Part 8

And All Souls Eve was the time of all times for doing it. The whole town is in commotion then. In the churches, when the Vespers of All Saints are finished, the Vespers of the Dead are said. Then, just after sunset, the streets are crowded with our people hurrying to the graveyard with their lanterns for the graves. Nothing is thought about but the death-fires. From all the church towers--in Jonquières, in the Isle, in Ferrières--comes the sad dull tolling of bells. After that, for an hour or more, the town is almost deserted. Only the very old, and the very young, and the sick with their watchers, and the bell-ringers in the towers, are left there. Everybody else is in the graveyard, high up on the hill-side: first busied in setting the lights and in weeping over dead loved ones; and then, when the duty to the dead ones is done with, in walking about through the graveyard to see the show. In Provence we take a great interest in every sort of show.

Magali and I had no death-fires to kindle, for in the graveyard were no dead of ours. Our people were of Les Saintes Maries, and there their graves were--and my father, who was drowned at his fishing, had no grave at all. But we went always to the graveyard on All Souls Eve, and most times together, that we might see the show with the others and enjoy the bustle of the crowd. And so there was nothing out of the common when I asked her to come with me; and off we started together--leaving my old mother weeping at home for my dead father, who could have no death-fire lit for him because his bones were lying lost to us far away in the depths of the sea.

Our house was in the eastern quarter of the town, in Jonquières. To reach the graveyard we had to cross the Isle, and go through Ferrières, and then up the hill-side beyond. But I did not mean that we should do that; and when we had crossed the Canal du Roi I said to Magali that we would turn, before we went onward, and walk down past the Fish-market to the end of the Isle--that from there we might see the lights glowing in the dusk on the slope rising above us black against the western sky. We had done that before--it is a pretty sight to see all those far-off glittering points of light above, and then to see their glittering reflections near by in the water below--and she willingly came with me.

But I had more in view. Down at the end of the Isle, along with the other boats moored at the wharf there to be near the Fish-market, my boat was lying; and when we were come close to her I said suddenly, as though the thought had entered my head that minute, that we would go aboard of her and run out a little way--and so see the death-fires more clearly because they would be less hidden by the shoulder of the hill. I did not have to speak twice. Magali was aboard of the boat on the instant, and was clapping her hands at the notion--for she had, as all our women have, a great pleasure in following any sudden fancy which promises something amusing and also a little strange. And I was quick after her, and had the lines cast off and began to get up the sail.

"Oh," she said, "won't the oars do? Need we bother with the sail for such a little way?"

But I did not answer her, and went on with what I was doing, while the boat drifted quickly out from land before the gusts of wind which struck us harder and harder as we cleared the point of the Isle. Until then I had not thought about the weather--my mind had been full of the other and bigger thought. The gusts of wind waked me up a little, and as I looked at the sky I began to have doubts that I could do what I wanted to do; for it was plain that a gale was rising which would make ticklish work for me even out on the Gulf of Fos--and would make pretty near impossible my keeping on to Les Saintes over the open sea. And I had about made up my mind that we must go back, and that I must carry out my plan some other time, when there came a hail to us from the shore.

"Where are you going?" called a voice--and as we turned our looks shoreward there was Jan. He had been following us, I suppose--just as I sometimes had followed him.

Before I could answer him, Magali spoke. "We are going out on the water to see the death-fires, Jan," she said. "We are going only a very little way."

Her words angered me. There was something in them that seemed to show that he had the right to question her. That settled me in my purpose. Storm or no storm, on I would go. And I brought the boat up to the wind, so as to lay our course straight down the Étang de Caronte, and called out to him: "We are going where you cannot follow. Good-bye!"

And then a gust of wind heeled us over, and we went on suddenly with a dash--as a horse goes when you spur him--and the water boiled and hissed under our bows. In another half-minute we were clear of the shelter of the point, and then the wind came down on us off the hills in a rush so strong that I had to ease off the sheet sharply--and I had a queer feeling about what was ahead of me out on the Gulf of Fos.

"Marius! Marius! What are you doing?" Magali cried in a shiver of fright: for she knew by that time that something was back of it all in my mind. As she spoke I could see through the dusk that Jan was running up the sail of his boat, and in a minute more would be after us.

"I am doing what I ought to have done long ago," I said. "I am taking you for my own. There is nothing to fear, dear Magali. You shall not be in danger. I had meant to take you to Les Saintes. But a gale is rising and we cannot get to Les Saintes to-night. We will run across the Gulf of Fos and anchor in the Grau de Gloria. There is a shepherd's hut near the Grau. I will make a fire in it and you can sleep there comfortably, while I watch outside. After all, it makes no difference where we go. I shall have carried you off--when we go back you must be my wife."

