Carette of Sark Part 38

And even as I spoke, the door opened and Krok came in, but a Krok that we hardly knew.

He was in a state of most intense agitation. I thought at first that it was on my account,--that he had heard of my arrival. But in a moment I saw that it was some greater thing still that moved him.

At sight of me he stopped, as if doubting his senses,--or tried to stop, for that which was in him would not let him stand still. He was bursting with some news, and my heart told me it was ill news. His eyes rolled and strained, his dumb mouth worked, he fairly gripped and shook himself in his frantic striving after communication with us.

My mother was alarmed, but yet kept her wits. Truly it seemed to me that unless he could tell us quickly what was in him something inside must give way under the strain. She ran quickly to a drawer in her dresser, and pulled out a sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal, and laid them before him on the table. He jumped at them, but his hand shook so that it only made senseless scratches on the paper. I heard his teeth grinding with rage. He seized his right hand with his left, and held it and quieted himself by a great effort. And slowly and jerkily he wrote, in letters that fell about the page,--"Carette--Torode--" and then the charcoal fell out of his hand and he rolled in a heap on the floor.

My heart gave a broken kick and fell sickly. It dropped in a moment to what had happened. Failing to end us, Torode had swung round Le Tas and run for Brecqhou, where Carette, alone with her two sick men, would be completely at his mercy. He would carry her off, gather his gear on Herm, and be away before Peter Port could lift a hand to stop him. If I held his life in my hand, he held in his what was dearer far than life to me. And I had been pluming myself on getting the better of him!

"See to him, mother. I must go. Carette is in danger," and I kissed her and ran out.

I went down the zigzag at Port a la Jument in sliding leaps, tumbled into the boat from which Krok had just landed, and once more I was pulling for life and that which was dearer still.

CHAPTER XXIX

HOW THE HAWK SWOOPED DOWN ON BRECQHOU

The Race was running furiously through the Gouliot, but I would have got through it if it had been twice as strong. There was a wild fury in my heart at thought of Carette in Torode's hands, which ravened for opposition--for something, anything, to rend and tear and overcome.

If I had come across Torode himself I would have hurled myself at his throat, though all his ruffians stood between; and had I clutched it they had hacked my hands off before I had let go.

I whirled up to the Gale de Jacob before prudence told me that two men armed are of more account than one man with nothing but a heart on fire, and that it would have been good to run round for Le Marchant. But my one thought had been to get to the place where Carette was in extremity, and the fire within me felt equal to all it might encounter.

I climbed the rocky way hot-foot, and sped down through the furze and golden-rod to the house. The door was open and I ran in. A drawn white face, with grizzled hair and drooping white moustache, and two dark eyes like smouldering fires, jerked feebly up out of a bunk at the far end, and then sank down again. It was Jean Le Marchant.

There was no sign of disorder in the room. In the next bunk another man lay apparently asleep.

"Where is Carette?" I asked hastily, but not without hope, from the lack of signs of disturbance.

"Where is she?" he asked feebly, with a touch of impatience.

"Is she not here?"

"She went out. I thought I heard a shot. Where is she?"

"I will go and see," and I ran out again, still not unhopeful. It might be that Krok had seen Torode's s.h.i.+p and his fears for Carette had magnified matters.

I searched quickly all round the house. I cried "Carette! Carette!" But only a wheeling gull squawked mockingly in reply. Then I ran along the trodden way to their landing-place. There was a boat lying there with its nose on the sh.o.r.e,--no sign of outrage anywhere. Could Krok be mistaken?

Could Carette just have rowed over to Havre Gosselin for something she was in need of?

I went down to the boat, doubtful of my next move.

In the boat that nosed the sh.o.r.e lay Helier Le Marchant, my comrade in prison, in escape, in many perils, with a bullet-hole in his forehead--dead. And I knew that Krok was right and my worst fears were justified.

Torode had landed, had caught Carette abroad, in carrying her off they had met Le Marchant hastening to her a.s.sistance, and had slain him,--the foul cowards that they were.

There was nothing I could do for him. I lifted him gently out onto the s.h.i.+ngle, and turned to and pulled out of the harbour. Others, I knew, would soon be across to Brecqhou, and would see to him and the rest. My work lay on Herm, and as like as not might end there, for death as sudden and certain as Helier Le Marchant's awaited me if Torode set eyes on me, and that I knew full well.

Had my brain been working quietly I should probably have doubted the wisdom of crossing to Herm in daylight. But all my thoughts were in a vast confusion, with this one thought only overtopping all the rest,--Carette was in the hands of Torode, and I must get there as quickly as possible.

There are times when foolish recklessness drives headlong through the obstacles which reason would bid one avoid, and so come desperate deeds accomplished while reason sits pondering the way.

I have since thought that the only possible reason why I succeeded in crossing unseen was that the boiling anxiety within drove me to the venture at once. I followed so closely on their track that they had not yet had time to take precautions, which presently they did. But at the time my one and only thought--the spring and spur of all my endeavour--was this,--Carette was on Herm and I must get there too.

