CHAPTER XI

"FIFTY FATHOMS DEEP"

(1)

"We shall never make Jersey with this wind," said the young fisherman.

"We _must_!" replied La Vireville firmly. "We could run for Gorey if St. Helier is impossible."

The Norman shrugged his shoulders under his faded guernsey. "Much more likely to be blown into St. Malo! She makes a great deal of leeway."

The subject of their conversation lay before them at that moment on the beach, an open sixteen-foot fisherman's boat, broad in the beam, ballasted with stones, and lug-rigged. The unlucky north-east wind, strong and steady, whipped La Vireville's cloak about him, and caused him to put a hasty hand to his hat. It was about nine of the spring evening and very dusk. The lights of the upper town of Granville showed about three miles to the left, along the crest of the high rock that jutted out into the sea, and a scrap of an undesired moon served to emphasise the rate at which the clouds were driving over the sky.

"At any rate we must put to sea," said the émigré, determined to waste no more words. "Get the boat ready, and I will fetch the child, and then help you down with her. Wherever the wind may drive us to, we cannot remain here."

He spoke no less than the truth. There had been a very unpleasant little scene on leaving Vire that morning, from which the Chouan had managed to extricate Anne and himself only by the liberal distribution of bribes. He had been driven to employ the same unsatisfactory method with regard also to their postilion, dismissing him in unusual and suspicious fashion outside Granville. Although the youth (plied in addition by his fare with much strong drink) had promised not to take the empty postchaise into the town, but to return with sealed lips on the road whence he had come, and though his start on that road had actually been witnessed, it was more than probable that he was, at the very moment, back in Granville, if not laying information against his late passengers, at least babbling about them over his cups. Hasty departure was therefore imperative, but the situation of St. Valéry-sur-Somme seemed to be reproduced, with a difference. This time fate (or, in this particular, La Vireville's knowledge) had brought the travellers to a maison de confiance--one of the chain of secret Royalist refuges which stretched along the roads from the coast--had given them a well-disposed fisherman, its master, and a convenient boat, but had denied the wind necessary to the thirty miles that lay between them and Jersey.

François, the fisherman in question, shrugged his shoulders again. "Very well, if you insist. You know the risks you are running. If we weather Chausey, we may be blown on to the Minquiers."

"My friend," retorted La Vireville, "they are nothing to the risks we run by remaining. I prefer the hospitality of the plateau des Minquiers to that of Granville prison. Shall I give you a hand with the boat?"

* * * * *

In the little cottage on the shore the fisherman's young wife was sitting with Anne-Hilarion, very drowsy, on her knee.

"Monsieur," she said, as her husband and the émigré came in, "it is wicked to take this baby to sea on such a night!"

"For that, Madame," replied La Vireville, "you must blame the women who sent him over to France."

The young woman kissed the sleepy little boy and rose with him in her arms.

"I will carry him down to the boat," she said. "You will have your hands full. There is the water-keg, François, and a basket of provisions. If you get within sight of Jersey this time to-morrow you will be lucky. You have the compass--and the nets?"

"Nets!" exclaimed La Vireville. "Ah, I understand." It was as well to have some ostensible reason for being at sea.

They went down the beach, all laden in their way, for even Anne, half asleep though he was, clutched in one hand the foreign shell which the master of the _Trois Frères_ had given him. In spite of the strong wind there were no breakers of sufficient force to make launching difficult. The fisherman's wife deposited her burden and helped to run the boat down. Then she went back, picked up the child, and gave him into the arms of La Vireville, where he stood knee-deep in the swirling water, with François holding on to the boat on the other side.

"Madame, I thank you for lending me your husband," said the Chouan, as he took the boy from her.

"It is only because of _this_," she answered, indicating the child.

"I know that, but I do not thank you any the less." He put Anne-Hilarion over the side and scrambled on board himself. François followed his example, and began to push off.

"Take the tiller, Monsieur," he said, "and I will hoist the sail. Au revoir, la femme!"

The wind carried away his wife's farewell. Rocking violently at first on the swell, the boat gradually steadied and gathered way as the lug-sail shot up, and at last, close-hauled, she was making her way out of the bay, and La Vireville and his charge were really leaving their native shores.

"Enfin!" exclaimed the former, and as François was now at liberty to steer, he relinquished the tiller and took Anne-Hilarion in his arms.

Once out of the lee of the land the full force of the wind was apparent. The _Marie-François_--in such manner did the fishing-boat combine the names of her owner and his wife--lay over to it; in the gloom the water rushed white past the gunwale (there was no coaming), and La Vireville had some ado to keep himself and the child in place on the weather side.

