Part 9

“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.”

“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.”

“What--that Nelson? Ah! but he is a cunning one.”

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-là est un malin.”

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.

Lieutenant Réal 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 should fall into the enemy’s hands.” The Préfet Maritime had called Réal, 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 Réal had written the passage down from memory directly the notion of consulting Peyrol had occurred to him.

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?”

“Easier said than done,” opined Peyrol curtly.

“That’s what I told my admiral.”

“Is he a lubber, so that you had to explain it to him?”

“No, gunner, he is not. He listened to me, nodding his head.”

“And what did he say when you finished?”

“He said: ‘Parfaitement. Have you got any ideas about it?’ And I said--listen to me, gunner--I said: ‘Oui, mon 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.”

“That doesn’t advance you very much,” growled old Peyrol.

“No,” admitted the lieutenant. “I can also dispose of a few thousand francs.”

“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.”

Réal reflected, then said slowly, “I wouldn’t tell any man that. Of course a service of danger, that would be understood.”

“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?”

“We could give him a course to steer.”

“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.”

“Some cruisers are sure to be out and pick him up.”

“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?”

“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.

“I will tell you what it is, lieutenant. This seems to me just the sort of order that a land-lubber would give to good seamen. You daren’t deny that.”

“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.”

“Yes--unless he is told the nature of the job,” said Peyrol.

“Evidently. But where’s the bribe big enough to induce a man to taste of the English pontoons?”

“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?”

“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.

“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?”

Peyrol, gazing into space, spoke in a level murmur.

“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!”

“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 ear, 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?”

Lieutenant Réal threw himself back, and Peyrol, still like a carven image of grim dreaminess, growled softly:

“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.”

“Upon my word, I am almost sick enough of life to do it,” the lieutenant said in a conversational tone.

“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.”

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 Réal 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.

“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.”

“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.”

“You have discovered that, have you?”

“Yes,” said Réal. “This morning, listening to your talk on the hillside with that English corvette within one might say a stone’s throw.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Us!” said Peyrol. “I am a sea-bandit and you are a sea-officer. What do you mean by us?”

“I mean all Frenchmen,” said the lieutenant. “Or, let us say simply France, which you too have served.”

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.”

“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.”

“A lubberly notion,” assented Peyrol, with more heartiness than he had ever displayed towards Lieutenant Réal.

“Yes, but there’s that corvette. Couldn’t something be arranged to make them swallow the whole thing, somehow, some way. You laugh.... Why?”

“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....”

He stopped short. Lieutenant Réal, after observing the sudden change on his countenance, said in an impressive manner:

“I think you have just had an idea.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

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.

“Won’t you tell me something more,” asked the lieutenant.

“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. Réal 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.

IX

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 sidelong 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.

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 tartane’s 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.

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 eyes casually, Peyrol noticed the broken rope, and at once put his hand on the man’s breast.

“His heart beats yet,” he murmured. “Go and light the cabin lamp, Michel.”

“You going to take that thing into the cabin?”

“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.”

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.

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.

“Go on deck to keep a lookout,” said Peyrol. “We may have to fight yet before the night’s out.”

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:

“Hullo! Hullo! Wake up, shipmate!”

It seemed enough to wake up the dead. A faint “Voilà! Voilà!” 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.

“You called, maître?”

“Yes,” said Peyrol. “Come along and help me to shift him.”

“Overboard?” murmured Michel readily.

“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.”

“The day is not very far off,” remarked Michel.

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.