Frenchman's Creek

Chapter XI

IT WAS about seven o'clock in the evening, and Dona, coming up on deck, found that the ship had altered course again, and was now standing in once more towards the coast.

The land was a blur as yet upon the horizon, no clearer than a wisp of cloud. All day they had remained at sea, and in mid-channel, with never a sight of another vessel, while a spanking breeze had held them for the full twelve hours, causing La Mouette to jump and dance like a live thing. Dona understood that the plan was to stay out of sight of land until dusk, and when evening came to creep in-shore under cover of darkness. The day therefore had been little more than a filling up of time, with the added chance, of course, of meeting with some merchant vessel carrying a cargo up-channel, which might offer itself for plunder, but such a ship had not been encountered, and the crew, enlivened by the long day at sea, found their appetites whipped now for the adventure that lay before them, and the unknown hazard of the night. One and all seemed possessed by a sense of excitement, a spirit of devilry, they were like boys setting forth upon some foolhardy venture, and Dona, leaning over the rail of the poop-deck to watch them, would hear them laugh and sing, cracking jokes with one another, and now and again glancing up in her direction, throwing her a look, a smile, all with a conscious air of gallantry, intensely aware of the presence on board of a woman, who had never sailed with them before.

Even the day was infectious, the hot sun, the fresh westerly breeze, the blue water, and Dona had a ridiculous longing to be a man amongst them, to handle ropes and blocks, to climb aloft up the tall raking spars and trim the sails, to handle the spokes of the great wheel. Now and again the spray broke on the deck, splashing her face and her hands, soaking her gown, but she did not care, the sun would soon dry her clothes, and she found a little patch of dry deck to leeward of the wheel where she sat cross-legged like a gypsy, her shawl tucked into her sash, and the wind playing havoc with her hair. By noon, she was prodigiously hungry, and there came to her, from the bows of the ship, the smell of hot burnt bread and bitter black coffee, and presently she saw Pierre Blanc climb the ladder to the poop, bearing in his hands a tray.

She took it from him, almost ashamed of her eagerness, and he-winking at her with an absurd familiarity which made her laugh, rolled his eyes to heaven and rubbed his stomach.

"Monsieur will join you directly," he said, smiling like an accomplice, and she thought how like William they all were in their linking of two together, and how they accepted it as natural, light-hearted and lovely.

She fell upon the loaf of bread like a creature ravenous for food, cutting a chunk off the black crust, and there was butter, too, and cheese, and the heart of a lettuce. Presently she heard a step behind her and glancing up she saw the captain of La Mouette looking down upon her. He sat by her side and reached for the loaf of bread.

"The ship can take care of herself," he said, "and anyway this is her weather, she would keep to her course all day, with a finger to the wheel now and again. Give me some coffee."

She poured out the steaming brew into two cups, and they drank greedily, watching each other over the rims.

"What do you think of my ship?" he asked.

"I think she is bewitched, and is not a ship at all, for I feel as though I had never been alive before."

"That is the effect she first had upon me, when I turned to piracy. What is the cheese like?"

"The cheese is also enchanted."

"And you do not feel sick?"

"I have not felt better in my life."

"Eat all you can now, because to-night there will be little time for food. Do you want another crust of bread?"

"Please."

"This wind will hold all day, but this evening it will fall light, and we shall have to creep along the coast, taking full advantage of the tide. Are you happy?"

"Yes…. Why do you ask?"

"Because I am happy too. Give me some more coffee."

"The men are very gay to-day," she said, reaching for the jug, "is it because of to-night, or because they are at sea again?"

"A mixture of both. And they are gay, too, because of you."

"Why should I make any difference?"

"You are an added stimulation. They will work all the better to-night because of you."

"Why did you not have a woman on board before?"

He smiled, his mouth full of bread and cheese, but he did not answer.

"I forgot to tell you," she said, "what Godolphin said the other day."

"And what did he say?"

"He told me that there were ugly rumours about the countryside, because of the men belonging to your ship. He said that he had heard of cases of women in distress."

"In distress about what?"

"The very thing I asked him. And he replied, to my choking delight, that he feared some of the country-women had suffered at the hands of your damned scoundrels."

"I doubt if they suffered."

"So do I."

He went on munching bread and cheese, glancing aloft now and again at the trim of the sails.

"My fellows never force their attentions upon your women," he said, "the trouble generally is that your women won't leave them alone. They creep out of their cottages, and stray upon the hills, if they think La Mouette is at anchor near their shores. Even our faithful William has trouble that way, I understand."

