uttering wild cries over
Peyrol's head. He shouted again:</p>
<p> ``Who does she belong to?''</p>
<p> The being on crutches lifted a finger towards the
circling birds and answered in a deep tone:</p>
<p> ``They are the only ones I know.'' Then, as Peyrol
gazed down at him over the side, he went on: ``This
craft used to belong to Escampobar. You know
Escampobar ? It's a house in the hollow between the
hills there.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, I know Escampobar,'' yelled Peyrol, turning
away and leaning against the mast in a pose which
he did not change for a long time. His immobility
tired out the crowd. They moved slowly in a body
towards their hovels, the hunchback bringing up the
rear with long swings between his crutches, and Peyrol
remained alone with the angry gulls. He lingered
on board the tragic craft which had taken Arlette's
parents to their death in the vengeful massacre of
Toulon and had brought the youthful Arlette and
Citizen Scevola back to Escampobar where old
Catherine, left alone at that time, had waited for
days for somebody's return. Days of anguish and
prayer, while she listened to the booming of guns
about Toulon and with an almost greater but different
terror to the dead silence which ensued.</p>
<p> Peyrol, enjoying the sensation of some sort of craft
under his feet, indulged in no images of horror
connected with that desolate tartane. It was late in
the evening before he returned to the farm, so that
he had to have his supper alone. The women had
retired, only the sans-culotte, smoking a short pipe
out of doors, had followed him into the kitchen and
asked where he had been and whether he had lost
his way. This question gave Peyrol an opening. He
had been to Madrague and had seen a very fine
tartane lying perishing on the beach.</p>
<p> ``They told me down there that she belonged to
you, citoyen.''</p>
<p> At this the terrorist only blinked.</p>
<p> ``What's the matter? Isn't she the craft you came
here in? Won't you sell her to me?'' Peyrol waited
a little. ``What objection can you have?''</p>
<p> It appeared that the patriot had no positive objections.
He mumbled something about the tartane
being very dirty. This caused Peyrol to look at him
with intense astonishment.</p>
<p> ``I am ready to take her off your hands as she
stands.''</p>
<p> ``I will be frank with you, citoyen. You see, when
she lay at the quay in Toulon a lot of fugitive traitors,
men and women, and children too, swarmed on board
of her, and cut the ropes with a view of escaping, but
the avengers were not far behind and made short
work of them. When we discovered her behind the
Arsenal, I and another man, we had to throw a lot
of bodies overboard, out of the hold and the cabin.
You will find her very dirty all over. We had no
time to clear up.'' Peyrol felt inclined to laugh. He
had seen decks swimming in blood and had himself
helped to throw dead bodies overboard after a fight;
but he eyed the citizen with an unfriendly eye. He
thought to himself: ``He had a hand in that massacre,
no doubt,'' but he made no audible remark. He
only thought of the enormous padlock securing that
emptied charnel house at the stern. The terrorist
insisted. ``We really had not a moment to clean her
up. The circumstances were such that it was necessary
for me to get away quickly lest some of the false
patriots should do me some carmagnole or other.
There had been bitter quarrelling in my section. I
was not alone in getting away, you know.''</p>
<p> Peyrol waved his arm to cut short the explanation.
But before he and the terrorist had parted for the
night Peyrol could regard himself as the owner of the
tragic tartane.</p>
<p> Next day he returned to the hamlet and took up
his quarters there for a time. The awe he had
inspired wore off, though no one cared to come very
near the tartane. Peyrol did not want any help. He
wrenched off the enormous padlock himself with a
bar of iron and let the light of day into the little cabin
which did indeed bear the trace's of the massacre in
the stains of blood on its woodwork, but contained
nothing else except a wisp of long hair and a woman's
earring, a cheap thing which Peyrol picked up and
looked at for a long time. The associations of such
finds were not foreign to his past. He could without
very strong emotion figure to himself the little place
choked with corpses. He sat down and looked about
at the stains and splashes which had been untouched
by sunlight for years. The cheap little earring lay
before him on the rough-hewn table between the
lockers, and he shook his head at it weightily. He,
at any rate, had never been a butcher.</p>
<p> Peyrol unassisted did all the cleaning. Then he
turned con amore to the fitting out of the tartane.
The habits of activity still clung to him. He welcomed
something to do; this congenial task had all
the air of preparation for a voyage, which was a
pleasing dream, and it brought every evening the
satisfaction of something achieved to that illusory end.
He rove new gear, scraped the masts himself, did all
the sweeping, scrubbing and painting single-handed,
working steadily and hopefully as though he had been
preparing his escape from a desert island; and directly
he had cleaned and renovated the dark little hole of
a cabin he took to sleeping on board. Once only he
went up on a visit to the farm for a couple of days,
as if to give himself a holiday. He passed them
mostly in observing Arlette. She was perhaps the
first problematic human being he had ever been in
contact with. Peyrol had no contempt for women.
He had seen them love, suffer, endure, riot, and
even fight for their own hand, very much like men.
Generally with men and women you had to be on
your guard, but in some ways women were more to
be trusted. As a matter of fact, his country-women
were to him less known than any other kind. From
his experience of many different races, however, he
had a vague idea that women were very much alike
everywhere. This one was a lovable creature. She
produced on him the effect of a child, aroused a kind
of intimate emotion which he had not known before
to exist by itself in a man. He was startled by its
detached character. ``Is it that I am getting old?''
he asked himself suddenly one evening, as he sat on
the bench against the wall looking straight before
him, after she had crossed his line of sight.</p>
<p> He felt himself an object of observation to Catherine,
whom he used to detect peeping at him round corners
or through half-opened doors. On his part he would
stare at her openly---aware of the impression he
produced on her: mingled curiosity and awe. He
had the idea she did not disapprove of his presence
at the farm, where, it was plain to him, she had a far
from easy life. This had no relation to the fact that
she did all the household work. She was a woman
of about his own age, straight as a dart but with a
wrinkled face. One evening as they were sitting alone
in the kitchen Peyrol said to her: ``You must have
been a handsome girl in your day, Catherine. It's
strange you never got married.''</p>
<p> She turned to him under the high mantel of the
fireplace and seemed struck all of a heap, unbelieving,
amazed, so that Peyrol was quite provoked. ``What's
the matter? If the old moke in the yard had spoken
you could not look more surprised. You can't deny
that you were a handsome girl.''</p>
<p> She recovered from her scare to say: ``I was born
here, grew up here, and early in my life I made up
my mind to die here.''</p>
<p> ``A strange notion,'' said Peyrol, ``for a young girl
to take into her head.''</p>
<p> ``It's not a thing to talk about,'' said the old woman,
stooping to get a pot out of the warm ashes. ``I did
not think, then,'' she went on, with her back to Peyrol,
``that I would live long. When I was eighteen I fell
in love with a priest.''</p>
<p> ``Ah, bah!'' exclaimed Peyrol under his breath.</p>
<p> ``That was the time when I prayed for death,'' she
pursued in a quiet voice. ``I spent nights on my
knees upstairs in that room where you sleep now. I
shunned everybody. People began to say I was crazy.
We have always been hated by the rabble about here.
They have poisonous tongues. I got the nickname of
`la fianc<e'>e du pr<e^>tre.' Yes, I was handsome, but who
would have looked at me if I had wanted to be looked
at? My only luck was to have a fine man for a
brother. He understood. No word passed his lips,
but sometimes when we were alone and not even his
wife was by, he would lay his hand on my shoulder
gently. From that time to this I have not been to
church and I never will go. But I have no quarrel
with God now.''</p>
<p> There were no signs of watchfulness and care in her
bearing now. She stood straight as an arrow before
Peyrol and looked at him with a confident air. The
rover was not yet ready to speak. He only nodded
twice and Catherine turned away to put the pot to
cool in the sink. ``Yes, I wished to die. But I did
not, and now I have got something to do,'' she said,
sitting down near the fireplace and taking her chin
in her hand. ``And I daresay you know what that
is,'' she added.</p>
<p> Peyrol got up deliberately.</p>
<p> ``Well! bonsoir,'' he said. ``I am off to Madrague.
I want to begin work again on the tartane at
daylight.''</p>
<p> ``Don't talk to me about the tartane, She took my
brother away for ever. I stood on the shore watching
her sails growing smaller and smaller. Then I came
up alone to this farmhouse.''</p>
<p> Moving calmly her faded lips which no lover or
child had ever kissed, old Catherine told Peyrol of the
days and nights of waiting, with the distant growl of
the big guns in her ears. She used to sit outside on
the bench longing for news, watching the flickers in
the sky and listening to heavy bursts of gunfire
coming over the water. Then came a night as if the
world were coming to an end. All the sky was
lighted up, the earth shook to its foundations, and
she felt the house rock, so that jumping up from the
bench she screamed with fear. That night she never
went to bed. Next morning she saw the sea covered
with sails, while a black and yellow cloud of smoke
hung over Toulon. A man coming up from Madrague
told her that he believed that the whole town had
been blown up. She gave him a bottle of wine and
he helped her to feed the stock that evening. Before
going home he expressed the opinion that there could
not be a soul left alive in Toulon, because the few
that survived would have gone away in the English
ships. Nearly a week later she was dozing by the
fire when voices outside woke her up, and she beheld
standing in the middle of the salle, pale like a corpse
out of a grave, with a blood-soaked blanket over her
shoulders and a red cap on her head, a ghastly
looking young girl in whom she suddenly recognized
her niece. She screamed in her terror: ``Fran<c,>ois,
Fran<c,>ois!'' This was her brother's name, and she
thought he was outside. Her scream scared the girl,
who ran out of the door. All was still outside. Once
more she screamed ``Fran<c,>ois!'' and, tottering as far
as the door, she saw her niece clinging to a strange
man in a red cap and with a sabre by his side who
yelled excitedly: ``You won't see Fran<c,>ois again.
Vive la R<e'>publique!''</p>
<p> ``I recognized the son Bron,'' went on Catherine.
``I knew his parents. When the troubles began he
left his home to follow the Revolution. I walked
straight up to him and took the girl away from his
side. She didn't want much coaxing. The child
always loved me,'' she continued, getting up from
the stool and moving a little closer to Peyrol. ``She
remembered her Aunt Catherine. I tore the horrid
blanket off her shoulders. Her hair was clotted with
blood and her clothes all stained with it. I took her
upstairs. She was as helpless as a little child. I
undressed her and examined her all over. She had
no hurt anywhere. I was sure of that---but of what
more could I be sure? I couldn't make sense of the
things she babbled at me. Her very voice distracted
me. She fell asleep directly I had put her into my
bed, and I stood there looking down at her, nearly
going out of my mind with the thought of what that
child may have been dragged through. When I
went downstairs I found that good-for-nothing inside
the house. He was ranting up and down the salle,
vapouring and boasting till I thought all this must
be an awful dream. My head was in a whirl. He
laid claim to her, and God knows what. I seemed
to understand things that made my hair stir on my
head. I stood there clasping my hands with all the
strength I had, for fear I should go out of my senses.''</p>
<p> ``He frightened you,'' said Peyrol, looking at her
steadily. Catherine moved a step nearer to him.</p>
<p> ``What? The son Bron, frighten me! He was the
butt of all the girls, mooning about amongst the
people outside the church on feast days in the time
of the king. All the countryside knew about him.
No. What I said to myself was that I mustn't let
him kill me. There upstairs was the child I had just
got away from him, and there was I, all alone with
that man with the sabre and unable to get hold of a
kitchen knife even.''</p>
<p> ``And so he remained,'' said Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``What would you have had me to do?'' asked
Catherine steadily. ``He had brought the child back
out of those shambles. It was a long time before I
got an idea of what had happened. I don't know
everything even yet and I suppose I will never know.
In a very few days my mind was more at case about
Arlette, but it was a long time before she would speak
and then it was never anything to the purpose. And
what could I have done single-handed? There was
nobody I would condescend to call to my help. We
of the Escampobar have never been in favour with
the peasants here,'' she said, proudly. ``And this is
all I can tell you.''</p>
<p> Her voice faltered, she sat down on the stool again
and took her chin in the palm of her hand. As Peyrol
left the house to go to the hamlet he saw Arlette and
the patron come round the corner of the yard wall
walking side by side but as if unconscious of each
other.</p>
<p> That night he slept on board the renovated tartane
and the rising sun found him at work about the hull.
By that time he had ceased to be the object of awed
contemplation to the inhabitants of the hamlet who
still, however, kept up a mistrustful attitude. His
only intermediary for communicating with them was
the miserable cripple. He was Peyrol's only company,
in fact, during his period of work on the tartane. He
had more activity, audacity, and intelligence, it
seemed to Peyrol, than all the rest of the inhabitants
put together. Early in the morning he could be seen
making his way on his crutches with a pendulum
motion towards the hull on which Peyrol would have
been already an hour or so at work. Peyrol then
would throw him over a sound rope's end and the
cripple, leaning his crutches against the side of the
tartane, would pull his wretched little carcass, all
withered below the waist, up the rope, hand over
hand, with extreme ease. There, sitting on the small
foredeck, with his back against the mast and his thin,
twisted legs folded in front of him, he would keep
Peyrol company, talking to him along the whole
length of the tartane in a strained voice and sharing
his midday meal, as of right, since it was he generally
who brought the provisions slung round his neck in a
quaint flat basket. Thus were the hours of labour
shortened for Peyrol by shrewd remarks and bits of
local gossip. How the cripple got hold of it it was
difficult to imagine, and the rover had not enough
knowledge of European superstitions to suspect him
of flying through the night on a broomstick like a sort
of male witch---for there was a manliness in that
twisted scrap of humanity which struck Peyrol from
the first. His very voice was manly and the character
of his gossip was not feminine. He did indeed mention
to Peyrol that people used to take him about the
neighbourhood in carts for the purpose of playing a
fiddle at weddings and other festive occasions; but
this seemed hardly adequate, and even he himself
confessed that there was not much of that sort of
thing going on during the Revolution when people
didn't like to attract attention and everything was
done in a hole-and-corner manner. There were no
priests to officiate at weddings, and if there were no
ceremonies how could there be rejoicings? Of course
children were born as before, but there were no
christenings---and people got to look funny somehow
or other. Their countenances got changed somehow;
the very boys and girls seemed to have something on
their minds.</p>
<p> Peyrol, busy about one thing and another, listened
without appearing to pay much attention to the story
of the Revolution, as if to the tale of an intelligent
islander on the other side of the world talking of
bloody rites and amazing hopes of some religion
unknown to the rest of mankind. But there was
something biting in the speech of that cripple which
confused his thoughts a little. Sarcasm was a mystery
which he could not understand. On one occasion he
remarked to his friend the cripple as they sat together
on the foredeck munching the bread and figs of their
midday meal:</p>
<p> ``There must have been something in it. But it
doesn't seem to have done much for you people here.''</p>
<p> ``To be sure,'' retorted the scrap of man vivaciously,
``it hasn't straightened my back or given me a pair
of legs like yours.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, whose trousers were rolled up above the
knee because he had been washing the hold, looked
at his calves complacently. ``You could hardly have
expected that,'' he remarked with simplicity.</p>
<p> ``Ah, but you don't know what people with properly
made bodies expected or pretended to,'' said the
cripple. ``Everything was going to be changed.
Everybody was going to tie up his dog with a string
of sausages for the sake of principles.'' His long face
which, in repose, had an expression of suffering
peculiar to cripples, was lighted up by an enormous
grin. ``They must feel jolly well sold by this time,''
he added. ``And of course that vexes them, but I am
not vexed. I was never vexed with my father and
mother. While the poor things were alive I never
went hungry---not very hungry. They couldn't have
been very proud of me.'' He paused and seemed to
contemplate himself mentally. ``I don't know what
I would have done in their place. Something very
different. But then, don't you see, I know what it
means to be like I am. Of course they couldn't know,
and I don't suppose the poor people had very much
sense. A priest from Almanarre---Almanarre is a sort
of village up there where there is a church. . . .''</p>
<p> Peyrol interrupted him by remarking that he knew
all about Almanarre. This, on his part, was a simple
delusion because in reality he knew much less of
Almanarre than of Zanzibar or any pirate village
from there up to Cape Guardafui. And the cripple
contemplated him with his brown eyes which had an
upward cast naturally.</p>
<p> ``You know . . .! For me,'' he went on, in a tone
of quiet decision, ``you are a man fallen from the
sky. Well, a priest from Almanarre came to bury
them. A fine man with a stern face. The finest man
I have seen from that time till you dropped on us
here. There was a story of a girl having fallen in
love with him some years before. I was old enough
then to have heard something of it, but that's neither
here nor there. Moreover, many people wouldn't
believe the tale.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, without looking at the cripple, tried to
imagine what sort of child he might have been---
what sort of youth? The rover had seen staggering
deformities, dreadful mutilations which were the cruel
work of man; but it was amongst people with dusky
skins. And that made a great difference. But what
he had heard and seen since he had come back to
his native land, the tales, the facts, and also the faces,
reached his sensibility with a particular force, because
of that feeling that came to him so suddenly after a
whole lifetime spent amongst Indians, Malagashes,
Arabs, blackamoors of all sorts, that he belonged
there, to this land, and had escaped all those things
by a mere hair's breadth. His companion completed
his significant silence, which seemed to have been
occupied with thoughts very much like his own, by
saying:</p>
<p> ``All this was in the king's time. They didn't cut
off his head till several years afterwards. It didn't
make my life any easier for me, but since those
Republicans had deposed God and flung Him out of
all the churches I have forgiven Him all my troubles.''</p>
<p> ``Spoken like a man,'' said Peyrol. Only the misshapen
character of the cripple's back prevented
Peyrol from giving him a hearty slap. He got up to
begin his afternoon's work. It was a bit of inside
painting and from the foredeck the cripple watched
him at it with dreamy eyes and something ironic on
his lips.</p>
<p> It was not till the sun had travelled over Cape Cici<e'>,
which could be seen across the water like dark mist
in the glare, that he opened his lips to ask: ``And
what do you propose to do with this tartane, citoyen?''</p>
<p> Peyrol answered simply that the tartane was fit to
go anywhere now, the very moment she took the
water.</p>
<p> ``You could go as far as Genoa and Naples and even
further,'' suggested the cripple.</p>
<p> ``Much further,'' said Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``And you have been fitting her out like this for a
voyage?''</p>
<p> ``Certainly,'' said Peyrol, using his brush steadily.</p>
<p> ``Somehow I fancy it will not be a long one.''</p>
<p> Peyrol never checked the to-and-fro movement of
his brush, but it was with an effort. The fact was
that he had discovered in himself a distinct reluctance
to go away from the Escampobar Farm. His desire
to have something of his own that could float was no
longer associated with any desire to wander. The
cripple was right. The voyage of the renovated
tartane would not take her very far. What was
surprising was the fellow being so very positive about
it. He seemed able to read people's thoughts.</p>
<p> The dragging of the renovated tartane into the
water was a great affair. Everybody in the hamlet,
including the women, did a full day's work and there
was never so much coin passed from hand to hand in
the hamlet in all the days of its obscure history.
Swinging between his crutches on a low sand-ridge
the cripple surveyed the whole of the beach. It was
he that had persuaded the villagers to lend a hand
and had arranged the terms for their assistance. It
was he also who through a very miserable-looking
pedlar (the only one who frequented the peninsula)
had got in touch with some rich persons in Fr<e'>jus
who had changed for Peyrol a few of his gold pieces
for current money. He had expedited the course of
the most exciting and interesting experience of his life,
and now planted on the sand on his two sticks in the
manner of a beacon he watched the last operation.
The rover, as if about to launch himself upon a track
of a thousand miles, walked up to shake hands with
him and look once more at the soft eyes and the
ironic smile.</p>
<p> ``There is no denying it---you are a man.''</p>
<p> ``Don't talk like this to me, citoyen,'' said the cripple
in a trembling voice. Till then, suspended between
his two sticks and with his shoulders as high as his
ears, he had not looked towards the approaching
Peyrol. ``This is too much of a compliment!''</p>
<p> ``I tell you,'' insisted the rover roughly, and as if
the insignificance of mortal envelopes had presented
itself to him for the first time at the end of his roving
life, ``I tell you that there is that in you which would
make a chum one would like to have alongside one
in a tight place.''</p>
<p> As he went away from the cripple towards the
tartane, while the whole population of the hamlet
disposed around her waited for his word, some on
land and some waist-deep in the water holding ropes
in their hands, Peyrol had a slight shudder at the
thought: ``Suppose I had been born like that.'' Ever
since he had put his foot on his native land such
thoughts had haunted him. They would have been
impossible anywhere else. He could not have been
like any blackamoor, good, bad, or indifferent, hale
or crippled, king or slave; but here, on this Southern
shore that had called to him irresistibly as he had
approached the Straits of Gibraltar on what he had
felt to be his last voyage, any woman, lean and old
enough, might have been his mother; he might have
been any Frenchman of them all, even one of those
he pitied, even one of those he despised. He felt the
grip of his origins from the crown of his head to the
soles of his feet while he clambered on board the
tartane as if for a long and distant voyage. As a
matter of fact he knew very well that with a bit of
luck it would be over in about an hour. When the
tartane took the water the feeling of being afloat
plucked at his very heart. Some Madrague fishermen
had been persuaded by the cripple to help old
Peyrol to sail the tartane round to the cove below the
Escampobar Farm. A glorious sun shone upon that
short passage and the cove itself was full of sparkling
light when they arrived. The few Escampobar goats
wandering on the hillside pretending to feed where
no grass was visible to the naked eye never even raised
their heads. A gentle breeze drove the tartane, as
fresh as paint could make her, opposite a narrow
crack in the cliff which gave admittance to a tiny
basin, no bigger than a village pond, concealed at the
foot of the southern hill. It was there that old Peyrol,
aided by the Madrague men, who had their boat
with them, towed his ship, the first really that he
ever owned.</p>
<p> Once in, the tartane nearly filled the little basin,
and the fishermen, getting into their boat, rowed
away for home. Peyrol, by spending the afternoon
in dragging ropes ashore and fastening them to
various boulders and dwarf trees, moored her to his
complete satisfaction. She was as safe from the
tempests there as a house ashore.</p>
<p> After he had made everything fast on board and
had furled the sails neatly, a matter of some time for
one man, Peyrol contemplated his arrangements
which savoured of rest much more than of wandering,
and found them good. Though he never meant to
abandon his room at the farmhouse he felt that his
true home was in the tartane, and he rejoiced at the
idea that it was concealed from all eyes except perhaps
the eyes of the goats when their arduous feeding
took them on the southern slope. He lingered on
board, he even threw open the sliding door of the
little cabin, which now smelt of fresh paint, not of
stale blood. Before he started for the farm the sun
had travelled far beyond Spain and all the sky to the
west was yellow, while on the side of Italy it presented
a sombre canopy pierced here and there with the
light of stars. Catherine put a plate on the table, but
nobody asked him any questions.</p>
<p> He spent a lot of his time on board, going down
early, coming up at midday ``pour manger la soupe,''
and sleeping on board almost every night. He did
not like to leave the tartane alone for so many hours.
Often, having climbed a little way up to the house,
he would turn round for a last look at her in the
gathering dusk, and actually would go back again.
After Michel had been enlisted for a crew and had
taken his abode on board for good, Peyrol found it a
much easier matter to spend his nights in the lantern-like
room at the top of the farmhouse.</p>
<p> Often waking up at night he would get up to look
at the starry sky out of all his three windows in
succession, and think: ``Now there is nothing in the
world to prevent me getting out to sea in less than
an hour.'' As a matter of fact it was possible for two
men to manage the tartane. Thus Peyrol's thought
was comfortingly true in every way, for he loved to
feel himself free, and Michel of the lagoon, after the
death of his depressed dog, had no tie on earth. It
was a fine thought which somehow made it quite
easy for Peyrol to go back to his four-poster and
resume his slumbers.<p> CHAPTER VIII</p>
<p> Perched sideways on the circular wall bordering
the well, in the full blaze of the midday sun, the rover
of the distant seas and the fisherman of the lagoon,
sharing between them a most surprising secret, had
the air of two men conferring in the dark. The first
word that Peyrol said was, ``Well?''</p>
<p> ``All quiet,'' said the other.</p>
<p> ``Have you fastened the cabin door properly?''</p>
<p> ``You know what the fastenings are like.''</p>
<p> Peyrol could not deny that. It was a sufficient
answer. It shifted the responsibility on to his shoulders
and all his life he had been accustomed to trust
to the work of his own hands, in peace and in war.
Yet he looked doubtfully at Michel before he
remarked:</p>
<p> ``Yes, but I know the man too.''</p>
<p> There could be no greater contrast than those two
faces: Peyrol's clean, like a carving of stone, and
only very little softened by time, and that of the
owner of the late dog, hirsute, with many silver
threads, with something elusive in the features and
the vagueness of expression of a baby in arms. ``Yes,
I know the man,'' repeated Peyrol. Michel's mouth
fell open at this, a small oval set a little crookedly in
the innocent face.</p>
<p> ``He will never wake,'' he suggested timidly.</p>
<p> The possession of a common and momentous secret
drawing men together, Peyrol condescended to explain.</p>
<p> ``You don't know the thickness of his skull. I do.''</p>
<p> He spoke as though he had made it himself.
Michel, who in the face of that positive statement
had forgotten to shut his mouth, had nothing to say.</p>
<p> ``He breathes all right?'' asked Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``Yes. After I got out and locked the door I listened
for a bit and I thought I heard him snore.''<p> Peyrol looked interested and also slightly anxious.</p>
<p> ``I had to come up and show myself this morning
as if nothing had happened,'' he said. ``The officer
has been here for two days and he might have taken
it into his head to go down to the tartane. I have
been on the stretch all the morning. A goat jumping
up was enough to give me a turn. Fancy him running
up here with his broken head all bandaged up,
with you after him.''</p>
<p> This seemed to be too much for Michel. He said
almost indignantly:</p>
<p> ``The man's half killed.''</p>
<p> ``It takes a lot to even half kill a Brother of the
Coast. There are men and men. You, for instance,''
Peyrol continued placidly, ``you would have been
altogether killed if it had been your head that got in
the way. And there are animals, beasts twice your
size, regular monsters, that may be killed with nothing
more than just a tap on the nose. That's well
known. I was really afraid he would overcome you
in some way or other. . . .''</p>
<p> ``Come, ma<i^>tre! One isn't a little child,'' protested
Michel against this accumulation of improbabilities.
He did it, however, only in a whisper and with
childlike shyness. Peyrol folded his arms on his
breast:</p>
<p> ``Go, finish your soup,'' he commanded in a low
voice, ``and then go down to the tartane. You
locked the cabin door properly, you said?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, I have,'' protested Michel, staggered by this
display of anxiety. ``He could sooner burst the deck
above his head, as you know.''</p>
<p> ``All the same, take a small spar and shore up that
door against the heel of the mast. And then watch
outside. Don't you go in to him on any account.
Stay on deck and keep a lookout for me. There is a
tangle here that won't be easily cleared and I must
be very careful. I will try to slip away and get down
as soon as I get rid of that officer.''</p>
<p> The conference in the sunshine being ended, Peyrol
walked leisurely out of the yard gate, and protruding
his head beyond the corner of the house, saw
Lieutenant R<e'>al sitting on the bench. This he had
expected to see. But he had not expected to see him
there alone. It was just like this: wherever Arlette
happened to be, there were worrying possibilities.
But she might have been helping her aunt in the
kitchen with her sleeves rolled up on such white arms
as Peyrol had never seen on any woman before. The
way she had taken to dressing her hair in a plait with
a broad black velvet ribbon and an Arlesian cap was
very becoming. She was wearing now her mother's
clothes of which there were chestfuls, altered for her
of course. The late mistress of the Escampobar Farm
had been an Arlesienne. Well-to-do, too. Yes, even
for women's clothes the Escampobar natives could do
without intercourse with the outer world. It was
quite time that this confounded lieutenant went back
to Toulon. This was the third day. His short leave
must be up. Peyrol's attitude towards naval officers
had been always guarded and suspicious. His relations
with them had been very mixed. They had
been his enemies and his superiors. He had been
chased by them. He had been trusted by them.
The Revolution had made a clean cut across the
consistency of his wild life---Brother of the Coast and
gunner in the national navy---and yet he was always
the same man. It was like that, too, with them.
Officers of the King, officers of the Republic, it was
only changing the skin. All alike looked askance at
a free rover. Even this one could not forget his
epaulettes when talking to him. Scorn and mistrust
of epaulettes were rooted deeply in old Peyrol. Yet
he did not absolutely hate Lieutenant R<e'>al. Only
the fellow's coming to the farm was generally a curse
and his presence at that particular moment a confounded
nuisance and to a certain extent even a
danger. ``I have no mind to be hauled to Toulon by
the scruff of my neck,'' Peyrol said to himself. There
was no trusting those epaulette-wearers. Any one of
them was capable of jumping on his best friend on
account of some officer-like notion or other.</p>
<p> Peyrol, stepping round the corner, sat down by
the side of Lieutenant R<e'>al with the feeling somehow
of coming to grips with a slippery customer.
The lieutenant, as he sat there, unaware of Peyrol's
survey of his person, gave no notion of slipperiness.
On the contrary, he looked rather immovably established.
Very much at home. Too much at home.
Even after Peyrol sat down by his side he continued
to look immovable---or at least difficult to get rid of.
In the still noonday heat the faint shrilling of cicadas
was the only sound of life heard for quite a long time.
Delicate, evanescent, cheerful, careless sort of life, yet
not without passion. A sudden gloom seemed to be
cast over the joy of the cicadas by the lieutenant's
voice though the words were the most perfunctory
possible.</p>
<p> ``Tiens! Vous voil<a`>.''</p>
<p> In the stress of the situation Peyrol at once asked
himself: ``Now why does he say that? Where did he
expect me to be?'' The lieutenant need not have
spoken at all. He had known him now for about two
years off and on, and it had happened many times
that they had sat side by side on that bench in a sort
of ``at arm's length'' equality without exchanging a
single word. And why could he not have kept quiet
now? That naval officer never spoke without an
object, but what could one make of words like that?
Peyrol achieved an insincere yawn and suggested
mildly:</p>
<p> ``A bit of siesta wouldn't be amiss. What do you
think, lieutenant?''</p>
<p> And to himself he thought: ``No fear, he won't go
to his room.'' He would stay there and thereby keep
him, Peyrol, from going down to the cove. He
turned his eyes on that naval officer, and if extreme
and concentrated desire and mere force of will could
have had any effect Lieutenant R<e'>al would certainly
have been removed suddenly from that bench. But
he didn't move. And Peyrol was astonished to see
that man smile, but what astonished him still more
was to hear him say:</p>
<p> ``The trouble is that you have never been frank
with me, Peyrol.''</p>
<p> ``Frank with you,'' repeated the rover. ``You
want me to be frank with you? Well, I have wished
you to the devil many times.''</p>
<p> ``That's better,'' said Lieutenant R<e'>al. ``But why?
I never tried to do you any harm.''</p>
<p> ``Me harm,'' cried Peyrol, ``to me?'' But he
faltered in his indignation as if frightened at it and
ended in a very quiet tone: ``You have been nosing
in a lot of dirty papers to find something against a
man who was not doing you any harm and was a
seaman before you were born.''</p>
<p> ``Quite a mistake. There was no nosing amongst
papers. I came on them quite by accident. I won't
deny I was intrigu<e'> finding a man of your sort living
in this place. But don't be uneasy. Nobody would
trouble his head about you. It's a long time since
you have been forgotten. Have no fear.''</p>
<p> ``You! You talk to me of fear . . .? No,'' cried
the rover, ``it's enough to turn a fellow into a sans-culotte
if it weren't for the sight of that specimen
sneaking around here.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant turned his head sharply, and for a
moment the naval officer and the free sea-rover looked
at each other gloomily. When Peyrol spoke again he
had changed his mood.</p>
<p> ``Why should I fear anybody? I owe nothing to
anybody. I have given them up the prize ship in
order and everything else, except my luck; and for
that I account to nobody,'' he added darkly.</p>
<p> ``I don't know what you are driving at,'' the
lieutenant said after a moment of thought. ``All I
know is that you seem to have given up your share
of the prize money. There is no record of you ever
claiming it.''</p>
<p> Peyrol did not like the sarcastic tone. ``You have
a nasty tongue,'' he said, ``with your damned trick of
talking as if you were made of different clay.''</p>
<p> ``No offence,'<code> said the lieutenant, grave but a little
puzzled. ``Nobody will drag out that against you.
It has been paid years ago to the Invalides</code> fund.
All this is buried and forgotten.''</p>
<p> Peyrol was grumbling and swearing to himself with
such concentration that the lieutenant stopped and
waited till he had finished.</p>
<p> ``And there is no record of desertion or anything
like that,'' he continued then. ``You stand there as
disparu. I believe that after searching for you a little
they came to the conclusion that you had come by
your death somehow or other.''</p>
<p> ``Did they? Well, perhaps old Peyrol is dead. At
any rate he has buried himself here.'' The rover
suffered from great instability of feelings for he passed
in a flash from melancholy into fierceness. ``And he
was quiet enough till you came sniffing around this
hole. More than once in my life I had occasion to
wonder how soon the jackals would have a chance
to dig up my carcass; but to have a naval officer
come scratching round here was the last thing. . . .''
Again a change came over him. ``What can you
want here?'' he whispered, suddenly depressed.</p>
<p> The lieutenant fell into the humour of that discourse.
``I don't want to disturb the dead,'' he said,
turning full to the rover who after his last words had
fixed his eyes on the ground. ``I want to talk to the
gunner Peyrol.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, without raising his eyes from the ground,
growled: ``He isn't here. He is disparu. Go and
look at the papers again. Vanished. Nobody
here.''</p>
<p> ``That,'' said Lieutenant R<e'>al, in a conversational
tone, ``that is a lie. He was talking to me this morning
on the hillside as we were looking at the English ship.
He knows all about her. He told me he spent nights
making plans for her capture. He seemed to be a
fellow with his heart in the right place. Un homme
de c<oe>ur. You know him.''</p>
<p> Peyrol raised his big head slowly and looked at the
lieutenant.</p>
<p> ``Humph,'' he grunted. A heavy, non-committal
grunt. His old heart was stirred, but the tangle was
such that he had to be on his guard with any man
who wore epaulettes. His profile preserved the
immobility of a head struck on a medal while he
listened to the lieutenant assuring him that this time
he had come to Escampobar on purpose to speak
with the gunner Peyrol. That he had not done so
before was because it was a very confidential matter.
At this point the lieutenant stopped and Peyrol made
no sign. Inwardly he was asking himself what the
lieutenant was driving at. But the lieutenant seemed
to have shifted his ground. His tone, too, was slightly
different. More practical.</p>
<p> ``You say you have made a study of that English
ship's movements. Well, for instance, suppose a
breeze springs up, as it very likely will towards the
evening, could you tell me where she will be to-night?
I mean, what her captain is likely to do.''</p>
<p> ``No, I couldn't,'' said Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``But you said you have been observing him minutely
for weeks. There aren't so many alternatives, and
taking the weather and everything into consideration,
you can judge almost with certainty.''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Peyrol again. ``It so happens that I
can't.''</p>
<p> ``Can't you? Then you are worse than any of the
old admirals that you think so little of. Why can't
you?''</p>
<p> ``I will tell you why,'' said Peyrol after a pause and
with a face more like a carving than ever. ``It's
because the fellow has never come so far this way
before. Therefore I don't know what he has got in
his mind, and in consequence I can't guess what he
will do next. I may be able to tell you some other
day but not to-day. Next time when you come . . .
to see the old gunner.''</p>
<p> ``No, it must be this time.''</p>
<p> ``Do vou mean you are going to stay here tonight?''</p>
<p> ``Did you think I was here on leave? I tell you I
am on service. Don't you believe me?''</p>
<p> Peyrol let out a heavy sigh. ``Yes, I believe you.
And so they are thinking of catching her alive. And
you are sent on service. Well, that doesn't make it
any easier for me to see you here.''</p>
<p> ``You are a strange man, Peyrol,'' said the lieutenant.
``I believe you wish me dead.''</p>
<p> ``No. Only out of this. But you are right, Peyrol
is no friend either to your face or to your voice. They
have done harm enough already.''</p>
<p> They had never attained to such intimate terms
before. There was no need for them to look at each
other. The lieutenant thought: ``Ah! He can't keep
his jealousy in.'' There was no scorn or malice in
that thought. It was much more like despair. He
said mildly:</p>
<p> ``You snarl like an old dog, Peyrol.''</p>
<p> ``I have felt sometimes as if I could fly at your
throat,'' said Peyrol in a sort of calm whisper. ``And
it amuses you the more.''</p>
<p> ``Amuses me? Do I look light-hearted?''</p>
<p> Again Peyrol turned his head slowly for a long,
steady stare. And again the naval officer and the
rover gazed at each other with a searching and
sombre frankness. This new-born intimacy could go
no further.</p>
<p> ``Listen to me, Peyrol. . . .''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said the other. ``If you want to talk, talk
to the gunner.''</p>
<p> Though he seemed to have adopted the notion of
a double personality the rover did not seem to be
much easier in one character than in the other.
Furrows of perplexity appeared on his brow, and as
the lieutenant did not speak at once Peyrol the gunner
asked impatiently:</p>
<p> ``So they are thinking of catching her alive?'' It
did not please him to hear the lieutenant say that it
was not exactly this that the chiefs in Toulon had in
their minds. Peyrol at once expressed the opinion
that of all the naval chiefs that ever were, Citizen
Renaud was the only one that was worth anything.
Lieutenant R<e'>al, disregarding the challenging tone,
kept to the point.</p>
<p> ``What they want to know is whether that English
corvette interferes much with the coast traffic.''</p>
<p> ``No, she doesn't,'' said Peyrol: ``she leaves poor
people alone, unless, I suppose, some craft acts
suspiciously. I have seen her give chase to one or
two. But even those she did not detain. Michel---
you know Michel---has heard from the mainland
people that she has captured several at various times.
Of course, strictly speaking, nobody is safe.''</p>
<p> ``Well, no. I wonder now what that Englishman
would call `acting suspiciously.' ''</p>
<p> ``Ah, now you are asking something. Don't you
know what an Englishman is? One day easy and
casual, next day ready to pounce on you like a tiger.