"You see!" shouted François, and he eased her a point or two.

He was laying the usual course for Jersey, to the northward of Granville, by the Passage de la Déroute. But the wind was strongly against them, and on their lee, to the left, as they both knew, lay the miles and miles of shoals and broken, half-submerged rocks and islets of the Iles Chausey and the Minquiers, so treacherous a network of reefs that for thirty miles out from the French coast in their direction there was no water more than ten fathoms deep, and few channels that were safe. It was true that this was not the direction which the voyagers wished to take, but it was, unfortunately, the direction of the steadily-increasing wind.

From time to time La Vireville struck a light, looked at the compass and reported, and François would take measures accordingly. On the other tack, however, the _Marie-François_ did not sail so well. After some couple of hours spent in these unprofitable manœuvres, during which they had only progressed a very few miles, La Vireville permitted himself to remark on this fact, and to say resignedly that he supposed they must make up their minds between being driven on to the rocks of Chausey or revisiting the Norman mainland. For himself he preferred Chausey.

"I told you that she made much leeway," replied the owner of the _Marie-François_ rather sulkily. "If she were a bigger boat we might change our course and ride out under the Iles Chausey till morning, when the wind will probably abate, but she is too small for that. Or, if the tide were making, we could find our way inside to the natural harbour that there is by the Grande Ile (always supposing there were no vessels of the Blues doing the same). But the ebb has already begun, and if we got in there we could not get out again, for the channels would be dry."

La Vireville, with Anne huddled up in his arms, reflected. He had sailed too often in just such a small craft between Brittany and Jersey not to know its limitations.

"Then I am afraid we must give up the idea of making Jersey and run for the coast of Brittany," he said at last. "I know it very well between Cap Fréhel and St. Brieuc. In fact"--he hesitated a moment--"I have a command thereabouts. With this wind we could make that part of the coast easily--provided that we are not sighted in the morning by the Blues, either at sea or ashore."

"Very well," agreed the Norman. "Our best plan will be to go between Chausey and the Minquiers. It is dangerous."

"It is better than returning," insisted Fortuné. "I suppose you know the channels well? And we should get some shelter from the lee of the islands of Chausey."

So they went about, and presently the little boat was engaged, in the darkness and the high wind, among that archipelago of dreary and dangerous reefs, of which some rose like needles out of the sea, and some, more deadly still, were only visible at low water. Of such were the most perilous of all, Les Ardentes, which lay in wait at the entry of the passage. And the moon would put aside the flying clouds for a moment, to show them the surf boiling white round some evil splinter of rock standing up in the channel like a warning finger, or the water sucking greedily over an unseen slab of granite. Only François' consummate steering, his steady nerves, and, perhaps, the luck which sometimes attends those who challenge risks, got them safely through. La Vireville kept Anne's eyes covered the whole time.

Even when they were through conditions were not agreeable. When François had set the course fairly for the coast of Brittany they felt the full violence of the wind again, this time, it was true, no longer in their teeth. The sorely-buffeted _Marie-François_, obliged unceasingly to tack to avoid being driven on to the St. Malo coast, shipped every few minutes a little water, flung half-contemptuously into her by a snarling wave. About two in the morning it became bitingly cold. La Vireville had long ago taken off his cloak to wrap round Anne, and finally he made a kind of bundle of him and put him right in the bows, where, in spite of the lobster-pots and the smell of fish and tarred rope, he thought the child would get more shelter than in the stern. Frightened and sea-sick, the little boy did, however, fall now and again into slumber of a sort, when La Vireville could turn an undivided attention to the management of the sails or to baling.

Thus the night wore on, and at last, as the dawn brightened on the grey, heaving waters, the coast of Brittany was visible on their left. The wind, now considerably abated, had gone round several points towards the north, and had St. Malo been their objective instead of the spot they particularly wished to avoid, they could have run before it for that harbour. As it was, they must make farther along the coast for the little bay which La Vireville had in view. It was true that, owing to the change in the wind, they would have difficulty in reaching this point before sunrise, and a man with a price on his head, like La Vireville, does not of preference select full daylight to land on a guarded coast, in precisely that region of it where he may with most probability be expected to land; but there was no help for it. There was always the bare possibility of falling in with one of the Jersey luggers before they got there, and thus making their landing unnecessary. Moreover, a sort of informal armistice was supposed to be in existence at the moment, on account of negotiations for a settlement then going forward between Republicans and Royalists in the west, though La Vireville pinned very little trust to the truce in question.