She did not understand at first. She was too much frightened with the suddenness of it all, and with the coming of Jan, and with the boat flying on through the rushing of the wind. I looked back and saw that Jan had got away after us. Dimly I could make out his sail through the dusk that lay thick upon the water. Beyond it and above it was a broad patch of brightness where all the death-fires were burning together in the graveyard. We had come too far to see any longer those many points of light singly. In a mass, they made against the black hill-side a great bright glow.

VI

"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"

My mother's words seemed to sound in my ears loudly, coming with the rush of wind that eddied around me out of the sail's belly. They gave me a queer start, as the thought came with them that here at last my heart's deep desire would be mine presently--if only I could snatch it and keep it from the she-wolf of the sea.

Magali was silent--half standing, half sitting, against the weather side of the boat, close in front of me as I stood at the tiller with the sheet in my hand. She had got over her fright. I could tell that by the brightness of her eyes, and by the warm colour in her cheeks that I had a glimpse of as we flashed past the break in the hills where the Mas Labillon stands. And in that moment while the dusk was thinned a little I could see, too, that she was breathing hard. I know what our women are, and I know what she was feeling. Our women like to be fought for, and any one of them gladly would have been in Magali's place--with the two strongest and handsomest men in Les Martigues in a fair way to come to a death-grip for her in the whirl of a rising storm.

Back in the dusk, against the faint glow of the death-fires, I could see the sail of Jan's boat dipping and swaying with the thrusts of the wind-gusts as it came on after me. It had gained a little; and I knew that it would gain more, for Jan's boat was a speedier boat than mine on the wind. Close-hauled, I could walk away from him; but in running down the Étang de Caronte I had no choice in my sailing. Out on the Gulf of Fos, if I dared take that chance, and if he dared follow me, I could bear up to windward and so shake him off--making for the Anse d'Auguette and taking shelter there. But even my hot blood chilled a little at the thought of going out that night on the Gulf of Fos. When we were down near the end of the étang--close to the Salines, where it is widest--the wind that pelted down on us from the hills was terribly strong. It was hard to stand against even there, where the water was smooth. Outside, it would be still stronger, and the water would be all in a boil. And at the end, to get into the Anse d'Auguette, we should have to take the risk of a roaring sea abeam.

But any risk was better than the risk of what might happen if Jan overhauled me. Now that I fairly had Magali away from him, I did not want to fight him. What might come in a fight in rough water--where the winds and the waves would have to be reckoned with, and with the most careful reckoning might play tricks on me--was too uncertain; while if I could stand him off and get away from him, so that even for one night I could keep Magali with me, the game would be won. After that, if he wanted it, I would fight him as much as he pleased.

The thought that I would win--in spite of Jan and in spite of the storm, too--made all my blood tingle. More by habit than anything else I sailed the boat: for my eyes were fixed on Magali's eyes, shining there close to me, and my heart was full of her. We did not speak, but once she turned and looked at me--bending forward a little, so that her face was within a foot of mine. What she saw in my eyes was so easy to read that she gave all at once a half-laugh and a half-sob--and then turned away and peered through the blustering darkness toward Jan's sail. Somehow, the way she did that made me feel that she was holding the balance between us; that she was waiting--as the she among wild beasts waits while the males are fighting for her--for the stronger of us to win. After that I was ready to face the Gulf of Fos.

The time for facing the gulf was close on me, too. We had run through the canal of the Salines and were out in the open water of Bouc--the great harbour at the mouth of the étang. The gale roared down on us, now that there was little land to break it, and we began to hear the boom of the waves pounding on the rocks outside. I luffed well into the wind and bore up for the narrows opening seaward where the Fort de Bouc light-house stands. The water still was not rough enough to trouble us. It would not be rough until we were at the very mouth of the narrows. Then, all at once, would come the crush and fury of the wind and sea. I knew what it would be like: and again a chill shot through me at the thought of risking everything on that one great chance. But I had one thing to comfort me: the moon had risen--and while the light came brokenly, as the clouds thinned and thickened again, there was brightness enough even at the darkest for me to lay a course when I got out among the tumbling waves. Yet only a man half mad with passion would have thought of fronting such a danger; and even I might have held back at the last moment had I not been stung to go on.

Jan had so gained on me in the run down the étang that as we came out from the canal of the Salines his boat was within less than a dozen rods of mine; and as I hauled my sheet and bore up for the narrows he shot down upon us and for a moment was almost under our stern. And at that Magali gave a little jump and a half-gasp, and laid her hand upon mine, crying: "Marius! Quick! Sail faster! He will take me from you! Get me away! Get me away!"

And then I knew that she no longer balanced us, but that her heart was for me. After that I would have faced not only the Gulf of Fos but the open Mediterranean in the worst storm that ever blew.

VII

"God keep you from the she-wolf, and from your heart's deep desire!"

