The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 18

Chapter 18

At precisely the same moment in the morning two boats set sail from the
south coast of Jersey: one from Grouville Bay, and one from the harbour
of St. Heliers. Both were bound for the same point; but the first was to
sail round the east coast of the island, and the second round the west
coast.

The boat leaving Grouville Bay would have on her right the Ecrehos and
the coast of France, with the Dirouilles in her course; the other would
have the wide Atlantic on her left, and the Paternosters in her course.
The two converging lines should meet at the island of Sark.

The boat leaving Grouville Bay was a yacht carrying twelve swivel-guns,
bringing Admiralty despatches to the Channel Islands. The boat leaving
St. Heliers harbour was a new yawl-rigged craft owned by Jean Touzel. It
was the fruit of ten years' labour, and he called her the Hardi Biaou,
which, in plain English, means "very beautiful." This was the third time
she had sailed under Jean's hand. She carried two carronades, for war
with France was in the air, and it was Jean's whim to make a show of
preparation, for, as he said: "If the war-dogs come, my pups can bark
too. If they don't, why, glad and good, the Hardi Biaou is big enough to
hold the cough-drops."

The business of the yacht Dorset was important that was why so small a
boat was sent on the Admiralty's affairs. Had she been a sloop she might
have attracted the attention of a French frigate or privateer wandering
the seas in the interests of Vive la Nation! The business of the yawl was
quite unimportant. Jean Touzel was going to Sark with kegs of wine and
tobacco for the seigneur, and to bring over whatever small cargo might be
waiting for Jersey. The yacht Dorset had aboard her the Reverend Lorenzo
Dow, an old friend of her commander. He was to be dropped at Sark, and
was to come back with Jean Touzel in the Hardi Biaou, the matter having
been arranged the evening before in the Vier Marchi. The saucy yawl had
aboard Maitresse Aimable, Guida, and a lad to assist Jean in working the
sails. Guida counted as one of the crew, for there was little in the
handling of a boat she did not know.

As the Hardi Biaou was leaving the harbour of St. Heliers, Jean told
Guida that Mr. Dow was to join them on the return journey. She had a
thrill of excitement, for this man was privy to her secret, he was
connected with her life history. But before the little boat passed St.
Brelade's Bay she was lost in other thoughts: in picturing Philip on the
Narcissus, in inwardly conning the ambitious designs of his career. What
he might yet be, who could tell? She had read more than a little of the
doings of great naval commanders, both French and British. She knew how
simple midshipmen had sometimes become admirals, and afterwards peers of
the realm.

Suddenly a new thought came to her. Suppose that Philip should rise to
high places, would she be able to follow? What had she seen--what did she
know--what social opportunities had been hers? How would she fit with an
exalted station?

Yet Philip had said that she could take her place anywhere with grace and
dignity; and surely Philip knew. If she were gauche or crude in manners,
he would not have cared for her; if she were not intelligent, he would
scarcely have loved her. Of course she had read French and English to
some purpose; she could speak Spanish--her grandfather had taught her
that; she understood Italian fairly--she had read it aloud on Sunday
evenings with the Chevalier. Then there were Corneille, Shakespeare,
Petrarch, Cervantes--she had read them all; and even Wace, the old Norman
trouvere, whose Roman de Rou she knew almost by heart. Was she so very
ignorant?

There was only one thing to do: she must interest herself in what
interested Philip; she must read what he read; she must study naval
history; she must learn every little thing about a ship of war. Then
Philip would be able to talk with her of all he did at sea, and she would
understand.

When, a few days ago, she had said to him that she did not know how she
was going to be all that his wife ought to be, he had answered her: "All
I ask is that you be your own sweet self, for it is just you that I want,
you with your own thoughts and imaginings, and not a Guida who has
dropped her own way of looking at things to take on some one else's--even
mine. It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who
are clever never think of trying to be."

