PART II THE ISLAND

CHAPTER ONE

§ 1

St. Malo guards those seas which lie on the west of Cape de la Hague, in the gulf which Normandy and Brittany make together. They were part of his bishopric of wild waves, their islets are crowned with the ruins of his monasteries and in legend he himself sits upon the Ortac Rock, watching the fisher-craft go by, lifting for them his intercessions against the storms. His name wanders through many an uncouth speech—in Sark he is Magliore, farther down his own coast he is Maclou, and far away across the sea, where West Barbary sinks into drowned Lyonesse, he claims St. Meliarne’s banner as it hangs in Mullion Church. And as his name and legend wander he becomes many strange things—giant and monster as well as monk and bishop. Nevertheless, we will claim his merits and intercessions, for those are treacherous seas, and the fanged rocks devour the little craft on which man goes out to seek his bread. Holy Malo—Magliore, Maclou, Meliarne, Mullion—pray for us.

On a May morning the colourless sky hung low over St. Malo’s sea, and a great stillness and cold held everything. There was no life upon the water, no wind, only a great stillness and cold.

Far away in the south-west, where sky and sea were woven together in mist, an eye shone—flashed—and disappeared. It might have been the eye of great Malo himself, looking out on his domains. Once more it broke out of the mist—beamed, and was gone. It was the only light in all that dullness, the only colour in all that grey. Again and again it flashed—departed—came and went.... Daniel, sitting on his bag on the second-class deck, asked a sailor what it was.

“That?” said the sailor—“that’s the Casquet light.”

“A lighthouse?”

The sailor looked at him commiseratingly.

“Never heard of the Casquets?”

Yes—he had heard his mother speak of them.

“That’s where the boats go down,” said the sailor—“there’s a current pulls from them rocks, and in a storm the craft goes into them like moths into a candle.”

“Have there been many wrecks?”

“Many!” the sailor laughed. “Never heard how the Stella went down?—and she was only the big noise; there was all the little ones that never got into the papers—all the French trawlers and the island boats that don’t get written about.”

He went off about his work, leaving Dan staring into the fogs with their golden eye. Now he could distinguish a tall purplish column—that must be the lighthouse ... it was like the disused lighthouse at home, on the cliffs above Birling Gap, but taller—more graceful, more sinister.... He could see the rocks beneath it now, the rocks on which it stood—huge, smooth, helmet-shaped rocks, like the heads of some monster coiled under the sea.... The Casquets were falling away into the east, as the Cesarea throbbed past them through the calm sea ... the sky was turning red behind them, and they and the column of the lighthouse were purple against the glow. The orange light winked in a crimson and purple sky. Colour had suddenly taken possession of the sky, and ran out over the sea ... the sea was blood-red—the Casquet rocks were black. The orange light became smoky, furious ... it seemed to fight the kindling sea and sky ... it gave one last flash upon its pedestal, and went out.

It was sunrise, but the moon had not yet set. Her papery, waning crescent hung over some new islands which had sprung out of the West. The Cesarea was ploughing her way towards them—behind her dragged the white furrows of the sea, and the great stream of the smoke from her smoke-stack, fuming along the sky among the last stars.

§ 2

A town lay asleep between two horns. On the end of each horn was a castle, which also seemed asleep, and behind the town rose a wooded land, with one high tower above the trees. The decks were crowded all round Daniel—people pushed about him, swinging bags and cases against his knees. Bells rang—sailors cried, “By y’r leave”—great coils of rope ran out into the sea ... voices shouted from the harbour side and from a little boat riding beside the buoy. Grasping his ticket in one hand, his bag in the other, he slowly pushed and jostled his way ashore.

This was Guernsey, and a fine place it looked—houses, churches, streets, and castles, too. But in the cold morning hour of sunrise and moonset, it seemed foreign and unfriendly. The tall houses with their steep, French roofs, were not the houses of home ... and yet it was here his father had met his mother—in a little house in Bordage, she had told him....

He was on the quay, following the stream of people towards the turnstiles. A great crane was hoisting luggage from the hold of the Cesarea—he must wait here for his box. He felt a sudden warm attachment to his box, for it was all that he had of home with him. It held everything he had in the world, except a few clothes in his bag—it was a part of Daniel Sheather in a strange land.... Suppose it was lost—suppose it had not come over with him, but lay behind at Southampton? He could not bear the thought—his photographs of the George, of his father and mother, of Chris and Len and Len’s children ... his one or two books—his handkerchiefs and shirts that his mother had hemmed and marked for him ... he could not start here without them all—he must have the old things....

Ah, there it was—he sprang forward to claim it, then did not know what to do. He asked a porter how he was to cross to Sark—where was the Sark boat? Confusion started—the porter said there was no boat to Sark that day, another porter said there was—nobody seemed to know. A little paddle-steamer was pointed out to him as the Sark boat, and one of the porters was for carrying his box on board, but in the end the noes had it, for her old man was reported to be over at Pleinmont at his sister’s wedding.

“But there will be a motor-boat crossing to-night, for visitors have arrived for the Bel-Air and are to be fetched,” said another porter.

It seemed as if Daniel would eventually reach Sark, though it was just as well he was not in a hurry. His box and bag were left on the quay, and he set off into the town to find a meal.

He thought he would like to go to the eating-house in Bordage, where his father had first met his mother, but though he managed to find the street and walk the length of it, no eating-house was to be seen. He felt as if his mother’s romance—his only link with Guernsey—had gone with it.

He ate his breakfast in a little shop in Hauteville Street, and then set out to see the town. It did not interest him much. He saw that it was beautiful and restful and sunny, but his heart was sick for Newhaven Bridge and the weedy, mussel-smelling mouth of the Ouse—for the little tilted rows of slate-roofed houses that swarmed over the lower slopes of the downs—for the street-start of the great white road that led up the valley towards home....

He went into the Town Church and sat there for a while—but even the church was foreign. Cold and unworshipful, it had none of the homeliness of Bullockdean; even in the last dead weeks he had known that Bullockdean church held warmth and friendship for those who were not too bruised to seek them—for the old women with their prayer-books and the young boys and girls who made sheep’s-eyes at each other. But here one was all among the dead—or rather the dead trappings of the dead, the coats of arms they would no longer bear, the swords they would no longer wear.... Memorial after memorial to Le Page and Le Pelley and Le Marchant and De la Condamine and De Jersey ... griffins, gules, mullets, bends d’or, and bends d’azur ... this was the Cloud of Witnesses—the Writing on the Wall of the Town Church.

He was tired after his long journey and dozing night on the second-class deck, and uncomfortable as he was in his hard pew, he fell asleep—to dream that he was rowing Belle in a little boat round the Casquets, which were plastered with the arms of the best Guernsey families. He woke to find himself being shaken by the verger, who told him that church was not the proper place to go to sleep in.

Well, where else was he to go?—what could he do till four o’clock, when the motor-boat started? He wished he had never come to this unfriendly place, where even the church refused him a lap to sleep in ... where no one might sleep but the well-born dead. He would be happier at home, even with Belle living just across the road as Mrs. Munk and the mistress of the Crown. At least he would have his family at home—here no one seemed to care. Uncle Philip had not even answered his mother’s second letter, saying that her son was crossing by Wednesday’s boat—someone might have come over to meet him in Guernsey, to tell him how to get to Sark. There lay Sark, a dim, distant land, beyond the nearer coasts of Herm and Jethou. What should he find in Sark?—a family, friends, home, love? No, he had left them all on the other side of the water.

§ 3

The day had grown very hot at noon, and at four o’clock the stones of the Albert Pier were warm with the sun. A white motor-boat bobbed on the tide, and the men within her shouted to one another in an outlandish tongue. They were loading her with crates and packing-cases and some luggage which had been brought down to the end of the pier. She must be the Sark boat, and Daniel asked if he could cross in her.

He was told that he could do so for ten shillings. This made him very angry, for he had only twelve-and-sixpence in the world, and did not much relish the prospect of starting a new life on a capital of half a crown. He felt that his cousins, who he understood had a boat of their own, might have come over and fetched him and spared him this expense. However, there was no help for it, so he took his seat in the little boat among the well-to-do visitors who had chartered it, and in a few minutes she was chug-chugging out of the harbour, past the lighthouse and Castle Cornet into the Little Russell.

The sea was heavily calm, and the waters had a thick, oily quality—they went in heavy, dull blue rolls across the Russell, as some force passed deep under them, never breaking their blue, oily surface. The tide was low, and the great buoys stood out of it, dripping with seaweed, and the foundations of rocks, tide-stained and seaweed hung. Used to the Sussex cliffs, the misty whiteness of Birling Gap, Dan watched in astonishment those rocks as the little Rose Carré flew past them. The sea was full of rocks, great rocks like castles, raising their turrets on pillared bases, pillars that the sea had carved. In colour they were pink and brown, against the oily blue of the sea and the clearer blue of the sky that rested on the sea.