The words were in my ears again as we went flying on toward the narrows--with the reflection of the flame in the light-house making a broad bright path for us, and the flame itself rising high before us against the cloud-rack like a ball of fire. But God was not with me then, and I gave those warning words no heed. I was drunk with the gladness that came to me when Magali made her choice between us; and all that I thought was that even if we did go down together, out there in the Gulf of Fos, I still would be keeping her from Jan and holding her for my own. That there might be any other ending for us never crossed my mind.

Jan did not think, I suppose, that I would dare to go outside the harbour. He was in a rage too, no doubt; but, still, he must have been a good deal cooler than I was--for a rage of hate does not boil in the very bones of a man, as a rage of love does--and so cool enough to know that it was sheer craziness to take a boat out into that sea. What I meant to do must have come to him with suddenness--as we drew so close to the light-house that the flame no longer was reflected ahead of us, and the narrows were open over my starboard bow, and I let the boat fall off from the wind and headed her into the broken water made by the inroll of half-spent waves. In my run close-hauled I had dropped him, but not so much as I thought I should, and as I came on the wind again--and hung for a moment before gathering fresh headway--he ranged up once more within hail.

"Where are you going? Are you crazy?" he called out--and though he must have shouted with all the strength of his big lungs his voice came thin through the wind to us, and broken by the pounding of the sea.

"Where you won't dare to follow!" I called back to him--and we went rushing on below the big old fort, that carries the light on its tower, through the short passage between the harbour and the Gulf of Fos.

Something he answered, but what it was I do not know: for as we cleared the shelter of the fort--but while the tail of rock beyond it still was to windward, so that I could not luff--down with a crash on us came the gale. I could only let fly the sheet--but even with the sheet all out over we went until the sail was deep in the water, and over the leeward gunwale the waves came hissing in. I thought that there was the end of it; but the boat had such way on her that even on her beam ends and with the sail dragging she went on until we had cleared the rocks; and then I luffed her and she rose slowly, and for the moment was safe again with her nose in the wind.

Magali's face was dead white--like a dead woman's face, only for her shining eyes. She fell to leeward as the boat went over--I could not spare a hand to save her--and struck hard against the gunwale. When the boat righted and she got up again her forehead was bleeding. On her white face the blood was like a black stain. But she put her hand on mine and said: "I am not frightened, Marius. I love you!"

Jan was close aboard again. As our way had deadened he had overhauled us; and because he saw what had happened to my boat he was able to bring his boat through the narrows without going over.

"Marius! Marius! For God's sake, for Magali's sake, put about!" he shouted. "It is the only chance to save her. Put about, I say!"

He was only a little way to leeward of us, but I barely made out his words. The wind was roaring past us, and the waves were banging like cannon on the rocks close by.

What he said was the truth, and I knew it. I knew that the gale was only just beginning, and that no boat could live through it for another hour. And then one of the devils loose on that All Souls Eve, or perhaps it was my own devil inside of me, put a new evil thought into my heart: making clear to me how I might get rid of Jan for good and all, and without its ending in my losing my head or in my losing Magali by being sent overseas. It was a chance, to be sure, and full of danger. But just then I was ready for any danger or for any chance.

"Lie down in the bottom of the boat, Magali," I called sharply. "That is the safest place for you. We are going about."

I spoke the truth to Magali; but, also, I did not want her to see what happened. She did what I told her to do, and then I began to wear the boat around. How I did it without swamping, I do not know. Perhaps the devils of All Souls Eve held up my mast through the black moments while we lay wallowing in the trough of the sea. But I did do it; and when I was come about I headed straight for Jan's boat--lying dead to leeward of me, not twenty yards away. The clouds thinned suddenly and almost the full light of the moon was with us. We could see each other's faces plainly--and in mine he saw what I meant to do.

"It will be all of us together, Marius!" he called to me. "Do you want to murder Magali too?"

But I did not believe that it would be all of us together: for I knew that his boat was an old one, and that mine was new and strong. And, also, the devils had me in their hold. The gale was behind me, driving me down upon him like a thunder-bolt. As I shot close to him the moon shone out full for a moment through a rift in the clouds. In that moment I saw his face clearly. The moonlight gleamed on it. It was a ghastly dead white. But I do not suppose that it was for himself that he was afraid. Jan was not a coward, or he would not have jumped after me when I was drowning in the stormy sea.

Once more he called to me. "Marius! For the sake of Magali--"

And then there was a crashing and a rending of planks as I shot against his boat, and a sudden upspringing of my own boat under me. And after that, for a long while, a roaring of water about me, and my own body tumbled and thrust hither and thither in it, and at last a blow which seemed to dash me down into a vast black depth that was all buzzing with little blazing stars.

* * * * *

But the others were upcast on the rocks dead.