The unwished-for sun was already rising when Anne-Hilarion, rather wan, was fetched from his place of retirement and persuaded to try to eat something. He displayed small interest and no disappointment on learning that he was being taken to Brittany instead of to Jersey. When this information was being imparted to him the fishing-boat was already edging in towards the coast--a coast of cliffs and bays equally asleep in the early sunshine, whence, so her crew hoped, her small size and her inconspicuous brown sail would save her from observation. After the night of cold and peril the change of atmosphere was not unwelcome. In another half-hour, with luck, they would reach the little bay La Vireville had in mind.

The émigré was just coaxing Anne to finish a slice of bread at which he was languidly nibbling when François bent forward from the tiller and said a couple of words:

"The Blues!"

La Vireville followed his pointing finger. On the low cliff a little ahead of them, which they would shortly pass to port, was a small wooden building, and, pacing up and down in front of it, a man in uniform with a musket over his shoulder.

The Chouan and the fisherman looked at one another. They could not hope, at so short a distance, to escape notice, unless the sentry were blind; the question was whether, in view of the truce, he would or would not consider their craft suspicious. On their present course every moment brought them nearer to the headland, and consequently within better range, while if they tacked and stood out to sea they ran the chance both of attracting more attention and of giving evidence of an uneasy conscience.

"We had better continue as we are, eh?" remarked La Vireville.

Francois nodded.

"I am going to put you back in the bows, Anne," said the émigré. "It is warmer there." And, catching him up, he went forward with him over the uneven stone ballast and deposited him as low as possible among the lobster-pots and nets. The coast was hidden from his own view by the lug-sail, and he could not see what was passing there. The _Marie-François_ held on at a good speed.

"He has seen us," observed François after a moment. A sort of smile flickered over his face, and he pulled the mainsheet a little tighter round the thwart.

La Vireville came back and stood by the mast. They were now abreast of the guardhouse. "He has roused the others," said François grimly. "He was not blind, that parishioner, worse luck!"

And with the words came the sound of a shout from the cliff, then of a shot. A bullet splashed into their wake a yard or so behind them.

Fortuné de la Vireville shrugged his shoulders. They were very obviously not out of range. But neither he nor the Norman had any impulse to bring to, which was evidently the course intimated by the bullet.

"So much for the truce!" he said aloud, and as the words left his mouth came a second and more menacing crackle from the cliff. At the same moment La Vireville was conscious of a violent blow on the side of the head--so violent, indeed, that it threw him off his balance. He had a lightning impression, compound of resentment and surprise, that the yard had been hit and had fallen on him. And then, suddenly, in the midst of the sunshine, it was night. . . .

(2)

La Vireville opened his eyes. It was day again, bright sunlight. The _Marie-François_ was bounding forward before a spanking breeze. For a second or two La Vireville could not remember why he was there--hardly, indeed, who he was. Then he looked up instinctively at the yard. It was there, unharmed, at the top of the brown, swelling sail. He himself was half lying, half sitting on the seat that ran round the gunwale, and everything was as before the helmsman at the tiller----

The helmsman!

"My God!" said La Vireville aloud. The fisherman was indeed sitting in the sternsheets, his arm over the tiller; but he was sitting in a heap, and his face was upturned to the sky. Under the tiller was a red pool shifting with the motion of the boat. The Chouan stared at him horror-struck. "My God!" he said again. "He's been hit. . . . Anne, Anne, where are you?"

Only then did he become aware of something clutching tightly one of his legs, and, looking down, saw the child clinging there, his face hidden. The émigré moved to take him in his arms, and was instantly conscious that he was very dizzy and that there was blood on the breast of his own coat. "Ciel! did they get me too?" he wondered, and putting up a hand to his head withdrew it with a reddened palm. How long ago did it all happen? There was the coast, but no guardhouse. It must be out of sight now behind the headland. The wind had taken them on, the dead hand had steered them--if indeed François were dead? He must see to him first.