He sat there tired and silent on his box, watching the calm beauty of the sea roll past him and the castles of the rocks. They ran by Jethou, steering on l’Etac. Sark was coming out of the sea; it looked like a sea-monster, sleeping on the tide. They drew nearer, and its flanks broke into bays; passing under l’Etac, the bays broke into caves and creaks and pinnacles—the island of Brenière stood out, fierce and eaten with caverns....

“You never been to Sark before?” asked the boatman in charge of the engine.

Daniel shook his head.

“You go to see friends?”

“I’m going to stay with my uncle, Philip le Couteur. Do you know him?”

“I know him? Oh, my Gar! Yes.”

“Do you know if he’s expecting me?”

“Oh, yes, he is expecting you. He say you come along some day.”

This sounded unnecessarily vague after his mother’s letter—but Daniel still hoped there would be someone to meet him at the harbour.

“Where is the Pêche à Agneau?” he asked. “Can we see it from here?”

“No—it is on the other side. Now we go past La Coupée.”

Young Sheather looked up at the towering cliffs—carrying their seamed brownness up against the glitter of the dustless sky. Could anyone live on this desert place, hard, fierce, scored and scaly as the hide of a dragon?

“Are there houses on the top?”

“Oh, my Gar, yes! Plenty houses,” and the boatman laughed.

The Rose Carré was running only a few yards from the coast—the Point du Derrible fell away straight into deep water. Close to Daniel’s staring eyes was a mass and terror of rocks, columns, caverns, points, blocks, walls, crags, gullies, every possible formation, heaping itself round the point, with the water lapping against it, oozing and plopping in its crannies with a faint glug-glug, rolling in and out of its caverns with a hollower, booming sound. As the boat ran by, the echoes of the engine sent up clouds of herring-gulls from the rocks, while on the smaller rocks beyond the point little parliaments of cormorants sat solemn and undisturbed.

“Very dangerous here,” said the boatman, laughing again, but Daniel was not frightened. He did not know enough about seafaring and this particular coast to be frightened. Later, knowledge would teach him fear.

The boat dodged her way through the deep channels into the harbour. The tide just allowed her to creep in. Daniel climbed up the green, oozy steps on to the quay. The little harbour was ringed all round with cliffs of that brownish pink with which he was now growing familiar; there was no way out of it save by a tunnel cut through them.

He looked round in vain for some signs of a greeting. A few boatmen and fishermen were leaning against the harbour walls, and a cart had come down from the hotel to fetch the visitors’ luggage, but no one seemed to have come to meet Daniel Sheather. He felt chilled and lonely; the rich, rather terrible beauty of the place, so foreign to his Saxon eyes—used to the tame, sweet landscape of the South Downs, with their gentle curves and misty colours—added to his feeling of strangeness. This island was unfriendly—a strange land, though the land of his birth.

He went up to an old man, and asked him if he could tell him the way to Philip le Couteur’s house, but this led only to a fresh baulk. The old fisherman could speak no language but his own, the harsh, disfigured remnant of the speech his Norman ancestors had left him—as they had left him their red hair and sea-blue eyes. It was a foreign language to Daniel, though he must have often heard it, indeed must have spoken it as a child. Luckily a younger man came to help him, and he gathered that the Pêche à Agneau was at the remotest end of the island, across the Coupée in Little Sark.

“How am I to get my box there?”

Nobody seemed to know. But everybody seemed very much amused—they seemed to relish the prospect of Dan being left in the Creux Harbour with the big, corded box he wanted to carry to the Pêche à Agneau. It was not a cruel or malicious amusement, merely the delight of primitive man in another’s misfortune—but it did not help Daniel to feel at home.

At last it was discovered that La Belle Hautgarde had sent their mule cart to fetch stores which the Rose Carré had brought over. The great lurching mules came through the tunnel in the midst of the discussion, and after a good deal of argument with the driver, it was arranged that Daniel should be taken in the mule cart as far as La Belle Hautgarde, from which it would not be difficult for the Le Couteurs to fetch his box.

He accordingly drove off. With a great clatter and clank of hoofs and wheels the cart went through the tunnel—and then suddenly the landscape melted ... fierce brown cliffs, rocks, columns and caves gave place to gentle banks smothered in cow-parsley, campion and bluebells. Trees bowered over head, their leaves spattered with filtering sunlight. A soft air blew, thick with the scent of flowers. He had broken through the frowning walls of Sark and found a flower-garden. It was as if a fierce, terrible face had suddenly and beautifully smiled.

Then he began to remember ... scents became familiar, that scent of evening and flowers and warm, sweet grass ... he remembered thatched roofs with queer crinkled edgings of tiles ... cows with sleek, mouse-coloured skins ... an avenue of trees ... a windmill.... He had forgotten the cliffs of Sark, the barriers which, as a child, he could have seldom or never seen, but he had remembered the heart—the deep lanes, the trees, the flowers, the daily sights of the child who had played with the lobster’s claw....

The road narrowed. The island narrowed. Sark was only six feet wide. On either side the cliffs fell away, down into sinister bays, hundreds of feet below. Dan was frightened at last—he grasped the sides of the cart, as it lurched over La Coupée, and then up the steep hill beyond it into Little Sark.

Once more the island spread, and the fields were full of trefoil, cropped by cows. Thatched roofs ran long-side the lane. They had come to La Belle Hautgarde, and Dan must dismount, and go on his own legs to the Pêche à Agneau.

“What about my box? Where can I leave it?”

“Leave it—where should you leave it, if not here?” asked the driver, who had deposited the box in the lane. “The sons of Philip Le Couteur will come and fetch it some time.”

“But is it safe?”

“Yes, it is safe. We are honest in Sark—we are not English.”

Dan did not know whether he ought to take offence at this last remark, but he had not much spirit left, and risky and grotesque as it seemed to leave his box lying in the road, he submitted to the inevitable, and walked off, to find as best he could his way to his uncle’s house.

§ 4

Perhaps the driver was right in his distinctions between Sark and England, for the box was still lying unharmed and apparently unnoticed in the lane when Daniel and two of his cousins called for it after supper. Dan and they were still in the stage of suspicious investigation—Peter was not unlike his English cousin, with his black hair and eyes, though instead of Dan’s flat Saxon features he had the sharp nose and chin of the Guernsey-diluted Le Couteurs; but Helier belonged to the Norman type of his Hamon mother, and had thick curly red hair and blue eyes and a ruddy freckled skin. Luckily both boys could speak English fluently, though the Saxon drawl and the French clip nearly built Babel out of the conversation.

“There your box—it is safe,” said Peter. He seized one end and swung it up—Dan laid hold of the other and could scarcely lift it. This was humiliating.

“Let me,” said Helier, and swung up the other end. They both swung the box to their shoulders, and signalled to Dan to come round to the side and take his lesser share of the burden.

“We carry it like a coffin,” said Peter, and they both laughed.

The Pêche à Agneau was only a couple of furlongs from La Belle Hautgarde, below the brow of the hill, looking out nearly west towards the Moie de la Bretagne. Like most dwellings in Sark, it was a collection of small, separate cottages gathered round a well. Philip Le Couteur and his family lived in one cottage, Eugene Le Couteur and his family in another, and the third cottage was inhabited by a daughter who had married back into the Hamons, and whose husband was in partnership with Philip and Eugene. There must have been more than twenty souls in that little desolate group of houses on the cliff edge, and it was not surprising that accommodation was scarce and Daniel had to sleep in the same room as his cousin Peter.

He found the mass of his cousins exceedingly confusing; they were so numerous that they seemed to have exhausted the supply of Christian names on the island—Eugene and Philip Le Couteur each had a son called Philip, and the community also contained three Eugenes and two Peters. Add to this a strong family likeness, born of generations of intermarriage (which had not seemed, however, to affect the hardiness of the stock), an incomprehensible speech and the complete promiscuity of all three families, and the result was utter bewilderment for poor Daniel.

However, they had given him an excellent supper of fish, bread and butter, and gâche—a soft, sweet cake full of currants, which he liked very much. When supper was over and the box had been fetched home, they left him to himself and the welcome freedom to go straight to bed.

He felt tired and strained, not only with the journey, but with the effort of adapting himself to such entirely new surroundings, though doubtless memory and hereditary both helped him a little. He was too tired for satisfying sleep—also he had been given what his Uncle Philip called an English bed, which meant a bed with broken springs, uneven legs, and mattress stuffed with what felt like lumps of wood. His cousin slept in a Sark bed, which was like a large flat box without a lid, full of gaily-coloured bedding. Dan realized that, though his uncles were exceedingly well-to-do, the discomfort of this new life would probably be much greater than that of the poverty-stricken George. However, he was of an adaptable nature, and shrugged down into the misery of the English bed, pulling the ends of the pillow over his ears and the blanket over his eyes, to shut out the strange world which moonlight was now making stranger.