Hard in the morning, careless in the afternoon, and
only reliable in a fight, whether with or against you,
but for the rest perfectly fantastic. You might think
a little touched in the head, and there again it would
not do to trust to that notion either.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant lending an attentive ear, Peyrol
smoothed his brow and discoursed with gusto of
Englishmen as if they had been a strange, very little-known
tribe. ``In a manner of speaking,'' he concluded,
``the oldest bird of them all can be caught
with chaff, but not every day.'' He shook his head,
smiling to himself faintly as if remembering a quaint
passage or two.</p>
<p> ``You didn't get all that knowledge of the English
while you were a gunner,'' observed the lieutenant
dryly.</p>
<p> ``There you go again,'' said Peyrol. ``And what's
that to you where I learned it all? Suppose I learned
it all from a man who is dead now. Put it down to
that.''</p>
<p> ``I see. It amounts to this, that one can't get at the
back of their minds very easily.''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Peyrol, then added grumpily, ``and
some Frenchmen are not much better. I wish I could
get at the back of your mind.''</p>
<p> ``You would find a service matter there, gunner,
that's what you would find there, and a matter that
seems nothing much at first sight, but when you look
into it, is about as difficult to manage properly as
anything you ever undertook in your life. It puzzled
all the big-wigs. It must have, since I was called in.
Of course I work on shore at the Admiralty and I
was in the way. They showed me the order from
Paris and I could see at once the difficulty of it. I
pointed it out and I was told . . .''</p>
<p> ``To come here,'' struck in Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``No. To make arrangements to carry it out.''</p>
<p> ``And you began by coming here. You are always
coming here.''</p>
<p> ``I began by looking for a man,'' said the naval
officer with emphasis.</p>
<p> Peyrol looked at him searchingly. ``Do you mean
to say that in the whole fleet you couldn't have found
a man?''</p>
<p> ``I never attempted to look for one there. My chief
agreed with me that it isn't a service for navy men.''</p>
<p> ``Well, it must be something nasty for a naval man
to admit that much. What is the order? I don't
suppose you came over here without being ready to
show it to me.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant plunged his hand into the inside
pocket of his naval jacket and then brought it out
empty.</p>
<p> ``Understand, Peyrol,'' he said earnestly, ``this is
not a service of fighting. Good men are plentiful for
that. The object is to play the enemy a trick.''</p>
<p> ``Trick?'' said Peyrol in a judicial tone, ``that's all
right. I have seen in the Indian Seas Monsieur
Surcouf play tricks on the English . . . seen them
with my own eyes, deceptions, disguises, and such-like.
. . . That's quite sound in war.''</p>
<p> ``Certainly. The order for this one comes from the
First Consul himself, for it is no small matter. It's to
deceive the English Admiral.''</p>
<p> ``What---that Nelson? Ah! but he is a cunning
one.''</p>
<p> After expressing that opinion the old rover pulled
out a red bandana handkerchief and after rubbing
his face with it repeated his opinion deliberately:
``Celui-l<a`> est un malin.''</p>
<p> This time the lieutenant really brought out a paper
from his pocket and saying, ``I have copied the order
for you to see,'' handed it to the rover, who took it
from him with a doubtful air.</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al watched old Peyrol handling it at
arm's length, then with his arm bent trying to adjust
the distance to his eyesight, and wondered whether
he had copied it in a hand big enough to be read easily
by the gunner Peyrol. The order ran like this: ``You
will make up a packet of dispatches and pretended
private letters as if from officers, containing a clear
statement besides hints calculated to convince the
enemy that the destination of the fleet now fitting in
Toulon is for Egypt and generally for the East. That
packet you will send by sea in some small craft to
Naples, taking care that the vessel shall fall into the
enemy's hands.'' The Pr<e'>fet Maritime had called
R<e'>al, had shown him the paragraph of the letter
from Paris, had turned the page over and laid his
finger on the signature, ``Bonaparte.'' Then after
giving him a meaning glance, the admiral locked up
the paper in a drawer and put the key in his pocket.
Lieutenant R<e'>al had written the passage down from
memory directly the notion of consulting Peyrol had
occurred to him.</p>
<p> The rover, screwing his eyes and pursing his lips,
had come to the end of it. The lieutenant extended
his hand negligently and took the paper away: ``Well,
what do you think?'' he asked. ``You understand
that there can be no question of any ship of war being
sacrificed to that dodge. What do you think of
it?''</p>
<p> ``Easier said than done,'' opined Peyrol curtly.</p>
<p> ``That's what I told my admiral.''</p>
<p> ``Is he a lubber, so that you had to explain it to
him?''</p>
<p> ``No, gunner, he is not. He listened to me, nodding
his head.''</p>
<p> ``And what did he say when you finished?''</p>
<p> ``He said: `Parfaitement. Have you got any ideas
about it?' And I said---listen to me, gunner---I said:
`Oui, Amiral, I think I've got a man,' and the
admiral interrupted me at once: `All right, you don't
want to talk to me about him. I put you in charge
of that affair and give you a week to arrange it.
When it's done report to me. Meantime you may
just as well take this packet.' They were already
prepared, Peyrol, all those faked letters and dispatches.
I carried it out of the admiral's room, a parcel done
up in sail-cloth, properly corded and sealed. I have
had it in my possession for three days. It's upstairs
in my valise.''</p>
<p> ``That doesn't advance you very much,'' growled
old Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``No,'' admitted the lieutenant. ``I can also dispose
of a few thousand francs.''</p>
<p> ``Francs,'' repeated Peyrol. ``Well, you had better
get back to Toulon and try to bribe some man to put
his head into the jaws of the English lion.''</p>
<p> R<e'>al reflected, then said slowly, ``I wouldn't tell
any man that. Of course a service of danger, that
would be understood.''</p>
<p> ``It would be. And if you could get a fellow with
some sense in his caboche, he would naturally try to
slip past the English fleet and maybe do it, too. And
then where's your trick?''</p>
<p> ``We could give him a course to steer.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. And it may happen that your course would
just take him clear of all Nelson's fleet, for you never
can tell what the English are doing. They might be
watering in Sardinia.''</p>
<p> ``Some cruisers are sure to be out and pick him
up.''</p>
<p> ``Maybe. But that's not doing the job, that's
taking a chance. Do you think you are talking to a
toothless baby---or what?''</p>
<p> ``No, my gunner. It will take a strong man's teeth
to undo that knot.'' A moment of silence followed.
Then Peyrol assumed a dogmatic tone.</p>
<p> ``I will tell you what it is, lieutenant. This seems
to me just the sort of order that a landlubber would
give to good seamen. You daren't deny that.''</p>
<p> ``I don't deny it,'' the lieutenant admitted. ``And
look at the whole difficulty. For supposing even that
the tartane blunders right into the English fleet, as if
it had been indeed arranged, they would just look
into her hold or perhaps poke their noses here and
there but it would never occur to them to search for
dispatches, would it? Our man, of course, would
have them well hidden, wouldn't he? He is not to
know. And if he were ass enough to leave them
lying about the decks the English would at once smell
a rat there. But what I think he would do would be
to throw the dispatches overboard.''</p>
<p> ``Yes---unless he is told the nature of the job,'' said
Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``Evidently. But where's the bribe big enough to
induce a man to taste of the English pontoons?''</p>
<p> ``The man will take the bribe all right and then
will do his best not to be caught; and if he can't
avoid that, he will take jolly good care that the
English should find nothing on board his tartane.
Oh no, lieutenant, any damn scallywag that owns a
tartane will take a couple of thousand francs from
your hand as tame as can be; but as to deceiving the
English Admiral, it's the very devil of an affair.
Didn't you think of all that before you spoke to the
big epaulettes that gave you the job?''</p>
<p> ``I did see it, and I put it all before him,'' the
lieutenant said, lowering his voice still more, for their
conversation had been carried on in undertones
though the house behind them was silent and solitude
reigned round the approaches of Escampobar Farm.
It was the hour of siesta---for those that could sleep.
The lieutenant, edging closer towards the old man,
almost breathed the words in his ear.</p>
<p> ``What I wanted was to hear you say all those
things. Do you understand now what I meant this
morning on the lookout? Don't you remember what
I said?''</p>
<p> Peyrol, gazing into space, spoke in a level
murmur.</p>
<p> ``I remember a naval officer trying to shake old
Peyrol off his feet and not managing to do it. I may
be disparu but I am too solid yet for any blancbec
that loses his temper, devil only knows why. And it's
a good thing that you didn't manage it, else I would
have taken you down with me, and we would have
made our last somersault together for the amusement
of an English ship's company. A pretty end that!''</p>
<p> ``Don't you remember me saying, when you mentioned
that the English would have sent a boat to go
through our pockets, that this would have been the
perfect way?'' In his stony immobility with the other
man leaning towards his car, Peyrol seemed a mere
insensible receptacle for whispers, and the lieutenant
went on forcibly: ``Well, it was in allusion to this
affair, for, look here, gunner, what could be more
convincing, if they had found the packet of dispatches
on me! What would have been their surprise, their
wonder! Not the slightest doubt could enter their
heads. Could it, gunner? Of course it couldn't. I
can imagine the captain of that corvette crowding
sail on her to get this packet into the Admiral's hands.
The secret of the Toulon fleet's destination found on
the body of a dead officer. Wouldn't they have
exulted at their enormous piece of luck! But they
wouldn't have called it accidental. Oh, no! They
would have called it providential. I know the English
a little too. They like to have God on their side---
the only ally they never need pay a subsidy to.
Come, gunner, would it not have been a perfect
way?''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al threw himself back and Peyrol,
still like a carven image of grim dreaminess, growled
softly:</p>
<p> ``Time yet. The English ship is still in the Passe.''
He waited a little in his uncanny living-statue manner
before he added viciously: ``You don't seem in a
hurry to go and take that leap.''</p>
<p> ``Upon my word, I am almost sick enough of life to
do it,'' the lieutenant said in a conversational tone.</p>
<p> ``Well, don't forget to run upstairs and take that
packet with you before you go,'' said Peyrol as before.
``But don't wait for me; I am not sick of life. I am
disparu, and that's good enough. There's no need
for me to die.''</p>
<p> And at last he moved in his seat, swung his head
from side to side as if to make sure that his neck had
not been turned to stone, emitted a short laugh, and
grumbled: ``Disparu! Hein! Well, I am damned!''
as if the word ``vanished'' had been a gross insult to
enter against a man's name in a register. It seemed
to rankle, as Lieutenant R<e'>al observed with some
surprise; or else it was something inarticulate that
rankled, manifesting itself in that funny way. The
lieutenant, too, had a moment of anger which flamed
and went out at once in the deadly cold philosophic
reflection: ``We are victims of the destiny which has
brought us together.'' Then again his resentment
flamed. Why should he have stumbled against that
girl or that woman, he didn't know how he must
think of her, and suffer so horribly for it? He who
had endeavoured almost from a boy to destroy all
the softer feelings within himself. His changing
moods of distaste, of wonder at himself and at the
unexpected turns of life, wore the aspect of profound
abstraction from which he was recalled by an outburst
of Peyrol's, not loud but fierce enough.</p>
<p> ``No,'' cried Peyrol, ``I am too old to break my
bones for the sake of a lubberly soldier in Paris who
fancies he has invented something clever.''</p>
<p> ``I don't ask you to,'' the lieutenant said, with
extreme severity, in what Peyrol would call an
epaulette wearer's voice. ``You old sea-bandit. And
it wouldn't be for the sake of a soldier anyhow. You
and I are Frenchmen after all.''</p>
<p> ``You have discovered that, have you?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said R<e'>al. ``This morning, listening to your
talk on the hillside with that English corvette within
one might say a stone's throw.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' groaned Peyrol. ``A French-built ship!''
He struck his breast a resounding blow. ``It hurts
one there to see her. It seemed to me I could jump
down on her deck single-handed.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, there you and I understood each other,'' said
the lieutenant. ``But look here, this affair is a much
bigger thing than getting back a captured corvette.
In reality it is much more than merely playing a trick
on an admiral. It's a part of a deep plan, Peyrol!
It's another stroke to help us on the way towards a
great victory at sea.''</p>
<p> ``Us!'' said Peyrol. ``I am a sea-bandit and you
are a sea-officer. What do you mean by us?''</p>
<p> ``I mean all Frenchmen,'' said the lieutenant. ``Or,
let us say simply France, which you too have served.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, whose stone-effigy bearing had become
humanized almost against his will, gave an appreciative
nod, and said: ``You've got something in your
mind. Now what is it? If you will trust a sea-bandit.''</p>
<p> ``No, I will trust a gunner of the Republic. It
occurred to me that for this great affair we could
make use of this corvette that you have been observing
so long. For to count on the capture of any old
tartane by the fleet in a way that would not arouse
suspicion is no use.''</p>
<p> ``A lubberly notion,'' assented Peyrol, with more
heartiness than he had ever displayed towards Lieutenant
R<e'>al.</p>
<p> ``Yes, but there's that corvette. Couldn't something
be arranged to make them swallow the whole
thing, somehow, some way? You laugh . . . Why?''</p>
<p> ``I laugh because it would be a great joke,'' said
Peyrol, whose hilarity was very short-lived. ``That
fellow on board, he thinks himself very clever. I
never set my eyes on him, but I used to feel that I
knew him as if he were my own brother; but now . . .''</p>
<p> He stopped short. Lieutenant R<e'>al, after observing
the sudden change on his countenance, said in an
impressive manner:</p>
<p> ``I think you have just had an idea.''</p>
<p> ``Not the slightest,'' said Peyrol, turning suddenly
into stone as if by enchantment. The lieutenant did
not feel discouraged and he was not surprised to hear
the effigy of Peyrol pronounce: ``All the same one
could see.'' Then very abruptly: ``You meant to
stay here to-night?''</p>
<p> ``Yes. I will only go down to Madrague and leave
word with the sailing barge which was to come to-day
from Toulon to go back without me.''</p>
<p> ``No, lieutenant. You must return to Toulon
to-day. When you get there you must turn out some
of those damned quill-drivers at the Port Office if it
were midnight and have papers made out for a
tartane---oh, any name you like. Some sort of papers.
And then you must come back as soon as you can.
Why not go down to Madrague now and see whether
the barge isn't already there? If she is, then by
starting at once you may get back here some time
about midnight.''</p>
<p> He got up impetuously and the lieutenant stood up
too. Hesitation was imprinted on his whole attitude.
Peyrol's aspect was not animated, but his Roman
face with its severe aspect gave him a great air of
authority.</p>
<p> ``Won't you tell me something more?'' asked the
lieutenant.</p>
<p> ``No,'' said the rover. ``Not till we meet again. If
you return during the night don't you try to get into
the house. Wait outside. Don't rouse anybody. I
will be about, and if there is anything to say I will
say it to you then. What are you looking about you
for? You don't want to go up for your valise. Your
pistols up in your room too? What do you want with
pistols, only to go to Toulon and back with a naval
boat's crew?'' He actually laid his hand on the
lieutenant's shoulder and impelled him gently towards
the track leading to Madrague. R<e'>al turned his head
at the touch and their eyes met with the strained
closeness of a wrestler's hug. It was the lieutenant
who gave way before the unflinchingly direct stare of
the old Brother of the Coast. He gave way under the
cover of a sarcastic smile and a very airy, ``I see you
want me out of the way for some reason or other,''
which produced not the slightest effect upon Peyrol,
who stood with his arm pointing towards Madrague.
When the lieutenant turned his back on him Peyrol's
pointing arm fell down by his side; but he watched
the lieutenant out of sight before he turned too and
moved in a contrary direction.<p> CHAPTER IX</p>
</p>
<p> On losing sight of the perplexed lieutenant, Peyrol
discovered that his own mind was a perfect blank.
He started to get down to his tartane after one side-long
look at the face of the house which contained
quite a different problem. Let that wait. His head
feeling strangely empty, he felt the pressing necessity
of furnishing it with some thought without loss of
time. He scrambled down steep places, caught at
bushes, stepped from stone to stone, with the assurance
of long practice, with mechanical precision and without
for a moment relaxing his efforts to capture some
definite scheme which he could put into his head.
To his right the cove lay full of pale light, while the
rest of the Mediterranean extended beyond it in a
dark, unruffled blue. Peyrol was making for the little
basin where his tartane had been hidden for years,
like a jewel in a casket meant only for the secret
rejoicing of his eye, of no more practical use than a
miser's hoard---and as precious! Coming upon a
hollow in the ground where grew a few bushes and
even a few blades of grass, Peyrol sat down to rest.
In that position his visible world was limited to a
stony slope, a few boulders, the bush against which
he leaned and the vista of a piece of empty sea-horizon.
He perceived that he detested that lieutenant much
more when he didn't see him. There was something
in the fellow. Well, at any rate he had got rid of him
for say eight or ten hours. An uneasiness came over
the old rover, a sense of the endangered stability of
things, which was anything but welcome. He wondered
at it, and the thought ``I am growing old,''
intruded on him again. And yet he was aware of
his sturdy body. He could still creep stealthily like
an Indian and with his trusty cudgel knock a man
over with a certain aim at the back of his head, and
with force enough to fell him like a bullock. He had
done that thing no further back than two o'clock the
night before, not twelve hours ago, as easy as easy
and without an undue sense of exertion. This fact
cheered him up. But still he could not find an idea
for his head. Not what one could call a real idea.
It wouldn't come. It was no use sitting there.</p>
<p> He got up and after a few strides came to a stony
ridge from which he could see the two white blunt
mastheads of his tartane. Her hull was hidden from
him by the formation of the shore, in which the most
prominent feature was a big flat piece of rock. That
was the spot on which not twelve hours before Peyrol,
unable to rest in his bed and coming to seek sleep in
his tartane, had seen by moonlight a man standing
above his vessel and looking down at her, a characteristic
forked black shape that certainly had no business
to be there. Peyrol, by a sudden and logical
deduction, had said to himself. ``Landed from an
English boat.'' Why, how, wherefore, he did not
stay to consider. He acted at once like a man
accustomed for many years to meet emergencies of
the most unexpected kind. The dark figure, lost in
a sort of attentive amazement, heard nothing, suspected
nothing. The impact of the thick end of the
cudgel came down on its head like a thunderbolt
from the blue. The sides of the little basin echoed
the crash. But he could not have heard it. The
force of the blow flung the senseless body over the
edge of the flat rock and down headlong into the
open hold of the tartane, which received it with the
sound of a muffled drum. Peyrol could not have
done the job better at the age of twenty. No. Not
so well. There was swiftness, mature judgment---and
the sound of the muffled drum was followed by a
perfect silence, without a sigh, without a moan.
Peyrol ran round a little promontory to where the
shore shelved down to the level of the tartanes rail
and got on board. And still the silence remained
perfect in the cold moonlight and amongst the deep
shadows of the rocks. It remained perfect because
Michel, who always slept under the half-deck forward,
being wakened by the thump which had made the
whole tartane tremble, had lost the power of speech.
With his head just protruding from under the half-deck,
arrested on all fours and shivering violently like
a dog that had been washed with hot water, he was
kept from advancing further by his terror of this
bewitched corpse that had come on board flying
through the air. He would not have touched it for
anything.</p>
<p> The ``You there, Michel,'' pronounced in an undertone,
acted like a moral tonic. This then was not the
doing of the Evil One; it was no sorcery! And even
if it had been, now that Peyrol was there, Michel had
lost all fear. He ventured not a single question while
he helped Peyrol to turn over the limp body. Its
face was covered with blood from the cut on the
forehead which it had got by striking the sharp edge
of the keelson. What accounted for the head not
being completely smashed and for no limbs being
broken was the fact that on its way through the air
the victim of undue curiosity had come in contact
with and had snapped like a carrot one of the foremast
shrouds. Raising his eves casually Peyrol noticed
the broken rope, and at once put his hand on the
man's breast.</p>
<p> ``His heart beats yet,'' he murmured. ``Go and
light the cabin lamp, Michel.''</p>
<p> ``You going to take that thing into the cabin?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said Peyrol. ``The cabin is used to that
kind of thing,'' and suddenly he felt very bitter. ``It
has been a death-trap for better people than this
fellow, whoever he is.''</p>
<p> While Michel was away executing that order
Peyrol's eyes roamed all over the shores of the basin,
for he could not divest himself of the idea that there
must be more Englishmen dodging about. That one
of the corvette's boats was still in the cove he had not
the slightest doubt. As to the motive of her coming,
it was incomprehensible. Only that senseless form
lying at his feet could perhaps have told him: but
Peyrol had little hope that it would ever speak again.
If his friends started to look for their shipmate there
was just a bare chance that they would not discover
the existence of the basin. Peyrol stooped and felt
the body all over. He found no weapon of any kind
on it. There was only a common clasp-knife on a
lanyard round its neck.</p>
<p> That soul of obedience, Michel, returning from aft,
was directed to throw a couple of bucketfuls of salt
water upon the bloody head with its face upturned
to the moon. The lowering of the body down into
the cabin was a matter of some little difficulty. It
was heavy. They laid it full length on a locker and
after Michel with a strange tidiness had arranged its
arms along its sides it looked incredibly rigid. The
dripping head with soaked hair was like the head of
a drowned man with a gaping pink gash on the
forehead.</p>
<p> ``Go on deck to keep a lookout,'' said Peyrol. ``We
may have to fight yet before the night's out.''</p>
<p> After Michel left him Peyrol began by flinging off
his jacket and, without a pause, dragging his shirt off
over his head. It was a very fine shirt. The Brothers
of the Coast in their hours of ease were by no means
a ragged crowd, and Peyrol the gunner had preserved
a taste for fine linen. He tore the shirt into long strips,
sat down on the locker and took the wet head on his
knees. He bandaged it with some skill, working as
calmly as though he had been practising on a dummy.
Then the experienced Peyrol sought the lifeless hand
and felt the pulse. The spirit had not fled yet. The
rover, stripped to the waist, his powerful arms folded
on the grizzled pelt of his bare breast, sat gazing down
at the inert face in his lap with the eyes closed peacefully
under the white band covering the forehead.
He contemplated the heavy jaw combined oddly with
a certain roundness of cheek, the noticeably broad
nose with a sharp tip and a faint dent across the
bridge, either natural or the result of some old injury.
A face of brown clay, roughly modelled, with a lot of
black eyelashes stuck on the closed lids and looking
artificially youthful on that physiognomy forty years
old or more. And Peyrol thought of his youth. Not
his own youth; that he was never anxious to recapture.
It was of that man's youth that he thought, of how
that face had looked twenty years ago. Suddenly he
shifted his position, and putting his lips to the ear of
that inanimate head, yelled with all the force of his
lungs:</p>
<p> ``Hullo! Hullo! Wake up, shipmate!''</p>
<p> It seemed enough to wake up the dead. A faint
``Voil<a`>! Voil<a`>!'' was the answer from a distance,
and presently Michel put his head into the cabin with
an anxious grin and a gleam in the round eyes.</p>
<p> ``You called, ma<i^>tre?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said Peyrol. ``Come along and help me to
shift him.''</p>
<p> ``Overboard?'' murmured Michel readily.</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Peyrol, ``into that bunk. Steady!
Don't bang his head," he cried with unexpected
tenderness. ``Throw a blanket over him. Stay in the
cabin and keep his bandages wetted with salt water.
I don't think anybody will trouble you to-night. I
am going to the house.''</p>
<p> ``The day is not very far off,'' remarked Michel.</p>
<p> This was one reason the more why Peyrol was in a
hurry to get back to the house and steal up to his
room unseen. He drew on his jacket over his bare
skin, picked up his cudgel, recommended Michel not
to let that strange bird get out of the cabin on any
account. As Michel was convinced that the man
would never walk again in his life, he received those
instructions without particular emotion.</p>
<p> The dawn had broken some time before Peyrol, on
his way up to Escampobar, happened to look round
and had the luck to actually see with his own eyes the
English man-of-war's boat pulling out of the cove.
This confirmed his surmises but did not enlighten
him a bit as to the causes. Puzzled and uneasy,
he approached the house through the farmyard---
Catherine, always the first up, stood at the open
kitchen door. She moved aside and would have let
him pass without remark, if Peyrol himself had not
asked in a whisper: ``Anything new?'' She answered
him in the same tone: ``She has taken to roaming at
night.'' Peyrol stole silently up to his bedroom, from
which he descended an hour later as though he had
spent all the night in his bed up there.</p>
<p> It was this nocturnal adventure which had affected
the character of Peyrol's forenoon talk with the
lieutenant. What with one thing and another he
found it very trying. Now that he had got rid of R<e'>al
for several hours, the rover had to turn his attention
to that other invader of the strained, questionable,
and ominous in its origins, peace of the Escampobar
Farm. As he sat on the flat rock with his eyes fixed
idly on the few drops of blood betraying his last
night's work to the high heaven, and trying to get
hold of something definite that he could think about,
Peyrol became aware of a faint thundering noise.
Faint as it was it filled the whole basin. He soon
guessed its nature, and his face lost its perplexity.
He picked up his cudgel, got on his feet briskly,
muttering to himself. ``He's anything but dead,'' and
hurried on board the tartane.</p>
<p> On the after-deck Michel was keeping a lookout.
He had carried out the orders he had received by the
well. Besides being secured by the very obvious
padlock, the cabin door was shored up by a spar
which made it stand as firm as a rock. The thundering
noise seemed to issue from its immovable substance
magically. It ceased for a moment, and a sort of
distracted continuous growling could be heard. Then
the thundering began again. Michel reported:
``This is the third time he starts this game.''</p>
<p> ``Not much strength in this,'' remarked Peyrol
gravely.</p>
<p> ``That he can do it at all is a miracle,'' said Michel,
showing a certain excitement. ``He stands on the
ladder and beats the door with his fists. He is getting
better. He began about half an hour after I got back
on board. He drummed for a bit and then fell off
the ladder. I heard him. I had my ear against the
scuttle. He lay there and talked to himself for a long
time. Then he went at it again.'' Peyrol approached
the scuttle while Michel added his opinion: ``He will
go on like that for ever. You can't stop him.''</p>
<p> ``Easy there,'' said Peyrol in a deep authoritative
voice. ``Time you finish that noise.''</p>
<p> These words brought instantly a death-like silence.
Michel ceased to grin. He wondered at the power of
these few words of a foreign language.</p>
<p> Peyrol himself smiled faintly. It was ages since he
had uttered a sentence of English. He waited complacently
until Michel had unbarred and unlocked
the door of the cabin. After it was thrown open he
boomed out a warning: ``Stand clear!'' and, turning
about, went down with great deliberation, ordering
Michel to go forward and keep a lookout.</p>
<p> Down there the man with the bandaged head was
hanging on to the table and swearing feebly without
intermission. Peyrol, after listening for a time with
an air of interested recognition as one would to a
tune heard many years ago, stopped it by a deep-voiced:</p>
<p> ``That will do.'' After a short silence he added:
``You look bien malade, hein? What you call sick,''
in a tone which if not tender was certainly not hostile.
``We will remedy that.''</p>
<p> ``Who are you?'' asked the prisoner, looking frightened
and throwing his arm up quickly to guard his
head against the coming blow. But Peyrol's uplifted
hand fell only on his shoulder in a hearty slap which
made him sit down suddenly on a locker in a partly
collapsed attitude and unable to speak. But though
very much dazed he was able to watch Peyrol open a
cupboard and produce from there a small demijohn
and two tin cups. He took heart to say plaintively:
``My throat's like tinder,'' and then suspiciously:
``Was it you who broke my head?''</p>
<p> ``It was me,'' admitted Peyrol, sitting down on the
opposite side of the table and leaning back to look at
his prisoner comfortably.</p>
<p> ``What the devil did you do that for?'' inquired the
other with a sort of faint fierceness which left Peyrol
unmoved.</p>
<p> ``Because you put your nose where you no business.
Understand? I see you there under the moon, pench<e'>,
eating my tartane with your eyes. You never hear
me, hein?''</p>
<p> ``I believe you walked on air. Did you mean to
kill me?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, in preference to letting you go and make a
story of it on board your cursed corvette.''</p>
<p> ``Well then, now's your chance to finish me. I am
as weak as a kitten.''</p>
<p> ``How did you say that? Kitten? Ha, ha, ha!''
laughed Peyrol. ``You make a nice petit chat.'' He
seized the demijohn by the neck and filled the mugs.
``There,'' he went on, pushing one towards the prisoner
---``it's good drink---that.''</p>
<p> Symons' state was as though the blow had robbed
him of all power of resistance, of all faculty of surprise
and generally of all the means by which a man may
assert himself except bitter resentment. His head was
aching, it seemed to him enormous, too heavy for his
neck and as if full of hot smoke. He took a drink
under Peyrol's fixed gaze and with uncertain movements
put down the mug. He looked drowsy for a
moment. Presently a little colour deepened his
bronze; he hitched himself up on the locker and said
in a strong voice:</p>
<p> ``You played a damned dirty trick on me. Call
yourself a man, walking on air behind a fellow's back
and felling him like a bullock?''</p>
<p> Peyrol nodded calmly and sipped from his mug.</p>
<p> ``If I had met you anywhere else but looking at my
tartane I would have done nothing to you. I would
have permitted you to go back to your boat. Where
was your damned boat?''</p>
<p> ``How can I tell you? I can't tell where I am. I've
never been here before. How long have I been
here?''</p>
<p> ``Oh, about fourteen hours,'' said Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``My head feels as if it would fall off if I moved,''
grumbled the other. . . . ``You are a damned
bungler, that's what you are.''</p>
<p> ``What for---bungler?''</p>
<p> ``For not finishing me off at once.''</p>
<p> He seized the mug and emptied it down his throat.
Peyrol drank too, observing him all the time. He
put the mug down with extreme gentleness and said
slowly:</p>
<p> ``How could I know it was you? I hit hard enough
to crack the skull of any other man.''</p>
<p> ``What do you mean? What do you know about
my skull? What are you driving at? I don't know
you, you white-headed villain, going about at night
knocking people on the head from behind. Did you
do for our officer, too?''</p>
<p> ``Oh yes! Your officer. What was he up to?
What trouble did you people come to make here,
anyhow?''</p>
<p> ``Do you think they tell a boat's crew? Go and
ask our officer. He went up the gully and our
coxswain got the jumps. He says to me: `You are
light-footed, Sam,<code> says he; `you just creep round the
head of the cove and see if our boat can be seen across
from the other side.</code> Well, I couldn't see anything.
That was all right. But I thought 1 would climb a
little higher amongst the rocks. . . .''</p>
<p> He paused drowsily.</p>
<p> ``That was a silly thing to do,'' remarked Peyrol in
an encouraging voice.</p>
<p> ``I would've sooner expected to see an elephant
inland than a craft lying in a pool that seemed no
bigger than my hand. Could not understand how
she got there. Couldn't help going down to find out
---and the next thing I knew 1 was lying on my back
with my head tied up, in a bunk in this kennel of a
cabin here. Why couldn't you have given me a hail
and engaged me properly, yardarm to yardarm?
You would have got me all the same, because all I
had in the way of weapons was the clasp-knife which
you have looted off me.''</p>
<p> ``Up on the shelf there,'' said Peyrol, looking round.
``No, my friend, I wasn't going to take the risk of
seeing you spread your wings and fly.''</p>
<p> ``You need not have been afraid for your tartane.
Our boat was after no tartane. We wouldn't have
taken your tartane for a gift. Why, we see them by
dozens every day---those tartanes.''</p>
<p> Peyrol filled the two mugs again. ``Ah,'' he said,
``I daresay you see many tartanes, but this one is not
like the others. You a sailor---and you couldn't see
that she was something extraordinary.''</p>
<p> ``Hellfire and gunpowder!'' cried the other. ``How
can you expect me to have seen anything? I just
noticed that her sails were bent before your club hit
me on the head.'' He raised his hands to his head
and groaned. ``Oh lord, I feel as though I had been
drunk for a month.''</p>
<p> Peyrol's prisoner did look somewhat as though he
had got his head broken in a drunken brawl. But to
Peyrol his appearance was not repulsive. The rover
preserved a tender memory of his freebooter's life with
its lawless spirit and its spacious scene of action, before
the change in the state of affairs in the Indian Ocean,
the astounding rumours from the outer world, made
him reflect on its precarious character. It was true
that he had deserted the French flag when quite a
youngster; but at that time that flag was white; and
now it was a flag of three colours. He had known
the practice of liberty, equality and fraternity as
understood in the haunts open or secret of the
Brotherhood of the Coast. So the change, if one
could believe what people talked about, could not
be very great. The rover had also his own positive
notions as to what these three words were worth.
Liberty---to hold your own in the world if you could.
Equality---yes! But no body of men ever accomplished
anything without a chief. All this was worth
what it was worth. He regarded fraternity somewhat
differently. Of course brothers would quarrel
amongst themselves; it was during a fierce quarrel
that flamed up suddenly in a company of Brothers
that he had received the most dangerous wound of
his life. But for that Peyrol nursed no grudge against
anybody. In his view the claim of the Brotherhood
was a claim for help against the outside world. And
here he was sitting opposite a Brother whose head he
had broken on sufficient grounds. There he was
across the table looking dishevelled and dazed,
uncomprehending and aggrieved, and that head of
his proved as hard as ages ago when the nickname of
Testa Dura had been given to him by a Brother of
Italian origin on some occasion or other, some butting
match no doubt; just as he, Peyrol himself, was
known for a time on both sides of the Mozambique
Channel as Poigne-de-Fer, after an incident when in
the presence of the Brothers he played at arm's length
with the windpipe of an obstreperous negro sorcerer
with an enormous girth of chest. The villagers
brought out food with alacrity, and the sorcerer was
never the same man again. It had been a great
display.</p>
<p> Yes, no doubt it was Testa Dura; the young
neophyte of the order (where and how picked up
Peyrol never heard), strange to the camp, simpleminded
and much impressed by the swaggering
cosmopolitan company in which he found himself.
He had attached himself to Peyrol in preference to
some of his own countrymen of whom there were
several in that band, and used to run after him like a
little dog and certainly had acted a good shipmate's
part on the occasion of that wound which had neither
killed nor cowed Peyrol but merely had given him
an opportunity to reflect at leisure on the conduct of
his own life.</p>
<p> The first suspicion of that amazing fact had intruded
on Peyrol while he was bandaging that head by the
light of the smoky lamp. Since the fellow still lived,
it was not in Peyrol to finish him off or let him lie
unattended like a dog. And then this was a sailor.
His being English was no obstacle to the development
of Peyrol's mixed feelings in which hatred certainly
had no place. Amongst the members of the Brotherhood
it was the Englishmen whom he preferred. He
had also found amongst them that particular and
loyal appreciation, which a Frenchman of character
and ability will receive from Englishmen sooner than
from any other nation. Peyrol had at times been a
leader, without ever trying for it very much, for he
was not ambitious. The lead used to fall to him
mostly at a time of crisis of some sort; and when he
had got the lead it was on the Englishmen that he
used to depend most.</p>
<p> And so that youngster had turned into this English
man-of-war's man! In the fact itself there was nothing
impossible. You found Brothers of the Coast in
all sorts of ships and in all sorts of places. Peyrol had
found one once in a very ancient and hopeless cripple
practising the profession of a beggar on the steps of
Manila cathedral; and had left him the richer by two
broad gold pieces to add to his secret hoard. There
was a tale of a Brother of the Coast having become a
mandarin in China, and Peyrol believed it. One
never knew where and in what position one would
find a Brother of the Coast. The wonderful thing
was that this one should have come to seek him out,
to put himself in the way of his cudgel. Peyrol's
greatest concern had been all through that Sunday
morning to conceal the whole adventure from Lieutenant
R<e'>al. As against a wearer of epaulettes,
mutual protection was the first duty between Brothers
of the Coast. The unexpectedness of that claim
coming to him after twenty years invested it with an
extraordinary strength. What he would do with the
fellow he didn't know. But since that morning the
situation had changed. Peyrol had received the
lieutenant's confidence and had got on terms with
him in a special way. He fell into profound thought.</p>
<p> ``Sacr<e'>e t<e^>te dure,'' he muttered without rousing
himself. Peyrol was annoyed a little at not having
been recognized. He could not conceive how difficult
it would have been for Symons to identify this portly
deliberate person with a white head of hair as the
object of his youthful admiration, the black-ringleted
French Brother in the prime of life of whom everybody
thought so much. Peyrol was roused by hearing the
other declare suddenly:</p>
<p> ``I am an Englishman, I am. I am not going to
knuckle under to anybody. What are you going to
do with me?''</p>
<p> ``I will do what I please,'' said Peyrol, who had
been asking himself exactly the same question.</p>
<p> ``Well, then, be quick about it, whatever it is. I
don't care a damn what you do, but---be---quick---
about it.''</p>
<p> He tried to be emphatic; but as a matter of fact
the last words came out in a faltering tone. And old
Peyrol was touched. He thought that if he were to
let him drink the mugful standing there, it would
make him dead drunk. But he took the risk. So he
said only:</p>
<p> ``Allons. Drink.'' The other did not wait for a
second invitation but could not control very well the
movements of his arm extended towards the mug.
Peyrol raised his on high.</p>
<p> ``Trinquons, eh?'' he proposed. But in his precarious
condition the Englishman remained unforgiving.</p>
<p> ``I'm damned if I do,'' he said indignantly, but so
low that Peyrol had to turn his ear to catch the words.
``You will have to explain to me first what you meant
by knocking me on the head.''</p>
<p> He drank, staring all the time at Peyrol in a
manner which was meant to give offence but which
struck Peyrol as so childlike that he burst into a
laugh.</p>
<p> ``Sacr<e'> imb<e'>cile, va! Did I not tell you it was
because of the tartane? If it hadn't been for the
tartane I would have hidden from you. I would
have crouched behind a bush like a---what do you
call them?---li<e`>vre.''</p>
<p> The other, who was feeling the effect of the d
stared with frank incredulity.</p>
<p> ``You are of no account,'' continued Peyrol. ``Ah!
if you had been an officer I would have gone for you
anywhere. Did you say your officer went up the
gully?''</p>
<p> Symons sighed deeply and easily. ``That's the way
he went. We had heard on board of a house
thereabouts.''</p>
<p> ``Oh, he went to the house!'' said Peyrol. ``Well,
if he did get there he must be very sorry for himself.