"William is very-Gallic."

"So am I, so are we all, but pursuit can sometimes be embarrassing."

"You forget," she said, "that the country-women find their husbands very dull."

"They should teach their husbands better manners."

"The English yokel is not at his best when he makes love."

"So I have heard. But surely he can improve, upon instruction."

"How can a woman instruct her husband in the things she does not know herself, in which she has had no intuition?"

"Surely she has instinct?"

"Instinct is not always enough."

"Then I am very sorry for your country-women."

He leant on his elbow, feeling in the pocket of his long coat for a pipe, and she watched him fill the bowl with the dark harsh tobacco that had lain once in the jar in her bedroom, and in a minute or two he began to smoke, holding the bowl in his hand.

"I told you once before," he observed, his eyes aloft at his spars, "that Frenchmen have a reputation for gallantry that is not merited. We cannot all be brilliant our side of the channel, while the blunderers remain on yours."

"Perhaps there is something in our English climate that is chilling to the imagination?"

"Climate has nothing to do with it, nor racial differences. A man, or a woman for that matter, is either born with a natural understanding of these things or he is not."

"And supposing, in marriage for example, one partner has the understanding and the other has not?"

"Then the marriage is doubtless very monotonous, which I believe most marriages to be." A wisp of smoke blew across her face, and looking up she saw that he was laughing at her.

"Why are you laughing?" she said.

"Because your face was so serious, as though you were considering writing a treatise on incompatibility."

"Perhaps I may do so, in my old age."

"The Lady St. Columb must write with knowledge of her subject, that is essential to all treatises."

"Possibly I have that knowledge."

"Possibly you have. But to make the treatise complete you must add a final word on compatibility. It does happen, you know, from time to time, that a man finds a woman who is the answer to all his more searching dreams. And the two have understanding of each other, from the lightest moment to the darkest mood."

"But it does not happen very often?"

"No, not very often."

"Then my treatise will have to remain incomplete."

"Which will be unfortunate for your readers, but even more unfortunate for yourself."

"Ah, but instead of a word on-compatibility, as you phrase it, I could write a page or two on motherhood. I am an excellent mother."

"Are you?"

"Yes. Ask William. He knows all about it."

"If you are so excellent a mother what are you doing on the deck of La Mouette with your legs tucked up under you and your hair blowing about your face, discussing the intimacies of marriage with a pirate?"

This time it was Dona who laughed, and putting her hands to her hair she tried to arrange the disordered ringlets, tying them behind her ears with a ribbon from her bodice.

"Do you know what Lady St. Columb is doing now?" she asked.

"I should love to know."

"She is lying in bed with a feverish headache and a chill on the stomach, and she will receive no one in her room except William, her faithful servant, who now and again brings her grapes to soothe her fever."

"I am sorry for her ladyship, especially if she browses on incompatibility as she lies there."

"She does no such thing, she is far too level-headed."

"If Lady St. Columb is level-headed why did she masquerade as a highwayman in London, and dress herself in breeches?"

"Because she was angry."

"Why was she angry?"

"Because she had not made a success of her life."

"And finding she had not made a success, she tried to escape?"

"Yes."

"And if Lady St. Columb tosses on a bed of fever now, regretting the past, who is this woman sitting on the deck beside me?"

"She is a cabin-boy, the most insignificant member of your crew."

"The cabin-boy has a monstrous appetite, he has eaten up all the cheese, and three-quarters of the loaf."

"I am sorry. I thought you had finished."

"So I have."

He smiled at her, and she looked away, lest he should read her eyes and think her wanton, which she knew herself to be, and did not care. Then, emptying his pipe on the deck, he said: "Would you like to sail the ship?"

She looked at him once again, her eyes dancing.

"May I? Will she not sink?"

He laughed, and rose to his feet, pulling her up beside him, and they went together to the great wheel, where he said a word to the helmsman.

"What do I do?" asked Dona.

"You hold the spokes in your two hands-thus. You keep the ship steady on her course-thus. Do not let her fall away too much, or you will catch the big foresail aback. Do you feel the wind on the back of your head?"

"Yes."

"Keep it there then, and do not let it come forward of your right cheek."

Dona stood by the wheel, with the spokes in her hands, and after a moment she felt the lifting of the ship, she sensed the movement of the lively hull, and the surge of the vessel as she swept forward over the long seas. The wind whistled in the rigging and the spars, and there was a sound of humming, too, in the narrow triangular sails above her head, while the great square foresail pulled and strained upon its ropes like a live thing.