CHAPTER TWO

§ I

He woke early, to find the room full of sunshine and stir. The stir came from the sea, which moved in a solemn roar over the rocks below. He sat up and listened to it—how the murmur swung!—as the wind drove it landwards, and then let it fall back into a sigh. His heart quickened with a love of the sea ... after all, had not his fathers sought their bread upon the waters for many generations?... He slipped out of bed and looked out of the window. There lay the sea, a soft sun-dazzled blue, calm enough far from the shore, but all laced with foam round the coasts and rocks.... Its deep tides swelled over its bed, moving solemnly—only the edges were in commotion.

He moved to the chair where his clothes were piled, and began to dress quickly and noiselessly. The sea was drawing him out to it—he must go down to it, close enough to smell it, to feel its spindrift on his face. It was queer that the sea had never stirred this emotion in him before—not at Birling Gap, where the little wavelets rippled on the wet mirror of the sand—not in the haunted desolation of the Casquets—nor even in St. Peter Port, with the fishing-boats at anchor under the White Rock.... It was not till he had come here that the deep had called to him, not till he had heard its voice from the house where he was born.

He ran out of the house as soon as he was dressed. Either somebody was up before him, or the door had never been shut, for he found it open. His footsteps rang on the cobbled stones of the courtyard, in the midst of which the well was wreathed in climbing roses. Round it the little houses and barns, their thatched roofs sprouting with stone-crop and scabias and coloured mosses, had a charming look of Arcady asleep—but Daniel had ceased to rest in the rustic beauty of the island’s heart, he wanted the edges, salt and rough, seamed, worn, cavernous, spiked and deadly, the workshop of the sea.

He found a path that wound over the brow of the cliff, and then stopped short above a slide of rock. The descent looked easy—the rocks were granite, rough and sure of foothold, and were moreover broken up into blocks and ledges. He let himself down, and as he had a strong head, found little difficulty in the scramble. He was soon only a few feet above some flat rocks full of pools into which the sea was breaking.

Looking down from above he could see the rich sea life of the pools, their purple fringes of seaweed, and their great red and green jewels, which he supposed must be sea-anemones. Below the slabs the tide was roaring, sending up lashings of foam. He would swing from his hands and let himself down—it wasn’t much of a drop.

It was more than he thought—a matter of seven feet. He was now well below the level of high tide, and the rocks were covered with thick greasy seaweed—the vraic which makes a livelihood for the lonely men of Pleinmont.... His feet slithered on it, and he found it best to crawl about from pool to pool. His throat tightened as he looked down into those little gardens of the sea—their rocks, their trees, their flowers, their tiny inhabitants swimming in their alleys. He had never seen anything so lovely, so complete—he forgot that he had come out to watch the splendour and fury of the waves below. This was fine—he could mess about here all the morning, but he supposed his uncles would want him to do some job or other with the boats. My! but they’d have to teach him a few things ... he to work in a boat, who had always worked in a bar!

The waters of the little pools swirled suddenly as the sea poured into them. It was a pity the tide was coming in.... Losh! but it had come in a good way since he’d been on the slabs ... things moved quicker here than at Birling Gap.... He’d better.... But he couldn’t. He had dropped off the rock, which now curved outwards above him, shutting off his escape that way.

He looked round for other ways, but could see none. The sea was all round the slabs, breaking over them—there was only the way he had come, and that was impossible from below. What a fool he had been—he might have realized that the rock curved inwards at the root.... Perhaps the tide would fall back before it reached him. No—for the seaweed was above his head, hanging from the eaves of the rock seven feet above the slabs.

He felt his skin go rough, and then cold and sweaty. He found himself shouting for help, but the sea was drowning his voice in a great roar. He was afraid, mysteriously, of more than death. There was something horrible and malevolent in this submerging coast—the very smell of brine and seaweed was sinister with its hint of corruption.... “Help!—Help!”—he could not die here—he would die anywhere but in this place.

He had faced death before—he had lain sick but disciplined under shell-fire in France. This was worse—infinitely worse. Shell-fire was nothing—it was only death. This was worse than death, for he was afraid not only of death but of the forces that were dealing death to him. “Oh, deliver us from evil....” He must not die in the slime....

A loud laugh sounded from the rock above.

“Peter!”

“You cry ‘help’?”

“For God’s sake get me out of this.”

“Idiot!” Peter laughed again. “You be drowned if you stay there.”

“I can’t get up.”

“I cannot get down—I go—I fetch a rope.”

“But won’t the tide be up before you’re back?”

“Oh, my Gar, no!”

He walked off with maddening deliberation.

“Peter, don’t leave me here!” Dan called after him foolishly, but Peter did not stop to listen.

Once more he was alone, and once more the horror was like a hand upon his throat, choking the breath out of it. His tongue parched and his eyes swam. He tried to think of other things—far-off homely things of the Ouse Valley, of nature cloaked and veiled and decent—but they were as shadows on glass, and could not hold his mind’s eye from its terror, from the dreadful strange things all round him, from nature indecent and exposed, shocking and horrifying him as he crouched there on his rock. He tried even to think of Belle, whom he had tried so hard not to think of for a month or more; the thought of her might give him a more wholesome sickness. But even Belle to-day was as a shadow on glass—his most poignant thought of her could not draw him away into the dignities of human sorrow. He could only cower and grovel before the horror of the sea, and those things which the sea exposes on some evil coasts. He now knew that he was not afraid of death—that death itself was only a shadow on glass.

Peter returned just as the slabs were coming awash. He brought with him a rope and two Philips, and they soon had Daniel up beside them among the pink stars of the thrift. He was trembling all over, which amused them very much, and the next moment was violently sick, which amused them more than ever. Their English cousin was very funny—oh, my Gar, yes!

§ 2

Daniel was rather ashamed of himself and of the terror he had shown. He did not like the way his cousins laughed at him—the way they had of saying for days and weeks afterwards: “You go down to-day to Rouge Caneau? You like it down there on the rocks.” But he never could bring himself to look upon his terror as quite unreasonable; during the next few weeks he felt it again more than once—down in the bays, below the high-tide level, among the hanging seaweed and cold slipperiness of the rocks. He felt as he sometimes used to feel at home in the churchyard—a feeling of “run away or the ghosts will get you” ... though here it was not ghosts, but something which prowled in that wet place between the tides, and lived in the caves that for half the day were full of water and for the other half were full of wind.

But he was not always afraid, for there was also the warm, flowery heart of the island, with its farms and its windmill, and its ilex-sheltered lanes. There was the loveliness of the Dixcart valley, where the ferns stand four feet high beside the stream—there were the marguerites pouring over the edge of the cliffs, and the foxgloves making purple flame at Les Orgeries and on the headland which the English call the Hog’s Back and the islanders call Château des Quenévés. The coasts were lovely, too—as long as you kept away from their roots—with their columns of rosy rock, their promontories like horned beasts, and above all with their distant view of islands and the golden coast of France.

Daniel soon learned to know this new complete little country—to know with thoroughness its five or six miles of road, with less assurance its twenty-five miles of coast. He was right in thinking that his cousins would want him to help them in their boats, and he learned to be useful quicker than either he or they had expected. Fundamentally adaptable and with sea-going blood in his veins, he soon learned, in spite of his initial terror, to handle a boat whether propelled by oars or engine. His uncles owned quite a little fleet—a cutter, two large motor-boats, a small motor-boat, and several rowing-boats. They used these for fishing, taking goods and passengers to and from Guernsey and even Jersey, and also for taking visitors on pleasure-trips round the island and to visit those caves which could be reached only from the sea.

Daniel was happy enough on the sea—for those were the days of summer calm, when the teeth of the coast were harmless as the teeth in the jaws of a sleeping animal. He loved the soft, wind-driven glide of the boat over the still waters of Havre Gosselin, he loved the gentle rocking beyond La Pêcheresse, or those moments at anchor off La Genetière, when he and his cousins let down the lobster-pots to the bed of the sea, or drew them up after old-man lobster had had time to fulfil his certain folly, and would be found sitting grey and disconsolate in his wicker prison.

His uncles never went a-fishing. Philip had charge of the Guernsey trade, and went to and fro about five days out of seven, either with goods or passengers; and Eugene, who was about ten years older, and had been beaten by the winds into still older looks, nowadays spent most of his time on land, attending to the farm with his son-in-law Hamon, though he was fond of boasting the exploits of his seafaring days.