There is half a company of infantry billeted in the
farm.''</p>
<p> This inspired fib went down easily with the English
sailor. Soldiers were stationed in many parts of the
coast as any seaman of the blockading fleet knew very
well. To the many expressions which had passed
over the face of that man recovering from a long
period of unconsciousness, there was added the shade
of dismay.</p>
<p> ``What the devil have they stuck soldiers on this
piece of rock for?'' he asked.</p>
<p> ``Oh, signalling post and things like that. I am
not likely to tell you everything. Why! you might
escape.''</p>
<p> That phrase reached the soberest spot in the whole
of Symons' individuality. Things were happening,
then. Mr. Bolt was a prisoner. But the main idea
evoked in his confused mind was that he would be
given up to those soldiers before very long. The
prospect of captivity made his heart sink and he
resolved to give as much trouble as he could.</p>
<p> ``You will have to get some of these soldiers to
carry me up. I won't walk. I won't. Not after
having had my brains nearly knocked out from behind.
I tell you straight! I won't walk. Not a step. They
will have to carry me ashore.''</p>
<p> Peyrol only shook his head deprecatingly.</p>
<p> ``Now you go and get a corporal with a file of men,''
insisted Symons obstinately. ``I want to be made a
proper prisoner of. Who the devil are you? You
had no right to interfere. I believe you are a civilian.
A common marinero, whatever you may call yourself.
You look to me a pretty fishy marinero at that.
Where did you learn English? In prison---eh? You
ain't going to keep me in this damned dog-hole, on
board your rubbishy tartane. Go and get that
corporal, I tell you.''</p>
<p> He looked suddenly very tired and only murmured:
``I am an Englishman, I am.''</p>
<p> Peyrol's patience was positively angelic.</p>
<p> ``Don't you talk about the tartane,'' he said
impressively, making his words as distinct as possible.
``I told you she was not like the other tartanes. That
is because she is a courier boat. Every time she goes
to sea she makes a pied-de-nez, what you call thumb
to the nose, to all your English cruisers. I do not
mind telling you because you are my prisoner. You
will soon learn French now.''</p>
<p> ``Who are you? The caretaker of this thing or
what?'' asked the undaunted Symons. But Peyrol's
mysterious silence seemed to intimidate him at last.
He became dejected and began to curse in a languid
tone all boat expeditions, the coxswain of the gig and
his own infernal luck.</p>
<p> Peyrol sat alert and attentive like a man interested
in an experiment, while after a moment Symons' face
began to look as if he had been hit with a club again,
but not as hard as before. A film came over his
round eyes and the words ``fishy mariners'' made
their way out of his lips in a sort of death-bed voice.
Yet such was the hardness of his head that he actually
rallied enough to address Peyrol in an ingratiating
tone.</p>
<p> ``Come, grandfather!'' He tried to push the mug
across the table and upset it. ``Come! Let us finish
what's in that tiny bottle of yours.''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Peyrol, drawing the demijohn to his
side of the table and putting the cork in.</p>
<p> ``No?'' repeated Symons in an unbelieving voice
and looking at the demijohn fixedly . . . ``You must
be a tinker'' . . . He tried to say something more
under Peyrol's watchful eyes, failed once or twice, and
suddenly pronounced the word ``cochon'' so correctly
as to make old Peyrol start. After that it was no use
looking at him any more. Peyrol busied himself in
locking up the demijohn and the mugs. When he
turned round most of his prisoner's body was extended
over the table and no sound came from it, not even
a snore.</p>
<p> When Peyrol got outside, pulling to the door of the
cuddy behind him, Michel hastened from forward to
receive the master's orders. But Peyrol stood so long
on the after-deck meditating profoundly with his
hand over his mouth that Michel became fidgety and
ventured a cheerful: ``It looks as if he were not going
to die.''</p>
<p> ``He is dead,'' said Peyrol with grim jocularity.
``Dead drunk. And you very likely will not see me
till to-morrow sometime.''</p>
<p> ``But what am I to do?'' asked Michel timidly.</p>
<p> ``Nothing,'' said Peyrol. ``Of course you must not
let him set fire to the tartane.''</p>
<p> ``But suppose,'' insisted Michel, ``he should give
signs of escaping.''</p>
<p> ``If you see him trying to escape,'' said Peyrol with
mock solemnity, ``then, Michel, it will be a sign for
you to get out of his way as quickly as you can. A
man who would try to escape with a head like this
on him would just swallow you at one mouthful.''</p>
<p> He picked up his cudgel and, stepping ashore, went
off without as much as a look at his faithful henchman.
Michel listened to him scrambling amongst the stones,
and his habitual amiably vacant face acquired a sort
of dignity from the utter and absolute blankness that
came over it.<p> CHAPTER X</p>
</p>
<p> It was only after reaching the level ground in front
of the farmhouse that Peyrol took time to pause and
resume his contact with the exterior world.</p>
<p> While he had been closeted with his prisoner the
sky had got covered with a thin layer of cloud, in one
of those swift changes of weather that are not unusual
in the Mediterranean. This grey vapour, drifting
high up, close against the disc of the sun, seemed to
enlarge the space behind its veil, add to the vastness
of a shadowless world no longer hard and brilliant
but all softened in the contours of its masses and in
the faint line of the horizon, as if ready to dissolve in
the immensity of the Infinite.</p>
<p> Familiar and indifferent to his eyes, material and
shadowy, the extent of the changeable sea had gone
pale under the pale sun in a mysterious and emotional
response. Mysterious too was the great oval patch of
dark water to the west; and also a broad blue lane
traced on the dull silver of the waters in a parabolic
curve described magistrally by an invisible finger for
a symbol of endless wandering. The face of the
farmhouse might have been the face of a house from
which all the inhabitants had fled suddenly. In the
high part of the building the window of the lieutenant's
room remained open, both glass and shutter.
By the door of the salle the stable fork leaning against
the wall seemed to have been forgotten by the sans-culotte.
This aspect of abandonment struck Peyrol
with more force than usual. He had been thinking
so hard of all these people, that to find no one about
seemed unnatural and even depressing. He had seen
many abandoned places in his life, grass huts, mud
forts, kings' palaces---temples from which every white-robed
soul had fled. Temples, however, never looked
quite empty. The gods clung to their own. Peyrol's
eyes rested on the bench against the wall of the salle.
In the usual course of things it should have been
occupied by the lieutenant who had the habit of
sitting there with hardly a movement, for hours, like
a spider watching for the coming of a fly. This
paralyzing comparison held Peyrol motionless with a
twisted mouth and a frown on his brow, before the
evoked vision, coloured and precise, of the man more
troubling than the reality had ever been.</p>
<p> He came to himself with a start. What sort of
occupation was this, 'cr<e'> nom de nom, staring at a
silly bench with no one on it? Was he going wrong
in his head? Or was it that he was getting really old?
He had noticed old men losing themselves like that.
But he had something to do. First of all he had to go
and see what the English sloop in the Passe was doing.</p>
<p> While he was making his way towards the lookout
on the hill where the inclined pine hung peering over
the cliff as if an insatiable curiosity were holding it in
that precarious position, Peyrol had another view
from above of the farmyard and of the buildings and
was again affected by their deserted appearance.
Not a soul, not even an animal seemed to have been
left; only on the roofs the pigeons walked with smart
elegance. Peyrol hurried on and presently saw the
English ship well over on the Porquerolles side with
her yards braced tip and her head to the southward.
There was a little wind in the Passe, while the dull
silver of the open had a darkling rim of rippled water
far away to the cast in that quarter where, far or
near, but mostly out of sight, the British Fleet kept
its endless watch. Not a shadow of a spar or gleam
of sail on the horizon betrayed its presence; but
Peyrol would not have been surprised to see a crowd
of ships surge up, people the horizon with hostile life,
come in running, and dot the sea with their ordered
groups all about Cape Cici<e'>, parading their damned
impudence. Then indeed that corvette, the big factor
of everyday life on that stretch of coast, would become
very small potatoes indeed; and the man in command
of her (he had been Peyrol's personal adversary
in many imaginary encounters fought to a finish in
the room upstairs) then indeed that Englishman
would have to mind his steps. He would be ordered
to come within hail of the Admiral, be sent here and
there, made to run like a little dog and as likely as
not get called on board the flagship and get a dressing
down for something or other.</p>
<p> Peyrol thought for a moment that the impudence
of this Englishman was going to take the form of
running along the peninsula and looking into the very
cove; for the corvette's head was falling off slowly.
A fear for his tartane clutched Peyrol's heart till he
remembered that the Englishman did not know of
her existence. Of course not. His cudgel had been
absolutely effective in stopping that bit of information.
The only Englishman who knew of the existence of
the tartane was that fellow with the broken head.
Peyrol actually laughed at his momentary scare.
Moreover, it was evident that the Englishman did not
mean to parade in front of the peninsula. He did
not mean to be impudent. The sloop's yards were
swung right round and she came again to the wind
but now heading to the northward back from where
she came. Peyrol saw at once that the Englishman
meant to pass to windward of Cape Esterel, probably
with the intention of anchoring for the night off the
long white beach which in a regular curve closes the
roadstead of Hy<e`>res on that side.</p>
<p> Peyrol pictured her to himself, on the clouded
night, not so very dark since the fall moon was but a
day old, lying at anchor within hail of the low shore,
with her sails furled and looking profoundly asleep,
but with the watch on deck lying by the guns. He
gnashed his teeth. It had come to this at last, that
the captain of the <u>Amelia</u> could do nothing with his
ship without putting Peyrol into a rage. Oh, for
forty Brothers, or sixty, picked ones, he thought, to
teach the fellow what it might cost him taking liberties
along the French coast! Ships had been carried by
surprise before, on nights when there was just light
enough to see the whites of each other's eyes in a
close tussle. And what would be the crew of that
Englishman? Something between ninety and a hundred
altogether, boys and landsman included. ...
Peyrol shook his fist for a good-bye, just when Cape
Esterel shut off the English sloop from his sight. But
in his heart of hearts that seaman of cosmopolitan
associations knew very well that no forty or sixty, not
any given hundred Brothers of the Coast would have
been enough to capture that corvette making herself
at home within ten miles of where he had first opened
his eyes to the world.</p>
<p> He shook his head dismally at the leaning pine, his
only companion. The disinherited soul of that rover
ranging for so many years a lawless ocean with the
coasts of two continents for a raiding ground, had
come back to its crag, circling like a sea-bird in the
dusk and longing for a great sea victory for its people:
that inland multitude of which Peyrol knew nothing
except the few individuals on that peninsula cut off
from the rest of the land by the dead water of a salt
lagoon; and where only a strain of manliness in a
miserable cripple and an unaccountable charm of a
half-crazed woman had found response in his heart.</p>
<p> This scheme of false dispatches was but a detail in
a plan for a great, a destructive victory. just a detail,
but not a trifle all the same. Nothing connected with
the deception of an admiral could be called trifling.
And such an admiral too. It was, Peyrol felt vaguely,
a scheme that only a confounded landsman would
invent. It behoved the sailors, however, to make a
workable thing of it. It would have to be worked
through that corvette.</p>
<p> And here Peyrol was brought up by the question
that all his life had not been able to settle for him---
and that was whether the English were really very
stupid or very acute. That difficulty had presented
itself with every fresh case. The old rover had enough
genius in him to have arrived at a general conclusion
that if they were to be deceived at all it could not be
done very well by words but rather by deeds; not by
mere wriggling, but by deep craft concealed under
some sort of straightforward action. That conviction,
however, did not take him forward in this case, which
was one in which much thinking would be necessary.</p>
<p> The <u>Amelia</u> had disappeared behind Cape Esterel,
and Peyrol wondered with a certain anxiety whether
this meant that the Englishman had given up his man
for good. ``If he has,'' said Peyrol to himself, ``I am
bound to see him pass out again from beyond Cape
Esterel before it gets dark.'' If, however, he did not
see the ship again within the next hour or two, then
she would be anchored off the beach, to wait for the
night before making some attempt to discover what
had become of her man. This could be done only
by sending out one or two boats to explore the coast,
and no doubt to enter the cove---perhaps even to land
a small search party.</p>
<p> After coming to this conclusion Peyrol began
deliberately to charge his pipe. Had he spared a
moment for a glance inland he might have caught a
whisk of a black skirt, the gleam of a white fichu---
Arlette running down the faint track leading from
Escampobar to the village in the hollow; the same
track in fact up which Citizen Scevola, while indulging
in the strange freak to visit the church, had been
chased by the incensed faithful. But Peyrol, while
charging and lighting his pipe, had kept his eyes
fastened on Cape Esterel. Then, throwing his arm
affectionately over the trunk of the pine, he had
settled himself to watch. Far below him the roadstead,
with its play of grey and bright gleams, looked
like a plaque of mother-of-pearl in a frame of yellow
rocks and dark green ravines set off inland by the
masses of the hills displaying the tint of the finest
purple; while above his head the sun, behind a cloud-veil,
hung like a silver disc.</p>
<p> That afternoon, after waiting in vain for Lieutenant
R<e'>al to appear outside in the usual way, Arlette, the
mistress of Escampobar, had gone unwillingly into
the kitchen where Catherine sat upright in a heavy
capacious wooden armchair, the back of which rose
above the top of her white muslin cap. Even in her
old age, even in her hours of ease, Catherine preserved
the upright carriage of the family that had held
Escampobar for so many generations. It would have
been easy to believe that, like some characters famous
in the world, Catherine would have wished to die
standing up and with unbowed shoulders.</p>
<p> With her sense of hearing undecayed she detected
the light footsteps in the salle long before Arlette
entered the kitchen. That woman, who had faced
alone and unaided (except for her brother's comprehending
silence) the anguish of passion in a forbidden
love, and of terrors comparable to those of the
judgment Day, neither turned her face, quiet without
serenity, nor her eyes, fearless but without fire, in the
direction of her niece.</p>
<p> Arlette glanced on all sides, even at the walls, even
at the mound of ashes under the big overmantel,
nursing in its heart a spark of fire, before she sat down
and leaned her elbow on the table.</p>
<p> ``You wander about like a soul in pain,'' said her
aunt, sitting by the hearth like an old queen on her
throne.</p>
<p> ``And you sit here eating your heart out.''</p>
<p> ``Formerly,'' remarked Catherine, ``old women like
me could always go over their prayers, but now . . .''</p>
<p> ``I believe you have not been to church for years.
I remember Scevola telling me that a long time ago.
Was it because you didn't like people's eyes? I have
fancied sometimes that most people in the world must
have been massacred long ago.''</p>
<p> Catherine turned her face away. Arlette rested her
head on her half-closed hand, and her eyes, losing
their steadiness, began to tremble amongst cruel
visions. She got up suddenly and caressed the thin,
half-averted, withered cheek with the tips of her
fingers, and in a low voice, with that marvellous
cadence that plucked at one's heart-strings, she said
coaxingly:</p>
<p> ``Those were dreams, weren't they?''</p>
<p> In her immobilitv the old woman called with all
the might of her will for the presence of Peyrol. She
had never been able to shake off a superstitious fear
of that niece restored to her from the terrors of a
Judgment Day in which the world had been given
over to the devils. She was always afraid that this
girl, wandering about with restless eyes and a dim
smile on her silent lips, would suddenly say something
atrocious, unfit to be heard, calling for vengeance
from heaven, unless Peyrol were by. That stranger
come from ``par dela les mers'' was out of it altogether,
cared probably for no one in the world but had struck
her imagination by his massive aspect, his deliberation
suggesting a mighty force like the reposeful attitude
of a lion. Arlette desisted from caressing the irresponsive
cheek, exclaimed petulantly: ``I am awake
now!'' and went out of the kitchen without having
asked her aunt the question she had meant to ask,
which was whether she knew what had become of the
lieutenant.</p>
<p> Her heart had failed her. She let herself drop on
the bench outside the door of the salle. ``What is the
matter with them all?'' she thought. ``I can't make
them out. What wonder is it that I have not been
able to sleep?'' Even Peyrol, so different from all
mankind, who from the first moment when he stood
before her had the power to soothe her aimless unrest,
even Peyrol would now sit for hours with the lieutenant
on the bench, gazing into the air and keeping
him in talk about things without sense, as if on
purpose to prevent him from thinking of her. Well,
he could not do that. But the enormous change
implied in the fact that every day had a to-morrow
now, and that all the people around her had ceased
to be mere phantoms for her wandering glances to
glide over without concern, made her feel the need
of support from somebody, from somewhere. She
could have cried aloud for it.</p>
<p> She sprang up and walked along the whole front of
the farm building. At the end of the wall enclosing
the orchard she called out in a modulated undertone:
``Eug<e`>ne,'' not because she hoped that the lieutenant
was anywhere within earshot, but for the pleasure of
hearing the sound of the name uttered for once above
a whisper. She turned about and at the end of the
wall on the yard side she repeated her call, drinking
in the sound that came from her lips, ``Eug<e`>ne,
Eug<e`>ne,'' with a sort of half-exulting despair. It was
in such dizzy moments that she wanted a steadying
support. But all was still. She heard no friendly
murmur, not even a sigh. Above her head under the
thin grey sky a big mulberry tree stirred no leaf.
Step by step, as if unconsciously, she began to move
down the track. At the end of fifty yards she opened
the inland view, the roofs of the village between the
green tops of the platanes overshadowing the fountain,
and just beyond the flat blue-grey level of the salt
lagoon, smooth and dull like a slab of lead. But
what drew her on was the church-tower, where, in a
round arch, she could see the black speck of the bell
which escaping the requisitions of the Republican
wars, and dwelling mute above the locked-up empty
church, had only lately recovered its voice. She ran
on, but when she had come near enough to make
out the figures moving about the village fountain, she
checked herself, hesitated a moment and then took
the footpath leading to the presbytery.</p>
<p> She pushed open the little gate with the broken
latch. The humble building of rough stones, from
between which much mortar had crumbled out,
looked as though it had been sinking slowly into the
ground. The beds of the plot in front were choked
with weeds, because the abb<e'> had no taste for
gardening. When the heiress of Escampobar opened
the door, he was walking up and down the largest
room which was his bedroom and sitting room and
where he also took his meals. He was a gaunt man
with a long, as if convulsed, face. In his young days
he had been tutor to the sons of a great noble, but he
did not emigrate with his employer. Neither did he
submit to the Republic. He had lived in his native
land like a hunted wild beast, and there had been
many tales of his activities, warlike and others. When
the hierarchy was re-established he found no favour
in the eyes of his superiors. He had remained too
much of a Royalist. He had accepted, without a
word, the charge of this miserable parish, where he
had acquired influence quickly enough. His sacerdotalism
lay in him like a cold passion. Though
accessible enough, he never walked abroad without
his breviary, acknowledging the solemnly bared heads
by a curt nod. He was not exactly feared, but some
of the oldest inhabitants who remembered the previous
incumbent, an old man who died in the garden after
having been dragged out of bed by some patriots
anxious to take him to prison in Hy<e`>res, jerked their
heads sideways in a knowing manner when their cur<e'>
was mentioned.</p>
<p> On seeing this apparition in an Arlesian cap and
silk skirt, a white fichu, and otherwise as completely
different as any princess could be from the rustics with
whom he was in daily contact, his face expressed the
blankest astonishment. Then---for he knew enough
of the gossip of his community---his straight, thick
eyebrows came together inimically. This was no
doubt the woman of whom he had heard his
parishioners talk with bated breath as having given
herself and her property up to a Jacobin, a Toulon
sans-culotte who had either delivered her parents to
execution or had murdered them himself during the
first three days of massacres. No one was very sure
which it was, but the rest was current knowledge.
The abb<e'>, though persuaded that any amount of
moral turpitude was possible in a godless country, had
not accepted all that tale literally. No doubt those
people were republican and impious, and the state of
affairs up there was scandalous and horrible. He
struggled with his feelings of repulsion and managed
to smooth his brow and waited. He could not imagine
what that woman with mature form and a youthful
face could want at the presbytery. Suddenly it
occurred to him that perhaps she wanted to thank
him---it was a very old occurrence---for interposing
between the fury of the villagers and that man. He
couldn't call him, even in his thoughts, her husband,
for apart from all other circumstances, that connection
could not imply any kind of marriage to a priest, even
had there been legal form observed. His visitor was
apparently disconcerted by the expression of his face,
the austere aloofness of his attitude, and only a low
murmur escaped her lips. He bent his head and was
not very certain what he had heard.</p>
<p> ``You come to seek my aid?'' he asked in a doubting
tone.</p>
<p> She nodded slightly, and the abb<e'> went to the door
she had left half open and looked out. There was
not a soul in sight between the presbytery and the
village, or between the presbytery and the church.
He went back to face her, saying:</p>
<p> ``We are as alone as we can well be. The old
woman in the kitchen is as deaf as a post.''</p>
<p> Now that he had been looking at Arlette closer the
abb<e'> felt a sort of dread. The carmine of those lips,
the pellucid, unstained, unfathomable blackness of
those eyes, the pallor of her cheeks, suggested to him
something provokingly pagan, something distastefully
different from the common sinners of this earth. And
now she was ready to speak. He arrested her with a
raised hand.</p>
<p> ``Wait,'' he said. ``I have never seen you before.
I don't even know properly who you are. None of
you belong to my flock---for you are from Escampobar.
are you not?'' Sombre under their bony arches, his
eyes fastened on her face, noticed the delicacy of
features, the naive pertinacity of her stare. She
said:</p>
<p> ``I am the daughter.''</p>
<p> ``The daughter! . . . Oh! I see . . . Much
evil is spoken of you.''</p>
<p> She said a little impatiently: ``By that rabble?''
and the priest remained mute for a moment. ``What
do they say? In my father's time they wouldn't have
dared to say anything. The only thing I saw of them
for years and years was when they were yelping like
curs on the heels of Scevola.''</p>
<p> The absence of scorn in her tone was perfectly
annihilating. Gentle sounds flowed from her lips
and a disturbing charm from her strange equanimity.
The abb<e'> frowned heavily at these fascinations, which
seemed to have in them something diabolic.</p>
<p> ``They are simple souls, neglected, fallen back into
darkness. It isn't their fault. They have natural
feelings of humanity which were outraged. I saved
him from their indignation. There are things that
must be left to divine justice.''</p>
<p> He was exasperated by the unconsciousness of that
fair face.</p>
<p> ``That man whose name you have just pronounced
and which I have heard coupled with the epithet of
`blood-drinker' is regarded as the master of Escampobar
Farm. He has been living there for years. How
is that?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, it is a long time ago since he brought me back
to the house. Years ago. Catherine let him stay.''</p>
<p> ``Who is Catherine?'' the abb<e'> asked harshly.</p>
<p> ``She is my father's sister who was left at home to
wait. She had given up all hope of seeing any of us
again, when one morning Scevola came with me to
the door. Then she let him stay. He is a poor
creature. What else could Catherine have done?
And what is it to us up there how the people in the
village regard him?'' She dropped her eyes and
seemed to fall into deep thought, then added, ``It was
only later that I discovered that he was a poor
creature, even quite lately. They call him <code>blood-drinker,</code>
do they? What of that? All the time he
was afraid of his own shadow.''</p>
<p> She ceased but did not raise her eyes.</p>
<p> ``You are no longer a child,'' began the abb<e'> in a
severe voice, frowning at her downcast eyes, and he
heard a murmur: ``Not very long.'' He disregarded
it and continued: ``I ask you, is this all that you
have to tell me about that man? I hope that at least
you are no hypocrite.''</p>
<p> ``Monsieur l'Abb<e'>,'' she said, raising her eyes fearlessly,
``what more am I to tell you about him? I
can tell you things that will make your hair stand on
end, but it wouldn't be about him.''</p>
<p> For all answer the abb<e'> made a weary gesture and
turned away to walk up and down the room. His
face expressed neither curiosity nor pity, but a sort
of repugnance which he made an effort to overcome.
He dropped into a deep and shabby old armchair,
the only object of luxury in the room, and pointed to
a wooden straight-backed stool. Arlette sat down on
it and began to speak. The abb<e'> listened, but looking
far away; his big bony hands rested on the arms of
the chair. After the first words he interrupted her:
``This is your own story you are telling me.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said Arlette.</p>
<p> ``Is it necessary that I should know?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, Monsieur l'Abb<e'>.''</p>
<p> ``But why?''</p>
<p> He bent his head a little, without, however, ceasing
to look far away. Her voice now was very low.
Suddenly the abb<e'> threw himself back.</p>
<p> ``You want to tell me your story because you have
fallen in love with a man?''</p>
<p> ``No, because that has brought me back to myself.
Nothing else could have done it.''</p>
<p> He turned his head to look at her grimly, but he
said nothing and looked away again. He listened.
At the beginning he muttered once or twice, ``Yes, I
have heard that,'' and then kept silent, not looking
at her at all. Once he interrupted her by a question:
``You were confirmed before the convent was forcibly
entered and the nuns dispersed?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' she said, ``a year before that or more.''</p>
<p> ``And then two of those ladies took you with them
towards Toulon.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, the other girls had their relations near by.
They took me with them thinking to communicate
with my parents, but it was difficult. Then the
English came and my parents sailed over to try and
get some news of me. It was safe for my father to be
in Toulon then. Perhaps you think that he was a
traitor to his country?'' she asked, and waited with
parted lips. With an impassible face the abb<e'> murmured:
``He was a good Royalist,'' in a tone of bitter
fatalism, which seemed to absolve that man and all
the other men of whose actions and errors he had
ever heard.</p>
<p> For a long time, Arlette continued, her father could
not discover the house where the nuns had taken
refuge. He only obtained some information on the
very day before the English evacuated Toulon. Late
in the day he appeared before her and took her away.
The town was full of retreating foreign troops. Her
father left her with her mother and went out again to
make preparations for sailing home that very night;
but the tartane was no longer in the place where he
had left her lying. The two Madrague men that he
had for a crew had disappeared also. Thus the family
was trapped in that town full of tumult and confusion.
Ships and houses were bursting into flames. Appalling
explosions of gunpowder shook the earth. She
spent that night on her knees with her face hidden in
her mother's lap, while her father kept watch by the
barricaded door with a pistol in each hand.</p>
<p> In the morning the house was filled with savage
yells. People were heard rushing up the stairs, and
the door was burst in. She jumped up at the crash
and flung herself down on her knees in a corner with
her face to the wall. There was a murderous uproar,
she heard two shots fired, then somebody seized her
by the arm and pulled her up to her feet. It was
Scevola. He dragged her to the door. The bodies
of her father and mother were lying across the doorway.
The room was full of gunpowder smoke. She
wanted to fling herself on the bodies and cling to
them, but Scevola took her under the arms and lifted
her over them. He seized her hand and made her
run with him, or rather dragged her downstairs.
Outside on the pavement some dreadful men and
many fierce women with knives joined them. They
ran along the streets brandishing pikes and sabres,
pursuing other groups of unarmed people, who fled
round corners with loud shrieks.</p>
<p> ``I ran in the midst of them, Monsieur l'Abb<e'>,''
Arlette went on in a breathless murmur. ``Whenever
I saw any water I wanted to throw myself into it, but
I was surrounded on all sides, I was jostled and
pushed and most of the time Scevola held my hand
very tight. When they stopped at a wine shop, they
would offer me some wine. My tongue stuck to the
roof of my mouth and I drank. The wine, the pavements,
the arms and faces, everything was red. I
had red splashes all over me. I had to run with them
all day, and all the time I felt as if I were falling down,
and down, and down. The houses were nodding at
me. The sun would go out at times. And suddenly
I heard myself yelling exactly like the others. Do
you understand, Monsieur I'Abb<e'>? The very same
words!''</p>
<p> The eyes of the priest in their deep orbits glided
towards her and then resumed their far-away fixity.
Between his fatalism and his faith he was not very
far from the belief of Satan taking possession of
rebellious mankind, exposing the nakedness of hearts
like flint and of the homicidal souls of the Revolution.</p>
<p> ``I have heard something of that,'' he whispered
stealthily.</p>
<p> She affirmed with quiet earnestness: ``Yet at that
time I resisted with all my might.''</p>
<p> That night Scevola put her under the care of a
woman called Perose. She was young and pretty
and was a native of Arles, her mother's country. She
kept an inn. That woman locked her up in her own
room, which was next to the room where the patriots
kept on shouting, singing and making speeches far
into the night. Several times the woman would look
in for a moment, make a hopeless gesture at her with
both arms, and vanish again. Later, on many other
nights when all the band lay asleep on benches and
on the floor, Perose would steal into the room, fall
on her knees by the bed on which Arlette sat upright,
open-eyed, and raving silently to herself, embrace her
feet and cry herself to sleep. But in the morning she
would jump up briskly and say: ``Come. The great
affair is to keep our life in our bodies. Come along
to help in the work of justice''; and they would join
the band that was making ready for another day of
traitor hunting. But after a time the victims, of
which the streets were full at first, had to be sought
for in back-yards, ferreted out of their hiding-places,
dragged up out of the cellars, or down from the
garrets of the houses, which would be entered by the
band with howls of death and vengeance.</p>
<p> ``Then, Monsieur l'Abb<e'>,'<code> said Arlette, ``I let
myself go at last. I could resist no longer. I said to
myself. `If it is so then it must be right.</code> But most of
the time I was like a person half asleep and dreaming
things that it is impossible to believe. About that
time, I don't know why, the woman Perose hinted
to me that Scevola was a poor creature. Next night
while all the band lay fast asleep in the big room
Perose and Scevola helped me out of the window into
the street and led me to the quay behind the arsenal.
Scevola had found our tartane lying at the pontoon
and one of the Madrague men with her. The other
had disappeared. Perose fell on my neck and cried
a little. She gave me a kiss and said: ``My time will
come soon. You, Scevola, don't you show yourself
in Toulon, because nobody believes in you any more.
Adieu, Arlette. Vive la Nation!'' and she vanished
in the night. I waited on the pontoon shivering in
my torn clothes, listening to Scevola and the man
throwing dead bodies overboard out of the tartane.
Splash, splash, splash. And suddenly I felt I must
run away, but they were after me in a moment,
dragged me back and threw me down into that cabin
which smelt of blood. But when I got back to the
farm all feeling had left me. I did not feel myself
exist. I saw things round me here and there, but I
couldn't look at anything for long. Something was
gone out of me. 1 know now that it was not my
heart, but then I didn't mind what it was. I felt
light and empty, and a little cold all the time, but I
could smile at people. Nothing could matter. Nothing
could mean anything. I cared for no one. I
wanted nothing. I wasn't alive at all, Monsieur
l'Abb<e'>. People seemed to see me and would talk to
me, and it seemed funny---till one day I felt my heart
beat.''</p>
<p> ``Why precisely did you come to me with this tale?''
asked the abb<e'> in a low voice.</p>
<p> ``Because you are a priest. Have you forgotten
that I have been brought up in a convent? I have
not forgotten how to pray. But I am afraid of the
world now. What must I do?''</p>
<p> ``Repent!'' thundered the abb<e'>, getting up. He
saw her candid gaze uplifted and lowered his voice
forcibly. ``You must look with fearless sincerity into
the darkness of your soul. Remember whence the
only true help can come. Those whom God has
visited by a trial such as yours can not be held
guiltless of their enormities. Withdraw from the
world. Descend within yourself and abandon the
vain thoughts of what people call happiness. Be an
example to yourself of the sinfulness of our nature
and of the weakness of our humanity. You may have
been possessed. What do I know? Perhaps it was
permitted in order to lead your soul to saintliness
through a life of seclusion and prayer. To that it
would be my duty to help you. Meantime you must
pray to be given strength for a complete renunciation.''</p>
<p> Arlette, lowering her eyes slowly, appealed to the
abb<e'> as a symbolic figure of spiritual mystery. ``What
can be God's designs on this creature?'' he asked
himself.</p>
<p> ``Monsieur le Cur<e'>,'' she said quietly, ``I felt the
need to pray to-day for the first time in many
years. When I left home it was only to go to your
church.''</p>
<p> ``The church stands open to the worst of sinners,''
said the abb<e'>.</p>
<p> ``I know. But I would have had to pass before all
those villagers: and you, abb<e'>, know well what they
are capable of.''</p>
<p> ``Perhaps,'' murmured the abb<e'>, ``it would be
better not to put their charity to the test.''</p>
<p> ``I must pray before I go back again. I thought
you would let me come in through the sacristy.''</p>
<p> ``It would be inhuman to refuse your request,'' he
said, rousing himself and taking down a key that
hung on the wall. He put on his broad-brimmed hat
and without a word led the way through the wicket
gate and along the path which he always used himself
and which was out of sight of the village fountain.
After they had entered the damp and dilapidated
sacristy he locked the door behind them and only
then opened another, a smaller one, leading into the
church. When he stood aside, Arlette became aware
of the chilly odour as of freshly turned-up earth
mingled with a faint scent of incense. In the deep
dusk of the nave a single little flame glimmered before
an image of the virgin. The abb<e'> whispered as she
passed on:</p>
<p> ``There before the great altar abase yourself and
pray for grace and strength and mercy in this world
full of crimes against God and men.''</p>
<p> She did not look at him. Through the thin soles
of her shoes she could feel the chill of the flagstones.
The abb<e'> left the door ajar, sat down on a rush-bottomed
chair, the only one in the sacristy, folded
his arms and let his chin fall on his breast. He
seemed to be sleeping profoundly, but at the end of
half an hour he got up and, going to the doorway,
stood looking at the kneeling figure sunk low on the
altar steps. Arlette's face was buried in her hands
in a passion of piety and prayer. The abb<e'> waited
patiently for a good many minutes more, before he
raised his voice in a grave murmur which filled the
whole dark place.</p>
<p> ``It is time for you to leave. I am going to ring for
vespers.''</p>
<p> The view of her complete absorption before the
Most High had touched him. He stepped back into
the sacristy and after a time heard the faintest possible
swish of the black silk skirt of the Escampobar daughter
in her Arlesian costume. She entered the sacristy
lightly with shining eyes, and the abb<e'> looked at her
with some emotion.</p>
<p> ``You have prayed well, my daughter,'' he said.
``No forgiveness will be refused to you, for you have
suffered much. Put your trust in the grace of God.''</p>
<p> She raised her head and stayed her footsteps for a
moment. In the dark little place he could see the
gleam of her eyes swimming in tears.</p>
<p> ``Yes, Monsieur l'Abb<e'>,'' she said in her clear
seductive voice. ``I have prayed and I feel answered.
I entreated the merciful God to keep the heart of the
man I love always true to me or else to let me die
before I set my eyes on him again.''</p>
<p> The abb<e'> paled under his tan of a village priest
and leaned his shoulders against the wall without a
word.<p> CHAPTER XI</p>
</p>
<p> After leaving the church by the sacristy door
Arlette never looked back. The abb<e'> saw her flit
past the presbytery, and the building hid her from
his sight. He did not accuse her of duplicity. He
had deceived himself. A heathen. White as her skin
was, the blackness of her hair and of her eyes, the
dusky red of her lips, suggested a strain of Saracen
blood. He gave her up without a sigh.</p>
<p> Arlette walked rapidly towards Escampobar as if
she could not get there soon enough; but as she
neared the first enclosed field her steps became slower
and after hesitating awhile she sat down between two
olive trees, near a wall bordered by a growth of thin
grass at the foot. ``And if I have been possessed,''
she argued to herself, ``as the abb<e'> said, what is it to
me as I am now? That evil spirit cast my true self
out of my body and then cast away the body too.
For years I have been living empty. There has been
no meaning in anything.''</p>
<p> But now her true self had returned matured in its
mysterious exile, hopeful and eager for love. She
was certain that it had never been far away from that
outcast body which Catherine had told her lately was
fit for no man's arms. That was all that old woman
knew about it, thought Arlette, not in scorn but rather
in pity. She knew better, she had gone to heaven for
truth in that long prostration with its ardent prayers
and its moment of ecstasy before an unlighted altar.</p>
<p> She knew its meaning well, and also the meaning
of another---of a terrestrial revelation which had come
to her that day at noon while she waited on the
lieutenant. Everybody else was in the kitchen; she
and R<e'>al were as much alone together as had ever
happened to them in their lives. That day she could
not deny herself the delight to be near him, to watch
him covertly, to hear him perhaps utter a few words,
to experience that strange satisfying consciousness of
her own existence which nothing but R<e'>al's presence
could give her; a sort of unimpassioned but all-absorbing
bliss, warmth, courage, confidence! . . .
She backed away from R<e'>al's table, seated herself
facing him and cast down her eyes. There was a
great stillness in the salle except for the murmur of
the voices in the kitchen. She had at first stolen a
glance or two and then peeping again through her
eyelashes, as it were, she saw his eyes rest on her with
a peculiar meaning. This had never happened
before. She jumped up, thinking that he wanted
something, and while she stood in front of him with
her hand resting on the table he stooped suddenly,
pressed it to the table with his lips and began kissing
it passionately without a sound, endlessly. . . . More
startled than surprised at first, then infinitely happy,
she was beginning to breathe quickly, when he left
off and threw himself back in the chair. She walked
away from the table and sat down again to gaze at
him openly, steadily, without a smile. But he was
not looking at her. His passionate lips were set hard
now and his face had an expression of stern despair.
No word passed between them. Brusquely he got up
with averted eyes and went outside, leaving the food
before him unfinished.</p>
<p> In the usual course of things, on any other day, she
would have got up and followed him, for she had
always yielded to the fascination that had first roused
her faculties. She would have gone out just to pass
in front of him once or twice. But this time she had
not obeyed what was stronger than fascination, something
within herself which at the same time prompted
and restrained her. She only raised her arm and
looked at her hand. It was true. It had happened.
He had kissed it. Formerly she cared not how
gloomy he was as long as he remained somewhere
where she could look at him---which she would do
at every opportunity with an open and unbridled
innocence. But now she knew better than to do that.
She had got up, had passed through the kitchen,
meeting without embarrassment Catherine's inquisitive
glance, and had gone upstairs. When she came
down after a time, he was nowhere to be seen, and
everybody else too seemed to have gone into hiding;
Michel, Peyrol, Scevola . . . But if she had met
Scevola she would not have spoken to him. It was
now a very long time since she had volunteered a
conversation with Scevola. She guessed, however,
that Scevola had simply gone to lie down in his lair,
a narrow shabby room lighted by one glazed little
window high up in the end wall. Catherine had put
him in there on the very day he had brought her
niece home and he had retained it for his own ever
since. She could even picture him to herself in there
stretched on his pallet. She was capable of that now.