A Sea Upcast

I

When we East Anglians be set to do a thing, we be set firm. We come at what we want by slow thinking, but when we know what we want we hold fast by it--being born stubborn, and also being born staunch. It is the same with our hating and with our loving: we fire slowly, but when at last the fire is kindled it burns so strongly in the very hearts of us--with a white glow, hotter than any flame--that there is no putting it out again short of putting out our lives.

Men and women alike, we are born that way; and we fishermen of the Suffolk and Norfolk coast likewise are bred that way: seeing that from the time we go afloat as youngsters until the time that we are drowned, or are grown so old and rusty that there is no more strength for sea-fighting left in us, our lives for the most part are spent in fighting the North Sea. That is a fight that needs stubbornness to carry it through to a finish. Also, it needs knowledge of the ocean's tricks and turns--because the North Sea can do what we East Anglians can't do: it can smile at you and lie. A man must have a deal of training before he can tell by the feel of it in his own insides that close over beyond a still sea and a sun-bright sky a storm is cooking up that will kill him if it can. And even when he feels the coming of it--if he be well to seaward, or if he be tempted by the fish being plenty and by the bareness of his own pockets to hold on in the face of it--he must have more in his head than any coast pilot has if he is to win home to Yarmouth Harbour or to Lowestoft Roads.

For God in his cruelty has set more traps to kill seafarers off this easterly outjut of England, I do believe, than He has set anywhere else in all the world: there being from Covehithe Ness northward to the Winterton Overfalls nothing but a maze of deadly shoals--all cut up by channels in which there is no sea-room--that fairly makes you queazy to think about when you are coming shoreward in a northeast gale. And as if that were not enough to make sure of man-food for the fishes, the currents that swirl and play among these shoals are up to some fresh wickedness with every hour of the tide-run and with every half shift of wind. Whether you make in for Yarmouth by Hemesby Hole to the north, or by the Hewett Channel to the south, or split the difference by running through Caister Road, it is all one: twisting about the Overfalls and the Middle Cross Sand and the South Scroby, there the currents are. What they will be doing with you, or how they will be doing it, you can't even make a good guess at; all that you can know for certain being that they will be doing their worst by you at the half tide.

At least, though, the Lowestoft men and the Yarmouth men have a good harbour when once they fetch it; and by that much are better off than we Southwold men, who have no harbour at all. With anything of a sea running there is no making a landing under Southwold Cliff--though it is safe enough when once your boat is beached and hauled up there; and so, if the storm gets ahead of us, there is nothing left but to run for Lowestoft: and a nice time we often have of it, with an on-shore gale blowing, working up into the Covehithe Channel under the tail of the Barnard Bank! As for beating up to seaward of the Barnard and running in through Pakefield Gat, anybody can try for it who has a mind to--and who has a boat that can eat the very heart out of the wind. Sometimes you do fetch it. But what happens to you most times is best known to the Newcome Shoal. When you have cleared the Barnard--if so be you do clear it--the Newcome lies close under your lee for all the rest of the run. What it has done for us fishermen you can see when the spring tides bare it and show black scraps of old boats wrecked there, and sometimes a gleam of sand-whitened bones.

For a good many years we had another chance, though a poor one, and that was to make a longish leg off shore and then run in before the wind and cross the Barnard into Covehithe Channel through what we called the Wreck Gat--a cut in the bank that the currents made striking against a wrecked ship buried there. The Wreck Gat is gone now--closed by the same storm that nearly closed my life for me--and you will not find it marked nowadays on the charts. Its going was a good riddance. At the best it was a desperate bad place to get through; and at its worst it was about the same as a sea pitfall: and that nobody knows better than I do, seeing that I was the last man to get through it alive. But when you happened to be to windward of it, if it served at all, it served better than running down a half mile farther and trying to round the tail of the bank.

Very many craft beside our own fisher-boats find their death-harbour on our East Anglian sands. Our coast, as it has a right to be, is the dread of every sailor man who sails the narrow seas. Great ships, storm-swept on our sands, are sucked down into the depths of them, or are hammered to pieces on the top of them, as light-heartedly as though they were no more than cock-boats. And the supply of ships to be wrecked there is unending--since the half of the trade of the world, they say, sails past our shores. From every land they come: and many and many a one of them comes but never goes. Down on them bangs the northeast wind with a roar and a rattle--and presently our sands have hold of them with a grip that is to keep them fast there till the last day! Sometimes the dead men who were living sailors aboard those ships come ashore to us, though they are more like to find graves in the sands that murdered them or to be swept out to sea; sometimes, by a twist of chance that you may call a miracle, the sea has a fancy for casting one or two of them ashore alive. Dazed and half mad creatures those live ones are, usually: their wits all jangled and shaken by the great horror that has been upon them while they tossed among the waves.