Eugene Le Couteur was the most uncivilized member of all that household, whose civilization ranged from the two old uncles, unable to read or write and with English limited to a few guide-book phrases for the visitors—to cousin Thomas, Philip’s son, who had once been to England, and ever since had worn a bowler hat on Sundays. Uncle Eugene hated England and the English; the only place he hated more than England was Guernsey, and he never wearied of complaining of the opportunity which had been missed during the Great War, when the Royal Navy could have smashed Guernsey as easy as a crab’s back.

“We could have smashed Guernsey, but Germany we could not smash—it was a waste.”

“We did smash Germany, uncle,” said Dan—who had come to pick up enough of the island speech to help him through a conversation.

“We did not smash Germany quite small—they are still there, and owe us a lot of money. We should have smashed Guernsey quite small, so that they could not owe us any money.”

“Well, we smashed Germany quite small enough,” grumbled Daniel, annoyed at this reflection upon him as a soldier. He was the only one of the household who had seen service in France, though Helier and young Eugene had both been on a mine-sweeper, “and each time we blow up they give us a new pair of trousers.”

“But what do we want to smash Germany for at all?” continued Uncle Eugene, in waxing indignation—“Germany has never done us any harm. I have never seen a German. When the war start, a silly, vagabond man come along to me and want to take my big boys to fight the Germans. I say: ‘I do not want to fight the Germans. They never done me any harm. They never put their lobster-pots on the Minquier Rocks. I am ready to fight the French whenever they put their lobster-pots on the Minquier Rocks, and I am ready to fight Guernsey always. But I have never seen a German, so why should I fight them?’ He say: ‘Then they will come and kill you.’ I say: ‘They will not. If they come to Sark they come to the north side, to the Eperqueries. If they should try to cross the Coupée into Little Sark—oh, my Gar! let them try, and they will see!’”

CHAPTER THREE

§ 1

The summer rose to the solstice, and all the island smelled of hay and flowers, with heavy smells of brine upon the coast. Daniel was not unhappy. His transplantation had been in some degree effective, and his old sorrows no longer seemed so actual to him—they belonged to another life, to another landscape. Besides, his work in the boats absorbed him, drawing his thoughts away from the past and fixing them in the present moment with its demands and preoccupations. If you have twenty-two land-going years behind you it takes some striving to learn the way of the sea.

His English correspondence was not of a kind to hinder much the good work of forgetting. His family were not letter-writers, and nor, for that matter, was he. He heard once from his mother and once from Len, with scrawls and scratches enclosed to Uncle Dan from Leslie and Ivy. His father did not write at all, nor did Ernley, nor did Belle. The country of the Ouse Valley soon began to live for him only in a few stilted phrases in stiff handwriting on cheap notepaper. By this means he heard that Belle and Ernley had come back from the long honeymoon which had followed their marriage in London—a marriage that had taken place before Dan left England and only a few days after their reconciliation. He could now, if he liked, picture Belle at the Crown—but the picture was again only a shadow on glass. He was like a man standing with his back to a firelit room and staring out of a window through which he sees sea, sky and islands bright in sunshine; only now and then the movements of those behind in the room become reflected like ghosts in the pane—what he really sees are the sea, sky and islands outside in the sun. This did not mean that he never suffered for Belle, for the thought of her often troubled him very much. After all he was still inside the room of his love for Belle, and only looked outside, through the window, at the sea, sky and islands of Sark. None the less, he had turned his back on her, and saw only her shadow reflected dimly in the new landscape that filled his horizon.

Other events in the Ouse Valley troubled him still less, though they were events which would have disturbed him considerably if they had not, as it were, happened behind him. Apparently, under his father’s unguided rule—for Chris only lounged and scoffed and Kitty only scolded—the George was going quickly along those evil ways Daniel had so often preached against in the old times. “He have those wicked men from Lewes giving horses’ names to the sailors,” wrote his mother, “and the sailors such fools. We shall have the police upon us.” He searched her letters in vain for any of the tenderness which had been his first comfort in his sorrow, and which had flickered intermittently through the month that had gone by before his leaving for Sark. But even this lack did not trouble him much.

Strangely enough, the only occasions when he felt really and acutely homesick, not only for his mother and for Belle, but for the whole of his life in Bullockdean, were the Sunday evenings when he went to church. None of the islanders went to church in the morning, the morning services being considered English and shunned accordingly; but every Sunday evening farmers and fishermen would assemble together in the ilex-shaded churchyard, dressed in their best blue jerseys and trousers and peaked boating-caps, and wait outside till the little sharp bell had stopped ringing, when they all marched in together and filled the back seats, ready for a quick corporate exit directly the service was over.

“Bien-aimés frères,” the clergyman would begin, which Daniel knew was “dearly beloved brethren” in French. Then would follow the whole of Evening Prayer that had become Prières du Soir by the same token. It was a queer, stiff, superstitious rite, in which strong men found comfort as they bawled French psalms to Anglican chants, and droned together: “Je crois en Dieu, le Père tout-puissant, Créateur du ciel et de la terre....” To Dan it sometimes brought a strange feeling of loss and pathos, as if he were indeed singing the Lord’s song in a strange land. He would shut his eyes during the sermon, which he was far too inexpert at the language to understand, and try to imagine himself back in Bullockdean Church, with the soft scent of its old stones in his nostrils, mixed with the moth-killer in Auntie Harman’s cape and the general tobacco-and-camphor reek of the Sunday evening congregation. He tried to think that if he opened his eyes he would see a dozen familiar backs before him—Auntie Harman’s, Maudie’s, Jess’s, Willie Pont’s, old Pilbeam’s—and beyond them Mr. Marchbanks in the pulpit, preaching an English sermon on keeping good company, helping the poor, reading the Bible, giving honest measure and other religious practices of an English village. He felt rather guilty with regard to Mr. Marchbanks, for he had promised to write to him, but had not done so. Also he was uncomfortably aware that in religious matters he had changed his custom too easily, and had given up doing many of the good things his friend had taught him.

Nevertheless, though it made him homesick and regretful, he could not help finding in the hideous little church, with its pitch-pine pews and flat, whitewashed ceiling, a friendliness which he had never found at the Pêche à Agneau. It was here that his mother had married his father, it was here that he had been baptized; and this unfamiliar language was the language of his parents’ vows and of the promises his godfathers and godmothers had made in his name. Also the place was somehow made homely by the memorials of the drowned with which its walls were covered—memorials of De Carterets and Carrés and Falles, who had gone out in their boats and never returned. Unlike the memorials in the Town Church over in Guernsey they did not bear in high funereal pride the arms or crests or mottoes of the dead, but only in reproachful repetition all round the wall, the plaintive cry of the living: “Ta voie a été par la mer et tes sentiers dans les grosses eaux—Néanmoins tes traces n’ont pas été connues....”

§ 2

Later in the summer Daniel was promoted to going out with the visitors. He would take charge of the engine, while one of his cousins steered, for though he was growing daily more expert and familiar with the coast, his sea-lore did not extend to the navigation of those crooked channels which were the avenues of the caves—with their treacherous stud of rocks, the grunes and demies of stealthy disaster.

Daniel liked the visitors. They were a relief after the Le Couteurs’ rather primitive companionship. He and his cousins were friendly enough, for he accepted, being gentle, their rough teasing and laughter and queer remoteness from all he was accustomed to; nevertheless, it was good to meet these people with their English talk and their English ways—to listen to them talking ordinary British politics, instead of the parish politics of Sark, to realize that there were other foreign complications besides those caused by the treachery and avarice of Guernsey. He often heard the sort of talk that he used to hear in his father’s bar, or in Ernley Munk’s room, when he grew dictatorial over the port.... Besides, some of the visitors came from places near home—he once took out a family from Eastbourne and heard them speak of Alciston.

The visitors liked him too, for his adaptable humility and pleasant manners—they gave him tips, sometimes very handsome ones, so that during August he was able to send a pound home every week. His cousins were inclined to be annoyed, for they themselves did not think much of Daniel’s manners.

“You only touch your cap—you do not take it off,” said Helier reproachfully.

“When a lady says she want the boat,” rebuked Uncle Philip, “you should not say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ as you do—it is not polite, though it may do very well in England or in Guernsey. You should say: ‘Madame, the boat is yours,’ and if she asks what time is best to start, you should say: ‘When it pleases madame.’”

In spite of this ornate politeness, on which all the Sark fishermen prided themselves, the Le Couteurs did not, like Dan, approve of the visitors in their hearts. They feared lest any of them should want to settle down on the island—“and we have more English.” Already several of the farms handed down from the original Forty Tenants were in English hands, and the local families were being driven more and more to the edges, into the second estate of the fishermen, who were unrepresented in the Chef Plès and therefore powerless to withstand the invader.