Formerly, for years after her return, people that were
out of her sight were out of her mind also. Had they
run away and left her she would not have thought of
them at all. She would have wandered in and out
of the empty house and round the empty fields without
giving anybody a thought. Peyrol was the first
human being she had noticed for years. Peyrol, since
he had come, had always existed for her. And as a
matter of fact the rover was generally very much in
evidence about the farm. That afternoon, however,
even Peyrol was not to be seen. Her uneasiness began
to grow, but she felt a strange reluctance to go into
the kitchen where she knew her aunt would be sitting
in the armchair like a presiding genius of the house
taking its rest, and unreadable in her immobility.
And yet she felt she must talk about R<e'>al to somebody.
This was how the idea of going down to the church
had come to her. She would talk of him to the priest
and to God. The force of old associations asserted
itself. She had been taught to believe that one could
tell everything to a priest, and that the omnipotent
God who know everything could be prayed to, asked
for grace, for strength, for mercy, for protection, for
pity. She had done it and felt she had been heard.</p>
<p> Her heart had quietened down while she rested
under the wall. Pulling out a long stalk of grass she
twined it round her fingers absently. The veil of
cloud had thickened over her head, early dusk had
descended upon the earth, and she had not found out
what had become of R<e'>al. She jumped to her feet
wildly. But directly she had done that she felt the
need of self-control. It was with her usual light step
that she approached the front of the house and for
the first time in her life perceived how barren and
sombre it looked when R<e'>al was not about. She
slipped in quietly through the door of the main
building and ran upstairs. It was dark on the
landing. She passed by the door leading into the
room occupied by her aunt and herself. It had been
her father and mother's bedroom. The other big
room was the lieutenant's during his visits to Escampobar.
Without even a rustle of her dress, like a shadow,
she glided along the passage, turned the handle
without noise and went in. After shutting the door
behind her she listened. There was no sound in the
house. Scevola was either already down in the yard
or still lying open-eyed on his tumbled pallet in raging
sulks about something. She had once accidentally
caught, him at it, down on his face, one eye and cheek
of which were buried in the pillow, the other eye
glaring savagely, and had been scared away by a
thick mutter: ``Keep off. Don't approach me.'' And
all this had meant nothing to her then.</p>
<p> Having ascertained that the inside of the house was
as still as the grave, Arlette walked across to the
window, which when the lieutenant was occupying
the room stood always open and with the shutter
pushed right back against the wall. It was of course
uncurtained, and as she came near to it Arlette caught
sight of Peyrol coming down the hill on his return
from the lookout. His white head gleamed like silver
against the slope of the ground and by and by passed
out of her sight, while her ear caught the sound of his
footsteps below the window. They passed into the
house, but she did not hear him come upstairs. He
had gone into the kitchen. To Catherine. They
would talk about her and Eug<e`>ne. But what would
they say? She was so new to life that everything
appeared dangerous: talk, attitudes, glances. She
felt frightened at the mere idea of silence between
those two. It was possible. Suppose they didn't say
anything to each other. That would be awful.</p>
<p> Yet she remained calm like a sensible person, who
knows that rushing about in excitement is not the
way to meet unknown dangers. She swept her eyes
over the room and saw the lieutenant's valise in a
corner. That was really what she had wanted to see.
He wasn't gone then. But it didn't tell her, though
she opened it, what had become of him. As to his
return, she had no doubt whatever about that. He
had always returned. She noticed particularly a
large packet sewn up in sail-cloth and with three
large red seals on the seam. It didn't, however,
arrest her thoughts. Those were still hovering about
Catherine and Peyrol downstairs. How changed
they were. Had they ever thought that she was mad?
She became indignant. ``How could I have prevented
that?'' she asked herself with despair. She
sat down on the edge of the bed in her usual attitude,
her feet crossed, her hands lying in her lap. She felt
on one of them the impress off R<e'>al's lips, soothing,
reassuring like every certitude, but she was aware of
a still remaining confusion in her mind, an indefinite
weariness like the strain of an imperfect vision trying
to discern shifting outlines, floating shapes, incomprehensible
signs. She could not resist the temptation
of resting her tired body, just for a little while.</p>
<p> She lay down on the very edge of the bed, the
kissed hand tucked under her cheek. The faculty of
thinking abandoned her altogether, but she remained
open-eyed, wide awake. In that position, without
hearing the slightest sound, she saw the door handle
move down as far as it would go, perfectly noiseless,
as though the lock had been oiled not long before.
Her impulse was to leap right out into the middle of
the room, but she restrained herself and only swung
herself into a sitting posture. The bed had not
creaked. She lowered her feet gently to the ground,
and by the time when holding her breath she put her
ear against the door, the handle had come back into
position. She had detected no sound outside. Not
the faintest. Nothing. It never occurred to her to
doubt her own eyes, but the whole thing had been
so noiseless that it could not have disturbed the
lightest sleeper. She was sure that had she been
lying on her other side, that is with her back to the
door, she would have known nothing. It was some
time before she walked away from the door and sat
on a chair which stood near a heavy and much-carved
table, an heirloom more appropriate to a ch<a^>teau
than to a farmhouse. The dust of many months
covered its smooth oval surface of dark, finely grained
wood.</p>
<p> ``It must have been Scevola,'' thought Arlette. It
could have been no one else. What could he have
wanted? She gave herself up to thought, but really
she did not care. The absent R<e'>al occupied all her
mind. With an unconscious slowness her finger
traced in the dust on the table the initials E A and
achieved a circle round them. Then she jumped up,
unlocked the door and went downstairs. In the
kitchen, as she fully expected, she found Scevola with
the others. Directly she appeared he got up and ran
upstairs, but returned almost immediately looking as
if he had seen a ghost, and when Peyrol asked him
some insignificant question his lips and even his chin
trembled before he could command his voice. He
avoided looking anybody in the face. The others too
seemed shy of meeting each other's eyes, and the
evening meal of the Escampobar seemed haunted by
the absent lieutenant. Peyrol, besides, had his
prisoner to think of. His existence presented a most
interesting problem, and the proceedings of the
English ship were another, closely connected with it
and full of dangerous possibilities. Catherine's black
and ungleaming eyes seemed to have sunk deeper in
their sockets, but her face wore its habitual severe
aloofness of expression. Suddenly Scevola spoke as if
in answer to some thought of his own.</p>
<p> ``What has lost us was moderation.''</p>
<p> Peyrol swallowed the piece of bread and butter
which he had been masticating slowly, and asked:</p>
<p> ``What are you alluding to, citoyen?''</p>
<p> ``I am alluding to the republic,'' answered Scevola,
in a more assured tone than usual. ``Moderation I
say. We patriots held our hand too soon. All the
children of the ci-devants and all the children of
traitors should have been killed together with their
fathers and mothers. Contempt for civic virtues and
love of tyranny were inborn in them all. They grow
up and trample on all the sacred principles. . . .
The work of the Terror is undone!''</p>
<p> ``What do you propose to do about it?'' growled
Peyrol. ``No use declaiming here or anywhere for
that matter. You wouldn't find anybody to listen to
you---you cannibal,'' he added in a good-humoured
tone. Arlette, leaning her head on her left hand, was
tracing with the forefinger of her right invisible initials
on the table-cloth. Catherine, stooping to light a
four-beaked oil lamp mounted on a brass pedestal,
turned her finely carved face over her shoulder. The
sans-culotte jumped up, flinging his arms about. His
hair was tousled from his sleepless tumbling on his
pallet. The unbuttoned sleeves of his shirt flapped
against his thin hairy forearms. He no longer looked
as though he had seen a ghost. He opened a wide
black mouth, but Peyrol raised his finger at him
calmly.</p>
<p> ``No, no. The time when your own people up
La Boy<e`>re way---don't they live up there?---trembled
at the idea of you coming to visit them with a lot of
patriot scallywags at your back is past. You have
nobody at your back; and if you started spouting like
this at large, people would rise up and hunt you down
like a mad dog.''</p>
<p> Scevola, who had shut his mouth, glanced over his
shoulder, and as if impressed by his unsupported state
went out of the kitchen, reeling, like a man who had
been drinking. He had drunk nothing but water.
Peyrol looked thoughtfully at the door which the
indignant sans-culotte had slammed after him.
During the colloquy between the two men, Arlette
had disappeared into the salle. Catherine, straightening
her long back, put the oil lamp with its four
smoky flames on the table. It lighted her face from
below. Peyrol moved it slightly aside before he spoke.</p>
<p> ``It was lucky for you,'' he said, gazing upwards,
``that Scevola hadn't even one other like himself
when he came here.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'<code> she admitted. ``I had to face him alone
from first to last. But can you see me between him
and Arlette? In those days he raved terribly, but he
was dazed and tired out. Afterwards I recovered
myself and I could argue with him firmly. I used to
say to him, `Look, she is so young and she has no
knowledge of herself.</code> Why, for months the only
thing she would say that one could understand was
`Look how it spurts, look how it splashes!' He talked
to me of his republican virtue. He was not a profligate.
He could wait. She was, he said, sacred to
him, and things like that. He would walk up and
down for hours talking of her and I would sit there
listening to him with the key of the room the child
was locked in, in my pocket. I temporized, and, as
you say yourself, it was perhaps because he had no
one at his back that he did not try to kill me, which
he might have done any day. I temporized. And
after all, why should he want to kill me? He told me
more than once he was sure to have Arlette for his
own. Many a time he made me shiver explaining
why it must be so. She owed her life to him. Oh!
that dreadful crazy life. You know he is one of
those men that can be patient as far as women are
concerned.''</p>
<p> Peyrol nodded understandingly. ``Yes, some are
like that. That kind is more impatient sometimes to
spill blood. Still I think that your life was one long
narrow escape, at least till I turned up here.''</p>
<p> ``Things had settled down, somehow,'' murmured
Catherine. ``But all the same I was glad when you
appeared here, a grey-headed man, serious.''</p>
<p> ``Grey hairs will come to any sort of man,'' observed
Peyrol acidly, ``and you did not know me. You
don't know anything of me even now.''</p>
<p> ``There have been Peyrols living less than half a
day's journey from here,'' observed Catherine in a
reminiscent tone.</p>
<p> ``That's all right,'' said the rover in such a peculiar
tone that she asked him sharply: ``What's the matter?
Aren't you one of them? Isn't Peyrol your name?''</p>
<p> ``I have had many names and this was one of them.
So this name and my grey hair pleased you, Catherine?
They gave you confidence in me, hein?''</p>
<p> ``I wasn't sorry to see you come. Scevola too, I
believe. He heard that patriots were being hunted
down, here and there, and he was growing quieter
every day. You roused the child wonderfully.''</p>
<p> ``And did that please Scevola too?''</p>
<p> ``Before you came she never spoke to anybody
unless first spoken to. She didn't seem to care where
she was. At the same time,'' added Catherine after a
pause, ``she didn't care what happened to her either.
Oh, I have had some heavy hours thinking it all over,
in the daytime doing my work, and at night while I
lay awake, listening to her breathing. And I growing
older all the time, and, who knows, with my last hour
ready to strike. I often thought that when I felt it
coming I would speak to you as I am speaking to
you now.''</p>
<p> ``Oh, you did think,'' said Peyrol in an undertone.
``Because of my grey hairs, I suppose.''</p>
<p> ``Yes. And because you came from beyond the
seas,'' Catherine said with unbending mien and in an
unflinching voice. ``Don't you know that the first
time Arlette saw you she spoke to you and that it was
the first time I heard her speak of her own accord
since she had been brought back by that man, and I
had to wash her from head to foot before I put her
into her mother's bed.''</p>
<p> ``The first time,'' repeated Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``It was like a miracle happening,'' said Catherine,
``and it was you that had done it.''</p>
<p> ``Then it must be that some Indian witch has given
me the power,'' muttered Peyrol, so low that Catherine
could not hear the words. But she did not seem to
care, and presently went on again:</p>
<p> ``And the child took to you wonderfully. Some
sentiment was aroused in her at last.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' assented Peyrol grimly. ``She did take to
me. She learned to talk to---the old man.''</p>
<p> ``It's something in you that seems to have opened
her mind and unloosed her tongue,'' said Catherine,
speaking with a sort of regal composure down at
Peyrol, like a chieftainess of a tribe. ``I often used to
look from afar at you two talking and wonder what
she . . .''</p>
<p> ``She talked like a child,'' struck in Peyrol abruptly.
``And so you were going to speak to me before your
last hour came. Why, you are not making ready to
die yet?''</p>
<p> ``Listen, Peyrol. If anybody's last hour is near it
isn't mine. You just look about you a little. It was
time I spoke to you.''</p>
<p> ``Why, I am not going to kill anybody,'' muttered
Peyrol. ``You are getting strange ideas into your
head.''</p>
<p> ``It is as I said,'' insisted Catherine without animation.
``Death seems to cling to her skirts. She has
been running with it madly. Let us keep her feet
out of more human blood.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, who had let his head fall on his breast,
jerked it up suddenly. ``What on earth are you talking
about?'' he cried angrily. ``I don't understand
you at all.''</p>
<p> ``You have not seen the state she was in when I got
her back into my hands,'' remarked Catherine. . . .
``I suppose you know where the lieutenant is. What
made him go off like that? Where did he go to?''</p>
<p> ``I know,'' said Peyrol. ``And he may be back
to-night.''</p>
<p> ``You know where he is! And of course you know
why he has gone away and why he is coming back,''
pronounced Catherine in an ominous voice. ``Well,
you had better tell him that unless he has a pair of
eyes at the back of his head he had better not return
here---not return at all; for if he does, nothing can
save him from a treacherous blow.''</p>
<p> ``No man was ever safe from treachery,'' opined
Peyrol after a moment's silence. ``I won't pretend
not to understand what you mean.''</p>
<p> ``You heard as well as I what Scevola said just
before he went out. The lieutenant is the child of
some ci-devant and Arlette of a man they called a
traitor to his country. You can see yourself what
was in his mind.''</p>
<p> ``He is a chicken-hearted spouter,'' said Peyrol
contemptuously, but it did not affect Catherine's
attitude of an old sibyl risen from the tripod to
prophesy calmly atrocious disasters. ``It's all his
republicanism,'' commented Peyrol with increased
scorn. ``He has got a fit of it on.''</p>
<p> ``No, that's jealousy,'' said Catherine. ``Maybe he
has ceased to care for her in all these years. It is a
long time since he has left off worrying me. With a
creature like that I thought that if I let him be master
here . . . But no! I know that after the lieutenant
started coming here his awful fancies have come back.
He is not sleeping at night. His republicanism is
always there. But don't you know, Peyrol, that there
may be jealousy without love?''</p>
<p> ``You think so,'' said the rover profoundly. He
pondered full of his own experience. ``And he has
tasted blood too,'' he muttered after a pause. ``You
may be right.''</p>
<p> ``I may be right,'' repeated Catherine in a slightly
indignant tone. ``Every time I see Arlette near him
I tremble lest it should come to words and to a bad
blow. And when they are both out of my sight it is
still worse. At this moment I am wondering where
they are. They may be together and I daren't raise
my voice to call her away for fear of rousing his
fury.''</p>
<p> ``But it's the lieutenant he is after,'' observed Peyrol
in a lowered voice. ``Well, I can't stop the lieutenant
coming back.''</p>
<p> ``Where is she? Where is he?'' whispered Catherine
in a tone betraying her secret anguish.</p>
<p> Peyrol rose quietly and went into the salle, leaving
the door open. Catherine heard the latch of the outer
door being lifted cautiously. In a few moments Peyrol
returned as quietly as he had gone out.</p>
<p> ``I stepped out to look at the weather. The moon
is about to rise and the clouds have thinned down.
One can see a star here and there.'' He lowered his
voice considerably. ``Arlette is sitting on the bench
humming a little song to herself. I really wonder
whether she knew I was standing within a few feet
of her.''</p>
<p> ``She doesn't want to hear or see anybody except
one man,'' affirmed Catherine, now in complete
control of her voice. ``And she was humming a song,
did you say? She who would sit for hours without
making a sound. And God knows what song it could
have been!''</p>
<p> ``Yes, there's a great change in her,'' admitted
Peyrol with a heavy sigh. ``This lieutenant,'' he
continued after a pause, ``has always behaved coldly
to her. I noticed him many times turn his face away
when he saw her coming towards us. You know
what these epaulette-wearers are, Catherine. And
then this one has some worm of his own that is
gnawing at him. I doubt whether he has ever
forgotten that he was a ci-devant boy. Yet I do
believe that she does not want to see and hear anybody
but him. Is it because she has been deranged in her
head for so long?''</p>
<p> ``No, Peyrol,'' said the old woman. ``It isn't that.
You want to know how I can tell? For years nothing
could make her either laugh or cry. You know that
yourself. You have seen her every day. Would you
believe that within the last month she has been both
crying and laughing on my breast without knowing
why?''</p>
<p> ``This I don't understand,'' said Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``But I do. That lieutenant has got only to whistle
to make her run after him. Yes, Peyrol. That is so.
She has no fear, no shame, no pride. I myself have
been nearly like that.'' Her fine brown face seemed
to grow more impassive before she went on much
lower and as if arguing with herself: ``Only I at least
was never blood-mad. I was fit for any man's arms.
. . . But then that man is not a priest.''</p>
<p> The last words made Peyrol start. He had almost
forgotten that story. He said to himself: ``She knows,
she has had the experience.''</p>
<p> ``Look here, Catherine,'' he said decisively, ``the
lieutenant is coming back. He will be here probably
about midnight. But one thing I can tell you: he is
not coming back to whistle her away. Oh, no! It
is not for her sake that he will come back.''</p>
<p> ``Well, if it isn't for her that he is coming back then
it must be because death has beckoned to him,'' she
announced in a tone of solemn unemotional conviction.
``A man who has received a sign from death
---nothing can stop him!''</p>
<p> Peyrol, who had seen death face to face many times,
looked at Catherine's fine brown profile curiously.</p>
<p> ``It is a fact,'' he murmured, ``that men who rush
out to seek death do not often find it. So one must
have a sign? What sort of sign would it be?''</p>
<p> ``How is anybody to know?'' asked Catherine,
staring across the kitchen at the wall. ``Even those
to whom it is made do not recognize it for what it is.
But they obey all the same. I tell you, Peyrol,
nothing can stop them. It may be a glance, or a
smile, or a shadow on the water, or a thought that
passes through the head. For my poor brother and
sister-in-law it was the face of their child.''</p>
<p> Peyrol folded his arms on his breast and dropped
his head. Melancholy was a sentiment to which he
was a stranger; for what has melancholy to do with
the life of a sea-rover, a Brother of the Coast, a simple,
venturesome, precarious life, full of risks and leaving
no time for introspection or for that momentary
self-forgetfulness which is called gaiety. Sombre fury,
fierce merriment, he had known in passing gusts,
coming from outside; but never this intimate inward
sense of the vanity of all things, that doubt of the
power within himself.</p>
<p> ``I wonder what the sign for me will be,'' he
thought; and concluded with self-contempt that for
him there would be no sign, that he would have to
die in his bed like an old yard dog in his kennel.
Having reached that depth of despondency, there was
nothing more before him but a black gulf into which
his consciousness sank like a stone.</p>
<p> The silence which had lasted perhaps a minute after
Catherine had finished speaking was traversed suddenly
by a clear high voice saying:</p>
<p> ``What are you two plotting here?''</p>
<p> Arlette stood in the doorway of the salle. The
gleam of light in the whites of her eyes set off her black
and penetrating glance. The surprise was complete.
The profile of Catherine, who was standing by the
table, became if possible harder; a sharp carving of
an old prophetess of some desert tribe. Arlette made
three steps forward. In Peyrol even extreme astonishment
was deliberate. He had been famous for never
looking as though he had been caught unprepared.
Age had accentuated that trait of a born leader. He
only slipped off the edge of the table and said in his
deep voice:</p>
<p> ``Why, patronne! We haven't said a word to each
other for ever so long.''</p>
<p> Arlette moved nearer still. ``I know,'' she cried.
``It was horrible. I have been watching you two.
Scevola came and dumped himself on the bench close
to me. He began to talk to me, and so I went away.
That man bores me. And here I find you people
saying nothing. It's insupportable. What has come
to you both? Say, you, Papa Peyrol---don't you like
me any more?'' Her voice filled the kitchen. Peyrol
went to the salle door and shut it. While coming
back he was staggered by the brilliance of life within
her that seemed to pale the flames of the lamp. He
said half in jest:</p>
<p> ``I don't know whether I didn't like you better
when you were quieter.''</p>
<p> ``And you would like best to see me still quieter in
my grave.''</p>
<p> She dazzled him. Vitality streamed out of her eyes,
her lips, her whole person, enveloped her like a halo
and . . . yes, truly, the faintest possible flush had
appeared on her cheeks, played on them faintly rosy
like the light of a distant flame on the snow. She
raised her arms up in the air and let her hands fall
from on high on Peyrol's shoulders, captured his
desperately dodging eyes with her black and compelling
glance, put out all her instinctive seduction---
while he felt a growing fierceness in the grip of her
fingers.</p>
<p> ``No! I can't hold it in! Monsieur Peyrol, Papa
Peyrol, old gunner, you horrid sea-wolf, be an angel
and tell me where he is.''</p>
<p> The rover, whom only that morning the powerful
grasp of Lieutenant R<e'>al found as unshakable as a
rock, felt all his strength vanish under the hands of
that woman. He said thickly:</p>
<p> ``He has gone to Toulon. He had to go.''</p>
<p> ``What for? Speak the truth to me!''</p>
<p> ``Truth is not for everybody to know,'' mumbled
Peyrol, with a sinking sensation as though the very
ground were going soft under his feet. ``On service,''
he added in a growl.</p>
<p> Her hands slipped suddenly from his big shoulders.
``On service?'' she repeated. ``What service?'' Her
voice sank and the words ``Oh, yes! His service''
were hardly heard by Peyrol, who as soon as her
hands had left his shoulders felt his strength returning
to him and the yielding earth grow firm again under
his feet. Right in front of him Arlette, silent, with
her arms hanging down before her with entwined
fingers, seemed stunned because Lieutenant R<e'>al was
not free from all earthly connections, like a visiting
angel from heaven depending only on God to whom
she had prayed. She had to share him with some
service that could order him about. She felt in herself
a strength, a power, greater than any service.</p>
<p> ``Peyrol,'' she cried low, ``don't break my heart,
my new heart, that has just begun to beat. Feel
how it beats. Who could bear it?'' She seized the
rover's thick hairy paw and pressed it hard against
her breast. ``Tell me when he will be back.''</p>
<p> ``Listen, patronne, you had better go upstairs,''
began Peyrol with a great effort and snatching his
captured hand away. He staggered backwards a
little while Arlette shouted at him:</p>
<p> ``You can't order me about as you used to do.'' In
all the changes from entreaty to anger she never
struck a false note, so that her emotional outburst had
the heart-moving power of inspired art. She turned
round with a tempestuous swish to Catherine who
had neither stirred nor emitted a sound: ``Nothing
you two can do will make any difference now.'' The
next moment she was facing Peyrol again. ``You
frighten me with your white hairs. Come! . . . am
I to go on my knees to you? . . . There!''</p>
<p> The rover caught her under the elbows, swung her
up clear of the ground, and set her down on her feet
as if she had been a child. Directly he had let her
go, she stamped her foot at him.</p>
<p> ``Are you stupid?'' she cried. ``Don't you understand
that something has happened to-day?''</p>
<p> Through all this scene Peyrol had kept his head as
creditably as could have been expected, in the manner
of a seaman caught by a white squall in the tropics.
But at those words a dozen thoughts tried to rush
together through his mind, in chase of that startling
declaration. Something had happened! Where?
How? Whom to? What thing? It couldn't be
anything between her and the lieutenant. He had,
it seemed to him, never lost sight of the lieutenant
from the first hour when they met in the morning till
he had sent him off to Toulon by an actual push on
the shoulder; except while he was having his dinner
in the next room with the door open, and for the few
minutes spent in talking with Michel in the yard.
But that was only a very few minutes, and directly
afterwards the first sight of the lieutenant sitting
gloomily on the bench like a lonely crow did not
suggest either elation or excitement or any emotion
connected with a woman. In the face of these
difficulties Peyrol's mind became suddenly a blank.
``Voyons, patronne,'' he began, unable to think of
anything else to say. ``What's all this fuss about? I
expect him to be back here about midnight.''</p>
<p> He was extremely relieved to notice that she
believed him. It was the truth. For indeed he did
not know what he could have invented on the spur
of the moment that would get her out of the way and
induce her to go to bed. She treated him to a sinister
frown and a terribly menacing, ``If you have lied . . .
Oh!''</p>
<p> He produced an indulgent smile. ``Compose yourself.
He will be here soon after midnight. You may
go to sleep with an easy mind.''</p>
<p> She turned her back on him contemptuously, and
said curtly, ``Come along, aunt,'' and went to the
door leading to the passage. There she turned for a
moment with her hand on the door handle.</p>
<p> ``You are changed. I can't trust either of you.
You are not the same people.''</p>
<p> She went out. Only then did Catherine detach her
gaze from the wall to meet Peyrol's eyes. ``Did you
hear what she said? We! Changed! It is she
herself . . .''</p>
<p> Peyrol nodded twice and there was a long pause,
during which even the flames of the lamp did not stir.</p>
<p> ``Go after her, Mademoiselle Catherine,'' he said
at last with a shade of sympathy in his tone. She did
not move. ``Allons---du courage,'' he urged her
deferentially as it were. ``Try to put her to sleep.''<p> CHAPTER XII</p>
</p>
<p> Upright and deliberate, Catherine left the kitchen,
and in the passage outside found Arlette waiting for
her with a lighted candle in her hand. Her heart
was filled with sudden desolation by the beauty of
that young face enhaloed in the patch of light, with
the profound darkness as of a dungeon for a background.
At once her niece led the way upstairs
muttering savagely through her pretty teeth: ``He
thinks I could go to sleep. Old imbecile!''</p>
<p> Peyrol did not take his eyes off Catherine's straight
back till the door had closed after her. Only then he
relieved himself by letting the air escape through his
pursed lips and rolling his eyes freely about. He
picked up the lamp by the ring on the top of the
central rod and went into the salle, closing behind
him the door of the dark kitchen. He stood the lamp
on the very table on which Lieutenant R<e'>al had had
his midday meal. A small white cloth was still
spread on it and there was his chair askew as he had
pushed it back when he got up. Another of the many
chairs in the salle was turned round conspicuously to
face the table. These things made Peyrol remark to
himself bitterly: ``She sat and stared at him as if he
had been gilt all over, with three heads and seven
arms on his body''---a comparison reminiscent of
certain idols he had seen in an Indian temple. Though
not an iconoclast, Peyrol felt positively sick at the
recollection, and hastened to step outside. The great
cloud had broken up and the mighty fragments were
moving to the westward in stately flight before the
rising moon. Scevola, who had been lying extended
full length on the bench, swung himself up suddenly,
very upright.</p>
<p> ``Had a little nap in the open?'' asked Peyrol,
letting his eyes roam through the luminous space
under the departing rearguard of the clouds jostling
each other up there.</p>
<p> ``I did not sleep,'' said the sans-culotte. ``I haven't
closed my eyes-not for one moment.''</p>
<p> ``That must be because you weren't sleepy,'' suggested
the deliberate Peyrol, whose thoughts were far
away with the English ship. His mental eye contemplated
her black image against the white beach of the
Salins describing a sparkling curve under the moon,
and meantime he went on slowly: ``For it could not
have been noise that kept you awake.'' On the level
of Escampobar the shadows lay long on the ground
while the side of the lookout hill remained yet black
but edged with an increasing brightness. And the
amenity of the stillness was such that if softened for
a moment Peyrol's hard inward attitude towards all
mankind, including even the captain of the English
ship. The old rover savoured a moment of serenity
in the midst of his cares.</p>
<p> ``This is an accursed spot,'' declared Scevola suddenly.</p>
<p> Peyrol, without turning his head, looked at him
sideways. Though he had sprung up from his
reclining posture smartly enough, the citizen had
gone slack all over and was sitting all in a heap. His
shoulders were hunched up, his hands reposed on his
knees. With his staring eyes he resembled a sick
child in the moonlight.</p>
<p> ``It's the very spot for hatching treacheries. One
feels steeped in them up to the neck.''</p>
<p> He shuddered and yawned a long irresistible
nervous yawn with the gleam of unexpected long
canines in a retracted, gaping mouth giving away
the restless panther lurking in the man.</p>
<p> ``Oh, yes, there's treachery about right enough.
You couldn't conceive that, citoyen?''</p>
<p> ``Of course I couldn't,'' assented Peyrol with serene
contempt. ``What is this treachery that you are
concocting?'' he added carelessly, in a social way,
while enjoying the charm of a moonlit evening.
Scevola, who did not expect that turn, managed,
however, to produce a rattling sort of laugh almost
at once.</p>
<p> ``That's a good one. Ha! ha! ha! . . . Me! . . .
concocting! . . . Why me?''</p>
<p> ``Well,'' said Peyrol carelessly, ``there are not many
of us to carry out treacheries about here. The women
are gone upstairs; Michel is down at the tartane.
There's me, and you would not dare suspect me of
treachery. Well, there remains only you.''</p>
<p> Scevola roused himself. ``This is not much of a
jest,'' he said. ``I have been a treason-hunter.
I . . .''</p>
<p> He checked that strain. He was full of purely
emotional suspicions. Peyrol was talking like this
only to annoy him and to get him out of the way;
but in the particular state of his feelings Scevola was
acutely aware of every syllable of these offensive
remarks. ``Aha,'' he thought to himself, ``he doesn't
mention the lieutenant.'' This omission seemed to
the patriot of immense importance. If Peyrol had
not mentioned the lieutenant it was because those
two had been plotting some treachery together, all
the afternoon on board that tartane. That's why
nothing had been seen of them for the best part of
the day. As a matter of fact, Scevola too had observed
Peyrol returning to the farm in the evening, only he
had observed him from another window than Arlette.
This was a few minutes before his attempt to open
the lieutenant's door, in order to find out whether
R<e'>al was in his room. He had tiptoed away,
uncertain, and going into the kitchen had found only
Catherine and Peyrol there. Directly Arlette joined
them a sudden inspiration made him run upstairs
and try the door again. It was open now! A clear
proof that it was Arlette who had been locked up in
there. The discovery that she made herself at home
like this in the lieutenant's room gave Scevola such
a sickening shock that he thought he would die of it.
It was beyond doubt now that the lieutenant had
been conspiring with Peyrol down on board that
tartane; for what else could they have been doing
there? ``But why had not R<e'>al come up in the
evening with Peyrol?'' Scevola asked himself, sitting
on the bench with his hands clasped between his
knees. . . . It's their cunning,'' he concluded
suddenly. ``Conspirators always avoid being seen
together. Ha!''</p>
<p> It was as if somebody had let off a lot of fireworks
in his brain. He was illuminated, dazzled, confused,
with a hissing in his cars and showers of sparks before
alone. Peyrol had vanished. Scevola seemed to
remember that he had heard somebody pronounce
the word ``good-night'' and the door of the salle slam.
And sure enough the door of the salle was shut now.
A dim light shone in the window that was next to it.
Peyrol had extinguished three of the lamp flames and
was now reclining on one of the long tables with that
faculty of accommodating himself to a plank an old
sea-dog never loses. He had decided to remain below
simply to be handy, and he didn't lie down on one
of the benches along the wall because they were too
narrow. He left one wick burning, so that the
lieutenant should know where to look for him, and
he was tired enough to think that he would snatch a
couple of hours' sleep before R<e'>al could return from
Toulon. He settled himself with one arm under his
head as if he were on the deck of a privateer, and it
never occurred to him that Scevola was looking
through the panes; but they were so small and dusty
that the patriot could see nothing. His movement
had been purely instinctive. He wasn't even aware
that he had looked in. He went away from there,
walked to the end of the building, spun round and
walked back again to the other end; and it was as if
he had been afraid of going beyond the wall against
which he reeled sometimes. ``Conspiracy, conspiracy,''
he thought. He was now absolutely certain that the
lieutenant was still hiding in that tartane, and was
only waiting till all was quiet to sneak back to his
room in which Scevola had proof positive that Arlette
was in the habit of making herself at home. To rob
him of his right to Arlette was part of the conspiracy
no doubt.</p>
<p> ``Have I been a slave to those two women, have I
waited all those years, only to see that corrupt creature
go off infamously with a ci-devant, with a conspiring
aristocrat?''</p>
<p> He became giddy with virtuous fury. There was
enough evidence there for any revolutionary tribunal
to cut all their heads off. Tribunal! There was no
tribunal! No revolutionary justice! No patriots!
He hit his shoulder against the wall in his distress
with such force that he rebounded. This world was
no place for patriots.</p>
<p> ``If I had betrayed myself in the kitchen they would
have murdered me in there.''</p>
<p> As it was he thought that he had said too much.
Too much. ``Prudence! Caution!'' he repeated to
himself, gesticulating with both arms. Suddenly he
stumbled and there was an amazing metallic clatter
made by something that fell at his feet.</p>
<p> ``They are trying to kill me now,'' he thought,
shaking with fright. He gave himself up for dead.
Profound silence reigned all round. Nothing more
happened. He stooped fearfully to look and recognized
his own stable fork lying on the ground. He
remembered he had left it at noon leaning against
the wall. His own foot had made it fall. He threw
himself upon it greedily. ``Here's what I need,'' he
muttered feverishly. ``I suppose that by now the
lieutenant would think I am gone to bed.''</p>
<p> He flattened himself upright against the wall with
the fork held along his body like a grounded musket.
The moon clearing the hill-top flooded suddenly the
front of the house with its cold light, but he didn't
know it; he imagined himself still to be ambushed in
the shadow and remained motionless, glaring at the
path leading towards the cove. His teeth chattered
with savage impatience.</p>
<p> He was so plainly visible in his death-like rigidity
that Michel, coming up out of the ravine, stopped
dead short, believing him an apparition not belonging
to this earth. Scevola, on his side, noticed the moving
shadow cast by a man---that man!---and charged
forward without reflection, the prongs of the fork
lowered like a bayonet. He didn't shout. He came
straight on, growling like a dog, and lunged headlong
with his weapon.</p>
<p> Michel, a primitive, untroubled by anything so
uncertain as intelligence, executed an instantaneous
sideways leap with the precision of a wild animal;
but he was enough of a man to become afterwards
paralyzed with astonishment. The impetus of the
rush carried Scevola several yards down the hill, before
he could turn round and assume an offensive attitude.
Then the two adversaries recognized each other. The
terrorist exclaimed: ``Michel?'' and Michel hastened
to pick up a large stone from the ground.</p>
<p> ``Hey, you, Scevola,'' he cried, not very loud but
very threatening. ``What are these tricks? . . .
Keep away, or I will heave that piece of rock at your
head, and I am good at that.''</p>
<p> Scevola grounded the fork with a thud. ``I didn't
recognize you,'' he said.</p>
<p> ``That's a story. Who did you think I was?
Not the other! I haven't got a bandaged head,
have I?''</p>
<p> Scevola began to scramble up. ``What's this?'' he
asked. ``What head, did you say?''</p>
<p> ``I say that if you come near I will knock you over
with that stone,'' answered Michel. ``You aren't to
be trusted when the moon is full. Not recognize!
There's a silly excuse for flying at people like this.
You haven't got anything against me, have you?''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said the ex-terrorist in a dubious tone and
keeping a watchful eye on Michel, who was still
holding the stone in his hand.</p>
<p> ``People have been saying for years that you are a
kind of lunatic,'' Michel criticized fearlessly, because
the other's discomfiture was evident enough to put
heart into the timid hare. ``If a fellow cannot come
up now to get a snooze in the shed without being run
at with a fork, well . . .''</p>
<p> ``I was only going to put this fork away,'' Scevola
burst out volubly. ``I had left it leaning against the
wall, and as I. was passing along I suddenly saw it,
so I thought I would put it in the stable before I went
to bed. That's all.''</p>
<p> Michel's mouth fell open a bit.</p>
<p> ``Now what do you think I would want with a
stable fork at this time of night, if it wasn't to put it
away?'' argued Scevola.</p>
<p> ``What indeed!'' mumbled Michel, who began to
doubt the evidence of his senses.</p>
<p> ``You go about mooning like a fool and imagine a
lot of silly things, you great, stupid imbecile. All I
wanted to do was to ask whether everything was all
right down there, and you, idiot, bound to one side
like a goat and pick up a stone. The moon has
affected your head, not mine. Now drop it.''</p>
<p> Michel, accustomed to do what he was told, opened
his fingers slowly, not quite convinced but thinking
there might be something in it. Scevola, perceiving
his advantage, scolded on:</p>
<p> ``You are dangerous. You ought to have your feet
and hands tied every full moon. What did you say
about a head just now? What head?''</p>
<p> ``I said that I didn't have a broken head.''</p>
<p> ``Was that all?'' said Scevola. He was asking himself
what on earth could have happened down there
during the afternoon to cause a broken head. Clearly,
it must have been either a fight or an accident, but in
any case he considered that it was for him a favourable
circumstance, for obviously a man with a bandaged
head is at a disadvantage. He was inclined to think
it must have been some silly accident, and he regretted
profoundly that the lieutenant had not killed himself
outright. He turned sourly to Michel.</p>
<p> ``Now you may go into the shed. And don't try
any of your tricks with me any more, because next
time you pick up a stone I will shoot you like a
dog.''</p>
<p> He began to move towards the yard gate which
stood always open, throwing over his shoulder an
order to Michel: ``Go into the salle. Somebody has
left a light in there. They all seem to have gone
crazy to-day. Take the lamp into the kitchen and
put it out and see that the door into the yard is shut.
I am going to bed.'' He passed through the gateway,
but he did not penetrate into the yard very far. He
stopped to watch Michel obeying the order. Scevola,
advancing his head cautiously beyond the pillar of
the gate, waited till he had seen Michel open the door
of the salle and then bounded out again across the
level space and down the ravine path. It was a
matter of less than a minute. His fork was still on
his shoulder. His only desire was not to be interfered
with, and for the rest he did not care what they all
did, what they would think and how they would
behave. The fixed idea had taken complete possession
of him. He had no plan, but he had a principle on
which to act; and that was to get at the lieutenant
unawares, and if the fellow died without knowing
what hand had struck him, so much the better.