Was Philip right? Was she really, in some way, a little bit clever? She
would like to believe so, for then she would be a better companion for
him. After all, how little she knew of Philip--now, why did that thought
always come up! It made her shudder. They two would really have to begin
with the A B C of understanding. To understand was a passion, it was
breathing and life to her. She would never, could never, be satisfied
with skimming the surface of life as the gulls out there skimmed the
water. . . . Ah, how beautiful the morning was, and how the bracing air
soothed her feverishness! All this sky, and light, and uplifting sea were
hers, they fed her with their strength--they were all so companionable.

Since Philip had gone--and that was but four days ago--she had sat down a
dozen times to write to him, but each time found she could not. She, drew
back from it because she wanted to empty out her heart, and yet, somehow,
she dared not. She wanted to tell Philip all the feelings that possessed
her; but how dared she write just what she felt: love and bitterness, joy
and indignation, exaltation and disappointment, all in one? How was it
these could all exist in a woman's heart at once? Was it because Love was
greater than all, deeper than all, overcame all, forgave all? and was
that what women felt and did always? Was that their lot, their destiny?
Must they begin in blind faith, then be plunged into the darkness of
disillusion, shaken by the storm of emotion, taste the sting in the fruit
of the tree of knowledge--and go on again the same, yet not the same?

More or less incoherently these thoughts flitted through Guida's mind. As
yet her experiences were too new for her to fasten securely upon their
meaning. In a day or two she would write to Philip freely and warmly of
her love and of her hopes; for, maybe, by that time nothing but happiness
would be left in the caldron of feeling. There was a packet going to
England in three days--yes, she would wait for that. And Philip--alas! a
letter from him could not reach her for at least a fortnight yet; and
then in another month after that he would be with her, and she would be
able to tell the whole world that she was the wife of Captain Philip
d'Avranche, of the good ship Araminta--for that he was to be when he came
again.

She was not sad now, indeed she was almost happy, for her thoughts had
brought her so close to Philip that she could feel his blue eyes looking
at her, the strong clasp of his hand. She could almost touch the brown
hair waving back carelessly from the forehead, untouched by powder, in
the fashion of the time; and she could hear his cheery laugh quite
plainly, so complete was the illusion.

St. Ouen's Bay, l'Etacq, Plemont, dropped behind them as they sailed.
They drew on to where the rocks of the Paternosters foamed to the unquiet
sea. Far over between the Nez du Guet and the sprawling granite pack of
the Dirouilles, was the Admiralty yacht winging to the nor'-west. Beyond
it again lay the coast of France, the tall white cliffs, the dark blue
smoky curve ending in Cap de la Hague.

To-day there was something new in this picture of the coast of France.
Against the far-off sands were some little black spots, seemingly no
bigger than a man's hand. Again and again Jean Touzel had eyed these
moving specks with serious interest; and Maitresse Aimable eyed Jean, for
Jean never looked so often at anything without good reason. If,
perchance, he looked three times at her consecutively, she gaped with
expectation, hoping that he would tell her that her face was not so red
to-day as usual--a mark of rare affection.

At last Guida noticed Jean's look. "What is it that you see, Maitre
Jean?" she said.

"Little black wasps, I think, ma'm'selle-little black wasps that sting."

Guida did not understand.

Jean gave a curious cackle, and continued: "Ah, those wasps--they have a
sting so nasty!" He paused an instant, then he added in a lower voice,
and not quite so gaily: "Yon is the way that war begins."

Guida's fingers suddenly clinched rigidly upon the tiller. "War? Do--do
you think that's a French fleet, Maitre Jean?"

"Steadee--steadee-keep her head up, ma'm'selle," he answered, for Guida
had steered unsteadily for the instant. "Steadee--shale ben! that's
right--I remember twenty years ago the black wasps they fly on the coast
of France like that. Who can tell now?" He shrugged his shoulders.
"P'rhaps they are coum out to play, but see you, when there is trouble in
the nest it is my notion that wasps come out to sting. Look at France
now, they all fight each other there, ma fuifre! When folks begin to slap
faces at home, look out when they get into the street. That is when the
devil have a grand fete."