Perhaps this attitude was partly responsible for the fact that, in spite of his acceptance of their life and customs, the Le Couteur family did not really absorb Daniel—he was never quite one of themselves, but remained English and outside them. His father would always be to them the stranger who had taken away his mother from her kin, and his mother would always be the woman who had forsaken her kin for the stranger. He had been born in their land, but he had been bred far away. Though he had adopted their customs, they were not really his. Though he no longer wore his English clothes, and though his colouring was the colouring of their race, where it touched Brittany rather than Normandy, he had the broad, flat Saxon features of his fathers, of the men of the Saxon fleets who had driven out first the monks and then the pirates from their land.

§ 3

Autumn came, and the visitors went. The seas and caves were a playground no longer but a business of storms and fogs. First came the equinoctial gales—a smashing of wind against the cliffs, with rain like knives. The sea no longer foamed only at the edges where the great baveuses slobbered the tides. It was a boiling whiteness as far as l’Etac. On the coast all was thunder; the caves roared with water and wind—the boom of the Gorey Souffleur could be heard far out in the Russell, and the screams of the Caverne des Lamentes foretold the winter’s wrecks to superstition loitering with stiff hair on the Coupée.

The Le Couteurs pulled up their boats. There might be some occasional fishing in calm intervals, but no real business. The Guernsey steamer came only twice a week, and sometimes she was unable to land her cargo and mails. The outer world seemed to recede immeasurably far.

Then, at the passing of the equinox came the fogs. These were more terrible than the storms. The storms were at least a spectacle, but the fogs were one continual white blindness on the land. Those were days in which sight, touch and smell were sunk in one clammy, salt whiteness, and the only sense which lived was sound. The air was torn with sound, as the fog-horns hummed from a score of rocks. There was the eternal moan of Blanchard, out beyond Les Abîmes, there was the thunder of Platte Fougère—slower, fiercer, seeming to shake the sea; and there was Sark’s own voice at Point Robert, which inland was like the drone of a mosquito, but on the coast was like the voice of a trumpet braying judgment—the judgment of the east coast of Sark. Daniel would sit on the cliffs, listening while it swelled with the echoes that poured into it, till at last every cave and rock and cliff-face roared with it, and out in the fogs upon the water the Grande Moie shook it out of his castles.

There was not much for him to do in those days—no work in the boats, and very little on the farm, and all the crowd of them to do it. His uncles and cousins smoked and snored beside the fire, and Dan sat with them, bored and lonely. Sometimes he played with Alice Hamon’s children—funny little things, with their queer French talk; they amused him, and when he played with them he felt at home. But you could not be always playing with children.

What else could you do? You could go to the Bel-Air and get drunk. It was not a very good thing to do, but you did it sometimes, because there was nothing else. Everyone did it—Uncle Eugene and Uncle Philip, Helier, Peter, William, the young Eugenes and Philips, all the lot of them. They sat with the other fishermen and farmers and drank armagnac—a rather unpleasant brandy, and ampurdan, a kind of heady port—and told each other long stories about themselves and their fishing exploits out beyond the demies of Baleine. Dan was not really fond of drinking, but it was easy to drink too much armagnac—it soon made his head heavy and then light. Then a strange thing would happen—he would change. He would cease to be Daniel Sheather of the George at Bullockdean, and would become Daniel Le Couteur of the Pêche à Agneau, yarning and quarrelling in debased Norman French, discussing Sark politics, “le seigneur,” “le ministre,” and disparaging England and Guernsey. Some buried local instinct would revive, stripping him of all his years in the Ouse Valley, of all his line of Saxon forefathers, leaving him only his inheritance in the Norman Isle. His very face would change—his features would appear sharper, his eyes brighter, as his mother’s blood quickened with the drink that had fired his mother’s father.... He was good company then, was Cousin Daniel. Oh, my Gar, yes!

When he had slept off his excitement and awoke a Sussex man again, he would feel ashamed. He would reproach himself not only for these transient disloyalties but for the whole slow system of his forgetting. There was no good pretending that he felt either for his home or for his people the same as he had felt when he first came out to Sark. Even the homesickness of Sunday nights was growing fainter, and “frères bien-aimés” showed signs of becoming the reality of which “dearly beloved brethren” was only a remembered translation. “The Prayer Book was written in French. Helier de Cartaret brought it from Jersey, and then it cross the sea and Queen Victoria say it very good and turn it into English.” So Uncle Eugene used to babble in his ignorance, and Dan had secretly scoffed at him. Hadn’t he always known that King Henry the Eighth had written the Prayer Book to serve out the Pope for wanting to marry Katharine of Aragon? But now he almost believed in Uncle Eugene’s version. His very mind was being swallowed up by Sark and his Sark relations. There were no visitors now to remind him of his own speech and country ... and after all, he was as much a Sarkie as he was an Englishman—why should he kick against the pricks? When he was in England he had never troubled about Sark, so now that he was in Sark, why should he trouble about England? Thus he ultimately surrendered.

At Christmas he had some letters which brought him back to Bullockdean for a day or two. His mother sent rather spiteful good wishes to her brothers at the Pêche à Agneau, but no present to her son, for she had reason to believe, she said, that “good things sent to Sark never arrive there.” His father, on the other hand, came out of his retirement to the extent of a gorgeous Christmas card of painted talc, adorned with two clasped hands and verses about “the heart which yearns for thee at this glad tide.” Len and Emmie sent cards too, and the ghastly fruit of Ivy’s first brush-painting lessons at school. His family was prolific in its seasonable wishes, yearning hearts, and mem’ries of his bright eyes, but it withheld the more satisfying gift of news. This was unexpectedly supplied by Jess Harman. She had not written to him since he left home, and he had seen very little of her during the weeks before he came away. But now on this first Christmas of his exile she wrote him a long letter, full of news. That letter nearly stopped his Norman drift. Not that Jess’s pen was agile enough to bring before him all the life of the Ouse Valley, coloured and lit up to dazzle his eyes. She revived his ardour by the simple process of feeding it with facts—long strings of facts. Each sentence contained a separate and independent fact. Since he had left England Dan had never had such a string of news.

“Old Gadgett is dead. Maudie gets twenty-five shillings a week now. Auntie has bought a new bonnet. She has given her old one to the old gyppo woman that sells clothes-pegs. Mrs. Penny has sent Susie to school and looks after Miles herself, so I do for the Rector now. I get twelve shillings a week. I have bought a silk jumper. Mrs. Pont has had the face-ache. Mrs. Ernley Munk has a dear little baby girl. I should like to be her nurse, but she has a proper one. It was born in Brighton in a nursing home. They have visitors at the Crown for Christmas. They are going to make their own electric light. We are having White-Wilcox in C for Christmas. The ladies’ choir will help them out.”

So Belle was a baby’s mother now ... that was the picture that stood out most clearly among all the other pictures—of Maudie behind the bar of the Crown, of Jess in her new silk jumper, of Mrs. Pont with her face-ache, of the old gyppo woman in Auntie Harman’s bonnet, of the choir rehearsing White-Wilcox in C with ladies to help them.... He could see Belle sitting with her baby in her arms, its little head almost lost in the hollow of her big breast, her hair hanging on her cheeks as she stooped over it, busy with the comfortable business of motherhood. He wondered if she was happy—why of course she was. She was a baby’s mother and a man’s wife. She was no longer poor distraught, dishevelled Belle Shackford, with her sorrows and gallantries, but well-protected, well-to-do Mrs. Ernley Munk of the Crown Inn, where they had visitors for Christmas and were going to make their own electric light....

It was strange that no one had written before now to tell him of the baby’s arrival. He supposed that it had not been so scandalously early as to please his mother—or perhaps she was still jealous of Belle, and did not want to remind her son of her existence. Ernley might have written, he reflected bitterly, but perhaps Ernley still felt their parting awkwardness.... Anyhow, it showed how far he was from Bullockdean, that the woman he loved should have borne a child without his having word of it.

That night he dreamed of Belle sitting in a stable with her baby on her knees, while all round her from invisible throats rose the strains of White-Wilcox in C, given by the particular magic of dreams an appeal so haunting and so wild that Daniel awoke with the tears streaming from his eyes. It was not till some minutes later that he saw anything incongruous in the fact that the words which had been sung to the familiar music were not the words of his Anglican memories, but the writing on the wall of Sark church: “Ta voie a été par la mer et tes sentiers dans les grosses eaux. Néanmoins tes traces n’ont pas été connues.”