Scevola was going to act in the cause of virtue and
justice. It was not to be a matter of personal contest
at all. Meantime, Michel, having gone into the salle,
had discovered Peyrol fast asleep on a table. Though
his reverence for Peyrol was unbounded, his simplicity
was such that he shook his master by the shoulder as
he would have done any common mortal. The rover
passed from a state of inertia into a sitting posture so
quickly that Michel stepped back a pace and waited
to be addressed. But as Peyrol only stared at him,
Michel took the initiative in a concise phrase:</p>
<p> ``He's at it!''</p>
<p> Peyrol did not seem completely awake: ``What is
it you mean?'' he asked.</p>
<p> ``He is making motions to escape.''</p>
<p> Peyrol was wide awake now. He even swung his
feet off the table.</p>
<p> ``Is he? Haven't you locked the cabin door?''</p>
<p> Michel, very frightened, explained that he had
never been told to do that.</p>
<p> ``No?'' remarked Peyrol placidly. ``I must have
forgotten.'' But Michel remained agitated and murmured:
``He is escaping.''</p>
<p> ``That's all right,'' said Peyrol. ``What are you
fussing about? How far can he escape, do you
think?''</p>
<p> A slow grin appeared on Michel's face. ``If he
tries to scramble over the top of the rocks, he will get
a broken neck in a very short time,'' he said. ``And
he certainly won't get very far, that's a fact.''</p>
<p> ``Well---you see,'' said Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``And he doesn't seem strong either. He crawled
out of the cabin door and got as far as the little water
cask and he dipped and dipped into it. It must be
half empty by now. After that he got on to his legs.
I cleared out ashore directly I heard him move,'' he
went on in a tone of intense self-approval. ``I hid
myself behind a rock and watched him.;;</p>
<p> ``Quite right,'' observed Peyrol. After that word
of commendation, Michel's face wore a constant
grin.</p>
<p> ``He sat on the after-deck,'' he went on as if relating
an immense joke, ``with his feet dangling down the
hold, and may the devil take me if I don't think he
had a nap with his back against the cask. He was
nodding and catching himself up, with that big white
head of his. Well, I got tired of watching that, and
as you told me to keep out of his way, I thought I
would come up here and sleep in the shed. That
was right, wasn't it?''</p>
<p> ``Quite right,'' repeated Peyrol. ``Well, you go
now into the shed. And so you left him sitting on
the after-deck?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said Michel. ``But he was rousing himself.
I hadn't got away more than ten yards when I heard
an awful thump on board. I think he tried to get up
and fell down the hold.''</p>
<p> ``Fell down the hold?'' repeated Peyrol sharply.</p>
<p> ``Yes, notre ma<i^>tre. I thought at first I would go
back and see, but you had warned me against him,
hadn't you? And I really think that nothing can kill
him.''</p>
<p> Peyrol got down from the table with an air of
concern which would have astonished Michel, if he
had not been utterly incapable of observing things.</p>
<p> ``This must be seen to,'' murmured the rover,
buttoning the waistband of his trousers. ``My cudgel
there, in the corner. Now you go to the shed. What
the devil are you doing at the door? Don't you know
the way to the shed?'' This last observation was
caused by Michel remaining in the doorway of the
salle with his head out and looking to right and left
along the front of the house. ``What's come to you?
You don't suppose he has been able to follow you so
quick as this up here?''</p>
<p> ``Oh no, notre ma<i^>tre, quite impossible. I saw that
sacr<e'> Scevola promenading up and down here. I
don't want to meet him again.''</p>
<p> ``Was he promenading outside?'' asked Peyrol, with
annoyance. ``Well, what do you think he can do to
you? What notions have you got in your silly head?
You are getting worse and worse. Out you go.''</p>
<p> Peyrol extinguished the lamp and, going out, closed
the door without the slightest noise. The intelligence
about Scevola being on the move did not please him
very much, but he reflected that probably the sans-culotte
had fallen asleep again and after waking up
was on his way to bed when Michel caught sight of
him. He had his own view of the patriot's psychology
and did not think the women were in any danger.
Nevertheless he went to the shed and heard the rustling
of straw as Michel settled himself for the night.</p>
<p> ``Debout,'' he cried low. ``Sh, don't make any
noise. I want you to go into the house and sleep at
the bottom of the stairs. If you hear voices, go up,
and if you see Scevola about, knock him down. You
aren't afraid of him, are you?''</p>
<p> ``No, if you tell me not to be,'' said Michel, who,
picking up his shoes, a present from Peyrol, walked
barefoot towards the house. The rover watched him
slipping noiselessly through the salle door. Having
thus, so to speak, guarded his base, Peyrol proceeded
down the ravine with a very deliberate caution.
When he got as far as the little hollow in the ground
from which the mastheads of the tartane could be
seen, he squatted and waited. He didn't know what
his prisoner had done or was doing and he did not
want to blunder into the way of his escape. The
day-old moon was high enough to have shortened the
shadows almost to nothing and all the rocks were
inundated by a yellow sheen, while the bushes by
contrast looked very black. Peyrol reflected that he
was not very well concealed. The continued silence
impressed him in the end. ``He has got away,'' he
thought. Yet he was not sure. Nobody could be
sure. He reckoned it was about an hour since Michel
had left the tartane; time enough for a man, even on
all fours, to crawl down to the shore of the cove.
Peyrol wished he had not hit so hard. His object
could have been attained with half the force. On
the other hand all the proceedings of his prisoner, as
reported by Michel, seemed quite rational. Naturally
the fellow was badly shaken. Peyrol felt as though he
wanted to go on board and give him some encouragement,
and even active assistance.</p>
<p> The report of a gun from seaward cut his breath
short as he lay there meditating. Within a minute
there was a second report, sending another wave of
deep sound among the crags and hills of the peninsula.
The ensuing silence was so profound that it seemed to
extend to the very inside of Peyrol's head, and lull all
his thoughts for a moment. But he had understood.
He said to himself that after this his prisoner, if he
had life enough left in him to stir a limb, would rather
die than not try to make his way to the seashore.
The ship was calling to her man.</p>
<p> In fact those two guns had proceeded from the
<u>Amelia</u>. After passing beyond Cape Esterel, Captain
Vincent dropped an anchor under foot off the beach
just as Peyrol had surmised he would do. From about
six o'clock till nine the <u>Amelia</u> lay there with her
unfurled sails hanging in the gear. Just before the
moon rose the captain came up on deck and after a
short conference with his first lieutenant, directed the
master to get the ship under way and put her head
again for the Petite Passe. Then he went below, and
presently word was passed on deck that the captain
wanted Mr. Bolt. When the master's mate appeared
in his cabin, Captain Vincent motioned him to a
chair.</p>
<p> ``I don't think I ought to have listened to you,'' he
said. ``Still, the idea was fascinating, but how it
would strike other people it is hard to say. The
losing of our man is the worst feature. I have an
idea that we might recover him. He may have been
captured by the peasants or have met with an
accident. It's unbearable to think of him lying at the
foot of some rock with a broken leg. I have ordered
the first and second cutters to be manned, and I
propose that you should take command of them, enter
the cove and, if necessary, advance a little inland to
investigate. As far as we know there have never been
any troops on that peninsula. The first thing you
will do is to examine the coast.''</p>
<p> He talked for some time, giving more minute
instructions, and then went on deck. The <u>Amelia</u>,
with the two cutters towing alongside, reached about
half-way down the Passe and then the boats were
ordered to proceed. just before they shoved off, two
guns were fired in quick succession.</p>
<p> ``Like this, Bolt,'' explained Captain Vincent,
``Symons will guess that we are looking for him; and
if he is hiding anywhere near the shore he will be
sure to come down where he can be seen by you.''<p> CHAPTER XIII</p>
</p>
<p> The motive force of a fixed idea is very great. In
the case of Scevola it was great enough to launch him
down the slope and to rob him for the moment of all
caution. He bounded amongst the boulders, using
the handle of the stable fork for a staff. He paid no
regard to the nature of the ground, till he got a fall
and found himself sprawling on his face, while the
stable fork went clattering down until it was stopped
by a bush. It was this circumstance which saved
Peyrol's prisoner from being caught unawares. Since
he had got out of the little cabin, simply because after
coming to himself he had perceived it was open,
Symons had been greatly refreshed by long drinks of
cold water and by his little nap in the fresh air.
Every moment he was feeling in better command of
his limbs. As to the command of his thoughts, that
was coming to him too rather quickly. The advantage
of having a very thick skull became evident in the
fact that as soon as he had dragged himself out of
that cabin he knew where he was. The next thing
he did was to look at the moon, to judge of the
passage of time. Then he gave way to an immense
surprise at the fact of being alone aboard the tartane.
As he sat with his legs dangling into the open hold
he tried to guess how it came about that the cabin
had been left unlocked and unguarded.</p>
<p> He went on thinking about this unexpected situation.
What could have become of that white-headed
villain? Was he dodging about somewhere watching
for a chance to give him another tap on the head?
Symons felt suddenly very unsafe sitting there on the
after-deck in the full light of the moon. Instinct
rather than reason suggested to him that he ought to
get down into the dark hold. It seemed a great
undertaking at first, but once he started he accomplished
it with the greatest ease, though he could not
avoid knocking down a small spar which was leaning
up against the deck. It preceded him into the hold
with a loud crash which gave poor Symons an attack
of palpitation of the heart. He sat on the keelson of
the tartane and gasped, but after a while reflected
that all this did not matter. His head felt very big,
his neck was very painful and one shoulder was
certainly very stiff. He could never stand up against
that old ruffian. But what had become of him?
Why! He had gone to fetch the soldiers! After that
conclusion Symons became more composed. He
began to try to remember things. When he had last
seen that old fellow it was daylight, and now-Symons
looked up at the moon again---it must be near six
bells in the first watch. No doubt the old scoundrel
was sitting in a wine shop drinking with the soldiers.
They would be here soon enough! The idea of being
a prisoner of war made his heart sink a little. His
ship appeared to him invested with an extraordinary
number of lovable features which included Captain
Vincent and the first lieutenant. He would have
been glad to shake hands even with the corporal, a
surly and malicious marine acting as master-at-arms
of the ship. ``I wonder where she is now,'' he thought
dismally, feeling his distaste for captivity grow with
the increase of his strength.</p>
<p> It was at this moment that he heard the noise of
Scevola's fall. It was pretty close; but afterwards he
heard no voices and footsteps heralding the approach
of a body of men. If this was the old ruffian coming
back, then he was coming back alone. At once
Symons started on all fours for the fore-end of the
tartane. He had an idea that ensconced under the
fore-deck he would be in a better position to parley
with the enemy and that perhaps he could find there
a handspike or some piece of iron to defend himself
with. just as he had settled himself in his hiding-place
Scevola stepped from the shore on to the after-deck.</p>
<p> At the very first glance Symons perceived that this
one was very unlike the man he expected to see. He
felt rather disappointed. As Scevola stood still in full
moonlight Symons congratulated himself on having
taken up a position under the fore-deck. That fellow,
who had a beard, was like a sparrow in body compared
with the other; but he was armed dangerously
with something that looked to Symons like either a
trident or fishgrains on a staff. ``A devil of a weapon
that,'' he thought, appalled. And what on earth did
that beggar want on board? What could he be
after?</p>
<p> The new-comer acted strangely at first. He stood
stock-still, craning his neck here and there, peering
along the whole length of the tartane, then crossing
the deck he repeated all those performances on the
other side. ``He has noticed that the cabin door is
open. He's trying to see where I've got to. He will
be coming forward to look for me,'' said Symons to
himself. ``If he corners me here with that beastly
pronged affair I am done for.'' For a moment he
debated within himself whether it wouldn't be better
to make a dash for it and scramble ashore; but in the
end he mistrusted his strength. ``He would run me
down for sure,'' he concluded. ``And he means no
good, that's certain. No man would go about at
night with a confounded thing like that if he didn't
mean to do for somebody.''</p>
<p> Scevola, after keeping perfectly still, straining his
ears for any sound from below where he supposed
Lieutenant R<e'>al to be, stooped down to the cabin
scuttle and called in a low voice: ``Are you there,
lieutenant?'' Symons saw these motions and could
not imagine their purport. That excellent able
seaman of proved courage in many cutting-out
expeditions broke into a slight perspiration. In the
light of the moon the prongs of the fork polished by
much use shone like silver, and the whole aspect of
the stranger was weird and dangerous in the extreme.
Whom could that man be after but him, himself?</p>
<p> Scevola, receiving no answer, remained in a stooping
position. He could not detect the slightest sound
of breathing down there. He remained in this
position so long that Symons became quite interested.
``He must think I am still down there,'<code> he whispered
to himself. The next proceeding was quite astonishing.
The man, taking up a position on one side of
the cuddy scuttle and holding his horrid weapon as
one would a boarding pike, uttered a terrific whoop
and went on yelling in French with such volubility
that he quite frightened Symons. Suddenly he left
off, moved away from the scuttle and looked at a loss
what to do next. Anybody who could have seen then
Symons</code> protruded head with his face turned aft
would have seen on it an expression of horror, ``The
cunning beast,'' he thought. ``If I had been down
there, with the row he made I would have surely
rushed on deck and then he would have had me.''
Symons experienced the feeling of a very narrow
escape; yet it brought not much relief. It was simply
a matter of time. The fellow's homicidal purpose
was evident. He was bound before long to come
forward. Symons saw him move, and thought, ``Now
he's coming,'' and prepared himself for a dash. ``If
I can dodge past those blamed prongs I might be
able to take him by the throat,'' he reflected, without,
however, feeling much confidence in himself.</p>
<p> But to his great relief Scevola's purpose was simply
to conceal the fork in the hold in such a manner that
the handle of it just reached the edge of the after-deck.
In that position it was of course invisible to anybody
coming from the shore. Scevola had made up his
mind that the lieutenant was out of the tartane. He
had wandered away along the shore and would
probably be back in a moment. Meantime it had
occurred to him to see if he could discover anything
compromising in the cabin. He did not take the
fork down with him because in that confined space
it would have been useless and rather a source of
embarrassment than otherwise, should the returning
lieutenant find him there. He cast a circular glance
around the basin and then prepared to go down.</p>
<p> Every movement of his was watched by Symons.
He guessed Scevola's purpose by his movements and
said to himself: ``Here's my only chance, and not a
second to be lost either.'' Directly Scevola turned his
back on the forepart of the tartane in order to go
down the little cabin ladder, Symons crawled out
from his concealment. He ran along the hold on all
fours for fear the other should turn his head round
before disappearing below, but directly he judged
that the man had touched bottom, he stood on his
feet and catching hold of the main rigging swung
himself on the after-deck and, as it were in the same
movement, flung himself on the doors of the cabin
which came together with a crash. How he could
secure them he had not thought, but as a matter of
fact he saw the padlock hanging on a staple on one
side; the key was in it, and it was a matter of a
fraction of a second to secure the doors effectually.</p>
<p> Almost simultaneously with the crash of the cabin
door there was a shrill exclamation of surprise down
there, and just as Symons had turned the key the
man he had trapped made an effort to break out.
That, however, did not disturb Symons. He knew
the strength of that door. His first action was to get
possession of the stable fork. At once he felt himself
a match for any single man or even two men unless
they had fire-arms. He had no hope, however, of
being able to resist the soldiers and really had no
intention of doing so. He expected to see them appear
at any moment led by that confounded marinero.
As to what the farmer man had come for on board
the tartane he had not the slightest doubt about it.
Not being troubled by too much imagination, it
seemed to him obvious that it was to kill an Englishman
and for nothing else. ``Well, I am jiggered,''
he exclaimed mentally. ``The damned savage! I
haven't done anything to him. They must be a
murderous lot hereabouts.'' He looked anxiously up
the slope. He would have welcomed the arrival of
soldiers. He wanted more than ever to be made a
proper prisoner, but a profound stillness reigned on
the shore and a most absolute silence down below in
the cabin. Absolute. No word, no movement. The
silence of the grave. ``He's scared to death,'' thought
Symons, hitting in his simplicity on the exact truth.
``It would serve him jolly well right if I went down
there and ran him through with that thing. I would
do it for a shilling, too.'' He was getting angry. It
occurred to him also that there was some wine down
there too. He discovered he was very thirsty and he
felt rather faint. He sat down on the little skylight
to think the matter over while awaiting the soldiers.
He even gave a friendly thought to Peyrol himself.
He was quite aware that he could have gone ashore
and hidden himself for a time, but that meant in the
end being hunted among the rocks and, certainly,
captured; with the additional risk of getting a musket
ball through his body.</p>
<p> The first gun of the <u>Amelia</u> lifted him to his feet as
though he had been snatched up by the hair of his
head. He intended to give a resounding cheer, but
produced only a feeble gurgle in his throat. His ship
was talking to him. They hadn't given him up.
At the second report he scrambled ashore with the
agility of a cat---in fact, with so much agility that he
had a fit of giddiness. After it passed off he returned
deliberately to the tartane to get hold of the stable
fork. Then trembling with emotion, he staggered off
quietly and resolutely with the only purpose of getting
down to the seashore. He knew that as long as he
kept downhill he would be all right. The ground in
this part being a smooth rocky surface and Symons
being barefooted, he passed at no great distance from
Peyrol without being heard. When he got on rough
ground he used the stable fork for a staff. Slowly as
he moved he was not really strong enough to be
sure-footed. Ten minutes later or so Peyrol, lying
ensconced behind a bush, beard the noise of a rolling
stone far away in the direction of the cove. Instantly
the patient Peyrol got on his feet and started towards
the cove himself. Perhaps he would have smiled if
the importance and gravity of the affair in which he
was engaged had not given all his thoughts a serious
cast. Pursuing a higher path than the one followed
by Symons, he had presently the satisfaction of seeing
the fugitive, made very noticeable by the white
bandages about his head, engaged in the last part of
the steep descent. No nurse could have watched with
more anxiety the adventure of a little boy than Peyrol
the progress of his former prisoner. He was very glad
to perceive that he had had the sense to take what
looked like the tartane's boathook to help himself
with. As Symons' figure sank lower and lower in his
descent Peyrol moved on, step by step, till at last he
saw him from above sitting down on the seashore,
looking very forlorn and lonely, with his bandaged
head between his hands. Instantly Peyrol sat down
too, protected by a projecting rock. And it is safe to
say that with that there came a complete cessation
of all sound and movement on the lonely head of the
peninsula for a full half hour.</p>
<p> Peyrol was not in doubt as to what was going to
happen. He was as certain that the corvette's boat
or boats were now on the way to the cove as though
he had seen them leave the side of the <u>Amelia</u>. But
he began to get a little impatient. He wanted to see
the end of this episode. Most of the time he was
watching Symons. ``Sacr<e'>e t<e^>te dure,'' he thought.
``He has gone to sleep.'<code> Indeed Symons</code> immobility
was so complete that he might have been dead from
his exertions: only Peyrol had a conviction that his
once youthful chum was not the sort of person that
dies easily. The part of the cove he had reached
was all right for Peyrol's purpose. But it would have
been quite easy for a boat or boats to fail to notice
Symons, and the consequence of that would be that
the English would probably land in several parties
for a search, discover the tartane. Peyrol
shuddered.</p>
<p> Suddenly he made out a boat just clear of the
eastern point of the cove. Mr. Bolt had been hugging
the coast and progressing very slowly, according to
his instructions, till he had reached the edge of the
point's shadow where it lay ragged and black on the
moonlit water. Peyrol could see the oars rise and fall.
Then another boat glided into view. Peyrol's alarm
for his tartane grew intolerable. ``Wake up, animal,
wake up,'' he mumbled through his teeth. Slowly
they glided on, and the first cutter was on the point
of passing by the man on the shore when Peyrol was
relieved by the hail of ``Boat ahoy'' reaching him
faintly where he knelt leaning forward, an absorbed
spectator.</p>
<p> He saw the boat heading for Symons, who was
standing up now and making desperate signs with
both arms. Then he saw him dragged in over the
bows, the boat back out, and then both of them
tossed oars and floated side by side on the sparkling
water of the cove.</p>
<p> Peyrol got up from his knees. They had their man
now. But perhaps they would persist in landing since
there must have been some other purpose at first in
the mind of the captain of the English corvette. This
suspense did not last long. Peyrol saw the oars fall
in the water, and in a very few minutes the boats,
pulling round, disappeared one after another behind
the eastern point of the cove.</p>
<p> ``That's done,'' muttered Peyrol to himself. ``I
will never see the silly hard-head again.'' He had a
strange notion that those English boats had carried off
something belonging to him, not a man but a part of
his own life, the sensation of a regained touch with
the far-off days in the Indian Ocean. He walked
down quickly as if to examine the spot from which
Testa Dura had left the soil of France. He was in a
hurry now to get back to the farmhouse and meet
Lieutenant R<e'>al, who would be due back from Toulon.
The way by the cove was as short as any other.
When he got down he surveyed the empty shore and
wondered at a feeling of emptiness within himself.
While walking up towards the foot of the ravine he
saw an object lying on the ground. It was a stable
fork. He stood over it asking himself, ``How on earth
did this thing come here?'' as though he had been too
surprised to pick it up. Even after he had done so
he remained motionless, meditating on it. He connected
it with some activity of Scevola, since he was
the man to whom it belonged, but that was no sort of
explanation of its presence on that spot, unless . . .</p>
<p> ``Could he have drowned himself?'' thought Peyrol,
looking at the smooth and luminous water of the cove.
It could give him no answer. Then at arm's length
he contemplated his find. At last he shook his head,
shouldered the fork, and with slow steps continued
on his way.<p> CHAPTER XIV</p>
</p>
<p> The midnight meeting of Lieutenant R<E'>al and
Peyrol was perfectly silent. Peyrol, sitting on the
bench outside the salle, had heard the footsteps
coming up the Madrague track long before the lieutenant
became visible. But he did not move. He did
not even look at him. The lieutenant, unbuckling
his sword-belt, sat down without uttering a word.
The moon, the only witness of the meeting, seemed to
shine on two friends so identical in thought and
feeling that they could commune with each other
without words. It was Peyrol who spoke first.</p>
<p> ``You are up to time.''</p>
<p> ``I had the deuce of a job to hunt up the people
and get the certificate stamped. Everything was shut
up. The Port-Admiral was giving a dinner-party,
but he came out to speak to me when I sent in my
name. And all the time, do you know, gunner, I
was wondering whether I would ever see you again
in my life. Even after I had the certificate, such as
it is, in my pocket, I wondered whether I would.''</p>
<p> ``What the devil did you think was going to happen
to me?'' growled Peyrol perfunctorily. He had thrown
the incomprehensible stable fork under the narrow
bench, and with his feet drawn in he could feel it
there, lying against the wall.</p>
<p> ``No, the question with me was whether I would
ever come here again.''</p>
<p> R<e'>al drew a folded paper from his pocket and
dropped it on the bench. Peyrol picked it up carelessly.
That thing was meant only to throw dust
into Englishmen's eyes. The lieutenant, after a
moment's silence, went on with the sincerity of a man
who suffered too much to keep his trouble to himself.</p>
<p> ``I had a hard struggle.''</p>
<p> ``That was too late,'' said Peyrol, very positively.
``You had to come back here for very shame; and
now you have come, you don't look very happy.''</p>
<p> ``Never mind my looks, gunner. I have made up
my mind.''</p>
<p> A ferocious, not unpleasing thought flashed through
Peyrol's mind. It was that this intruder on the
Escampobar sinister solitude in which he, Peyrol, kept
order was under a delusion. Mind! Pah! His mind
had nothing to do with his return. He had returned
because in Catherine's words, ``death had made a
sign to him.'' Meantime, Lieutenant R<e'>al raised his
hat to wipe his moist brow.</p>
<p> ``I made up my mind to play the part of dispatch-bearer.
As you have said yourself, Peyrol, one could
not bribe a man---I mean an honest man---so you
will have to find the vessel and leave the rest to me.
In two or three days . . . You are under a moral
obligation to let me have your tartane.''</p>
<p> Peyrol did not answer. He was thinking that R<e'>al
had got his sign, but whether it meant death from
starvation or disease on board an English prison hulk,
or in some other way, it was impossible to say. This
naval officer was not a man he could trust; to whom
he could, for instance, tell the story of his prisoner
and what he had done with him. Indeed, the story
was altogether incredible. The Englishman commanding
that corvette had no visible, conceivable or
probable reason for sending a boat ashore to the cove
of all places in the world. Peyrol himself could
hardly believe that it had happened. And he thought:
``If I were to tell that lieutenant he would only
think that I was an old scoundrel who had been in
treasonable communication with the English for God
knows how long. No words of mine could persuade
him that this was as unforeseen to me as the moon
falling from the sky.''</p>
<p> ``I wonder,'' he burst out, but not very loud, ``what
made you keep on coming back here time after time!''
R<e'>al leaned his back against the wall and folded his
arms in the familiar attitude of their leisurely talks.</p>
<p> ``Ennui, Peyrol,'' he said in a far-away tone.
``Confounded boredom.''</p>
<p> Peyrol also, as if unable to resist the force of
example, assumed the same attitude, and said:</p>
<p> ``You seem to be a man that makes no friends.''</p>
<p> ``True, Peyrol. I think I am that sort of man.''</p>
<p> ``What, no friends at all? Not even a little friend
of any sort?''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al leaned the back of his head against
the wall and made no answer. Peyrol got on his
legs.</p>
<p> ``Oh, then, it wouldn't matter to anybody if you
were to disappear for years in an English hulk. And
so if I were to give you my tartane you would go?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, I would go this moment.''</p>
<p> Peyrol laughed quite loud, tilting his head back.
All at once the laugh stopped short and the lieutenant
was amazed to see him reel as though he had been
hit in the chest. While giving way to his bitter mirth,
the rover had caught sight of Arlette's face at the,
open window of the lieutenant's room. He sat heavily
on the bench and was unable to make a sound. The
lieutenant was startled enough to detach the back of
his head from the wall to look at him. Peyrol stooped
low suddenly, and began to drag the stable fork from
its concealment. Then he got on his feet and stood
leaning on it, glaring down at R<e'>al, who gazed
upwards with languid surprise. Peyrol was asking
himself, ``Shall I pick him up on that pair of prongs,
carry him down and fling him in the sea?'' He felt
suddenly overcome by a heaviness of arms and a
heaviness of heart that made all movement impossible.
His stiffened and powerless limbs refused all
service. . . . Let Catherine look after her niece. He
was sure that the old woman was not very far away.
The lieutenant saw him absorbed in examining the
points of the prongs carefully. There was something
queer about all this.</p>
<p> ``Hallo, Peyrol! What's the matter?'' he couldn't
help asking.</p>
<p> ``I was just looking,'' said Peyrol. ``One prong is
chipped a little. I found this thing in a most unlikely
place.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant still gazed at him curiously.</p>
<p> ``I know! It was under the bench.''</p>
<p> ``H'm,'' said Peyrol, who had recovered some self-control.
``It belongs to Scevola.''</p>
<p> ``Does it?'' said the lieutenant, falling back again.</p>
<p> His interest seemed exhausted, but Peyrol didn't
move.</p>
<p> ``You go about with a face fit for a funeral,'' he
remarked suddenly in a deep voice. ``Hang it all,
lieutenant, I have heard you laugh once or twice, but
the devil take me if I ever saw you smile. It is as if
you had been bewitched in your cradle.''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al got up as if moved by a spring.
``Bewitched,'' he repeated, standing very stiff: ``In
my cradle, eh? . . . No, I don't think it was so
early as that.''</p>
<p> He walked forward with a tense still face straight at
Peyrol as though he had been blind. Startled, the
rover stepped out of the way and, turning on his heels,
followed him with his eyes. The lieutenant paced on,
as if drawn by a magnet, in the direction of the door
of the house. Peyrol, his eyes fastened on R<e'>al's
back, let him nearly reach it before he called out
tentatively: ``I say, lieutenant!'' To his extreme
surprise, R<e'>al swung round as if to a touch.</p>
<p> ``Oh, yes,'' he answered, also in an undertone.
``We will have to discuss that matter to-morrow.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, who had approached him close, said in a
whisper which sounded quite fierce: ``Discuss? No!
We will have to carry it out to-morrow. I have been
waiting half the night just to tell you that.''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al nodded. The expression on his
face was so stony that Peyrol doubted whether he had
understood. He added:</p>
<p> ``It isn't going to be child's play.'' The lieutenant
was about to open the door when Peyrol said: ``A
moment,'' and again the lieutenant turned about
silently.</p>
<p> ``Michel is sleeping somewhere on the stairs. Will
you just stir him up and tell him I am waiting outside?
We two will have to finish our night on board
the tartane, and start work at break of day to get
her ready for sea. Yes, lieutenant, by noon. In
twelve hours' time you will be saying good-bye to
la belle France.''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al's eyes staring over his shoulder,
seemed glazed and motionless in the moonlight like
the eyes of a dead man. But he went in. Peyrol
heard presently sounds within of somebody staggering
in the passage and Michel projected himself
outside headlong, but after a stumble or two pulled
up, scratching his head and looking on every side in
the moonlight without perceiving Peyrol, who was
regarding him from a distance of five feet. At last
Peyrol said:</p>
<p> ``Come, wake up! Michel! Michel!''</p>
<p> ``Voil<a`>, notre ma<i^>tre.''</p>
<p> ``Look at what I have picked up,'' said Peyrol.
``Take it and put it away.''</p>
<p> Michel didn't offer to touch the stable fork extended
to him by Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``What's the matter with you?'' asked Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``Nothing, nothing! Only last time I saw it, it was
on Scevola's shoulder.'' He glanced up at the sky. </p>
<p> ``A little better than an hour ago.''</p>
<p> ``What was he doing?''</p>
<p> ``Going into the yard to put it away.''</p>
<p> ``Well, now you go into the yard to put it away,''
said Peyrol, ``and don't be long about it.'' He waited
with his hand over his chin till his henchman reappeared
before him. But Michel had not got over
his surprise.</p>
<p> ``He was going to bed, you know,'' he said.</p>
<p> ``Eh, what? He was going. . . . He hasn't gone
to sleep in the stable, perchance? He does sometimes,
you know.''</p>
<p> ``I know. I looked. He isn't there,'' said Michel,
very awake and round-eyed.</p>
<p> Peyrol started towards the cove. After three or
four steps he turned round and found Michel motionless
where he had left him.</p>
<p> ``Come on,'' he cried, ``we will have to fit the
tartane for sea directly the day breaks.''</p>
<p> Standing in the lieutenant's room just clear of the
open window, Arlette listened to their voices and to
the sound of their footsteps diminishing down the
slope. Before they had quite died out she became
aware of a light tread approaching the door of the
room.</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al had spoken the truth. While in
Toulon he had more than once said to himself that
he could never go back to that fatal farmhouse. His
mental state was quite pitiable. Honour, decency,
every principle forbade him to trifle with the feelings
of a poor creature with her mind darkened by a very
terrifying, atrocious and, as it were, guilty experience.
And suddenly he had given way to a base impulse
and had betrayed himself by kissing her hand! He
recognized with despair that this was no trifling, but
that the impulse had come from the very depths of
his being. It was an awful discovery for a man who
on emerging from boyhood had laid for himself a
rigidly straight line of conduct amongst the unbridled
passions and the clamouring falsehoods of revolution
which seemed to have destroyed in him all capacity
for the softer emotions. Taciturn and guarded, he
had formed no intimacies. Relations he had none.
He had kept clear of social connections. It was in
his character. At first he visited Escampobar because
when he took his leave he had no place in the world
to go to, and a few days there were a complete
change from the odious town. He enjoyed the sense
of remoteness from ordinary mankind. He had
developed a liking for old Peyrol, the only man who
had nothing to do with the revolution---who had not
even seen it at work. The sincere lawlessness of the
ex-Brother of the Coast was refreshing. That one
was neither a hypocrite nor a fool. When he robbed
or killed it was not in the name of the sacred revolutionary
principles or for the love of humanity.</p>
<p> Of course R<e'>al had remarked at once Arlette's
black, profound and unquiet eyes and the persistent
dim smile on her lips, her mysterious silences and the
rare sound of her voice which made a caress of every
word. He heard something of her story from the
reluctant Peyrol who did not care to talk about it. It
awakened in R<e'>al more bitter indignation than pity.
But it stimulated his imagination, confirmed him in
that scorn and angry loathing for the revolution he
had felt as a boy and had nursed secretly ever since.
She attracted him by her unapproachable aspect.
Later he tried not to notice that, in common parlance,
she was inclined to hang about him. He used to
catch her gazing at him stealthily. But he was free
from masculine vanity. It was one day in Toulon
that it suddenly dawned on him what her mute
interest in his person might mean. He was then
sitting outside a caf<e'> sipping some drink or other
with three or four officers, and not listening to their
uninteresting conversation. He marvelled that this
sort of illumination should come to him like this,
under these circumstances; that he should have
thought of her while seated in the street with these
men round him, in the midst of more or less professional
talk! And then it suddenly dawned on him
that he had been thinking of nothing but that woman
for days.</p>
<p> He got up brusquely, flung the money for his drink
on the table, and without a word left his companions.
But he had the reputation of an eccentric man and
they did not even comment on his abrupt departure.
It was a clear evening. He walked straight out of
town, and that night wandered beyond the fortifications,
not noticing the direction he took. All the
countryside was asleep. There was not a human
being stirring, and his progress in that desolate part
of the country between the forts could have been traced
only by the barking of dogs in the rare hamlets and
scattered habitations.</p>
<p> ``What has become of my rectitude, of my self-respect,
of the firmness of my mind?'' he asked himself
pedantically. ``I have let myself be mastered by
an unworthy passion for a mere mortal envelope,
stained with crime and without a mind.''</p>
<p> His despair at this awful discovery was so profound
that if he had not been in uniform he would have
tried to commit suicide with the small pistol he had
in his pocket. He shrank from the act, and the
thought of the sensation it would produce, from the
gossip and comments it would raise, the dishonouring
suspicions it would provoke. ``No,'' he said to himself,
``what I will have to do is to unmark my linen,
put on civilian old clothes and walk out much farther
away, miles beyond the forts, hide myself in some
wood or in an overgrown hollow and put an end to
my life there. The gendarmes or a garde-champ<e^>tre
discovering my body after a few days, a complete
stranger without marks of identity, and being unable
to find out anything about me, will give me an obscure
burial in some village churchyard.''</p>
<p> On that resolution he turned back abruptly and at
daybreak found himself outside the gate of the town.
He had to wait till it was opened, and then the
morning was so far advanced that he had to go
straight to work at his office at the Toulon Admiralty.
Nobody noticed anything peculiar about him that
day. He went through his routine tasks with outward
composure, but all the same he never ceased arguing
with himself. By the time he returned to his quarters
he had come to the conclusion that as an officer in
war-time he had no right to take his own life. His
principles would not permit him to do that. In this
reasoning he was perfectly sincere. During a deadly
struggle against an irreconcilable enemy his life
belonged to his country. But there were moments
when his loneliness, haunted by the forbidden vision
of Escampobar with the figure of that distracted girl,
mysterious, awful, pale, irresistible in her strangeness,
passing along the walls, appearing on the hill-paths,
looking out of the window, became unbearable. He
spent hours of solitary anguish shut up in his quarters,
and the opinion amongst his comrades was that R<e'>al's
misanthropy was getting beyond all bounds.</p>
<p> One day it dawned upon him clearly that he could
not stand this. It affected his power of thinking.
``I shall begin to talk nonsense to people,'' he said to
himself. ``Hasn't there been once a poor devil who
fell in love with a picture or a statue? He used to
go and contemplate it. His misfortune cannot be
compared with mine! Well, I will go to look at her
as at a picture too; a picture as untouchable as if it
had been under glass.'' And he went on a visit to
Escampobar at the very first opportunity. He made
up for himself a repellent face, he clung to Peyrol for
society, out there on the bench, both with their arms
folded and gazing into space. But whenever Arlette
crossed his line of sight it was as if something had
moved in his breast. Yet these visits made life just
bearable; they enabled him to attend to his work
without beginning to talk nonsense to people. He
said to himself that he was strong enough to rise
above temptation, that he would never overstep the
line; but it had happened to him upstairs in his room
at the farm, to weep tears of sheer tenderness while
thinking of his fate. These tears would put out for a
while the gnawing fire of his passion. He assumed
austerity like an armour and in his prudence he, as a
matter of fact, looked very seldom at Arlette for fear
of being caught in the act.</p>
<p> The discovery that she had taken to wandering at
night had upset him all the same, because that sort of
thing was unaccountable. It gave him a shock which
unsettled, not his resolution, but his fortitude. That
morning he had allowed himself, while she was
waiting on him, to be caught looking at her and then,
losing his self-control, had given her that kiss on the
hand. Directly he had done it he was appalled. He
had overstepped the line. Under the circumstances
this was an absolute moral disaster. The full
consciousness of it came to him slowly. In fact this
moment of fatal weakness was one of the reasons why
he had let himself be sent off so unceremoniously by
Peyrol to Toulon. Even while crossing over he
thought the only thing was not to come back any
more. Yet while battling with himself he went on
with the execution of the plan. A bitter irony presided
over his dual state. Before leaving the Admiral who
had received him in full uniform in a room lighted
by a single candle, he was suddenly moved to say:
``I suppose if there is no other way I am authorized
to go myself,'' and the Admiral had answered: ``I
didn't contemplate that, but if you are willing I don't
see any objection. I would only advise you to go in
uniform in the character of an officer entrusted with
dispatches. No doubt in time the Government would
arrange for your exchange. But bear in mind that
it would be a long captivity, and you must understand
it might affect your promotion.''</p>
<p> At the foot of the grand staircase in the lighted hall
of the official building R<e'>al suddenly thought: ``And
now I must go back to Escampobar.'' Indeed he had
to go to Escampobar because the false dispatches were
there in the valise he had left behind. He couldn't
go back to the Admiral and explain that he had lost
them. They would look on him as an unutterable
idiot or a man gone mad. While walking to the quay
where the naval boat was waiting for him he said to
himself. ``This, in truth, is my last visit for years---
perhaps for life.''</p>
<p> Going back in the boat, notwithstanding that the
breeze was very light, he would not let the men take
to the oars. He didn't want to return before the
women had gone to bed. He said to himself that the
proper and honest thing to do was not to see Arlette
again. He even managed to persuade himself that
his uncontrolled impulse had had no meaning for that
witless and unhappy creature. She had neither
started nor exclaimed; she had made no sign. She
had remained passive and then she had backed away
and sat down quietly. He could not even remember
that she had coloured at all. As to himself, he had
enough self-control to rise from the table and go out
without looking at her again. Neither did she make
a sign. What could startle that body without mind?