The toil of rowing, however, relieved my brain by degrees to the point of reasonable thinking. One unarmed man against a mult.i.tude must use such strategy as he can devise, and so such little common-sense as was left me took me in under the Fauconniere by Jethou, and then cautiously across the narrow channel to the tumbled ma.s.ses of dark rock on the eastern side of Herm. Here were hiding-places in plenty, and I had no difficulty in poling my boat up a ragged cleft where none could see it save from the entrance.

And here I was safe enough, for all the living was on the other side of the island, the side which lay towards Guernsey.

Instinct, I suppose, and the knowledge of what I myself would have done in Torode's place, told me what he would do. And, crawling cautiously about my hiding-place, and peering over the rocks, I presently saw a well-manned boat row out from the channel between Herm and Jethou, and lie there in wait for anything that might attempt the pa.s.sage from Sercq to Peter Port.

Nothing would pa.s.s that day, that was certain, for Torode would imagine Sercq buzzing with the news of his treacheries and bursting to set Peter Port on him. I had got across only just in time.

On the other side of the island I could imagine all that was toward,--the schooner loading rapidly with all they wished to take away, the bustle and traffic between sh.o.r.e and s.h.i.+p, and Carette prisoner, either on board, or in one of the houses,--or, as likely as not, to have her out of the way, in my old cleft in the rock.

I wondered how long their preparations would take, for all my hopes depended on that. If they cleared out before dark I was undone. If they stayed the night I might have a chance.

It was about midday now. Could they load in time to thread their way through the maze of hidden rocks that strew the pa.s.sages to the sea, and try the skilful pilot even in the daytime? I thought not. I hoped not. He would be a reckless, or a sorely pressed, man who attempted it. And with his boat on the watch there, and no word able to get to Peter Port unless after dark, and the time then necessary for an organised descent on Herm, I thought Torode would risk it and lie there quietly till perhaps the early morning.

It was a time of weary waiting, with nothing to do but think of Carette's distress, and watch the white clouds sailing slowly along the blue sky, while my boat rose high and fell low in the black cleft, now ten feet up with a rush and a swirl, then as many feet down, with deep gurglings and rus.h.i.+ng waterfalls from every ledge. She was getting sorely bruised against the rough rock walls in spite of all my fendings, but there was no help for it.

I could make no plans till I knew where Carette was lodged, and that I could not learn until it was dark, and I remembered gratefully that the new moon was not due for several days yet.

In thinking over things while I lay waiting, I took blame to myself, and felt very great regret, that I had not taken the time to see my grandfather and tell him about Torode. For if the night saw the end of me, as it very well might, no other was cognisant of the matter, and Torode would go unpunished. But go he would I felt sure, for he would never believe that it was all still locked up in me. Of course Helier Le Marchant might have told Jeanne Falla. But even then Jeanne Falla would only have on hearsay from Helier what he had heard from me, whereas I was an eye-witness, and could swear to the facts. And yet I could not but feel that if I had not got across to Herm when I did, I should not have got across at all, and Carette's welfare was more to me than the punishment of Torode.

That day seemed as if it never would end. Sercq and Brecqhou lay basking in the sun, as though no tragedies lurked behind their rounded bastions. The sun seemed fixed in the sky. The shadows wheeled so slowly that only by noting them against the seams in the rocks could I be sure that they moved at all. Then even that was denied me, as the headland, in a cleft of whose feet I lay, cut off the light, and flung its shadow out over the sea.

But--"pas de rue sans but." At last the red beams struck level across the water, and all the heads of Sercq and the black rocks of Brecqhou were touched with golden fire. I could see the Autelets flaming under the red Saignie cliffs; and the green bastion of Tintageu; and the belt of gleaming sand in Grande Greve; and the razor back of the Coupee; and the green heights above Les Fontaines; and all the sentinel rocks round Little Sercq.

And then the colours faded and died, and Brecqhou became a part of Sercq once more, and both were folded softly in a purple haze, and soon they were shadows, and then they were gone. And I could not but think that I might never see them again; and if I did not, that was just how I would have wished to see them for the last time.

CHAPTER x.x.x

HOW I FOUND MY LOVE IN THE CLEFT

Waited till the night seemed growing old to me, for the waiting in that dark cleft was weary work, with the water, which I could no longer see, swelling and sinking beneath me, carrying me up and up and up, pumping and grinding against the unseen rocks, then down and down and down into the depths, wet and wallowing, and fearful every moment of a wound beyond repair to my frail craft.

But at last I could wait no longer. With my hands in the rough wet walls I hauled out of the cleft and started on my search for Carette.

The sh.o.r.e thereabouts was a honeycomb of sharp-toothed rocks. I took an oar over the stern and sculled slowly and silently out from the land. I turned to the north and felt my way among the rocks, grazing here, b.u.mping there, but moving so gently that no great harm was done.

I knew at last, by the changed voice of the sea on the sh.o.r.e, that I had come to the first beach of sh.e.l.ls, and there I turned the boat's nose in and ran her softly aground.