CHAPTER FOUR

§ 1

The winter passed, vanishing slowly through a succession of fogs, and once more the seas began to sleep and men to work. There was only what might be called one winter casualty—an Englishman who had taken a house near the Clos Jaon in May, and had so loved October, with the pale lights on Derrible and the yellow calms of the sea, that he had vowed Sark to be a heaven one could be happy in all the year round. The result was that early in February he had been thrown aboard the Guernsey steamer, rolling on her paddle-boxes beside Les Burons—accompanied by such of his personal belongings as did not miss the deck and fall into the sea—and in April had sent for his furniture to be brought to the Gallic civilization of Jersey.

The Le Couteurs had the contract for the removal, as he preferred to take the bigger risks of the quicker way rather than the involved and age-long process of sending by Guernsey and the English mail. All three motor-boats were required—the big Allouette and the new two-cylinder Kitty Hamon, as well as the little Baleine. Uncle Philip was to have been in charge of the party, but he had a bad attack of rheumatism shortly before the day fixed for sailing and delegated his command to his eldest son, Philip Junior. This very much pleased the cousins—“We have a good time in St. Helier,” said Peter to Daniel—“Oh, my Gar, yes!”

On a fine, soft morning of late March the run was made. The wild hyacinths on the cliffs were as blue as the sea, and the gorse in the Dixcart valley was like a mirror of the rising sun. Daniel was in the small boat with his cousins Peter and Eugene, carrying packages and crates of china and soft goods. He had been eagerly looking forward to the run. After the long imprisonment of winter, with all its dullness and introspection, it was good to feel the wind in his hair, and blowing through his jersey, drying the sweat of his lading. It was good to feel the motion of the boat, running out like a hare into the Déroute. He was looking forward to seeing Jersey, too. For nearly a year he had seen her dim, whale-like shape lying in the south; and he felt that it was high time that he set foot on her shores. The adventure of spring was upon him—he was sick of his confinement in Sark’s three by one-and-a-half.

They were to land at Gorey, for Mr. Cleeves’s new house was at La Rigondaine, so the little merchant fleet of the Le Couteurs steered straight on the Dirouilles, and then on La Coupe by Rozel Bay. They left the Paternosters to the north-west—Dan saw them standing out of the sea, all knotty and dark with vraic—that rosary of death, of which Our Fathers stand up above the water, while the Hail Marys lie coiled beneath. The Jersey coast spread out before them in a panorama of sands and cliffs and woods, while inland the sun was glittering on the glasshouses.

The crossing had taken six hours, and there followed three more hours of unloading and packing the stuff into the vans waiting to take it to La Rigondaine. By the time their work was over all the Le Couteurs were tired, and stretched themselves on the warm stones of Gorey Pier. There they lay in a row—big men with red hair and little men with black, all in their blue jerseys and bell-shaped trousers, with their peaked caps over their eyes to keep out the sun. The stones were cold when they awoke, and the sun had blurred into a fiery crimson scar which streaked the black clouds behind Mont Orgueil.

“Too late to go home,” said Cousin Philip cheerfully, sitting up.

“There will be a moon to-night,” said Ernest Hamon.

“We go back to-morrow,” said Philip—“I have not been in Jersey for twenty months. I want to see the place.”

“I want to see St. Helier,” said young Eugene.

“We go and have a drink first,” said Philip.

§ 2

They went and had some drinks at the Rozel Inn. Dan was beginning to feel excited at finding himself in a town with inns and shops, though in point of size Gorey was not much more than twice as big as Bullockdean. His cousins began to talk about St. Helier, which sounded almost metropolitan.

“Let us go there,” said Eugene and William. Ernest Hamon thought it better not. “He has a wife,” said William. They all laughed. In the end Ernest went with them, and Daniel found himself in a railway train for the first time for a year.

It stood in relation to other trains very much as Gorey stood to other towns, nevertheless the experience was exhilarating after so long an abstinence. He had drunk a couple of brandies at the inn, and brandy was stronger than armagnac. He sat in the little jogging train watching the first stars appear in the grey sky, through the smoke of his cousins’ pipes. The coast was beginning to light up—the lighthouses were kindled, and great eyes shone solemnly across the narrow tides of Grouville Bay from the Ecureuil and the Azicot. There were other lights, too, out at sea, and the coast of France twinkled afar off, with lighthouses and beacons, and the dazzles of towns.

On through the solemn dusk ran the little train, past the martello towers standing dark against the still, white sweep of the bay, over Gorey Common and the sophistication of the golf-course, over La Roque Point to the teased shoals of St. Clement’s Bay. Then at last they were in St. Helier, with the harbour and the pier and the castle and the streets and the lamps all alight and joyful.

They went first of all to an eating-house and had supper—a wonderful supper of steak and kidney pudding, such as never was seen at the Pêche à Agneau, where in winter one lived continuously on the ormers picked up under Saignie and Tintageu, with a little tough mutton on Sundays. There were some Breton sailors who knew Philip and Helier, and they came and sat at the Le Couteurs’ table. It was they who suggested that afterwards they should all go and dance.

Ha! ha! and Oh, my Gar!—it was a good idea, though nobody could dance. That only made it all the funnier. Ernest Hamon began to talk once more about going home by moonlight; but nobody would listen to him—they had drunk a good deal of the sour claret stood them by the Breton sailors—and Hamon had never been able to stand up to any of the Le Couteurs, including his own wife, so they all went off together in a string, laughing and singing along the Pier Road towards La Folle.

Daniel had only a dim idea as to where they actually went. The Bretons knew the way and led them in and out of a multitude of little alleys, by wharves and warehouses and marine taverns, till they came to a kind of hall where a great many people were dancing to a mechanical orchestra. There were sailors of all kinds from the ships in the harbour, fishermen, a few townsmen, a soldier or two from the barracks, who vanished soon and suddenly at a rumour of the military police, and an inadequate number of women and girls.

These were in great demand, as the male dancers were so much in excess of the female. Some of the men were dancing together—Daniel noticed a big, dark, solemn-faced Breton dancing with a sailor off one of the Great Western Railway Company’s boats. His cousins at once deserted him in pursuit of partners, and he sat down on a bench against the wall, feeling rather forlorn and shy.

He had danced sometimes as a soldier, and on one or two occasions when Mr. Marchbanks had tried to rouse a little gaiety in his parish by giving a dance at the parish room. But he had forgotten his steps—and the present assembly was very different from the decorous “hops” of his military and parochial experience. The air was full of dust and noise, the scraping of feet, the clack of tongues in French and English and the four various patois of the four largest islands. There was a bar at the end of the room, and most of the partnerless men were drinking there. One of the Breton sailors who had come with the Le Couteurs signalled to Daniel and offered him a drink. He could speak no English, and Daniel’s nearest approach to French was a lame following of his cousin’s bastard Norman, so there was not much conversation; but Dan had his first glass of absinthe, which had the effect of making him think he could dance.

Evidently the other understood the language of a tapping foot and a dark eye roving in the direction of the dancers. Two girls had come up by then, pretty pale creatures, arm in arm. The Breton stood them both drinks, and in a few minutes had paired off with one of them, leaving the other with Daniel’s arm round her waist.

“You want to dance?”

“Eh?”

He stared at her stupidly. He could hardly realize that he had been spoken to in English.

“You want to dance?”

“Yes—I should like to.”

“You come on then.”

She was a little soft thing—soft and light—and it was quite easy to swing her round in spite of his not knowing the steps. But he had an uneasy consciousness of bumping her about rather badly, owing to his defective steering. When the music stopped they were both breathless and glad to sit down.

“How did you know I was English?” he asked.

“I guess.”

“Do I look English?”

“No—but I hear you speaking to your friends and you speak different.”

“How do you know I speak different?”

He had spoken only the Sark patois, which she, being a Jerseywoman, would scarcely understand.

“Because I know how they speak in Sark. My father came from Sark. I am a Falle—though here we call it Falla.”

“Oh, you know Sark?”

She shook her head.

“I was never there, but my father was there. I was born in Jersey—in the parish of St. André. My name is Rose, after my mother, who die when I was a baby.”

“Do you live with your father?”

She shook her head again.

“No, my father is dead—he die last summer.”

There were tears in her eyes and Daniel felt sorry he had asked the question. It was a relief when the sudden bray of the mechanical orchestra drowned all possibility of further talk. He suggested that they should take the floor again, and she consented, though she must have been feeling tired and bruised after their first performance.

They danced together the whole evening. He had no one else to dance with, nor apparently had she, and rather than be alone she submitted to his clumsiness. His cousins had found partners and were lost. He gave her two more drinks at the bar, but they did not seem to affect her as they affected him, perhaps because she had not had so many already. He felt bemused and unsteady. After a time it made him giddy to dance, and they sat down together hand in hand. His cousin Eugene came up to him.

“We meet to-morrow at Gorey Pier—eight o’clock—see?”

“Where are we going to spend the night?” asked Daniel, making a feeble snatch at reality.