Guida's face grew paler as he spoke. The eyes of Maitresse Aimable were
fixed on her now, and unconsciously the ponderous good-wife felt in that
warehouse she called her pocket for her rosary. An extra bead was there
for Guida, and one for another than Guida. But Maltresse Aimable did
more: she dived into the well of silence for her voice; and for the first
time in her life she showed anger with Jean. As her voice came forth she
coloured, her cheeks expanded, and the words sallied out in puffs:

"Nannin, Jean, you smell shark when it is but herring. You cry wasp when
the critchett sing. I will believe war when I see the splinters fly--me!"

Jean looked at his wife in astonishment. That was the longest speech he
had ever heard her make. It was also the first time that her rasp of
criticism had ever been applied to him, and with such asperity too. He
could not make it out. He looked from his wife to Guida; then, suddenly
arrested by the look in her face, he scratched his shaggy head in
despair, and moved about in his seat.

"Sit you still, Jean," said his wife sharply; "you're like peas on a hot
griddle."

This confused Jean beyond recovery, for never in his life had Aimable
spoken to him like that. He saw there was something wrong, and he did not
know whether to speak or hold his tongue; or, as he said to himself, he
"didn't know which eye to wink." He adjusted his spectacles, and, pulling
himself together, muttered: "Smoke of thunder, what's all this?"

Guida wasn't a wisp of quality to shiver with terror at the mere mention
of war with France; but ba su, thought Jean, there was now in her face a
sharp, fixed look of pain, in her eyes a bewildered anxiety.

Jean scratched his head still more. Nothing particular came of that.
There was no good trying to work the thing out suddenly, he wasn't clever
enough. Then out of an habitual good-nature he tried to bring better
weather fore and aft.

"Eh ben," said he, "in the dark you can't tell a wasp from a honey-bee
till he lights on you; and that's too far off there"--he jerked a finger
towards the French shore--"to be certain sure. But if the wasp nip, you
make him pay for it, the head and the tail--yes, I think-me. . . .
There's the Eperquerie," he added quickly, nodding in front of him.

The island of Sark lifted a green bosom above her perpendicular cliffs,
with the pride of an affluent mother among her brood. Dowered by sun and
softened by a delicate haze like an exquisite veil of modesty, this
youngest daughter of the isles clustered with her kinsfolk in the emerald
archipelago between the great seas.

The outlines of the coast grew plainer as the Hardi Biaou drew nearer and
nearer. From end to end there was no harbour upon this southern side.
There was no roadway, as it seemed no pathway at all up the overhanging
cliffs-ridges of granite and grey and green rock, belted with mist,
crowned by sun, and fretted by the milky, upcasting surf. Little islands,
like outworks before it, crouched slumberously to the sea, as a dog lays
its head in its paws and hugs the ground close, with vague, soft-blinking
eyes.

By the shore the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising
and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth
and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails
spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. In the tall
cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the edge of a rocky
bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping to the little ones
without. Every point of rock had its sentinel gull, looking-looking out
to sea like some watchful defender of a mystic city. Piercing might be
the cries of pain or of joy from the earth, more piercing were their
cries; dark and dreadful might be the woe of those who went down to the
sea in ships, but they shrilled on unheeding, their yellow beaks still
yellowing in the sun, keeping their everlasting watch and ward.

Now and again other birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among
the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks, and
turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak
extended, the body gorged with carrion. Black marauders among blithe
birds of peace and joy, they watched like sable spirits near the nests,
or on some near sea rocks, sombre and alone, blinked evilly at the tall
bright cliffs and the lightsome legions nestling there.

These swart loiterers by the happy nests of the young were like spirits
of fate who might not destroy, who had no power to harm the living, yet
who could not be driven forth: the ever-present death-heads at the feast,
the impressive acolytes by the altars of destiny.