She had made nothing of it, he thought with self-contempt.
``Body without mind! Body without
mind!'' he repeated with angry derision directed at
himself. And all at once he thought: ``No. It isn't
that. All in her is mystery, seduction, enchantment.
And then---what do I care for her mind!''</p>
<p> This thought wrung from him a faint groan so that
the coxswain asked respectfully: ``Are you in pain,
lieutenant?'' ``It's nothing,'' he muttered and set
his teeth with the desperation of a man under torture.</p>
<p> While talking with Peyrol outside the house, the
words ``I won't see her again,'' and ``body without
mind'' rang through his head. By the time he had
left Peyrol and walked up the stairs his endurance
was absolutely at an end. All he wanted was to be
alone. Going along the dark, passage he noticed that
the door of Catherine's room was standing ajar. But
that did not arrest his attention. He was approaching
a state of insensibility. As he put his hand on the
door handle of his room he said to himself. ``It will
soon be over!''</p>
<p> He was so tired out that he was almost unable to
hold up his head, and on going in he didn't see Arlette,
who stood against the wall on one side of the window,
out of the moonlight and in the darkest corner of the
room. He only became aware of somebody's presence
in the room as she flitted past him with the faintest
possible rustle, when he staggered back two paces and
heard behind him the key being turned in the lock.
If the whole house had fallen into ruins, bringing
him to the ground, lie could not have been more
overwhelmed and, in a manner, more utterly bereft
of all his senses. The first that came back to him was
the sense of touch when Arlette seized his hand. He
regained his hearing next. She was whispering to
him: ``At last. At last! But you are careless. If it
had been Scevola instead of me in this room you
would have been dead now. I have seen him at
work.'' He felt a significant pressure on his hand,
but he couldn't see her properly yet, though he was
aware of her nearness with every fibre of his body.
``It wasn't yesterday though,'' she added in a low
tone. Then suddenly: ``Come to the window so that
I may look at you.''</p>
<p> A great square of moonlight lay on the floor. He
obeyed the tug like a little child. She caught hold of
his other hand as it hung by his side. He was rigid
all over, without joints, and it did not seem to him
that he was breathing. With her face a little below
his she stared at him closely, whispering gently:
``Eug<e`>ne, Eug<e`>ne,'' and suddenly the livid immobility
of his face frightened her. ``You say nothing. You
look ill. What is the matter? Are you hurt?'' She
let go his insensitive hands and began to feel him all
over for evidence of some injury. She even snatched
off his hat and flung it away in her haste to discover
that his head was unharmed; but finding no sign of
bodily damage, she calmed down like a sensible,
practical person. With her hands clasped round his
neck she hung back a little. Her little even teeth
gleamed, her black eyes, immensely profound, looked
into his, not with a transport of passion or fear but
with a sort of reposeful satisfaction, with a searching
and appropriating expression. He came back to life
with a low and reckless exclamation, felt horribly
insecure at once as if he were standing on a lofty
pinnacle above a noise as of breaking waves in his
cars, in fear lest her fingers should part and she would
fall off and be lost to him for ever. He flung his
arms round her waist and hugged her close to his
breast. In the great silence, in the bright moonlight
falling through the window, they stood like that for a
long, long time. He looked at her head resting on
his shoulder. Her eyes were closed and the expression
of her unsmiling face was that of a delightful dream,
something infinitely ethereal, peaceful and, as it were,
eternal. Its appeal pierced his heart with a pointed
sweetness. ``She is exquisite. It's a miracle,'' he
thought with a snort of terror. ``It's impossible.''</p>
<p> She made a movement to disengage herself, and
instinctively he resisted, pressing her closer to his
breast. She yielded for a moment and then tried
again. He let her go. She stood at arm's length, her
hands on his shoulders, and her charm struck him
suddenly as funny in the seriousness of expression as
of a very capable, practical woman.</p>
<p> ``All this is very well,'' she said in a businesslike
undertone. ``We will have to think how to get away
from here. I don't mean now, this moment,'' she
added, feeling his slight start. ``Scevola is thirsting
for your blood.'' She detached one hand to point a
finger at the inner wall of the room, and lowered her
voice. ``He's there, you know. Don't trust Peyrol
either. I was looking at you two out there. He has
changed. I can trust him no longer.'' Her murmur
vibrated. ``He and Catherine behave strangely. I
don't know what came to them. He doesn't talk to
me. When I sit down near him he turns his shoulder
to me. . . .''</p>
<p> She felt R<e'>al sway under her hands, paused in
concern and said: ``You are tired.'' But as he didn't
move, she actually led him to a chair, pushed him
into it, and sat on the floor at his feet. She rested her
head against his knees and kept possession of one of
his hands. A sigh escaped her. ``I knew this was
going to be,'' she said very low. ``But I was taken
by surprise.''</p>
<p> ``Oh, you knew it was going to be,'' he repeated
faintly.</p>
<p> ``Yes! I had prayed for it. Have you ever been
prayed for, Eug<e`>ne?'' she asked, lingering on his
name.</p>
<p> ``Not since I was a child,'' answered R<e'>al in a
sombre tone.</p>
<p> ``Oh yes! You have been prayed for to-day. I
went down to the church. . . .'' R<e'>al could hardly
believe his ears. . . . The abb<e'> let me in by the
sacristy door. He told me to renounce the world.
I was ready to renounce anything for you.'' R<e'>al,
turning his face to the darkest part of the room,
seemed to see the spectre of fatality awaiting its time
to move forward and crush that calm, confident joy.
He shook off the dreadful illusion, raised her hand to
his lips for a lingering kiss, and then asked:</p>
<p> ``So you knew that it was going to be? Everything?
Yes! And of me, what did you think?''</p>
<p> She pressed strongly the hand to which she had
been clinging all the time. ``I thought this.''</p>
<p> ``But what did you think of my conduct at times?
You see, I did not know what was going to be. I
. . . I was afraid,'' he added under his breath.</p>
<p> ``Conduct? What conduct? You came, you went.
When you were not here I thought of you, and when
you were here I could look my fill at you. I tell you
I knew how it was going to be. I was not afraid
then.''</p>
<p> ``You went about with a little smile,'' he whispered,
as one would mention an inconceivable marvel.</p>
<p> ``I was warm and quiet,'' murmured Arlette, as if
on the borders of dreamland. Tender murmurs
flowed from her lips describing a state of blissful
tranquillity in phrases that sounded like the veriest
nonsense, incredible, convincing and soothing to
R<e'>al's conscience.</p>
<p> ``You were perfect,'' it went on. ``Whenever you
came near me everything seemed different.''</p>
<p> ``What do you mean? How different?''</p>
<p> ``Altogether. The light, the very stones of the
house, the hills, the little flowers amongst the rocks!
Even Nanette was different.''</p>
<p> Nanette was a white Angora with long silken hair,
a pet that lived mostly in the yard.</p>
<p> ``Oh, Nanette was different too,'' said R<e'>al, whom
delight in the modulations of that voice had cut off
from all reality, and even from a consciousness of
himself, while he sat stooping over that head resting
against his knee, the soft grip of her hand being his
only contact with the world.</p>
<p> ``Yes. Prettier. It's only the people. . . . She
ceased on an uncertain note. The crested wave of
enchantment seemed to have passed over his head
ebbing out faster than the sea, leaving the dreary
expanses of the sand. He felt a chill at the roots of
his hair.</p>
<p> ``What people?'' he asked.</p>
<p> ``They are so changed. Listen, to-night while you
were away---why did you go away?---I caught those
two in the kitchen, saying nothing to each other.
That Peyrol---he is terrible.''</p>
<p> He was struck by the tone of awe, by its profound
conviction. He could not know that Peyrol, unforeseen,
unexpected, inexplicable, had given by his mere
appearance at Escampobar a moral and even a
physical jolt to all her being, that he was to her an
immense figure, like a messenger from the unknown
entering the solitude of Escampobar; something
immensely strong, with inexhaustible power, unaffected
by familiarity and remaining invincible.</p>
<p> ``He will say nothing, he will listen to nothing. He
can do what he likes.''</p>
<p> ``Can he?'' muttered R<e'>al.</p>
<p> She sat up on the floor, moved her head up and
down several times as if to say that there could be no
doubt about that.</p>
<p> ``Is he, too, thirsting for my blood?'' asked R<e'>al
bitterly.</p>
<p> ``No, no. It isn't that. You could defend yourself.
I could watch over you. I have been watching over
you. Only two nights ago I thought I heard noises
outside and I went downstairs, fearing for you; your
window was open but I could see nobody, and yet I
felt. . . . No, it isn't that! It's worse. I don't
know what he wants to do. I can't help being fond
of him, but I begin to fear him now. When he first
came here and I saw him he was just the same---only
his hair was not so white---big, quiet. It seemed to
me that something moved in my head. He was
gentle, you know. I had to smile at him. It was as
if I had recognized him. I said to myself. `That's he,
the man himself.' ''</p>
<p> ``And when I came?'' asked R<e'>al with a feeling of
dismay.</p>
<p> ``You! You were expected,'' she said in a low tone
with a slight tinge of surprise at the question, but still
evidently thinking of the Peyrol mystery. ``Yes, I
caught them at it last evening, he and Catherine in
the kitchen, looking at each other and as quiet as
mice. I told him he couldn't order me about. Oh,
mon ch<e'>ri, mon ch<e'>ri, don't you listen to Peyrol---
don't let him . . .''</p>
<p> With only a slight touch on his knee she sprang to
her feet. R<e'>al stood up too.</p>
<p> ``He can do nothing to me,'' he mumbled.</p>
<p> `Don't tell him anything. Nobody can guess what
he thinks, and now even I cannot tell what he means
when he speaks. It was as if he knew a secret.'' She
put an accent into those words which made R<e'>al feel
moved almost to tears. He repeated that Peyrol
could have no influence over him, and he felt that he
was speaking the truth. He was in the power of his
own word. Ever since he had left the Admiral in a
gold-embroidered uniform, impatient to return to his
guests, he was on a service for which he had volunteered.
For a moment he had the sensation of an
iron hoop very tight round his chest. She peered at
his face closely, and it was more than he could bear.</p>
<p> ``All right. I'll be careful,'' he said. ``And
Catherine, is she also dangerous?''</p>
<p> In the sheen of the moonlight Arlette, her neck and
head above the gleams of the fichu, visible and elusive,
smiled at him and moved a step closer.</p>
<p> ``Poor Aunt Catherine,'' she said. . . . ``Put your
arm round me, Eug<e'>ne. . . . She can do nothing.
She used to follow me with her eyes always. She
thought I didn't notice, but I did. And now she
seems unable to look me in the face. Peyrol too, for
that matter. He used to follow me with his eyes.
Often I wondered what made them look at me like
that. Can you tell, Eug<e'>ne? But it's all changed
now.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, it is all changed,'' said R<e'>al in a tone which
he tried to make as light as possible. ``Does
Catherine know you are here?''</p>
<p> ``When we went upstairs this evening I lay down
all dressed on my bed and she sat on hers. The
candle was out, but in the moonlight I could see her
quite plainly with her hands on her lap. When I
could lie still no longer I simply got up and went out
of the room. She was still sitting at the foot of her
bed. All I did was to put my finger on my lips and
then she dropped her head. I don't think I quite
closed the door. . . . Hold me tighter, Eug<e`>ne, I
am tired. . . . Strange, you know! Formerly, a
long time ago, before I ever saw you, I never rested
and never felt tired.'' She stopped her murmur
suddenly and lifted a finger recommending silence.
She listened and R<e'>al listened too, he did not know
for what; and in this sudden concentration on a point,
all that had happened since he had entered the room
seemed to him a dream in its improbability and in
the more than life-like force dreams have in their
inconsequence. Even the woman letting herself go on
his arm seemed to have no weight as it might have
happened in a dream.</p>
<p> ``She is there,'' breathed Arlette suddenly, rising on
tiptoe to reach up to his ear. ``She must have heard
you go past.''</p>
<p> ``Where is she?'' asked R<e'>al with the same intense
secrecy.</p>
<p> ``Outside the door. She must have been listening
to the murmur of our voices. . . .'' Arlette breathed
into his ear as if relating an enormity. ``She told me
one day that I was one of those who are fit for no
man's arms.''</p>
<p> At this he flung his other arm round her and looked
into her enlarged as if frightened eyes, while she
clasped him with all her strength and they stood like
that a long time, lips pressed on lips without a kiss,
and breathless in the closeness of their contact. To
him the stillness seemed to extend to the limits of the
universe. The thought ``Am I going to die?'' flashed
through that stillness and lost itself in it like a spark
flying in an everlasting night. The only result of it
was the tightening of his hold on Arlette.</p>
<p> An aged and uncertain voice was heard uttering the
word ``Arlette.'' Catherine, who had been listening
to their murmurs, could not bear the long silence.
They heard her trembling tones as distinctly as though
she had been in the room. R<e'>al felt as if it had saved
his life. They separated silently. </p>
<p> ``Go away,'' called out Arlette. </p>
<p> ``Arl------. . .''</p>
<p> ``Be quiet,'' she cried louder. ``You can do
nothing.''</p>
<p> ``Arlette,'' came through the door, tremulous and
commanding.</p>
<p> ``She will wake up Scevola,'' remarked Arlette to
R<e'>al in a conversational tone. And they both waited
for sounds that did not come. Arlette pointed her
finger at the wall. ``He is there, you know.''</p>
<p> ``He is asleep,'' muttered R<e'>al. But the thought
``I am lost'' which he formulated in his mind had no
reference to Scevola.</p>
<p> ``He is afraid,'' said Arlette contemptuously in an
undertone. ``But that means little. He would quake
with fright one moment and rush out to do murder
the next.''</p>
<p> Slowly, as if drawn by the irresistible authority of
the old woman, they had been moving towards the
door. R<e'>al thought with the sudden enlightenment
of passion: ``If she does not go now I won't have the
strength to part from her in the morning.'' He had
no image of death before his eyes but of a long and
intolerable separation. A sigh verging upon a moan
reached them from the other side of the door and
made the air around them heavy with sorrow against
which locks and keys will not avail.</p>
<p> ``You had better go to her,'' he whispered in a
penetrating tone.</p>
<p> ``Of course I will,'' said Arlette with some feeling.
``Poor old thing. She and I have only each other in
the world, but I am the daughter here, she must do
what I tell her.'' With one of her hands on R<e'>al's
shoulder she put her mouth close to the door and said
distinctly:</p>
<p> ``I am coming directly. Go back to your room and
wait for me,'' as if she had no doubt of being obeyed.</p>
<p> A profound silence ensued. Perhaps Catherine had
gone already. R<e'>al and Arlette stood still for a whole
minute as if both had been changed into stone.</p>
<p> ``Go now,'' said R<e'>al in a hoarse, hardly audible
voice.</p>
<p> She gave him a quick kiss on the lips and again
they stood like a pair of enchanted lovers bewitched
into immobility.</p>
<p> ``If she stays on,'' thought R<e'>al, ``I shall never have
the courage to tear myself away, and then I shall have
to blow my brains out.'' But when at last she moved
he seized her again and held her as if she had been
his very life. When he let her go he was appalled by
hearing a very faint laugh of her secret joy.</p>
<p> ``Why do you laugh?'' he asked in a scared tone.</p>
<p> She stopped to answer him over her shoulder.</p>
<p> ``I laughed because I thought of all the days to
come. Days and days and days. Have you thought
of them?''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' R<e'>al faltered, like a man stabbed to the
heart, holding the door half open. And he was glad
to have something to hold on to.</p>
<p> She slipped out with a soft rustle of her silk skirt,
but before he had time to close the door behind her
she put back her arm for an instant. He had just
time to press the palm of her hand to his lips. It was
cool. She snatched it away and he had the strength
of mind to shut the door after her. He felt like a man
chained to the wall and dying of thirst, from whom a
cold drink is snatched away. The room became dark
suddenly. He thought, ``A cloud over the moon, a
cloud over the moon, an enormous cloud,'' while he
walked rigidly to the window, insecure and swaying
as if on a tight rope. After a moment he perceived
the moon in a sky on which there was no sign of the
smallest cloud anywhere. He said to himself, ``I
suppose I nearly died just now. But no,'' he went on
thinking with deliberate cruelty, ``Oh, no, I shall not
die. I shall only suffer, suffer, suffer. . . .''</p>
<p> ``Suffer, suffer.'' Only by stumbling against the
side of the bed did he discover that he had gone away
from the window. At once he flung himself violently
on the bed with his face buried in the pillow, which
he bit to restrain the cry of distress about to burst
through his lips. Natures schooled into insensibility
when once overcome by a mastering passion are like
vanquished giants ready for despair. He, a man on
service, felt himself shrinking from death and that
doubt contained in itself all possible doubts of his own
fortitude. The only thing he knew was that he would
be gone to-morrow morning. He shuddered along
his whole extended length, then lay still gripping a
handful of bedclothes in each hand to prevent himself
from leaping up in panicky restlessness. He was
saying to himself pedantically, ``I must lie down and
rest, I must rest to have strength for to-morrow, I
must rest,'' while the tremendous struggle to keep still
broke out in waves of perspiration on his forehead.
At last sudden oblivion must have descended on him
because he turned over and sat up suddenly with the
sound of the word ``Ecoutez'' in his ears.</p>
<p> A strange, dim, cold light filled the room; a light he
did not recognize for anything he had known before,
and at the foot of his bed stood a figure in dark
garments with a dark shawl over its head, with a
fleshless predatory face and dark hollows for its eyes,
silent, expectant, implacable. . . . Is this death?''
he asked himself, staring at it terrified. It resembled
Catherine. It said again: ``Ecoutez.'' He took away
his eyes from it and glancing down noticed that his
clothes were torn open on his chest. He would not
look up at that thing, whatever it was, spectre or old
woman, and said:</p>
<p> ``Yes, I hear you.''</p>
<p> ``You are an honest man.'' It was Catherine's
unemotional voice. ``The day has broken. You will
go away.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' he said without raising his head.</p>
<p> ``She is asleep,'' went on Catherine or whoever it
was, ``exhausted, and you would have to shake her
hard before she would wake. You will go. You
know,'' the voice continued inflexibly, ``she is my
niece, and you know that there is death in the folds
of her skirt and blood about her feet. She is for no
man.''</p>
<p> R<e'>al felt all the anguish of an unearthly experience.
This thing that looked like Catherine and spoke like
a cruel fate had to be faced. He raised his head in
this light that seemed to him appalling and not of
this world.</p>
<p> ``Listen well to me, you too,'' he said. ``If she had
all the madness of the world and the sin of all the
murders of the Revolution on her shoulders, I would
still hug her to my breast. Do you understand?''</p>
<p> The apparition which resembled Catherine lowered
and raised its hooded head slowly. ``There was a
time when I could have hugged l'enfer m<e^>me to my
breast. He went away. He had his vow. You have
only your honesty. You will go.''</p>
<p> ``I have my duty,'' said Lieutenant R<e'>al in
measured tones, as if calmed by the excess of horror
that old woman inspired him with.</p>
<p> ``Go without disturbing her, without looking at
her.''</p>
<p> ``I will carry my shoes in my hand,'' he said. He
sighed deeply and felt as if sleepy. ``It is very early,''
he muttered.</p>
<p> ``Peyrol is already down at the well,'' announced
Catherine. ``What can he be doing there all this
time?'' she added in a troubled voice. R<e'>al, with his
feet now on the ground, gave her a side glance; but
she was already gliding away, and when he looked
again she had vanished from the room and the door
was shut.<p> CHAPTER XV</p>
</p>
<p> Catherine, going downstairs, found Peyrol still at
the well. He seemed to be looking into it with
extreme interest.</p>
<p> ``Your coffee is ready, Peyrol,'' she shouted to him
from the doorway.</p>
<p> He turned very sharply like a man surprised and
came along smiling.</p>
<p> ``That's pleasant news, Mademoiselle Catherine,''
he said. ``You are down early.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' she admitted, ``but you too, Peyrol. Is
Michel about? Let him come and have some coffee
too.''</p>
<p> ``Michel's at the tartane. Perhaps you don't know
that she is going to make a little voyage.'' He drank
a mouthful of coffee and took a bite out of a slice of
bread. He was hungry. He had been up all night
and had even had a conversation with Citizen Scevola.
He had also done some work with Michel after
daylight; however, there had not been much to do
because the tartane was always kept ready for sea.
Then after having again locked up Citizen Scevola,
who was extremely concerned as to what was going to
happen to him but was left in a state of uncertainty,
he had come up to the farm, had gone upstairs where
he was busy with various things for a time, and then
had stolen down very cautiously to the well, where
Catherine, whom he had not expected downstairs so
early, had seen him before she went into Lieutenant
R<e'>al's room. While he enjoyed his coffee he listened
without any signs of surprise to Catherine's comments
upon the disappearance of Scevola. She had looked
into his den. He had not slept on his pallet last night,
of that she was certain, and he was nowhere to be
seen, not even in the most distant field, from the points
of vantage around the farm. It was inconceivable
that he should have slipped away to Madrague, where
he disliked to go, or to the village, where he was afraid
to go. Peyrol remarked that whatever happened to
him he was no great loss, but Catherine was not to
be soothed.</p>
<p> ``It frightens a body,'' she said. ``He may be
hiding somewhere to jump on one treacherously.
You know what I mean, Peyrol.''</p>
<p> ``Well, the lieutenant will have nothing to fear, as
he's going away. As to myself, Scevola and I are
good friends. I had a long talk with him quite
recently. You two women can manage him perfectly;
and then, who knows, perhaps he has gone away for
good.''</p>
<p> Catherine stared at him, if such a word as stare can
be applied to a profound contemplative gaze. ``The
lieutenant has nothing to fear from him,'' she repeated
cautiously.</p>
<p> ``No, he is going away. Didn't you know it?''
The old woman continued to look at him profoundly.
``Yes, he is on service.''</p>
<p> For another minute or so Catherine continued
silent in her contemplative attitude. Then her hesitation
came to an end. She could not resist the desire
to inform Peyrol of the events of the night. As she
went on Peyrol forgot the half-full bowl of coffee and
his half-eaten piece of bread. Catherine's voice
flowed with austerity. She stood there, imposing and
solemn like a peasant-priestess. The relation of what
had been to her a soul-shaking experience did not
take much time, and she finished with the words,
``The lieutenant is an honest man.'' And after a
pause she insisted further: ``There is no denying it.
He has acted like an honest man.''</p>
<p> For a moment longer Peyrol continued to look at
the coffee in the bowl, then without warning got up
with such violence that the chair behind him was
thrown back upon the flagstones.</p>
<p> ``Where is he, that honest man?'' he shouted suddenly
in stentorian tones which not only caused
Catherine to raise her hands, but frightened himself,
and he dropped at once to a mere forcible utterance.
``Where is that man? Let me see him.''</p>
<p> Even Catherine's hieratic composure was disturbed.
``Why,'' she said, looking really disconcerted, ``he
will be down here directly. This bowl of coffee is for
him.''</p>
<p> Peyrol made as if to leave the kitchen, but Catherine
stopped him. ``For God's sake, Monsieur Peyrol,''
she said, half in entreaty and half in command, ``don't
wake up the child. Let her sleep. Oh, let her sleep!
Don't wake her up. God only knows how long it is
since she has slept properly. I could not tell you. I
daren't think of it.'' She was shocked by hearing
Peyrol declare: ``All this is confounded nonsense.''
But he sat down again, seemed to catch sight of the
coffee bowl and emptied what was left in it down his
throat.</p>
<p> ``I don't want her on my hands more crazy than
she has been before,'' said Catherine, in a sort of
exasperation but in a very low tone. This phrase in
its selfish form expressed a real and profound compassion
for her niece. She dreaded the moment when
that fatal Arlette would wake up and the dreadful
complications of life which her slumbers had suspended
would have to be picked up again. Peyrol
fidgeted on his seat.</p>
<p> ``And so he told you he was going? He actually
did tell you that?'' he asked.</p>
<p> ``He promised to go before the child wakes up.
. . . At once.''</p>
<p> ``But, sacr<e'> nom d'un chien, there is never any wind
before eleven o'clock,'' Peyrol exclaimed in a tone of
profound annoyance, yet trying to moderate his voice,
while Catherine, indulgent to his changing moods,
only compressed her lips and nodded at him soothingly.
``It is impossible to work with people like
that,'' he mumbled.</p>
<p> ``Do you know, Monsieur Peyrol, that she has been
to see the priest?'' Catherine was heard suddenly,
towering above her end of the table. The two women
had had a talk before Arlette had been induced by
her aunt to lie down. Peyrol gave a start.</p>
<p> ``What? Priest? . . . Now look here, Catherine,''
he went on with repressed ferocity, ``do you imagine
that all this interests me in the least?''</p>
<p> ``I can think of nothing but that niece of mine.
We two have nobody but each other in the world,''
she went on, reproducing the very phrase Arlette had
used to R<e'>al. She seemed to be thinking aloud, but
noticed that Peyrol was listening with attention. ``He
wanted to shut her up from everybody,'' and the old
woman clasped her meagre hands with a sudden
gesture. ``I suppose there are still some convents
about the world.''</p>
<p> ``You and the patronne are mad together,'' declared
Peyrol. ``All this only shows what an ass the cur<e'> is.
I don't know much about these things, though I have
seen some nuns in my time, and some very queer ones
too, but it seems to me that they don't take crazy
people into convents. Don't you be afraid. I tell
you that.'' He stopped because the inner door of the
kitchen came open and Lieutenant R<e'>al stepped in.
His sword hung on his forearm by the belt, his hat
was on his head. He dropped his little valise on the
floor and sat down in the nearest chair to put on his
shoes which he had brought down in his other hand.
Then he came up to the table. Peyrol, who had kept
his eyes on him, thought: ``Here is one who looks like
a moth scorched in the fire.'' R<e'>al's eyes were sunk,
his cheeks seemed hollowed and the whole face had
an arid and dry aspect.</p>
<p> ``Well, you are in a fine state for the work of
deceiving the enemy,'' Peyrol observed. ``Why, to
look at you, nobody would believe a word you said.
You are not going to be ill, I hope. You are on
service. You haven't got the right to be ill. I say,
Mademoiselle Catherine, produce the bottle---you
know, my private bottle. . . .'' He snatched it from
Catherine's hand, poured some brandy into the lieutenant's
coffee, pushed the bowl towards him and
waited. ``Nom de nom!'' he said forcibly, ``don't
you know what this is for? It's for you to drink.''
R<e'>al obeyed with a strange, automatic docility.
``And now,'' said Peyrol, getting up, ``I will go to
my room and shave. This is a great day---the day
we are going to see the lieutenant off.''</p>
<p> Till then R<e'>al had not uttered a word, but directly
the door closed behind Peyrol he raised his head.</p>
<p> ``Catherine!'' His voice was like a rustle in his
throat. She was looking at him steadily and he
continued: ``Listen, when she finds I am gone you
tell her I will return soon. To-morrow. Always
to-morrow.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, my good Monsieur,'' said Catherine in an
unmoved voice but clasping her hands convulsively.
``There is nothing else I would dare tell her!''</p>
<p> ``She will believe you,'' whispered R<e'>al wildly. </p>
<p> ``Yes! She will believe me,'' repeated Catherine in
a mournful tone.</p>
<p> R<e'>al got up, put the sword-belt over his head,
picked up the valise. There was a little flush on his
cheeks.</p>
<p> ``Adieu,'' he said to the silent old woman. She
made no answer, but as he turned away she raised
her hand a little, hesitated, and let it fall again. It
seemed to her that the women of Escampobar had
been singled out for divine wrath. Her niece appeared
to her like the scapegoat charged with all the murders
and blasphemies of the Revolution. She herself too
had been cast out from the grace of God. But that
had been a long time ago. She had made her peace
with Heaven since. Again she raised her hand and,
this time, made in the air the sign of the cross at the
back of Lieutenant R<e'>al.</p>
<p> Meanwhile upstairs Peyrol, scraping his big flat
cheek with an English razor-blade at the window,
saw Lieutenant R<e'>al on the path to the shore; and
high above there, commanding a vast view of sea and
land, he shrugged his shoulders impatiently with no
visible provocation. One could not trust those
epaulette-wearers. They would cram a fellow's head
with notions either for their own sake or for the sake
of the service. Still, he was too old a bird to be
caught with chaff; and besides, that long-legged stiff
beggar going down the path with all his officer airs,
was honest enough. At any rate he knew a seaman
when he saw one, though he was as cold-blooded as
a fish. Peyrol had a smile which was a little awry.</p>
<p> Cleaning the razor-blade (one of a set of twelve in
a case) he had a vision of a brilliantly hazy ocean and
an English Indiaman with her yards braced all ways,
her canvas blowing loose above her bloodstained decks
overrun by a lot of privateersmen and with the island
of Ceylon swelling like a thin blue cloud on the far
horizon. He had always wished to own a set of
English blades and there he had got it, fell over it as
it were, lying on the floor of a cabin which had been
already ransacked. ``For good steel---it was good
steel,'' he thought looking at the blade fixedly. And
there it was, nearly worn out. The others too. That
steel! And here he was holding the case in his hand
as though he had just picked it up from the floor.
Same case. Same man. And the steel worn out.</p>
<p> He shut the case brusquely, flung it into his sea-chest
which was standing open, and slammed the lid down.
The feeling which was in his breast and had been
known to more articulate men than himself, was that
life was a dream less substantial than the vision of
Ceylon lying like a cloud on the sea. Dream left
astern. Dream straight ahead. This disenchanted
philosophy took the shape of fierce swearing. ``Sacr<e'>
nom de nom de nom. . . . Tonnerre de bon
Dieu!''</p>
<p> While tying his neckcloth he handled it with fury
as though he meant to strangle himself with it. He
rammed a soft cap on to his venerable locks recklessly,
seized his cudgel---but before leaving the room walked
up to the window giving on the east. He could not
see the Petite Passe on account of the lookout hill, but
to the left a great portion of the Hy<e`>res roadstead lay
spread out before him, pale grey in the morning light,
with the land about Cape Blanc swelling in the
distance with all its details blurred as yet and only
one conspicuous object presenting to his sight something
that might have been a lighthouse by its shape,
but which Peyrol knew very well was the English
corvette already under way and with all her canvas
set.</p>
<p> This sight pleased Peyrol mainly because he had
expected it. The Englishman was doing exactly what
he had expected he would do, and Peyrol looked
towards the English cruiser with a smile of malicious
triumph as if he were confronting her captain. For
some reason or other he imagined Captain Vincent
as long-faced, with yellow teeth and a wig, whereas
that officer wore his own hair and had a set of teeth
which would have done honour to a London belle
and was really the hidden cause of Captain Vincent
appearing so often wreathed in smiles.</p>
<p> That ship at this great distance and steering in his
direction held Peyrol at the window long enough for
the increasing light of the morning to burst into
sunshine, colouring and filling-in the flat outline of
the land with tints of wood and rock and field, with
clear dots of buildings enlivening the view. The sun
threw a sort of halo around the ship. Recollecting
himself, Peyrol left the room and shut the door quietly.
Quietly too he descended the stairs from his garret.
On the landing he underwent a short inward struggle,
at the end of which he approached the door of
Catherine's room and opening it a little, put his head
in. Across the whole width of it he saw Arlette fast
asleep. Her aunt had thrown a light coverlet over
her. Her low shoes stood at the foot of the bed. Her
black hair lay loose on the pillow; and Peyrol's gaze
became arrested by the long eyelashes on her pale
cheek. Suddenly he fancied she moved, and he
withdrew his head sharply, pulling the door to. He
listened for a moment as if tempted to open it again,
but judging it too risky, continued on his way downstairs.
At his reappearance in the kitchen Catherine
turned sharply. She was dressed for the day, with a
big white cap on her head, a black bodice and a
brown skirt with ample folds. She had a pair of
varnished sabots on her feet over her shoes.</p>
<p> ``No signs of Scevola,'' she said, advancing towards
Peyrol. ``And Michel too has not been here yet.''</p>
<p> Peyrol thought that if she had been only shorter,
what with her black eyes and slightly curved nose
she would have looked like a witch. But witches can
read people's thoughts, and he looked openly at
Catherine with the pleasant conviction that she could
not read his thoughts. He said:</p>
<p> ``I took good care not to make any noise upstairs,
Mademoiselle Catherine. When I am gone the house
will be empty and quiet enough.''</p>
<p> She had a curious expression. She struck Peyrol
suddenly as if she were lost in that kitchen in which A
she had reigned for many years. He continued:</p>
<p> ``You will be alone all the morning.''</p>
<p> She seemed to be listening to some distant sound,
and after Peyrol had added, ``Everything is all right
now,'' she nodded and after a moment said in a
manner that for her was unexpectedly impulsive:</p>
<p> ``Monsieur Peyrol, I am tired of life.''</p>
<p> He shrugged his shoulders and with somewhat
sinister jocosity remarked:</p>
<p> ``I will tell you what it is; you ought to have been
married.''</p>
<p> She turned her back on him abruptly.</p>
<p> ``No offence,'' Peyrol excused himself in a tone of
gloom rather than of apology. ``It is no use to attach
any importance to things. What is this life? Phew!
Nobody can remember one-tenth of it. Here I am;
and, you know, I would bet that if one of my old-time
chums came along and saw me like this, here with
you---I mean one of those chums that stand up for a
fellow in a scrimmage and look after him should he
be hurt---well, I bet,'' he repeated, ``he wouldn't
know me. He would say to himself perhaps, `Hullo!
here's a comfortable married couple.' ''</p>
<p> He paused. Catherine, with her back to him and
calling him, not ``Monsieur,'' but ``Peyrol,'' tout
court, remarked, not exactly with displeasure, but
rather with an ominous accent that this was no time
for idle talk. Peyrol, however, continued, though
his tone was very far from being that of idle talk:</p>
<p> ``But you see, Mademoiselle Catherine, you were
not like the others. You allowed yourself to be struck
all of a heap, and at the same time you were too hard
on yourself.''</p>
<p> Her long thin frame, bent low to work the bellows
under the enormous overmantel, she assented: ``Perhaps!
We Escampobar women were always hard on
ourselves.''</p>
<p> ``That's what I say. If you had had things happen
to you which happened to me. . . .''</p>
<p> ``But you men, you are different. lt doesn't matter
what you do. You have got your own strength. You
need not be hard on yourselves. You go from one
thing to another thoughtlessly.''</p>
<p> He remained looking at her searchingly with something
like a hint of a smile on his shaven lips, but she
turned away to the sink where one of the women
working about the farm had deposited a great pile of
vegetables. She started on them with a broken-bladed
knife, preserving her sibylline air even in that homely
occupation.</p>
<p> ``It will be a good soup, I see, at noon to-day,'' said
the rover suddenly. He turned on his heels and went
out through the salle. The whole world lay open to
him, or at any rate the whole of the Mediterranean,
viewed down the ravine between the two hills. The
bell of the farm's milch-cow, which had a talent for
keeping herself invisible, reached him from the right,
but he could not see as much as the tips of her horns,
though he looked for them. He stepped out sturdily.
He had not gone twenty yards down the ravine when
another sound made him stand still as if changed
into stone. It was a faint noise resembling very much
the hollow rumble an empty farm-cart would make
on a stony road, but Peyrol looked up at the sky,
and though it was perfectly clear, he did not seem
pleased with its aspect. He had a hill on each side
of him and the placid cove below his feet. He
muttered ``H'm! Thunder at sunrise. It must be in
the west. It only wanted that!'' He feared it would
first kill the little breeze there was and then knock
the weather up altogether. For a moment all his
faculties seemed paralyzed by that faint sound. On
that sea ruled by the gods of Olympus he might have
been a pagan mariner subject to Jupiter's caprices;
but like a defiant pagan he shook his fist vaguely at
space which answered him by a short and threatening
mutter. Then he swung on his way till he caught
sight of the two mastheads of the tartane, when he
stopped to listen. No sound of any sort reached him
from there, and he went on his way thinking, ``Go
from one thing to another thoughtlessly! Indeed!
. . . That's all old Catherine knows about it.'' He
had so many things to think of that he did not know
which to lay hold of first. He just let them lie jumbled
up in his head. His feelings too were in a state of
confusion, and vaguely he felt that his conduct was
at the mercy of an internal conflict. The consciousness
of that fact accounted perhaps for his sardonic
attitude towards himself and outwardly towards those
whom he perceived on board the tartane; and
especially towards the lieutenant whom he saw sitting
on the deck leaning against the head of the rudder,
characteristically aloof from the two other persons on
board. Michel, also characteristically, was standing
on the top of the little cabin scuttle, obviously looking
out for his ``ma<i^>tre.'' Citizen Scevola, sitting on deck,
seemed at first sight to be at liberty, but as a matter
of fact he was not. He was loosely tied up to a
stanchion by three turns of the mainsheet with the
knot in such a position that he could not get at it
without attracting attention; and that situation seemed
also somewhat characteristic of Citizen Scevola with
its air of half liberty, half suspicion and, as it were,
contemptuous restraint. The sans-culotte, whose late
experiences had nearly unsettled his reason, first by
their utter incomprehensibility and afterwards by the
enigmatical attitude of Peyrol, had dropped his head
and folded his arms on his breast. And that attitude
was dubious too. It might have been resignation or
it might have been profound sleep. The rover
addressed himself first to the lieutenant.</p>
<p> ``Le moment approche,'' said Peyrol with a queer
twitch at a corner of his lip, while under his soft
woollen cap his venerable locks stirred in the breath
of a suddenly warm air. ``The great moment---eh?''</p>
<p> He leaned over the big tiller, and seemed to be
hovering above the lieutenant's shoulder.</p>
<p> ``What's this infernal company?'' murmured the
latter without even looking at Peyrol.</p>
<p> ``All old friends---quoi?'' said Peyrol in a homely
tone. ``We will keep that little affair amongst ourselves.
The fewer the men the greater the glory.
Catherine is getting the vegetables ready for the
noonday soup and the Englishman is coming down
towards the Passe where he will arrive about noon
too, ready to have his eye put out. You know, lieutenant,
that will be your job. You may depend on
me for sending you off when the moment comes.
For what is it to you? You have no friends, you have
not even a petite amie. As to expecting an old rover
like me---oh no, lieutenant! Of course liberty is
sweet, but what do you know of it, you epaulette-wearers?