Down in the waist of the ship the men had perceived the change of helmsman, and nudging one another, and pointing, they laughed up at her, calling to one another in the Breton patois she could not understand, while their captain stood beside her, his hands deep in the pockets of his long coat, his lips framed in a whistle, his eyes searching the seas ahead.

"So there is one thing," he said at last, "that my cabin-boy can do by instinct."

"What is it?" she asked, her hair blowing over her face.

"He can sail a ship."

And laughing, he walked away, leaving her alone with La Mouette.

For an hour Dona stood her trick at the wheel, as happy, she thought to herself, as James would be with a new toy, and finally, her arms tiring, she looked over her shoulders to the helmsman she had relieved, who stood by the wheel watching her with a grin on his face, and coming forward he took the wheel from her again, and she went below to the master's cabin and lay down upon his bunk and slept.

Once, opening an eye, she saw him come in and lean over the charts on the table, jotting down calculations on a piece of paper, and then she must have fallen asleep again for when she woke the cabin was empty, and rising and stretching herself she went on deck, aware, with a certain sense of shame, that she was hungry again.

It was seven then, and the ship was drawing near the coast with the Frenchman himself at the wheel. She said nothing, but went and stood by him, watching the blur of the coast on the horizon.

Presently he called out an order to his men, and they began to climb the rigging, little lithe figures, hand over hand, like monkeys, and then Dona saw the great square topsail sag and fall into folds as they furled it upon the yard.

"When a ship comes in sight of land," he said to her, "the topsail is the first thing that shows to a landsman ashore.

It is still two hours to dusk, and we do not wish to be seen."

She looked towards the distant coast, her heart beating with a strange excitement, and she was seized, even as he and his men were seized, with the spirit of superb adventure.

"I believe you are going to do something very mad and very foolish," she said.

"You told me you wanted Godolphin's wig," he answered.

She watched him out of the tail of her eye, intrigued by his coolness, his quiet, steady voice, just the same as it was when he went with her fishing on the river. "What is going to happen?" she said. "What are you going to do?"

He did not answer immediately. He called a fresh order to his men, and another sail was furled.

"Do you know Philip Rashleigh?" he said after a while.

"I have heard Harry speak of him."

"He married Godolphin's sister-but that is by-the-way. Philip Rashleigh is expecting a ship from the Indies, a fact which came to my ears too late, otherwise I should have taken steps to meet her. As it is, I presume her to have arrived at her destination within the last two days. My intention is to seize her, as she lies at anchor, put a prize crew on board, and have them sail her to the opposite coast."

"But supposing her men outnumber yours?"

"That is one of the risks I take continuously. The essential thing is the element of surprise, which has never failed me yet."

He looked down at her, amused by her frown of perplexity, and her shrug of the shoulder, as though she considered him crazy indeed.

"What do you suppose I do?" he said, "when I shut myself in my cabin and make my plans? Do I stake everything on a turn of luck? My men are not idle, you know, when I seek relaxation in the creek. Some of them move about the country, as Godolphin told you, but not with the intention of causing women to be distressed. The distress is a minor detail."

"Do they speak English?"

"Of course. That is why I choose them for this particular work."

"You are exceedingly thorough," she said.

"I dislike inefficiency," he countered.

Little by little the line of the coast became distinct, and they were entering a great sweeping bay. Away to the west she could see white stretches of sand, turning to shadowed grey now in the gathering dusk. The ship was heading north, sailing towards a dark headland, and as yet there seemed to be no creek or inlet where a vessel could lie at anchor.

"You don't know where we are going?" he asked.

"No," she answered.

He smiled, saying nothing, and began to whistle softly under his breath, watching her as he did so, so that at last she looked away, knowing that her eyes betrayed her, and his also; they were speaking to each other without words. She looked out over the smooth sea towards the land, the smell of it came to her with the evening breeze, warm cliff grass, and moss, and trees, hot sand where the sun had shone all day, and she knew that this was happiness, this was living as she had always wished to live. Soon there would be danger, and excitement, and the reality perhaps of fighting, and through it all and afterwards they would be together, making their own world where nothing mattered but the things they could give to one another, the loveliness, the silence, and the peace. And then, stretching her arms above her head and smiling, and glancing back at him over her shoulder she said to him, "Where are we bound then?"

"We are bound for Fowey Haven," he told her.