As the Hardi Biaou drew near the lofty, inviolate cliffs, there opened up
sombre clefts and caverns, honeycombing the island at all points of the
compass. She slipped past rugged pinnacles, like buttresses to the
island, here trailed with vines, valanced with shrubs of unnameable
beauty, and yonder shrivelled and bare like the skin of an elephant.

Some rocks, indeed, were like vast animals round which molten granite had
been poured, preserving them eternally. The heads of great dogs, like the
dogs of Ossian, sprang out in profile from the repulsing mainland;
stupendous gargoyles grinned at them from dark points of excoriated
cliff. Farther off, the face of a battered sphinx stared with unheeding
look into the vast sea and sky beyond. From the dark depths of mystic
crypts came groanings, like the roaring of lions penned beside the caves
of martyrs.

Jean had startled Guida with his suggestions of war between England and
France. Though she longed to have Philip win glory in some great battle,
yet her first natural thought was of danger to the man she loved--and the
chance too of his not coming back to her from Portsmouth. But now as she
looked at this scene before her, there came again to her face the old
charm of blitheness. The tides of temperament in her were fast to flow
and quick to ebb. The reaction from pain was in proportion to her
splendid natural health.

Her lips smiled. For what can long depress the youthful and the loving
when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may
perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary
crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the
egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in
the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious
who dream of being even comfortable and obscure--happiness would be a
presumption; as though Fate intended each living human being at some one
moment to have the whole world to himself. And who shall cry out against
that egotism with which all are diseased?

So busy was Guida with her own thoughts that she scarcely noticed they
had changed their course, and were skirting the coast westerly, whereby
to reach Havre Gosselin on the other side of the island. There on the
shore above lay the seigneurie, the destination of the Hardi Biaou.

As they passed the western point of the island, and made their course
easterly by a channel between rocky bulwarks opening Havre Gosselin, they
suddenly saw a brig rounding the Eperquerie. She was making to the
south-east under full sail. Her main and mizzen masts were not visible,
and her colours could not be seen, but Jean's quick eye had lighted on
something which made him cast apprehensive glances at his wife and Guida.
There was a gun in the stern port-hole of the vanishing brig; and he also
noted that it was run out for action.

His swift glance at his wife and Guida assured him that they had not
noticed the gun.

Jean's brain began working with unusual celerity. He was certain that the
brig was a French sloop or a privateer. In other circumstances, that in
itself might not have given him much trouble of mind, for more than once
French frigates had sailed round the Channel Isles in insulting strength
and mockery; but at this moment every man knew that France and England
were only waiting to see who should throw the ball first and set the red
game going. Twenty French frigates could do little harm to the island of
Sark; a hundred men could keep off an army and navy there; but Jean knew
that the Admiralty yacht Dorset was sailing at this moment within half a
league of the Eperquerie. He would stake his life that the brig was
French and hostile and knew it also. At all costs he must follow and
learn the fate of the yacht.

If he landed at Havre Gosselin and crossed the island on foot, whatever
was to happen would be over and done, and that did not suit the book of
Jean Touzel. More than once he had seen a little fighting, and more than
once shared in it. If there was to be a fight--he looked affectionately
at his carronades--then he wanted to be within seeing or striking
distance.

Instead of running into Havre Gosselin, he set for the Bec du Nez, the
eastern point of the island. His object was to land upon the rocks of the
Eperquerie, where the women would be safe whatever befell. The tide was
running strong round the point, and the surf was heavy, so that once or
twice the boat was almost overturned; but Jean had measured well the
currents and the wind.

This was one of the most exciting moments in his life, for, as they
rounded the Bec du Nez, there was the Dorset going about to make for
Guernsey, and the brig, under full sail, bearing down upon her. Even as
they rounded the point, up ran the tricolour to the brig's mizzen-mast,
and the militant shouts of the French sailors came over the water.