Moreover, I am no good for quarter-deck
talks and all that politeness.''</p>
<p> ``I wish, Peyrol, you would not talk so much,'' said
Lieutenant R<e'>al, turning his head slightly. He was
struck by the strange expression on the old rover's
face. ``And I don't see what the actual moment
matters. I am going to look for the fleet. All you
have to do is to hoist the sails for me and then scramble
ashore.''</p>
<p> ``Very simple,'' observed Peyrol through his teeth,
and then began to sing:<p> ``Quoique leurs chapeaux sont bien laids
God-dam! Moi, j'aime les Anglais
Ils ont un si bon caract<e`>re!''</p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
</p>
<h2><dedication></h2>
<p> ``H<e'>! Citoyen!'' and then remarked confidentially
to R<e'>al: ``He isn't asleep, you know, but he isn't like
the English, he has a sacr<e'> mauvais caract<e`>re. He
got into his head,'' continued Peyrol, in a loud and
innocent tone, ``that you locked him up in this cabin
last night. Did you notice the venomous glance he
gave you just now?''</p>
<p> Both Lieutenant R<e'>al and the innocent Michel
appeared surprised at his boisterousness; but all the
time Peyrol was thinking: ``I wish to goodness I knew
how that thunderstorm is getting on and what course
it is shaping. I can't find that out unless I go up to
the farm and get a view to the westward. It may be
as far as the Rh<o^>ne Valley; no doubt it is and it will
come out of it too, curses on it. One won't be able
to reckon on half an hour of steady wind from any
quarter.'' He directed a look of ironic gaiety at all
the faces in turn. Michel met it with a faithful-dog
gaze and innocently open mouth. Scevola kept his
chin buried on his chest. Lieutenant R<e'>al was
insensible to outward impressions and his absent stare
made nothing of Peyrol. The rover himself presently
fell into thought. The last stir of air died out in the
little basin, and the sun clearing Porquerolles inundated
it with a sudden light in which Michel blinked
like an owl.</p>
<p> ``It's hot early,'' he announced aloud but only
because he had formed the habit of talking to himself.
He would not have presumed to offer an opinion
unless asked by Peyrol.</p>
<p> His voice having recalled Peyrol to himself, he
proposed to masthead the yards and even asked
Lieutenant R<e'>al to help in that operation which was
accomplished in silence except for the faint squeaking
of the blocks. The sails, however, were kept hauled
up in the gear.</p>
<p> ``Like this,'' said Peyrol, ``you have only to let go
the ropes and you will be under canvas at once.''</p>
<p> Without answering R<e'>al returned to his position by
the rudder-head. He was saying to himself---``I am
sneaking off. No, there is honour, duty. And of
course I will return. But when? They will forget all
about me and I shall never be exchanged. This war
may last for years,---'' and illogically he wished he
could have had a God to whom he could pray for
relief in his anguish. ``She will be in despair,'' he
thought, writhing inwardly at the mental picture of a
distracted Arlette. Life, however, had embittered his
spirit early, and he said to himself: ``But in a month's
time will she even give me a thought?'' Instantly he
felt remorseful with a remorse strong enough to lift
him to his feet as if he were morally obliged to go up
again and confess to Arlette this sacrilegious cynicism
of thought. ``I am mad,'' he muttered, perching
himself on the low rail. His lapse from faith plunged
him into such a depth of unhappiness that he felt all
his strength of will go out of him. He sat there
apathetic and suffering. He meditated dully: ``Young
men have been known to die suddenly; why should
not I? I am, as a matter of fact, at the end of my
endurance. I am half dead already. Yes! but what
is left of that life does not belong to me now.''</p>
<p> ``Peyrol,'' he said in such a piercing tone that even
Scevola jerked his head up; but he made an effort to
reduce his shrillness and went on speaking very
carefully: ``I have left a letter for the Secretary
General at the Majorit<e'> to pay twenty-five hundred
francs to Jean---you are Jean, are you not?---Peyrol,
price of the tartane in which I sail. Is that right?''</p>
<p> ``What did you do that for?'' asked Peyrol with an
extremely stony face. ``To get me into trouble?''</p>
<p> ``Don't be a fool, gunner, nobody remembers your,
name. It is buried under a stack of blackened paper.
I must ask you to go there and tell them that you have
seen with your own eyes Lieutenant R<e'>al sail away
on his mission.''</p>
<p> The stoniness of Peyrol persisted but his eyes were
full of fury. ``Oh, yes, I see myself going there.
Twenty-five hundred francs! Twenty-five hundred
fiddlesticks.'' His tone changed suddenly. ``I heard
some one say that you were an honest man, and I
suppose this is a proof of it. Well, to the devil with
your honesty.'' He glared at the lieutenant and
then thought: ``He doesn't even pretend to listen to
what I say''---and another sort of anger, partly
contemptuous and with something of dim sympathy
in it, replaced his downright fury. ``Pah!'' he said,
spat over the side, and walking up to R<e'>al with great
deliberation, slapped him on the shoulder. The only
effect of this proceeding was to make R<e'>al look up at
him without any expression whatever.</p>
<p> Peyrol then picked up the lieutenant's valise and
carried it down into the cuddy. As he passed by,
Citizen Scevola uttered the word ``Citoyen'' but it
was only when he came back again that Peyrol
condescended to say, ``Well?''</p>
<p> ``What are you going to do with me?'' asked
Scevola.</p>
<p> ``You would not give me an account of how you
came on board this tartane,'' said Peyrol in a tone
that sounded almost friendly, ``therefore I need not
tell you what I will do with you.''</p>
<p> A low muttering of thunder followed so close upon
his words that it might have come out of Peyrol's own
lips. The rover gazed uneasily at the sky. It was
still clear overhead, and at the bottom of that little
basin surrounded by rocks there was no view in any
other direction; but even as he gazed there was a sort
of flicker in the sunshine succeeded by a mighty but
distant clap of thunder. For the next half hour Peyrol
and Michel were busy ashore taking a long line from
the tartane to the entrance of the little basin where
they fastened the end of it to a bush. This was for
the purpose of hauling the tartane out into the cove.
Then they came aboard again. The bit of sky above
their heads was still clear, but while walking with the
hauling line near the cove Peyrol had got a glimpse
of the edge of the cloud. The sun grew scorching all
of a sudden, and in the stagnating air a mysterious
change seemed to come over the quality and the colour
of the light. Peyrol flung his cap on the deck, baring
his head to the subtle menace of the breathless stillness
of the air.</p>
<p> ``Phew! <C,>a chauffe,' he muttered, rolling up the
sleeves of his jacket. He wiped his forehead with his
mighty forearm upon which a mermaid with an
immensely long fishtail was tattooed. Perceiving the
lieutenant's belted sword lying on the deck, he picked
it up and without any ceremony threw it down the
cabin stairs. As he was passing again near Scevola,
the sans-culotte raised his voice.</p>
<p> ``I believe you are one of those wretches corrupted
by English gold,'' he cried like one inspired. His
shining eyes, his red cheeks, testified to the fire of
patriotism burning in his breast, and he used that
conventional phrase of revolutionary time, a time
when, intoxicated with oratory, he used to run about
dealing death to traitors of both sexes and all ages.
But his denunciation was received in such profound
silence that his own belief in it wavered. His words
had sunk into an abysmal stillness and the next sound
was Peyrol speaking to R<e'>al.</p>
<p> ``I am afraid you will get very wet, lieutenant,
before long,'' and then, looking at R<e'>al, he thought
with great conviction: ``Wet! He wouldn't mind
getting drowned.'' Standing stock-still he fretted and
fumed inwardly, wondering where precisely the
English ship was by this time and where the devil
that thunderstorm had got to: for the sky had become
as mute as the oppressed earth. R<e'>al asked:</p>
<p> ``Is it not time to haul out, gunner?'' And Peyrol
said:</p>
<p> ``There is not a breath of wind anywhere for miles.''
He was gratified by the fairly loud mutter rolling
apparently along the inland hills. Over the pool a
little ragged cloud torn from the purple robe of the
storm floated, arrested and thin like a bit of dark
gauze.</p>
<p> Above at the farm Catherine had heard too the
ominous mutter and came to the door of the salle.
From there she could see the purple cloud itself,
convoluted and solid, and its sinister shadow lying
over the hills. The oncoming of the storm added to
her sense of uneasiness at finding herself all alone in
the house. Michel had not come up. She would
have welcomed Michel, to whom she hardly ever
spoke, simply as a person belonging to the usual order
of things. She was not talkative, but somehow she
would have liked somebody to speak to just for a
moment. This cessation of all sound, voices or footsteps,
around the buildings was not welcome; but
looking at the cloud, she thought that there would be
noise enough presently. However, stepping back into
the kitchen, she was met by a sound that made her
regret the oppressive silence, by its piercing and
terrifying character; it was a shriek in the upper part
of the house where, as far as she knew, there was
only Arlette asleep. In her attempt to cross the
kitchen to the foot of the stairs the weight of her
accumulated years fell upon the old woman. She
felt suddenly very feeble and hardly able to breathe.
And all at once the thought, ``Scevola! Was he
murdering her up there?'' paralyzed the last remnant
of her physical powers. What else could it be? She
fell, as if shot, into a chair under the first shock and
found herself unable to move. Only her brain
remained active, and she raised her hands to her eyes
as if to shut out the image of the horrors upstairs.
She heard nothing more from above. Arlette was
dead. She thought that now it was her turn. While
her body quailed before the brutal violence, her weary
spirit longed ardently f or the end. Let him come!
Let all this be over at last, with a blow on the head
or a stab in the breast. She had not the courage to
uncover her eyes. She waited. But after about a
minute---it seemed to her interminable---she heard
rapid footsteps overhead. Arlette was running here
and there. Catherine uncovered her eyes and was
about to rise when she heard at the top of the stairs
the name of Peyrol shouted with a desperate accent.
Then, again, after the shortest of pauses, the cry of:
``Peyrol, Peyrol!'' and then the sound of feet running
downstairs. There was another shriek, ``Peyrol!'' just
outside the door before it flew open. Who was
pursuing her? Catherine managed to stand up.
Steadying herself with one hand on the table she
presented an undaunted front to her niece who ran
into the kitchen with loose hair flying and the
appearance of wildest distraction in her eyes.</p>
<p> The staircase door had slammed to behind her.
Nobody was pursuing her; and Catherine, putting
forth her lean brown arm, arrested Arlette's flight
with such a jerk that the two women swung against
each other. She seized her niece by the shoulders.</p>
<p> ``What is this, in Heaven's name? Where are you
rushing to?'' she cried, and the other, as if suddenly
exhausted, whispered:</p>
<p> ``I woke up from an awful dream.''</p>
<p> The kitchen grew dark under the cloud that hung
over the house now. There was a feeble flicker of
lightning and a faint crash, far away.</p>
<p> The old woman gave her niece a little shake.</p>
<p> ``Dreams are nothing,'' she said. ``You are awake
now. . . .'' And indeed Catherine thought that no
dream could be so bad as the realities which kept
hold of one through the long waking hours.</p>
<p> ``They were killing him,'' moaned Arlette, beginning
to tremble and struggle in her aunt's arms. ``I
tell you they were killing him.''</p>
<p> ``Be quiet. Were you dreaming of Peyrol?''</p>
<p> She became still in a moment and then whispered:
``No. Eug<e`>ne.''</p>
<p> She had seen R<e'>al set upon by a mob of men and
women, all dripping with blood, in a livid cold light,
in front of a stretch of mere shells of houses with
cracked walls and broken windows, and going down
in the midst of a forest of raised arms brandishing
sabres, clubs, knives, axes. There was also a man
flourishing a red rag on a stick, while another was
beating a drum which boomed above the sickening
sound of broken glass falling like rain on the pavement.
And away round the corner of an empty street came
Peyrol whom she recognized by his white head,
walking without haste, swinging his cudgel regularly.
The terrible thing was that Peyrol looked straight at
her, not noticing anything, composed, without a frown
or a smile, unseeing and deaf, while she waved her
arms and shrieked desperately to him for help. She
woke up with the piercing sound of his name in her
ears and with the impression of the dream so powerful
that even now, looking distractedly into her aunt's
face, she could see the bare arms of that murderous
crowd raised above R<e'>al's sinking head. Yet the
name that had sprung to her lips on waking was the
name of Peyrol. She pushed her aunt away with
such force that the old woman staggered backwards
and to save herself had to catch hold of the overmantel
above her head. Arlette ran to the door of the salle,
looked in, came back to her aunt and shouted:
``Where is he?''</p>
<p> Catherine really did not know which path the
lieutenant had taken. She understood very well that
``he'' meant R<e'>al.</p>
<p> She said: ``He went away a long time ago''
grasped her niece's arm and added with an effort to
steady her voice: ``He is coming back, Arlette---for
nothing will keep him away from you.''</p>
<p> Arlette, as if mechanically, was whispering to herself
the magic name, ``Peyrol, Peyrol!'' then cried:
``I want Eug<e`>ne now. This moment.''</p>
<p> Catherine's face wore a look of unflinching patience.
``He has departed on service,'' she said. Her niece
looked at her with enormous eyes, coal-black, profound,
and immovable, while in a forcible and distracted
tone she said: ``You and Peyrol have been
plotting to rob me of my reason. But I will know how
to make that old man give him up. He is mine!''
She spun round wildly like a person looking for a way
of escape from a deadly peril, and rushed out blindly.</p>
<p> About Escampobar the air was murky but calm,
and the silence was so profound that it was possible to
hear the first heavy drops of rain striking the ground.
In the intimidating shadow of the storm-cloud, Arlette
stood irresolute for a moment, but it was to Peyrol,
the man of mystery and power, that her thoughts
turned. She was ready to embrace his knees, to
entreat and to scold. ``Peyrol, Peyrol!'' she cried
twice, and lent her ear as if expecting an answer.
Then she shouted: ``I want him back.''</p>
<p> Catherine, alone in the kitchen, moving with
dignity, sat down in the armchair with the tall back,
like a senator in his curule chair awaiting the blow of
a barbarous fate.</p>
<p> Arlette flew down the slope. The first sign of her
coming was a faint thin scream which really the rover
alone heard and understood. He pressed his lips in a
particular way, showing his appreciation of the coming
difficulty. The next moment he saw, poised on a
detached boulder and thinly veiled by the first perpendicular
shower, Arlette, who, catching sight of the
tartane with the men on board of her, let out a
prolonged shriek of mingled triumph and despair:
``Peyrol! Help! Pey------rol!''</p>
<p> R<e'>al jumped to his feet with an extremely scared
face, but Peyrol extended an arresting arm. ``She is
calling to me,'' he said, gazing at the figure poised on
the rock. ``Well leaped! Sacr<e'> nom! . . . Well
leaped!'' And he muttered to himself soberly: ``She
will break her legs or her neck.''</p>
<p> ``I see you, Peyrol,'' screamed Arlette, who seemed
to be flying through the air. ``Don't you dare.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, here I am,'' shouted the rover, striking his
breast with his fist.</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al put both his hands over his face.
Michel looked on open-mouthed, very much as if
watching a performance in a circus; but Scevola cast
his eyes down. Arlette came on board with such an
impetus that Peyrol had to step forward and save
her from a fall which would have stunned her. She
struggled in his arms with extreme violence. The
heiress of Escampobar with her loose black hair
seemed the incarnation of pale fury. ``Mis<e'>rable!
Don't you dare!'' A roll of thunder covered her voice,
but when it had passed away she was heard again in
suppliant tones. ``Peyrol, my friend, my dear old
friend. Give him back to me,'' and all the time her
body writhed in the arms of the old seaman. ``You
used to love me, Peyrol,'' she cried without ceasing to
struggle, and suddenly struck the rover twice in the
face with her clenched fist. Peyrol's head received
the two blows as if it had been made of marble, but
he felt with fear her body become still, grow rigid in
his arms. A heavy squall enveloped the group of
people on board the tartane. Peyrol laid Arlette
gently on the deck. Her eyes were closed, her hands
remained clenched; every sign of life had left her
white face. Peyrol stood up and looked at the tall
rocks streaming with water. The rain swept over the
tartane with an angry swishing roar to which was
added the sound of water rushing violently down the
folds and seams of the precipitous shore vanishing
gradually from his sight, as if this had been the
beginning of a destroying and universal deluge---the
end of all things.</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al, kneeling on one knee, contemplated
the pale face of Arlette. Distinct, yet mingling
with the faint growl of distant thunder, Peyrol's voice
was heard saying:</p>
<p> ``We can't put her ashore and leave her lying in the
rain. She must be taken up to the house.'' Arlette's
soaked clothes clung to her limbs while the lieutenant,
his bare head dripping with rain water, looked as if
he had just saved her from drowning. Peyrol gazed
down inscrutably at the woman stretched on the deck
and at the kneeling man. ``She has fainted from
rage at her old Peyrol,'' he went on rather dreamily.
``Strange things do happen. However, lieutenant,
you had better take her under the arms and step
ashore first. I will help you. Ready? Lift.''</p>
<p> The movements of the two men had to be careful
and their progress was slow on the lower, steep part
of the slope. After going up more than two-thirds of
the way, they rested their insensible burden on a flat
stone. R<e'>al continued to sustain the shoulders but
Peyrol lowered the feet gently.</p>
<p> ``Ha!'' he said. ``You will be able to carry her
yourself the rest of the way and give her up to old
Catherine. Get a firm footing and I will lift her and
place her in your arms. You can walk the distance
quite easily. There. . . . Hold her a little higher,
or her feet will be catching on the stones.''</p>
<p> Arlette's hair was hanging far below the lieutenant's
arm in an inert and heavy mass. The thunderstorm
was passing away, leaving a cloudy sky. And Peyrol
thought with a profound sigh: ``I am tired.''</p>
<p> ``She is light,'' said R<e'>al.</p>
<p> ``Parbleu, she is light. If she were dead, you would
find her heavy enough. Allons, lieutenant. No! I
am not coming. What's the good? I'll stay down
here. I have no mind to listen to Catherine's
scolding.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant, looking absorbed into the face
resting in the hollow of his arm, never averted his
gaze---not even when Peyrol, stooping over Arlette,
kissed the white forehead near the roots of the hair,
black as a raven's wing.</p>
<p> ``What am I to do?'' muttered R<e'>al.</p>
<p> ``Do? Why, give her up to old Catherine. And
you may just as well tell her that I will be coming
along directly. That will cheer her up. I used to
count for something in that house. Allez. For our
time is very short.''</p>
<p> With these words he turned away and walked
slowly down to the tartane. A breeze had sprung up.
He felt it on his wet neck and was grateful for the
cool touch which recalled him to himself, to his old
wandering self which had known no softness and no
hesitation in the face of any risk offered by life.</p>
<p> As he stepped on board, the shower passed away.
Michel, wet to the skin, was still in the very same
attitude gazing up the slope. Citizen Scevola had
drawn his knees up and was holding his head in his
hands; whether because of rain or cold or for some
other reason, his teeth were chattering audibly with
a continuous and distressing rattle. Peyrol flung off
his jacket, heavy with water, with a strange air as if
it was of no more use to his mortal envelope, squared
his broad shoulders and directed Michel in a deep,
quiet voice to let go the lines holding the tartane to
the shore. The faithful henchman was taken aback
and required one of Peyrol's authoritative ``Allez'' to
put him in motion. Meantime the rover cast off the
tiller lines and laid his hand with an air of mastery
on the stout piece of wood projecting horizontally
from the rudder-head about the level of his hip. The
voices and the movements of his companions caused
Citizen Scevola to master the desperate trembling of
his jaw. He wriggled a little in his bonds and the
question that had been on his lips for a good many
hours was uttered again.</p>
<p> ``What are you going to do with me?''</p>
<p> ``What do you think of a little promenade at sea?''
Peyrol asked in a tone that was not unkindly.</p>
<p> Citizen Scevola, who had seemed totally and
completely cast down and subdued, let out a most
unexpected screech.</p>
<p> ``Unbind me. Put me ashore.''</p>
<p> Michel, busy forward, was moved to smile as though
he had possessed a cultivated sense of incongruity.
Peyrol remained serious.</p>
<p> ``You shall be untied presently,'' he assured the
blood-drinking patriot, who had been for so many
years the reputed possessor not only of Escampobar,
but of the Escampobar heiress that, living on appearances,
he had almost come to believe in that ownership
himself. No wonder he screeched at this rude
awakening. Peyrol raised his voice: ``Haul on the
line, Michel.''</p>
<p> As, directly the ropes had been let go, the tartane
had swung clear of the shore, the movement given her
by Michel carried her towards the entrance by which
the basin communicated with the cove. Peyrol
attended to the helm, and in a moment, gliding
through the narrow gap, the tartane carrying her
way, shot out almost into the middle of the cove.</p>
<p> A little wind could be felt, running light wrinkles
over the water, but outside the overshadowed sea was
already speckled with white caps. Peyrol helped
Michel to haul aft the sheets and then went back to
the tiller. The pretty spick-and-span craft that had
been lying idle for so long began to glide into the
wide world. Michel gazed at the shore as if lost in
admiration. Citizen Scevola's head had fallen on
his knees while his nerveless hands clasped his legs
loosely. He was the very image of dejection.</p>
<p> ``H<e'>, Michel! Come here and cast loose the citizen.
It is only fair that he should be untied for a little
excursion at sea.''</p>
<p> When his order had been executed, Peyrol addressed
himself to the desolate figure on the deck.</p>
<p> ``Like this, should the tartane get capsized in a
squall, you will have an equal chance with us to swim
for your life.''</p>
<p> Scevola disdained to answer. He was engaged in
biting his knee with rage in a stealthy fashion.</p>
<p> ``You came on board for some murderous purpose.
Who you were after unless it was myself, God only
knows. I feel quite justified in giving you a little
outing at sea. I won't conceal from you, citizen, that
it may not be without risk to life or limb. But you
have only yourself to thank for being here.''</p>
<p> As the tartane drew clear of the cove, she felt more
the weight of the breeze and darted forward with a
lively motion. A vaguely contented smile lighted up
Michel's hairy countenance.</p>
<p> ``She feels the sea,'' said Peyrol, who enjoyed the
swift movement of his vessel. ``This is different from
your lagoon, Michel.''</p>
<p> ``To be sure,'' said Michel with becoming gravity.</p>
<p> ``Doesn't it seem funny to you, as you look back at
the shore, to think that you have left nothing and
nobody behind?''</p>
<p> Michel assumed the aspect of a man confronted by
an intellectual problem. Since he had become
Peyrol's henchman he had lost the habit of thinking
altogether. Directions and orders were easy things to
apprehend; but a conversation with him whom he
called ``notre ma<i^>tre'' was a serious matter demanding
great and concentrated attention.</p>
<p> ``Possibly,'' he murmured, looking strangely self-conscious.</p>
<p> ``Well, you are lucky, take my word for it,'' said
the rover, watching the course of his little vessel along
the head of the peninsula. ``You have not even a
dog to miss you.''</p>
<p> ``I have only you, Ma<i^>tre Peyrol.''</p>
<p> ``That's what I was thinking,'' said Peyrol half to
himself, while Michel, who had good sea-legs, kept
his balance to the movements of the craft without
taking his eyes from the rover's face.</p>
<p> ``No,'' Peyrol exclaimed suddenly, after a moment
of meditation, ``I could not leave you behind.'' He
extended his open palm towards Michel.</p>
<p> ``Put your hand in there,'' he said.</p>
<p> Michel hesitated for a moment before this extraordinary
proposal. At last he did so, and Peyrol,
holding the bereaved fisherman's hand in a powerful
grip, said:</p>
<p> ``If I had gone away by myself, I would have left
you marooned on this earth like a man thrown out to
die on a desert island.'' Some dim perception of the
solemnity of the occasion seemed to enter Michel's
primitive brain. He connected Peyrol's words with
the sense of his own insignificant position at the tail
of all mankind; and, timidly, he murmured with his
clear, innocent glance unclouded, the fundamental
axiom of his philosophy:</p>
<p> ``Somebody must be last in this world.''</p>
<p> ``Well, then, you will have to forgive me all that
may happen between this and the hour of sunset.''</p>
<p> The tartane, obeying the helm, fell off before the
wind, with her head to the eastward.</p>
<p> Peyrol murmured: ``She has not forgotten how to
walk the seas.'' His unsubdued heart, heavy for so
many days, had a moment of buoyancy---the illusion
of immense freedom.</p>
<p> At that moment R<e'>al, amazed at finding no tartane
in the basin, was running madly towards the cove,
where he was sure Peyrol must be waiting to give her
up to him. He ran out on to the very rock on which
Peyrol's late prisoner had sat after his escape, too
tired to care, yet cheered by the hope of liberty.
But R<e'>al was in a worse plight. He could see no
shadowy form through the thin veil of rain which
pitted the sheltered piece of water framed in the rocks.
The little craft had been spirited away. Impossible!
There must be something wrong with his eyes! Again
the barren hillsides echoed the name of ``Peyrol,''
shouted with all the force of R<e'>al's lungs. He shouted
it only once, and about five minutes afterwards
appeared at the kitchen-door, panting, streaming with
water as if he had fought his way up from the bottom
of the sea. In the tall-backed armchair Arlette lay,
with her limbs relaxed, her head on Catherine's arm,
her face white as death. He saw her open her black
eyes, enormous and as if not of this world; he saw old
Catherine turn her head, heard a cry of surprise, and
saw a sort of struggle beginning between the two
women. He screamed at them like a madman:
``Peyrol has betrayed me!'' and in an instant, with a
bang of the door, he was gone.</p>
<p> The rain had ceased. Above his head the unbroken
mass of clouds moved to the eastward, and he moved
in the same direction as if he too were driven by the
wind up the hillside, towards the lookout. When he
reached the spot and, gasping, flung one arm round
the trunk of the leaning tree, the only thing he was
aware of during the sombre pause in the unrest of the
elements was the distracting turmoil of his thoughts.
After a moment he perceived through the rain the
English ship with her topsails lowered on the caps,
forging ahead slowly across the northern entrance of
the Petite Passe. His distress fastened insanely on
the notion of there being a connection between that
enemy ship and Peyrol's inexplicable conduct. That
old man had always meant to go himself! And when
a moment after, looking to the southward, he made
out the shadow of the tartane coming round the land
in the midst of another squall, he muttered to himself
a bitter: ``Of course!'' She had both her sails set.
Peyrol was indeed pressing her to the utmost in his
shameful haste to traffic with the enemy. The truth
was that from the position in which R<e'>al first saw
him, Peyrol could not yet see the English ship, and
held confidently on his course up the middle of the
strait. The man-of-war and the little tartane saw
each other quite unexpectedly at a distance that was
very little over a mile. Peyrol's heart flew into his
mouth at finding himself so close to the enemy. On
board the <u>Amelia</u> at first no notice was taken. It was
simply a tartane making for shelter on the north side
of Porquerolles. But when Peyrol suddenly altered
his course, the master of the man-of-war, noticing the
man<oe>uvre, took up the long glass for a look. Captain
Vincent was on deck and agreed with the master's
remark that ``there was a craft acting suspiciously.''
Before the <u>Amelia</u> could come round in the heavy
squall, Peyrol was already under the battery of
Porquerolles and, so far, safe from capture. Captain
Vincent had no mind to bring his ship within reach
of the battery and risk damage in his rigging or hull
for the sake of a small coaster. However, the tale
brought on board by Symons of his discovery of a
hidden craft, of his capture, and his wonderful escape,
had made every tartane an object of interest to the
whole ship's company. The <u>Amelia</u> remained hove to
in the strait while her officers watched the lateen sails
gliding to and fro under the protecting muzzles of the
guns. Captain Vincent himself had been impressed
by Peyrol's man<oe>uvre. Coasting craft as a rule were
not afraid of the <u>Amelia</u>. After taking a few turns on
the quarter-deck he ordered Symons to be called aft.</p>
<p> The hero of a unique and mysterious adventure,
which had been the only subject of talk on board the
corvette for the last twenty-four hours, came along
rolling, hat in hand, and enjoying a secret sense of
his importance.</p>
<p> ``Take the glass,'' said the captain, ``and have a
look at that vessel under the land. Is she anything
like the tartane that you say you have been aboard
of?''</p>
<p> Symons was very positive. ``I think I can swear
to those painted mastheads, your honour. It is the
last thing I remember before that murderous ruffian
knocked me senseless. The moon shone on them.
I can make them out now with the glass.'' As to the
fellow boasting to him that the tartane was a dispatch-boat
and had already made some trips, well, Symons
begged his honour to believe that the beggar was not
sober at the time. He did not care what he blurted
out. The best proof of his condition was that he went
away to fetch the soldiers and forgot to come back.
The murderous old ruffian! ``You see, your honour,'<code>
continued Symons, ``he thought I was not likely to
escape after getting a blow that would have killed
nine out of any ten men. So he went away to boast
of what he had done before the people ashore; because
one of his chums, worse than himself, came down
thinking he would kill me with a dam</code> big manure
fork, saving your honour's presence. A regular
savage he was.''</p>
<p> Symons paused, staring, as if astonished at the
marvels of his own tale. The old master, standing at
his captain's elbow, observed in a dispassionate tone
that, anyway, that peninsula was not a bad jumping-off
place for a craft intending to slip through the
blockade. Symons, not being dismissed, waited hat
in hand while Captain Vincent directed the master to
fill on the ship and stand a little nearer to the battery.
It was done, and presently there was a flash of a gun
low down on the water's edge and a shot came
skipping in the direction of the <u>Amelia</u>. It fell very
short, but Captain Vincent judged the ship was close
enough and ordered her to be hove to again. Then
Symons was told to take a look through the glass
once more. After a long interval he lowered it and
spoke impressively to his captain:</p>
<p> ``I can make out three heads aboard, your honour,
and one is white. I would swear to that white head
anywhere.''</p>
<p> Captain Vincent made no answer. All this seemed
very odd to him; but after all it was possible. The
craft had certainly acted suspiciously. He spoke to
the first lieutenant in a half-vexed tone.</p>
<p> ``He has done a rather smart thing. He will dodge
here till dark and then get away. lt is perfectly
absurd. I don't want to send the boats too close to
the battery. And if I do he may simply sail away
from them and be round the land long before we are
ready to give him chase. Darkness will be his best
friend. However, we will keep a watch on him in
case he is tempted to give us the slip late in the afternoon.
In that case we will have a good try to catch
him. If he has anything aboard I should like to get
hold of it. It may be of some importance, after all.''</p>
<p> On board the tartane Peyrol put his own interpretation
on the ship's movements. His object had been
attained. The corvette had marked him for her prey.
Satisfied as to that, Peyrol watched his opportunity
and taking advantage of a long squall, with rain thick
enough to blur the form of the English ship, he left
the shelter of the battery to lead the Englishman a
dance and keep up his character of a man anxious
to avoid capture.</p>
<p> R<e'>al, from his position on the lookout, saw in the
thinning downpour the pointed lateen sails glide round
the north end of Porquerolles and vanish behind the
land. Some time afterwards the <u>Amelia</u> made sail in
a manner that put it beyond doubt that she meant to
chase. Her lofty canvas was shut off too presently by
the land of Porquerolles. When she had disappeared
R<e'>al turned to Arlette.</p>
<p> ``Let us go,'' he said.</p>
<p> Arlette, stimulated by the short glimpse of R<e'>al at
the kitchen door, whom she had taken for a vision of
a lost man calling her to follow him to the end of the
world, had torn herself out of the old woman's thin,
bony arms which could not cope with the struggles of
her body and the fierceness of her spirit. She had run
straight to the lookout, though there was nothing to
guide her there except a blind impulse to seek R<e'>al
wherever he might be. He was not aware of her
having found him until she seized hold of his arm
with a suddenness, energy and determination of which
no one with a clouded mind could have been capable.
He felt himself being taken possession of in a way that
tore all his scruples out of his breast. Holding on to
the trunk of the tree, he threw his other arm round
her waist, and when she confessed to him that she did
not know why she had run up there, but that if she
had not found him she would have thrown herself
over the cliff, he tightened his clasp with sudden
exultation, as though she had been a gift prayed for
instead of a stumbling block for his pedantic conscience.
Together they walked back. In the failing
light the buildings awaited them, lifeless, the walls
darkened by rain and the big slopes of the roofs
glistening and sinister under the flying desolation of
the clouds. In the kitchen Catherine heard their
mingled footsteps, and rigid in the tall armchair
awaited their coming. Arlette threw her arms round
the old woman's neck while R<e'>al stood on one side,
looking on. Thought after thought flew through his
mind and vanished in the strong feeling of the
irrevocable nature of the event handing him to the
woman whom, in the revulsion of his feelings, he was
inclined to think more sane than himself Arlette,
with one arm over the old woman's shoulders, kissed
the wrinkled forehead under the white band of linen
that, on the erect head, had the effect of a rustic
diadem.</p>
<p> ``To-morrow you and I will have to walk down to
the church.''</p>
<p> The austere dignity of Catherine's pose seemed to
be shaken by this proposal to lead before the God,
with whom she had made her peace long ago, that
unhappy girl chosen to share in the guilt of impious
and unspeakable horrors which had darkened her
mind.</p>
<p> Arlette, still stooping over her aunt's face, extended
a hand towards R<e'>al, who, making a step forward,
took it silently into his grasp.</p>
<p> ``Oh, yes, you will, Aunt,'' insisted Arlette. ``You
will have to come with me to pray for Peyrol, whom
you and I shall never see any more.''</p>
<p> Catherine's head dropped, whether in assent or
grief; and R<e'>al felt an unexpected and profound
emotion, for he, too, was convinced that none of the
three persons in the farm would ever see Peyrol again.
It was as though the rover of the wide seas had left
them to themselves on a sudden impulse of scorn, of
magnanimity, of a passion weary of itself. However
come by, R<e'>al was ready to clasp for ever to his breast
that woman touched by the red hand of the Revolution;
for she, whose little feet had run ankle-deep
through the terrors of death, had brought to him the
sense of triumphant life.<p> CHAPTER XVI</p>
</p>
<p> Astern of the tartane, the sun, about to set, kindled
a streak of dull crimson glow between the darkening
sea and the overcast sky. The peninsula of Giens
and the islands of Hy<e`>res formed one mass of land
detaching itself very black against the fiery girdle of
the horizon; but to the north the long stretch of the
Alpine coast continued beyond sight its endless sinuosities
under the stooping clouds.</p>
<p> The tartane seemed to be rushing together with the
run of the waves into the arms of the oncoming night.
A little more than a mile away on her lee quarter,
the <u>Amelia</u>, under all plain sail, pressed to the end of
the chase. It had lasted now for a good many hours,
for Peyrol, when slipping away, had managed to get
the advantage of the <u>Amelia</u> from the very start.
While still within the large sheet of smooth water
which is called the Hy<e`>res roadstead, the tartane,
which was really a craft of extraordinary speed,
managed to gain positively on the sloop. Afterwards,
by suddenly darting down the eastern passage between
the two last islands of the group, Peyrol actually got
out of sight of the chasing ship, being hidden by the
Ile du Levant for a time. The <u>Amelia</u> having to tack
twice in order to follow, lost ground once more.
Emerging into the open sea, she had to tack again,
and then the position became that of a stern chase,
which proverbially is known as a long chase. Peyrol's
skilful seamanship had twice extracted from Captain
Vincent a low murmur accompanied by a significant
compression of lips. At one time the <u>Amelia</u> had been
near enough the tartane to send a shot ahead of her.
That one was followed by another which whizzed
extraordinarily close to the mastheads, but then
Captain Vincent ordered the gun to be secured again.
He said to his first lieutenant, who, his speaking
trumpet in hand, kept at his elbow: ``We must not
sink that craft on any account. If we could get only
an hour's calm, we would carry her with the boats.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant remarked that there was no hope
of a calm for the next twenty-four hours at least.</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Captain Vincent, ``and in about an
hour it will be dark, and then he may very well give
us the slip. The coast is not very far off and there
are batteries on both sides of Fr<e'>jus, under any of
which he will be as safe from capture as though he
were hove up on the beach. And look,'' he exclaimed
after a moment's pause, ``this is what the fellow means
to do.''</p>
<p> ``Yes, sir,'' said the lieutenant, keeping his eyes on
the white speck ahead, dancing lightly on the short
Mediterranean waves, ``he is keeping off the wind.''</p>
<p> ``We will have him in less than an hour,'' said
Captain Vincent, and made as if he meant to rub
his hands, but suddenly leaned his elbow on the rail.
``After all,'' he went on, ``properly speaking, it is a
race between the <u>Amelia</u> and the night.''</p>
<p> ``And it will be dark early to-day,'' said the first
lieutenant, swinging the speaking trumpet by its
lanyard. ``Shall we take the yards off the back-stays,
sir?''</p>
<p> ``No,'' said Captain Vincent. ``There is a clever
seaman aboard that tartane. He is running off now,
but at any time he may haul up again. We must not
follow him too closely, or we shall lose the advantage
which we have now. That man is determined on
making his escape.''</p>
<p> If those words by some miracle could have been
carried to the ears of Peyrol, they would have brought
to his lips a smile of malicious and triumphant
exultation. Ever since he had laid his hand on the
tiller of the tartane every faculty of his resourcefulness
and seamanship had been bent on deceiving the
English captain, that enemy whom he had never seen,
the man whose mind he had constructed for himself
from the evolutions of his ship. Leaning against the
heavy tiller he addressed Michel, breaking the silence
of the strenuous afternoon.</p>
<p> ``This is the moment,'' his deep voice uttered
quietly. ``Ease off the mainsheet, Michel. A little
now, only.''</p>
<p> When Michel returned to the place where he had
been sitting to windward, the rover noticed his eyes
fixed on his face wonderingly. Some vague thoughts
had been forming themselves slowly, incompletely, in
Michel's brain. Peyrol met the utter innocence of
the unspoken inquiry with a smile that, beginning
sardonically on his manly and sensitive mouth, ended
in something resembling tenderness.</p>
<p> ``That's so, camarade,'' he said with particular
stress and intonation, as if those words contained a full
and sufficient answer. Most unexpectedly Michel's
round and generally staring eyes blinked as if dazzled.