Eugene laughed.

“I leave that to you.”

Daniel half understood. He looked at Rose Falla, and then angrily at his cousin, but Eugene stepped back among the dancers and was lost. Dan was furious. How dare that Sarkie swine insult him and his girl? He must have seen that she wasn’t that sort ... then suddenly he realized that after all Eugene had a certain justification. After all, only one sort of girl was likely to come to a low-down sailors’ joint like this. This girl looked young and gentle, but she could not be so ignorant as to imagine she was in a respectable place. She must have come deliberately, knowing what it was. In fact, she must have come for the same purpose as the other girls—to pick up a man, that was it—and he was the man she had picked up. He was a fool not to have realized it. After all, it was only kids who imagined that tarts were always flashy—he’d seen some pretty quiet ones when he was in the army and they always got off easiest ... think—he’d been two years in the army and yet he’d never let himself in for anything like this. It was all part and parcel of his forgetting his good English ways.... Well, he wasn’t really in for it even now. He could still get out—and he would. It wasn’t at all the sort of thing he wanted. He wanted something different.... Belle sitting in a stable with her baby on her knees.... He rose unsteadily to his feet.

“I’m going out—I’m going home.”

She stared at him, and at his rough words he saw the tears come back into her eyes. At once he grew more gentle.

“Don’t be angry. I’m not saying anything against you—but you must let me go. I—I’ve never been with a girl.”

“Nor I with a boy.”

For a moment they stood facing each other in a corner of the noisy, crowded room. Then he exclaimed:

“But why are you here?”

She began to cry in earnest. No one took any notice. Tears and kisses, all the private bitter-sweet of love, were common and public already in that hall, where there was no shade to the glaring arc-lights but the dust kicked up by the dancers’ feet.

“Why are you here?” he repeated, raising his voice so that she could hear him above the jangling din of the orchestra.

“I come with my friend Simone.”

“But why?”

“Because I must live.”

His indignation nearly sobered him. But the fire of his absinthes and cognacs was still in his head, driving thought and action together. He took her by the arm and pulled her towards the door.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Outside. I can’t talk to you properly in here.”

“You aren’t angry with me? You won’t leave me?”

“Don’t you want me to leave you? I should have thought you did.”

She wept—“No.”

§ 3

He had shepherded her out into the road, which ran by the sea. He could hear the lap and glug of water against piles, and all the great dark emptiness before him was studded with the eyes of the rocks, winking and turning in the blackness below the stars. He put his arm round his companion and guided her to a seat against the wall of some marine stores. Here they sat down again, he still holding her close to him for warmth, for the air blew keenly.

“Now tell me why you’ve come here—you aren’t that sort—and why don’t you want me to go?”

“You mustn’t go. If you go I’ve no one.”

“But your friend?”

“She’s found a boy—she doesn’t want me.”

“But where’s your home?—where do you live?”

“I live with Simone—the last two days. They turn me out of my room in La Blanche, because I have no money. Simone still work where I used to work.”

“You poor little thing—are you out of a job? Have you no one to take care of you?”

“My father die after a long illness that take all our money, and we not able to pay the insurance, so I get nothing. Then I work for Madame Etienne, in the bodices, but trade is bad, and she have to send away many girls. I go and Simone stay. I can get nothing. I have to go out of my room. For two days I have nothing but bread and tea. Then Simone say I come to her, but she have not enough money for both, as she get only half-time at Madame’s. So she say I get a boy to take care of me. That is the only way. She say I come with her here to-night and find a nice boy. She say she will find me a nice boy. She say some boys very nice and gentle and kind and not like the others.”

Tears choked her breathless flow of words, and he melted into a furious pity.

“You poor little soul! What a life for you to start on! What a shame!”

“I always been good till now.”

“Why, you’d never stand the racket! Simone’s a bad lot. You must promise me never, never to go back to that place.”

“How can I promise? If you leave me I must go back and find another boy—a rough boy, not like you. When I see you so quiet I felt so glad and I thought I not mind so much. But now you will not have me, and I must go back.”

“Go back? By God, you shan’t!”

His brain was still fiery with drink, and he saw himself as this poor little thing’s protector, rescuing her from an evil life, establishing her in ease and virtue. He would save her. There was only one thing to do—take her right away—take her back with him to Sark, to the Pêche à Agneau. Alice Hamon would look after her—she could help in the house and on the farm. So cognac and excitement smoothed out his plan. He saw no difficulties in the way—beyond a sudden vision of his six cousins standing between him and the boat, saying: “You no bring her—oh, my Gar, no.” He would have to get her across without his cousins knowing it—that was all.... He could take her over himself in the little Baleine. He could manage the Baleine by himself—she was such a small affair. Besides, this girl was island bred, and could probably give him a hand if he wanted it. Anyway, it was the only thing to do. He couldn’t let her go back to that hell—and he couldn’t take her anywhere in Jersey. He must face the dangers of the Sark crossing for her sake, and no doubt a Providence, which approved of pure women and brave men, would take care of them both.... He stood up, dragging his companion to her feet.

“You’re to come with me.”

“Where?”

“Home—I’ll take you over to Sark.”

“But—but——”

“I tell you it’s the only thing to do. I can’t leave you here by yourself, or with a girl like Simone. If you come to Sark, there’ll be plenty of work for you to do in my uncle’s house. You can help my cousin, Alice Hamon, look after the children—anyways, you can’t stop here.”

“But we can’t start now.”

“Yes, we can—we must, or maybe that swine Eugene ull stop us. The moon ull be up in half an hour, and the sea’s as calm as a lake. I’ve got a little boat we can easily manage ourselves. Come along at once.”

She was evidently of a yielding disposition. That dependence which had made her submit to Simone’s judgment and attempt escape by way of prostitution, now made her submit to Daniel’s and attempt her escape by way of an unknown sea. She seemed equally willing to risk either her soul or her body at another’s behest. Dan hurried her along the sea road out of the town, too fuddled and elated either to feel fatigue himself or be conscious of hers. They would have to reach the harbour before it was light, and they would have to do the whole distance on foot, as the trains had long ceased running. Nevertheless, he was not dismayed.

Rose clung to Daniel’s arm, her feet dragging. She had danced most of the evening with a clumsy partner, and her shoes were cheap high-heeled affairs, absolutely unsuited to the road; but as long as he led, she would follow. Already he was princely in her sight; and when either fatigue or fear or bewilderment seemed likely to overwhelm her, she would lift her swimming eyes to his face and love his short defiant nose and English mouth, and his eyes which were wild with drink and moonlight. The moon had risen as they came to Roque Lavrons, huge and primrose-coloured, gleaming on the wet surfaces of sand in Azette Bay.

They crossed the desolation of Samarès Marsh, and came to Grouville and the golf course, from which they could see the lights of Gorey Harbour and Mont Orgueil. Daniel wondered if he should have much difficulty in getting hold of the Baleine. There would, of course, be a watchman on the harbour. Perhaps he would not acknowledge Daniel’s right to her. He must not let him know he was going to sea ... he would pretend he was hungry and that he and his companion had come for a feast ... he knew there was food on board, some biscuits and tinned beef.

§ 4

“Hullo! Qui va là?”

“Le Couteur—pour la Baleine.”

“What do you want her for now?”

“We’re hungry, and she’s got food on board.”

The watchman came out of his hut, sleepy and grumbling, to undo the gate for the English Le Couteur and his girl. Daniel wondered a little at the ease with which he was allowed to pass—it was not until some time afterwards that he realized that the watchman would never imagine that even an Englishman could be such a fool as to put out to sea at one o’clock in the morning.

The sea was plopping against the quay, and out beyond the bar Daniel could see the little white horses galloping from France. He found the three Le Couteur boats beside the steps, and helping Rose Falla through the big Allouette and the Kitty Hamon, he reached at last the little Baleine. Here they found a tin of beef and biscuits under a bit of sacking, and crouching together in the bottom of the boat, they ate their meal with a hunger that surprised him, for hitherto he had not thought of food except as a pretext for getting on board. Rose’s thin shoes were now in pieces, rags of kid held together by mud. Her little face was dabbled with sweat and her clothes were sticking to her. She was worn out after the dancing and her tramp from St. Helier, and though the food revived her a little she still lay huddled at his feet, while Dan prepared for their stealthy putting to sea. In the heat of his knight errantry he did not notice that his lady had already had enough.

He unknotted the salt, sticky rope that held the Baleine to the Kitty Hamon. Gosh! But his cousins would be mad when they found out what had happened. Never mind—he would be over in Sark before they could make any fuss. He took the paddle and silently manœuvred his craft under the quay walls. He would not start his engine till he was well away.