Too late had the little yacht with her handful of guns seen the danger
and gone about. The wind was fair for her; but it was as fair for the
brig, able to outsail her twice over. As the Hardi Biaou neared the
landing-place of the Eperquerie, a gun was fired from the privateer
across the bows of the Dorset, and Guida realised what was happening.

As they landed another shot was fired, then came a broadside. Guida put
her hands before her eyes, and when she looked again the main-mast of the
yacht was gone. And now from the heights of Sark above there rang out a
cry from the lips of the affrighted islanders: "War--war--war--war!"

Guida sank down upon the rock, and her face dropped into her hands. She
trembled violently. Somehow all at once, and for the first time in her
life, there was borne in upon her a feeling of awful desolation and
loneliness. She was alone--she was alone--she was alone that was the
refrain of her thoughts.

The cry of war rang along the cliff tops; and war would take Philip from
her. Perhaps she would never see him again. The horror of it, the pity of
it, the peril of it.

Shot after shot the twelve-pounders of the Frenchman drove like dun hail
at the white timbers of the yacht, and her masts and spars were flying.
The privateer now came drawing down to where she lay lurching.

A hand touched Guida upon the shoulder. "Cheer thee, my dee-ar," said
Maitresse Aimable's voice. Below, Jean Touzel had eyes only for this
sea-fight before him, for, despite the enormous difference, the
Englishmen were now fighting their little craft for all that she was
capable. But the odds were terribly against her, though she had the
windward side, and the firing of the privateer was bad. The carronades on
her flush decks were replying valiantly to the twelve-pounders of the
brig. At last a chance shot carried away her mizzenmast, and another
dismounted her single great gun, killing a number of men. The carronades,
good for only a few discharges, soon left her to the fury of her
assailant, and presently the Dorset was no better than a battered
raisin-box. Her commander had destroyed his despatches, and nothing
remained now but to be sunk or surrender.

In not more than twenty minutes from the time the first shot was fired,
the commander and his brave little crew yielded to the foe, and the
Dorset's flag was hauled down.

When her officers and men were transferred to the Frenchman, her one
passenger and guest, the Rev. Lorenzo Dow, passed calmly from the gallant
little wreck to the deck of the privateer, with a finger between the
leaves of his book of meditations. With as much equanimity as he would
have breakfasted with a bishop, made breaches of the rubric, or drunk
from a sailor's black-jack, he went calmly into captivity in France,
giving no thought to what he left behind; quite heedless that his going
would affect for good or ill the destiny of the young wife of Philip
d'Avranche.

Guida watched the yacht go down, and the brig bear away towards France
where those black wasps of war were as motes against the white sands.
Then she remembered that there had gone with it one of the three people
in the world who knew her secret, the man who had married her to Philip.
She shivered a little, she scarcely knew why, for it did not then seem of
consequence to her whether Mr. Dow went or stayed, though he had never
given her the marriage certificate. Indeed, was it not better he should
go? Thereby one less would know her secret. But still an undefined fear
possessed her.

"Cheer thee, cheer thee, my dee-ar, my sweet dormitte," said Maitresse
Aimable, patting her shoulder. "It cannot harm thee, ba su! 'Tis but a
flash in the pan."

Guida's first impulse was to throw herself into the arms of the
slow-tongued, great-hearted woman who hung above her like a cloud of
mercy, and tell her whole story. But no, she would keep her word to
Philip, till Philip came again. Her love--the love of the young, lonely
wife, must be buried deep in her own heart until he appeared and gave her
the right to speak.

Jean was calling to them. They rose to go. Guida looked about her. Was it
all a dream-all that had happened to her, and around her? The world was
sweet to look upon, and yet was it true that here before her eyes there
had been war, and that out of war peril must come to her.

A week ago she was free as air, happy as healthy body, truthful mind,
simple nature, and tender love can make a human being. She was then only
a young, young girl. To-day-she sighed.

Long after they put out to sea again she could still hear the affrighted
cry of the peasants from the cliff-or was it only the plaintive echo of
her own thoughts?

"War--war--war--war!"

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