"Anne--my little pigeon, my comrade, it is all right," he said, stooping to him. At the sound of his voice the child lifted his head, took one look at him, and screamed. La Vireville then realised that there must be blood down his face, and, pulling out his handkerchief, did his best to remove it. Afterwards he twisted the handkerchief hurriedly round his head, in which, so far as he knew, there might be a bullet, though he inclined to think that it was a ball ricochetting off the mast which had given him a glancing blow. Otherwise he would hardly be alive to speculate about it. Not that there was any time just then for speculation. . . . Anne-Hilarion suffered himself to be lifted on to his friend's knee, and, shuddering convulsively, hid his face once more in his breast. La Vireville comforted him as well as he could, trying hastily to dissipate the terror which seemed to have frozen him, for he could not devote much time to consolation now, when Francois might be bleeding to death. So he soon lifted the little boy off his knee, and put him down facing the bows, telling him not to look round; and Anne, sobbing now as if his heart would break, leant his head on the gunwale, and so remained.

But François was quite dead. He had fallen back and died instantly, so the Chouan judged, shot, probably, through the heart. It was for this, thought La Vireville, that he had dragged him from his wife. . . . He pulled the body with difficulty away from the tiller, laid it on the ballast, spread over it a small spare mizen, and sat down at the helm to think. But he found himself looking rather hopelessly at the mess of blood below the tiller; something must be done to it, for the sake of the little boy who had been through so much. He found a rag under the seat, and with this converted the pool into a smear, and then perceived that, still bleeding himself from the head, he was leaving wherever he moved a further series of bright splashes. "I must stop that," he thought, and took stronger measures with a piece of sailcloth hacked off the mizen.

But all the while he was aware of strange momentary gaps in consciousness, though his brain was clear enough. At any cost, he must not lose his senses again--or if he must, let it at least be on land. Only an extraordinary coincidence had saved the _Marie-François_ from being blown on to the rocks or out to sea. Anne was still sobbing; the time to comfort him was not yet come. The pressing need was to make a decision while he yet could. Fortunately he knew his whereabouts exactly. . . . After a few moments' thought he made the decision, altered the boat's course a trifle, and, sitting there steering with the dead fisherman at his feet, began gently to talk to Anne at the other end of the boat.

And so, presently, the sun shining, the waves slapping her sides, and the lug-sail wide with the following wind, the _Marie-François_ began to make for the cliffs, just where a spit of rock ran out at their feet and they sloped to a little cove. Here there was only a lazy swell that stirred the long seaweed, for it was half-tide.

"We are going ashore here, child," said La Vireville, letting down the sail. "You will not see this boat again." For he meant to sink her if it could be done; she was too clear an indication of their whereabouts, and here, so near his own command, he would have small difficulty in getting another boat for Jersey, and men to sail her, too, more capable of the task than he felt at present.

White, dishevelled, and tear-stained, the little boy got off the seat. "Are we to get out now?" he asked uncertainly, as the sail came down with a run.

"Yes, little one, and be careful that you do not slip," said the émigré, putting him over the side on to the rock, and scrambling after him. Once there he spread his cloak on the seaweed. "Now sit quiet for a moment," he went on, in a business-like tone, "and take care of these things for me." He put the water-keg, the compass, and what remained of the provisions beside him, and armed himself with an oar.

"I am not going to leave you, Anne," he said. "I am only going to the end of this rock; but I want you to look at the compass carefully while I am away, so that when I come back in a minute or two you will be able to tell me which is the north. Will you?"

"Yes, M. le Chevalier," responded Anne, and averted his eyes not unwillingly from La Vireville's bandaged head to the still-swinging compass-card.

With the oar La Vireville manœuvred the boat farther out along the spit of rock, where she would catch a better wind for his purpose. Then he clambered on board again, and, lifting the sail, looked regretfully at the young, sunburnt face beneath. Thinking of the dead fisherman's wife, he turned out his pockets; there was nothing there but a claspknife and a twist of tobacco, but round his neck was a medal, and on his finger a silver ring, and these he took. Then with a rope he lashed the body to the thwarts and made fast the tiller. The last thing was done with an auger from the locker. Hastily he then hoisted the sail, scrambled back on to the rock, and pushed the boat off with the oar.

Slowly at first, then faster as the breeze caught her, the _Marie-François_ moved away. Her executioner had bored only small holes, so that she should be well out in the bay before her doom came upon her; but she was settling little by little as she went. She began at last to lie over to the wind, and that hastened the end; the water without and the water within met over the gunwale; she heeled suddenly over, struggled to right herself, heeled over again . . . and was gone. The brown sail lay a second or two on the water, then it followed the rest, and the _Marie-François_ and her master went down to the bottom of the bay.

An oar, a loose spar, some indeterminate objects, and a couple of lobster-pots bobbed on the surface of the waves as La Vireville, dizzy with pain and regret, made his way back over the seaweed to the forlorn, frightened child for whom these two lives had just been thrown away.