He too produced from somewhere in the depths of
his being a queer, misty smile from which Peyrol
averted his gaze.</p>
<p> ``Where is the citizen?'' he asked, bearing hard
against the tiller and staring straight ahead. ``He
isn't gone overboard, is he? I don't seem to have seen
him since we rounded the land near Porquerolles
Castle.''</p>
<p> Michel, after craning his head forward to look over
the edge of the deck, announced that Scevola was
sitting on the keelson.</p>
<p> ``Go forward,'' said Peyrol, ``and ease off the fore-sheet
now a little. This tartane has wings,'' he added
to himself.</p>
<p> Alone on the after-deck Peyrol turned his head to
look at the <u>Amelia</u>. That ship, in consequence of
holding her wind, was now crossing obliquely the
wake of the tartane. At the same time she had
diminished the distance. Nevertheless, Peyrol considered
that had he really meant to escape, his
chances were as eight to ten---practically an assured
success. For a long time he had been contemplating
the lofty pyramid of canvas towering against the
fading red belt on the sky, when a lamentable groan
made him look round. It was Scevola. The citizen
had adopted the mode of progression on all fours, and
while Peyrol looked at him he rolled to leeward,
saving himself rather cleverly from going overboard,
and holding on desperately to a cleat, shouted in a
hollow voice, pointing with the other hand as if he had
made a tremendous discovery: ``La terre! La terre!''</p>
<p> ``Certainly,'' said Peyrol, steering with extreme
nicety. ``What of that?''</p>
<p> ``I don't want to be drowned!'' cried the citizen in
his new hollow voice. Peyrol reflected a bit before
he spoke in a serious tone:</p>
<p> ``If you stay where you are, I assure you that you
will . . .'' he glanced rapidly over his shoulder at the
<u>Amelia</u>. . . ``not die by drowning.'' He jerked his
head sideways. ``I know that man's mind.''</p>
<p> ``What man? Whose mind?'' yelled Scevola with
intense eagerness and bewilderment. ``We are only
three on board.''</p>
<p> But Peyrol's mind was contemplating maliciously
the figure of a man with long teeth, in a wig and with
large buckles to his shoes. Such was his ideal conception
of what the captain of the <u>Amelia</u> ought to
look like. That officer, whose naturally good-humoured
face wore then a look of severe resolution,
had beckoned his first lieutenant to his side again.</p>
<p> ``We are gaining,'' he said quietly. ``I intend to
close with him to windward. We won't risk any of
his tricks. It is very difficult to outman<oe>uvre a
Frenchman, as you know. Send a few armed marines
on the forecastle-head. I am afraid the only way to
get hold of this tartane is to disable the men on board
of her. I wish to goodness I could think of some other.
When we close with her, let the marines fire a well-aimed
volley. You must get some marines to stand
by aft as well. I hope we may shoot away his
halliards; once his sails are down on his deck he is
ours for the trouble of putting a boat over the side.''</p>
<p> For more than half an hour Captain Vincent stood
silent, elbow on rail, keeping his eye on the tartane,
while on board the latter Peyrol steered silent and
watchful but intensely conscious of the enemy ship
holding on in her relentless pursuit. The narrow
red band was dying out of the sky. The French
coast, black against the fading light, merged into the
shadows gathering in the eastern board. Citizen
Scevola, somewhat soothed by the assurance that he
would not die by drowning, had elected to remain
quiet where he had fallen, not daring to trust himself
to move on the lively deck. Michel, squatting to
windward, gazed intently at Peyrol in expectation of
some order at any minute. But Peyrol uttered no
word and made no sign. From time to time a burst
of foam flew over the tartane, or a splash of water
would come aboard with a scurrying noise.</p>
<p> It was not till the corvette had got within a long
gunshot from the tartane that Peyrol opened his
mouth.</p>
<p> ``No!'' he burst out, loud in the wind, as if giving
vent to long anxious thinking, ``No! I could not
have left you behind with not even a dog for company.
Devil take me if I don't think you would not have
thanked me for it either. What do you say to that,
Michel?''</p>
<p> A half-puzzled smile dwelt persistently on the guileless
countenance of the ex-fisherman. He stated what
he had always thought in respect of Peyrol's every
remark: ``I think you are right, ma<i^>tre.''</p>
<p> ``Listen then, Michel. That ship will be alongside
of us in less than half an hour. As she comes up they
will open on us with musketry.''</p>
<p> ``They will open on us . . .'' repeated Michel,
looking quite interested. ``But how do you know
they will do that, ma<i^>tre?''</p>
<p> ``Because her captain has got to obey what is in
my mind,'' said Peyrol, in a tone of positive and
solemn conviction. ``He will do it as sure as if I were
at his car telling him what to do. He will do it
because he is a first-rate seaman, but I, Michel, I am
just a little bit cleverer than he.'' He glanced over
his shoulder at the <u>Amelia</u> rushing after the tartane
with swelling sails, and raised his voice suddenly.
``He will do it because no more than half a mile
ahead of us is the spot where Peyrol will die!''</p>
<p> Michel did not start. He only shut his eyes for a
time, and the rover continued in a lower tone:</p>
<p> ``I may be shot through the heart at once,'' he said:
``and in that case you have my permission to let go
the halliards if you are alive yourself. But if I live I
mean to put the helm down. When I do that you
will let go the foresheet to help the tartane to fly into
the wind's eye. This is my last order to you. Now
go forward and fear nothing. Adieu.'' Michel
obeyed without a word.</p>
<p> Half a dozen of the _Amelia_'s marines stood ranged
on the forecastle-head ready with their muskets.
Captain Vincent walked into the lee waist to watch
his chase. When he thought that the jibboom of the
<u>Amelia</u> had drawn level with the stern of the tartane
he waved his hat and the marines discharged their
muskets. Apparently no gear was cut. Captain
Vincent observed the white-headed man, who was
steering, clap his hand to his left side, while he hove
the tiller to leeward and brought the tartane sharply
into the wind. The marines on the poop fired in
their turn, all the reports merging into one. Voices
were heard on the decks crying that they ``had hit
the white-haired chap.'' Captain Vincent shouted
to the master:</p>
<p> ``Get the ship round on the other tack.''</p>
<p> The elderly seaman who was the master of the
<u>Amelia</u> took a critical look before he gave the necessary
orders; and the <u>Amelia</u> closed on her chase with her
decks resounding to the piping of boatswain's mates
and the hoarse shout: ``Hands shorten sail. About
ship.''</p>
<p> Peyrol, lying on his back under the swinging tiller,
heard the calls shrilling and dying away; he heard
the ominous rush of _Amelia_'s bow wave as the sloop
foamed within ten yards of the tartane's stern; he
even saw her upper yards coming down, and then
everything vanished out of the clouded sky. There
was nothing in his ears but the sound of the wind,
the wash of the waves buffeting the little craft left
without guidance, and the continuous thrashing of its
foresail the sheet of which Michel had let go according
to orders. The tartane began to roll heavily, but
Peyrol's right arm was sound and he managed to put
it round a bollard to prevent himself from being
flung about. A feeling of peace sank into him, not
unmingled with pride. Everything he had planned
had come to pass. He had meant to play that man
a trick, and now the trick had been played. Played
by him better than by any other old man on whom
age had stolen, unnoticed, till the veil of peace was
torn down by the touch of a sentiment unexpected
like an intruder and cruel like an enemy.</p>
<p> Peyrol rolled his head to the left. All he could see
were the legs of Citizen Scevola sliding nervelessly to
and fro to the rolling of the vessel as if his body had
been jammed somewhere. Dead, or only scared to
death? And Michel? Was he dead or dying, that
man without friends whom his pity had refused to
leave behind marooned on the earth without even a
dog for company? As to that, Peyrol felt no compunction;
but he thought he would have liked to see
Michel once more. He tried to utter his name, but
his throat refused him even a whisper. He felt himself
removed far away from that world of human sounds,
in which Arlette had screamed at him: ``Peyrol, don't
you dare!'' He would never hear anybody's voice
again! Under that grey sky there was nothing for
him but the swish of breaking seas and the ceaseless
furious beating of the tartane's foresail. His play-thing
was knocking about terribly under him, with
her tiller flying madly to and fro just clear of his head,
and solid lumps of water coming on board over his
prostrate body. Suddenly, in a desperate lurch which
brought the whole Mediterranean with a ferocious
snarl level with the slope of the little deck, Peyrol
saw the <u>Amelia</u> bearing right down upon the tartane.
The fear, not of death but of failure, gripped his
slowing-down heart. Was this blind Englishman
going to run him down and sink the dispatches
together with the craft? With a mighty effort of his
ebbing strength Peyrol sat up and flung his arm round
the shroud of the mainmast.</p>
<p> The <u>Ameleia</u>, whose way had carried her past the
tartane for a quarter of a mile, before sail could be
shortened and her yards swung on the other tack, was
coming back to take possession of her chase. In the
deepening dusk and amongst the foaming seas it was
a matter of difficulty to make out the little craft. At
the very moment when the master of the man-of-war,
looking out anxiously from the forecastle-head, thought
that she might perhaps have filled and gone down, he
caught sight of her rolling in the trough of the sea,
and so close that she seemed to be at the end of the
_Amelia_'s jibboom. His heart flew in his mouth.
``Hard a starboard!'' he yelled, his order being passed
along the decks.</p>
<p> Peyrol, sinking back on the deck in another heavy
lurch of his craft, saw for an instant the whole of the
English corvette swing up into the clouds as if she
meant to fling herself upon his very breast. A blown
seatop flicked his face noisily, followed by a smooth
interval, a silence of the waters. He beheld in a flash
the days of his manhood, of strength and adventure.
Suddenly an enormous voice like the roar of an angry
sea-lion seemed to fill the whole of the empty sky in
a mighty and commanding shout: ``Steady!"''. . .
And with the sound of that familiar English word
ringing in his ears Peyrol smiled to his visions and
died.</p>
<p> The <u>Amelia</u>, stripped down to her topsails and hove
to, rose and fell easily while on her quarter about a
cable's length away Peyrol's tartane tumbled like a
lifeless corpse amongst the seas. Captain Vincent, in
his favourite attitude of leaning over the rail, kept his
eyes fastened on his prize. Mr. Bolt, who had been
sent for, waited patiently till his commander turned
round.</p>
<p> ``Oh, here you are, Mr. Bolt. I have sent for you
to go and take possession. You speak French, and
there may still be somebody alive in her. If so, of
course you will send him on board at once. I am
sure there can be nobody unwounded there. It will
anyhow be too dark to see much, but just have a
good look round and secure everything in the way of
papers you can lay your hands on. Haul aft the
foresheet and sail her up to receive a tow line. I
intend to take her along and ransack her thoroughly
in the morning; tear down the cuddy linings and so
on, should you not find at once what I expect. . . .''
Captain Vincent, his white teeth gleaming in the
dusk, gave some further orders in a lower tone, and
Mr. Bolt departed in a hurry. Half an hour afterwards
he was back on board, and the <u>Amelia</u>, with the
tartane in tow, made sail to the eastward in search
of the blockading fleet.</p>
<p> Mr. Bolt, introduced into a cabin strongly lighted
by a swinging lamp, tendered to his captain across
the table a sail-cloth package corded and scaled, and
a piece of paper folded in four, which, he explained,
seemed to be a certificate of registry, strangely enough
mentioning no name. Captain Vincent seized the
grey canvas package eagerly.</p>
<p> ``This looks like the very thing, Bolt,'' he said,
turning it over in his hands. ``What else did you
find on board?''</p>
<p> Bolt said that he had found three dead men, two
on the after-deck and one lying at the bottom of the
open hold with the bare end of the foresheet in his
hand---``shot down, I suppose, just as he had let it
go,'' he commented. He described the appearance of
the bodies and reported that he had disposed of them
according to orders. In the tartane's cabin there was
half a demijohn of wine and a loaf of bread in a
locker; also, on the floor, a leather valise containing
an officer's uniform coat and a change of clothing.
He had lighted the lamp and saw that the linen was
marked ``E. R<e'>al.'' An officer's sword on a broad
shoulder-belt was also lying on the floor. These
things could not have belonged to the old chap with
the white hair, who was a big man. ``Looks as if
somebody had tumbled overboard,'' commented Bolt.
Two of the bodies looked nondescript, but there was
no doubt about that fine old fellow being a seaman.</p>
<p> ``By Heavens!'' said Captain Vincent, ``he was
that! Do you know, Bolt, that he nearly managed
to escape us? Another twenty minutes would have
done it. How many wounds had he?''</p>
<p> ``Three I think, sir. I did not look closely,'' said
Bolt.</p>
<p> ``I hated the necessity of shooting brave men like
dogs,'' said Captain Vincent. ``Still, it was the only
way; and there may be something here,'' he went on,
slapping the package with his open palm, ``that will
justify me in my own eyes. You may go now.''</p>
<p> Captain Vincent did not turn in but only lay down
fully dressed on the couch till the officer of the watch,
appearing at the door, told him that a ship of the fleet
was in sight away to windward. Captain Vincent
ordered the private night signal to be made. When
he came on deck the towering shadow of a line-of-battle
ship that seemed to reach to the very clouds
was well within hail and a voice bellowed from her
through a speaking trumpet:</p>
<p> ``What ship is that?''</p>
<p> ``His Majesty's sloop <u>Amelia</u>,'' hailed back Captain
Vincent. ``What ship is that, pray?''</p>
<p> Instead of the usual answer there was a short pause
and another voice spoke boisterously through the
trumpet:</p>
<p> ``Is that you, Vincent? Don't you know the <u>Superb</u>
when you see her?''</p>
<p> ``Not in the dark, Keats. How are you? I am in
a hurry to speak the Admiral.''</p>
<p> ``The fleet is lying by,'' came the voice now with
painstaking distinctness across the murmurs, whispers
and splashes of the black lane of water dividing the
two ships. ``The Admiral bears S.S.E. If you
stretch on till daylight as you are, you will fetch him
on the other tack in time for breakfast on board the
Victory. Is anything up?''</p>
<p> At every slight roll the sails of the <u>Amelia</u>, becalmed
by the bulk of the seventy-four, flapped gently against
the masts.</p>
<p> ``Not much,'' hailed Captain Vincent. ``I made a
prize.''</p>
<p> ``Have you been in action?'' came the swift inquiry.</p>
<p> ``No, no. Piece of luck.''</p>
<p> ``Where's your prize?'' roared the speaking trumpet
with interest.</p>
<p> ``In my desk,'' roared Captain Vincent in reply.
. . . ``Enemy dispatches. . . . I say, Keats, fill on
your ship. Fill on her, I say, or you will be falling
on board of me.'' He stamped his foot impatiently.
``Clap some hands at once on the tow-line and run
that tartane close under our stern,'' he called to the
officer of the watch, ``or else the old <u>Superb</u> will walk
over her without ever knowing anything about it.''</p>
<p> When Captain Vincent presented himself on board
the Victory it was too late for him to be invited to
share the Admiral's breakfast. He was told that
Lord Nelson had not been seen on deck yet, that
morning; and presently word came that he wished to
see Captain Vincent at once in his cabin. Being
introduced, the captain of the <u>Amelia</u>, in undress
uniform, with a sword by his side and his hat under
his arm, was received kindly, made his bow and with
a few words of explanation laid the packet on the big
round table at which sat a silent secretary in black
clothes, who had been obviously writing a letter from
his lordship's dictation. The Admiral had been
walking up and down, and after he had greeted
Captain Vincent he resumed his pacing of a nervous
man. His empty sleeve had not yet been pinned on
his breast and swung slightly every time he turned in
his walk. His thin locks fell lank against the pale
cheeks, and the whole face in repose had an expression
of suffering with which the fire of his one eye presented
a startling contrast. He stopped short and
exclaimed while Captain Vincent towered over him
in a respectful attitude:</p>
<p> ``A tartane! Captured on board a tartane! How
on earth did you pitch upon that one out of the
hundreds you must see every month?''</p>
<p> ``I must confess that I got hold accidentally of some
curious information,'' said Captain Vincent. ``It was
all a piece of luck.''</p>
<p> While the secretary was ripping open with a pen-knife
the cover of the dispatches Lord Nelson took
Captain Vincent out into the stern gallery. The quiet
and sunshiny morning had the added charm of a
cool, light breeze; and the <u>Victory</u>, under her three
topsails and lower staysails, was moving slowly to the
southward in the midst of the scattered fleet carrying
for the most part the same sail as the Admiral. Only
far away two or three ships could be seen covered with
canvas trying to close with the flag. Captain Vincent
noted with satisfaction that the first lieutenant of the
<u>Amelia</u> had been obliged to brace by his afteryards in
order not to overrun the Admiral's quarter.</p>
<p> ``Why!'' exclaimed Lord Nelson suddenly, after
looking at the sloop for a moment, ``you have that
tartane in tow!''</p>
<p> ``I thought that your lordship would perhaps like
to see a 40-ton lateen craft which has led such a chase
to, I daresay, the fastest sloop in his Majesty's
service.''</p>
<p> ``How did it all begin?'' asked the Admiral, continuing
to look at the <u>Amelia</u>.</p>
<p> ``As I have already hinted to your lordship, certain
information came in my way,'' began Captain Vincent,
who did not think it necessary to enlarge upon
that part of the story. ``This tartane, which is not
very different to look at from the other tartanes along
the coast between Cette and Genoa, had started from
a cove on the Giens Peninsula. An old man with a
white head of hair was entrusted with the service and
really they could have found nobody better. He
came round Cape Esterel intending to pass through
the Hy<e`>res roadstead. Apparently he did not expect
to find the <u>Amelia</u> in his way. And it was there that
he made his only mistake. If he had kept on his
course I would probably have taken no more notice
of him than of two other craft that were in sight then.
But he acted suspiciously by hauling up for the battery
on Porquerolles. This man<oe>uvre in connection with
the information of which I spoke decided me to
overhaul him and see what he had on board.''
Captain Vincent then related concisely the episodes
of the chase. ``I assure your lordship that I never
gave an order with greater reluctance than to open
musketry fire on that craft; but the old man had
given such proofs of his seamanship and determination
that there was nothing else for it. Why! at the very
moment he had the <u>Amelia</u> alongside of him he still
made a most clever attempt to prolong the chase.
There were only a few minutes of daylight left, and
in the darkness we might very well have lost him.
Considering that they all could have saved their lives
simply by striking their sails on deck, I can not refuse
them my admiration and especially to the white-haired man.''</p>
<p> The Admiral, who had been all the time looking
absently at the <u>Amelia</u> keeping her station with the
tartane in tow, said:</p>
<p> ``You have a very smart little ship, Vincent. Very
fit for the work I have given you to do. French built,
isn't she?''</p>
<p> ``Yes, my lord. They are great shipbuilders.''</p>
<p> ``You don't seem to hate the French, Vincent,''
said the Admiral, smiling faintly.</p>
<p> ``Not that kind, my lord,'' said Captain Vincent
with a bow. ``I detest their political principles and
the characters of their public men, but your lordship
will admit that for courage and determination we
could not have found worthier adversaries anywhere
on this globe.''</p>
<p> ``I never said that they were to be despised,'' said
Lord Nelson. ``Resource, courage, yes. . . . If that
Toulon fleet gives me the slip, all our squadrons from
Gibraltar to Brest will be in jeopardy. Why don't
they come out and be done with it? Don't I keep
far enough out of their way?'' he cried.</p>
<p> Vincent remarked the nervous agitation of the frail
figure with a concern augmented by a fit of coughing
which came on the Admiral. He was quite alarmed
by its violence. He watched the Commander-in-Chief
in the Mediterranean choking and gasping so helplessly
that he felt compelled to turn his eyes away from
the painful spectacle; but he noticed also how quickly
Lord Nelson recovered from the subsequent exhaustion.</p>
<p> ``This is anxious work, Vincent,'' he said. ``It is
killing me. I aspire to repose somewhere in the
country, in the midst of fields, out of reach of the sea
and the Admiralty and dispatches and orders, and
responsibility too. I have been just finishing a letter
to tell them at home I have hardly enough breath in
my body to carry me on from day to day. . . . But
I am like that white-headed man you admire so
much, Vincent,'' he pursued, with a weary smile, ``I
will stick to my task till perhaps some shot from the
enemy puts an end to everything. . . . Let us see
what there may be in those papers you have brought
on board.''</p>
<p> The secretary in the cabin had arranged them in
separate piles.</p>
<p> ``What is it all about?'' asked the Admiral, beginning
again to pace restlessly up and down the cabin.</p>
<p> ``At the first glance the most important, my lord,
are the orders for marine authorities in Corsica and
Naples to make certain dispositions in view of an
expedition to Egypt.''</p>
<p> ``I always thought so,'' said the Admiral, his eye
gleaming at the attentive countenance of Captain
Vincent. ``This is a smart piece of work on your
part, Vincent. I can do no better than send you
back to your station. Yes . . . Egypt . . . the Easts.
. . . Everything points that way,'' he soliloquized
under Vincent's eyes while the secretary, picking up
the papers with care, rose quietly and went out to
have them translated and to make an abstract for the
Admiral.</p>
<p> ``And, yet who knows!'' exclaimed Lord Nelson,
standing still for a moment. ``But the blame or the
glory must be mine alone. I will seek counsel from
no man.'' Captain Vincent felt himself forgotten,
invisible, less than a shadow in the presence of a
nature capable of such vehement feelings. ``How long
can he last?'' he asked himself with sincere concern.</p>
<p> The Admiral, however, soon remembered his presence,
and at the end of another ten minutes Captain
Vincent left the <u>Victory</u>, feeling, like all officers who
approached Lord Nelson, that he had been speaking
with a personal friend; and with a renewed devotion
for the great sea-officer's soul dwelling in the frail
body of the Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's
ships in the Mediterranean. While he was being
pulled back to his ship a general signal went up in
the <u>Victory</u> for the fleet to form line, as convenient,
ahead and astern of the Admiral; followed by another
to the <u>Amelia</u> to part company. Vincent accordingly
gave his orders to make sail, and, directing the master
to shape a course for Cape Cici<e'>, went down into his
cabin. He had been up nearly the whole of the last
three nights and he wanted to get a little sleep. His
slurnbers, however, were short and disturbed. Early
in the afternoon he found himself broad awake and
reviewing in his mind the events of the day before.
The order to shoot three brave men in cold blood,
terribly distasteful at the time, was lying heavily on
him. Perhaps he had been impressed by Peyrol's
white head, his obstinacy to escape him, the determination
shown to the very last minute, by something in
the whole episode that suggested a more than common
devotion to duty and a spirit of daring defiance.
With his robust health, simple good nature, and
sanguine temperament touched with a little irony,
Captain Vincent was a man of generous feelings and
of easily moved sympathies.</p>
<p> ``Yet,'' he reflected, ``they have been asking for it.
There could be only one end to that affair. But the
fact remains that they were defenceless and unarmed
and particularly harmless-looking, and at the same
time as brave as any. That old chap now. . . .'<code>
He wondered how much of exact truth there was in
Symons</code> tale of adventure. He concluded that the
facts must have been true but that Symons' interpretation
of them made it extraordinarily difficult to
discover what really there was under all that. That
craft certainly was fit for blockade running. Lord
Nelson had been pleased. Captain Vincent went on
deck with the kindliest feelings towards all men, alive
and dead.</p>
<p> The afternoon had turned out very fine. The
British Fleet was just out of sight with the exception
of one or two stragglers, under a press of canvas. A
light breeze in which only the <u>Amelia</u> could travel at
five knots, hardly ruffled the profundity of the blue
waters basking in the warm tenderness of the cloudless
sky. To south and west the horizon was empty except
for two specks very far apart, of which one shone
white like a bit of silver and the other appeared black
like a drop of ink. Captain Vincent, with his purpose
firm in his mind, felt at peace with himself. As he
was easily accessible to his officers his first lieutenant
ventured a question to which Captain Vincent replied:</p>
<p> ``He looks very thin and worn out, but I don't
think he is as ill as he thinks he is. I am sure you all
would like to know that his lordship is pleased with
our yesterday's work---those papers were of some
importance you know---and generally with the <u>Amelia</u>.
It was a queer chase, wasn't it?'' he went on. ``That
tartane was clearly and unmistakably running away
from us. But she never had a chance against the
<u>Amelia</u>.''</p>
<p> During the latter part of that speech the first
lieutenant glanced astern as if asking himself how
long Captain Vincent proposed to drag that tartane
behind the <u>Amelia</u>. The two keepers in her wondered
also as to when they would be permitted to get back
on board their ship. Symons, who was one of them,
declared that he was sick and tired of steering the
blamed thing. Moreover, the company on board
made him uncomfortable; for Symons was aware that
in pursuance of Captain Vincent's orders, Mr. Bolt
had had the three dead Frenchmen carried into the
cuddy which he afterwards secured with an enormous
padlock that, apparently, belonged to it, and had
taken the key on board the <u>Amelia</u>. As to one of them,
Symons' unforgiving verdict was that it would have
served him right to be thrown ashore for crows to
peck his eyes out. And anyhow, he could not understand
why he should have been turned into the
coxswain of a floating hearse, and be damned to
it. . . . He grumbled interminably.</p>
<p> Just about sunset, which is the time of burials at
sea, the <u>Amelia</u> was hove to and, the rope being
manned, the tartane was brought alongside and her
two keepers ordered on board their ship. Captain
Vincent, leaning over with his elbows on the rail,
seemed lost in thought. At last the first lieutenant
spoke.</p>
<p> ``What are we going to do with that tartane, sir?
Our men are on board.''</p>
<p> ``We are going to sink her by gunfire,'' declared
Captain Vincent suddenly. ``His ship makes a very
good coffin for a seaman, and those men deserve
better than to be thrown overboard to roll on the
waves. Let them rest quietly at the bottom of the
sea in the craft to which they had stuck so well.''</p>
<p> The lieutenant, making no reply, waited for some
more positive order. Every eye on the ship was
turned on the captain. But Captain Vincent said
nothing and seemed unable or unwilling to give it
yet. He was feeling vaguely, that in all his good
intentions there was something wanting.</p>
<p> ``Ah! Mr. Bolt,'' he said, catching sight of the
master's-mate in the waist. ``Did they have a flag on
board that craft?''</p>
<p> ``I think she had a tiny bit of ensign when the chase
began, sir, but it must have blown away. It is not at
the end of her mainyard now.'' He looked over the
side. ``The halliards are rove, though,'' he added.</p>
<p> ``We must have a French ensign somewhere on
board,'' said Captain Vincent.</p>
<p> ``Certainly, sir,'' struck in the master, who was
listening.</p>
<p> ``Well, Mr. Bolt,'' said Captain Vincent, ``you have
had most to do with all this. Take a few men with
you, bend the French ensign on the halliards and
sway his mainyard to the masthead.'' He smiled at
all the faces turned towards him. ``After all they
never surrendered and, by heavens, gentlemen, we
will let them go down with their colours flying.''</p>
<p> A profound but not disapproving silence reigned
over the decks of the ship while Mr. Bolt with three
or four hands was busy executing the order. Then
suddenly above the topgallant rail of the <u>Amelia</u>
appeared the upper curve of a lateen yard with the
tricolour drooping from the point. A subdued
murmur from all hands greeted this apparition. At
the same time Captain Vincent ordered the line
holding the tartane alongside to be cast off and the
mainyard of the <u>Amelia</u> to be swung round. The
sloop shooting ahead of her prize left her stationary
on the sea, then putting the helm up, ran back abreast
of her on the other side. The port bow-gun was
ordered to fire a round, aiming well forward. That
shot, however, went just over, taking the foremast
out of the tartane. The next was more successful,
striking the little hull between wind and water, and
going out well under water on the other side. A
third was fired, as the men said, just for luck, and
that too took effect, a splintered hole appearing at
the bow. After that the guns were secured and the
<u>Amelia</u>, with no brace being touched, was brought to
her course towards Cape Cici<e'>. All hands on board
of her with their backs to the sunset sky, clear like a
pale topaz above the hard blue gem of the sea,
watched the tartane give a sudden dip, followed by a
slow, unchecked dive. At last the tricolour flag alone
remained visible for a tense and interminable moment,
pathetic and lonely, in the centre of a brimful horizon.
All at once it vanished, like a flame blown upon,
bringing to the beholders the sense of having been
left face to face with an immense, suddenly created
solitude. On the decks of the <u>Amelia</u> a low murmur
died out.
<ul>
<li><em> </em> <em> </em> *</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p> When Lieutenant R<e'>al sailed away with the Toulon
fleet on the great strategical cruise which was to end
in the battle of Trafalgar, Madame R<e'>al returned
with her aunt to her hereditary house at Escampobar.
She had only spent a few weeks in town where she
was not much seen in public. The lieutenant and
his wife lived in a little house near the western gate,
and the lieutenant's official position, though he was
employed on the staff to the last, was not sufficiently
prominent to make her absence from official ceremonies
at all remarkable. But this marriage was an
object of mild interest in naval circles. Those---mostly
men---who had seen Madame R<e'>al at home, told
stories of her dazzling complexion, of her magnificent
black eyes, of her personal and attractive strangeness,
and of the Arlesian costume she insisted on wearing,
even after her marriage to an officer of the navy,
being herself sprung from farmer stock. It was also
said that her father and mother had fallen victims in
the massacres of Toulon after the evacuation of the
town; but all those stories varied in detail and were
on the whole very vague. Whenever she went abroad
Madame R<e'>al was attended by her aunt who aroused
almost as much curiosity as herself: a magnificent old
woman with upright carriage and an austere, brown,
wrinkled face showing signs of past beauty. Catherine
was also seen alone in the streets where, as a matter
of fact, people turned round to look after the thin and
dignified figure, remarkable amongst the passers-by,
whom she, herself, did not seem to see. About her
escape from the massacres most wonderful tales were
told, and she acquired the reputation of a heroine.
Arlette's aunt was known to frequent the churches,
which were all open to the faithful now, carrying
even into the house of God her sibylline aspect of a
prophetess and her austere manner. It was not at
the services that she was seen most. People would see
her oftener in an empty nave, standing slim and as
straight as an arrow in the shade of a mighty pillar as
if making a call on the Creator of all things with
whom she had made her peace generously, and now
would petition only for pardon and reconciliation
with her niece Arlette. For Catherine for a long time
remained uncertain of the future. She did not get
rid of her involuntary awe of her niece as a selected
object of God's wrath, until towards the end of her
life. There was also another soul for which she was
concerned. The pursuit of the tartane by the <u>Amelia</u>
had been observed from various points of the islands
that close the roadstead of Hy<e`>res, and the English
ship had been seen from the Fort de la Vigie opening
fire on her chase. The result, though the two vessels
soon ran out of sight, could not be a matter of doubt.
There was also the story told by a coaster that got
into Fr<e'>jus, of a tartane being fired on by a square-rigged
man-of-war; but that apparently was the next
day. All these rumours pointed one way and were
the foundation of the report made by Lieutenant R<e'>al
to the Toulon Admiralty. That Peyrol went out to
sea in his tartane and was never seen again, was of
course an incontrovertible fact.</p>
<p> The day before the two women were to go back to
Escampobar, Catherine approached a priest in the
church of Ste Marie Majeure, a little unshaven fat
man with a watery eye, in order to arrange for some
masses to be said for the dead.</p>
<p> ``But for whose soul are we to pray?'' mumbled the
priest in a wheezy low tone.</p>
<p> ``Pray for the soul of Jean,'' said Catherine. ``Yes,
Jean. There is no other name.''</p>
<p> Lieutenant R<e'>al, wounded at Trafalgar, but escaping
capture, retired with the rank of Capitaine de
Fr<e'>gate and vanished from the eyes of the naval world
in Toulon and indeed from the world altogether.
Whatever sign brought him back to Escampobar on
that momentous night, was not meant to call him to
his death but to a quiet and retired life, obscure in a
sense but not devoid of dignity. In the course of years
he became the Mayor of the Commune in that very
same little village which had looked on Escampobar
as the abode of iniquity, the sojourn of blood-drinkers
and of wicked women.</p>
<p> One of the earliest excitements breaking the monotony
of the Escampobar life was the discovery at the
bottom of the well, one dry year when the water got
very low, of some considerable obstruction. After a
lot of trouble in getting it up, this obstruction turned
out to be a garment made of sail-cloth, which had
armholes and three horn buttons in front, and looked
like a waistcoat; but it was lined, positively quilted,
with a surprising quantity of gold pieces of various
ages, coinages and nationalities. Nobody but Peyrol
could have put it there. Catherine was able to give
the exact date; because she remembered seeing him
doing something at the well on the very morning
before he went out to sea with Michel, carrying off
Scevola. Captain R<e'>al could guess easily the origin
of that treasure, and he decided with his wife's
approval to give it up to the Government as the hoard
of a man who had died intestate with no discoverable
relations, and whose very name had been a matter
of uncertainty, even to himself. After that event the
uncertain name of Peyrol found itself oftener and
oftener on Monsieur and Madame R<e'>al's lips, on
which before it was but seldom heard; though the
recollection of his white-headed, quiet, irresistible
personality haunted every corner of the Escampobar
fields. From that time they talked of him openly, as
though he had come back to live again amongst
them.</p>
<p> Many years afterwards, one fine evening, Monsieur
and Madame R<e'>al sitting on the bench outside the
salle (the house had not been altered at all outside
except that it was now kept whitewashed), began to
talk of that episode and of the man who, coming from
the seas, had crossed their lives to disappear at sea
again.</p>
<p> ``How did he get all that lot of gold?'' wondered
Madame R<e'>al innocently. ``He could not possibly
want it; and, Eug<e`>ne, why should he have put it
down there?''</p>
<p> ``That, ma ch<e`>re amie,'' said R<e'>al, ``is not an easy
question to answer. Men and women are not so
simple as they seem. Even you, fermi<e`>re (he used to
give his wife that name jocularly, sometimes), are not
so simple as some people would take you to be. I
think that if Peyrol were here he could not perhaps
answer your question himself.''</p>
<p> And they went on, reminding each other in short
phrases separated by long silences, of his peculiarities
of person and behaviour, when above the slope leading
down to Madrague, there appeared first, the pointed
ears, and then the whole body of a very diminutive
donkey of a light grey colour with dark points. Two
pieces of wood, strangely shaped, projected on each
side of his body as far as his head, like very long shafts
of a cart. But the donkey dragged no cart after him.
He was carrying on his back on a small pack saddle
the torso of a man who did not seem to have any legs.
The little animal, beautifully groomed and with an
intelligent and even impudent physiognomy, stopped
in front of Monsieur and Madame R<e'>al. The man,
balancing himself cleverly on the pack saddle with his
withered legs crossed in front of him, slipped off,
disengaged his crutches from each side of the donkey
smartly, propped himself on them, and with his open
palm gave the animal a resounding thwack which
sent it trotting into the yard. The cripple of the
Madrague in his quality of Peyrol's friend (for the
rover had often talked of him both to the women and
to Lieutenant R<e'>al with great appreciation---``C'est
un homme, <c,>a'') had become a member of the
Escampobar community. His employment was to
run about the country on errands, most unfit, one
would think, for a man without legs. But the donkey
did all the walking while the cripple supplied the
sharp wits and an unfailing memory. The poor
fellow, snatching off his hat and holding it with one
hand alongside his right crutch, approached to render
his account of the day in the simple words: ``Everything
has been done as you ordered, madame''; then
lingered, a privileged servant, familiar but respectful,
attractive with his soft eyes, long face, and his pained
smile.</p>
<p> ``We were just talking of Peyrol,'' remarked Captain
R<e'>al.</p>
<p> ``Ah, one could talk a long time of him,'' said the
cripple. ``He told me once that if I had been complete
---with legs like everybody else, I suppose he meant---
I would have made a good comrade away there in
the distant seas. He had a great heart.''</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' murmured Madame R<e'>al thoughtfully.
Then turning to her husband, she asked: ``What sort
of man was he really, Eug<e`>ne?'' Captain R<e'>al
remained silent. ``Did you ever ask yourself that
question?'' she insisted.</p>
<p> ``Yes,'' said R<e'>al. ``But the only certain thing we
can say of him is that he was not a bad Frenchman.''</p>
<p> ``Everything's in that,'' murmured the cripple, with
fervent conviction in the silence that fell upon R<e'>al's
words and Arlette's faint sigh of memory.</p>
<p> The blue level of the Mediterranean, the charmer
and the deceiver of audacious men, kept the secret of
its fascination---hugged to its calm breast the victims
of all the wars, calamities and tempests of its history,
under the marvellous purity of the sunset sky. A few
rosy clouds floated high up over the Esterel range.
The breath of the evening breeze came to cool the
heated rocks of Escampobar; and the mulberry tree,
the only big tree on the head of the peninsula, standing
like a sentinel at the gate of the yard, sighed
faintly in a shudder of all its leaves, as if regretting
the Brother of the Coast, the man of dark deeds, but
of large heart, who often at noonday would lie down
to sleep under its shade.</p>
<h2><text></h2>
<p> This electronic edition of <u>The Rover</u> is based on the
printed edition published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.,
Edinburgh, (no date, but should be 1926 or later on internal
evidence).</p>
<p> The following changes have been made to the text:</p>
<p> Page divisions and column titles have been removed.</p>
<p> All end-of-line hyphenation have been removed, and the
de-hyphenated words placed at the end of the first line. The
guide for whether to keep or remove the hyphen has been the
text itself.</p>
<p> The following misprints have been corrected:</p>
<h2>but interrupted himself suddenly to hail Scevola:</h2>
<p> The following markup has been added:</p>
<p> Each paragraph begins with two spaces indentation.</p>
<p> <u> </u> indicates text in italics</p>
<p> <a`> a-grave
<a^> a-circumflex
<c,> c-cedilla
<C,> C-cedilla
<e`> e-grave
<e'> e-acute
<e^> e-circumflex
<i^> i-circumflex
<oe> oe-ligature
<o^> o-circumflex</p>
<p>------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>ch. 2, p. 18: lodge me there?'' (missing ?)
ch. 8, p. 128: ``A French-built ship!'<code> (ship!</code>)<p> The transcription and proof-reading was done by Anders
Thulin, Rydsvagen 288, S-582 58 Linkoping, Sweden. (Email:
ath@linkoping.trab.se)</p>
<p> As far as I am concerned, this edition is entirely free,
and may be used in any way and for any purpose you like.</p>
<p> I'd be glad to hear of any errors or omissions you might
find.</p>
</p>
<p>Revision history:
=================</p>
<p>version 1.0: 1993-07-24
version 1.1: 1995-09-15 corrected a few mistranscriptions
removed extraneous spaces
repackaged as one single text file</p>
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