The moonlight, gleaming between the piles, fell on Rose Falla’s face, showing him for a moment its dreadful whiteness.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

“Oh, no—not afraid. I often go to sea with my father.”

That was good—she would be able to help him. He ought to make Sark easily. The sea was calm, and both wind and tide were in his favour. He had passed the green light at the harbour’s end, steering by the spar-buoy at the Azicot. The moonlight was almost dazzling on the water, and he could see all the rocks standing up out of it, and the spar-buoys at Les Arches and Les Guillemots. For the first time he began to feel a little afraid, as the sea-wind cleared the fogs from his brain. But he reassured himself—they were quite safe in a boat like this, nothing but a converted row-boat, of the shallowest draught. He needn’t start her engine till they were out past the five-fathom line.

The lights of Gorey Harbour now seemed far away—he was able to see the north side of Mont Orgueil, with the red light of the Archirondel Tower shining on Havre de Fer. He was surrounded by demies and grunes and the roar of water. The Baleine drifted between two rocks, and he saw the points of another beneath her. This both terrified and reassured him, for he knew that though her course was dangerous yet her draught was shallow. He would be all right in another ten minutes and could start the engine. What was that red light which had appeared round the point?—it might be Le Fara, which they had passed on their way to Jersey.

He had started his engine and drew a tiny ribbon of foam with him out to sea. Almost impudently the little Baleine ran out into the mightiness of La Déroute. The wind blew keenly, and there was a big movement under the surface of the waves, which gleamed with phosphorescent patches. But the rocks had been left behind, and Daniel had lost his fear—or, rather, it had been changed. He no longer felt uneasy about the physical risks of his adventure, but for the first time he saw that it bristled with dangers of another kind. The sea-wind had blown him sober, and he began to see his madness soberly.

He looked at Rose Falla crouching for warmth beside the engine, and he wondered what had made him so mad as to bring this girl away. The folly of the voyage was nothing to the folly of bringing her with him.... The Paternosters waiting in the north-west were not to be dreaded half so much as the future he had built for himself in that drunken hour. What should he do with Rose Falla? Would his cousins take her? And if they wouldn’t, what could he do? He had only a very little money, having sent nearly all his summer’s earnings home. He couldn’t keep her in Sark if his cousins would not take her in—and was there anything in his whole experience of them to give him even a reasonable hope of their doing so? Moreover, how did he know she had told him the truth? She might be only a bad lot. Or she might have friends, relations in Jersey, who would have the law on him for taking her away like this. Oh, Gosh! he was properly in for it!... that was the sort of thing you got for drinking too much and going to bad places. It served him right. He’d been well brought up, so there was no excuse. Neither was there any way of getting out of it as far as he could see. He could not put back for Gorey now. He must go on and hope for the best—and in that hour of sober disillusion the best he could hope for seemed that they should hit something and go, the pair of them, to the bottom of the sea.

CHAPTER FIVE

§ 1

Daniel and Rose did not go to the bottom, but, not very surprisingly, the Baleine did. She went aground long before it was light, on some outlying rocks half a mile from the Paternosters, and for three hours he and his companion sat drenched and silent watching the dawn break behind the eastward mystery of France. Rose saw that her deliverer’s mood had changed, that he no longer gloried in his championship, that apprehension and regret had taken the place of daring and indignation. But she would not complain. She crouched beside him on the inhospitable seaweed, her arms thrown over his knees—a drenched, draggled, exhausted Andromeda still unreproachful of her Perseus. He did not speak to her or look at her, but sat gazing down the violet paths of the sea towards the Ecrehos as their cliffs came slowly out of the webs that trailed between water and sky.

At about eight o’clock they were taken off by a steam yacht on her way to Guernsey. The yacht gave them breakfast and the almost terrifying luxury of a hot bath. It dried their clothes and overwhelmed them with amiable inquiries. It was apologetic for its ruthlessness in taking them on to Guernsey when they wanted to go to Sark, and paid their fare home by the steamer from St Peter Port.

Rose was delighted with the yacht and its motherly behaviour. Her native hardiness recovered quickly from endurances that would have smashed an English girl—on the voyage across to Sark in the little paddle-steamer, she laughed and chattered gaily. She was no longer the terrified victim of the dancing hall or the collapsed heroine of the wreck of the Baleine. She was a joyful and prattling child with queer little adorable gleams of womanliness. He saw that she must be even younger than he had first imagined, probably not more than eighteen. Her skin had the living freshness of youth, her eyes its emptiness, her mouth its expectation. As he realized her youth, he lost the consciousness of his own and began to feel himself old. He was clear-headed and he saw that for better or for worse he had appointed himself this girl’s protector, and from the decision made when he was drunk there was no appeal now that he was sober. He would have to see her through.... Whatever happened she must not go back to Jersey and to the inevitable life that awaited her there. Somehow he would have to persuade his uncles to keep her, though his chances, already poor enough had been almost finally ruined by the loss of the Baleine, a catastrophe which he knew the families at the Pêche à Agneau would not accept in the spirit of resignation. There was no good asking himself how he should manage to stand up to Uncle Eugene and Uncle Philip. He must just make up his mind to do so.

No wonder that Rose Falla found him a glum companion; but she was still undismayed. Restored in mind and body, it did not occur to her to fret or even wonder about the future. She did not imagine that this masterful being who had torn her from the dance room at La Folle, swept her out to sea, and had been at least instrumental in bringing about her two hours of fairyland on the yacht, should not be omnipotent in his own domain.

“I love to go to Sark. I love to see Sark. It is my father’s place. You know where he was born? It is called La Moinerie.”

They were sailing close under the red cliffs of Saignie, and he showed her the jut of Tintageu between Port du Moulin and Pégâne Bay, and beyond it he told her was the Pêche à Agneau where he lived.

“Oh, how lovely—you look out over the sea. Oh, I shall be happy, and I shall learn to talk in my father’s way. We will talk together.”

He wondered if his cousins would already be home. Probably they would, if they had not wasted too much time at Gorey looking about for him and the Baleine. As the Helper chugged into the Creux Harbour, he saw the Allouette and the Kitty Hamon anchored under Les Lâches. So they were back.... He looked anxiously round on landing, but saw only two De Cartarets who had come down to fetch stores for La Fregondée. He felt inclined to ask them about his cousins, but on consideration refrained. They stared after him and his companion, and their merriment told him that they foresaw his discomfiture.

Rose was no longer tired on this second walk together. She was delighted with the flowery heart of the island, richer and wilder than the heart of Jersey. She pulled handfuls of bluebells from the banks, laughing and singing to herself in the spring warmth of the afternoon. As they walked over the Coupée into Little Sark, Dan found himself wondering if even his cousins could be harsh to this beautiful singing thing with her hands full of flowers.

§ 2

He need not have worried. There was but one thought in the Le Couteur mind, one reproach on the Le Couteur tongue—for the loss of the Baleine. Dan might have brought the whole female population of St. Helier in his train without causing half the uproar they considered due to the disappearance of their smallest motor-boat. The Baleine had been only an ancient row-boat fitted with a second-hand engine, but the Le Couteurs talked as if she had been a liner. No more swift, seaworthy, or luxurious craft had ever sailed the Russell or the Déroute. Unfortunately they did not realize their blessing while they had it, and had failed to insure this paragon, considering the premiums they paid on the Allouette and the Kitty Hamon already over large.

“Vagabond!” shouted Uncle Eugene into the tangle of his beard.

“Vagabond!” shouted Uncle Philip.

“Oh my Gar!—you make all the Carrés laugh at us,” shouted his cousin Helier.

“You were drunk—vagabond!” shouted Uncle Philip.

In the midst of all this commotion, Rose Falla’s presence passed almost unnoticed. Alice Hamon gave her some tea and gâche, and she had slunk away to bed in the children’s room before Dan had had to do more than give a perfunctory explanation of her.

But the next day the storm had in a measure subsided, and in a clearer atmosphere the Le Couteurs were able to fix their attention on this secondary point of folly.

Rose had been very bright and smiling at breakfast, which she had helped prepare, though she was unable to talk except in English—which Dan knew would be counted to her for unrighteousness. Afterwards, she had cleared the cups and plates away, and finally gone off with Alice Hamon to help her make the beds. Then Uncle Philip turned slowly to Daniel and asked:

“What you bring her here for?”

Young Sheather did his best to explain, glozing the fact that he would never have brought her at all if he had been sober. At the end of his harangue, Uncle Philip merely shrugged his shoulders.

“I thought you bring her for a wife.”

“A wife! Good Lord! But I hardly know her.”

“There is no need to know a wife. You get more than enough time to know her afterwards.”

“But anyhow I’m not in a position to marry. Besides, I don’t want to—that’s not the way I’d——”

“Then what are you going to do with her?”

“Can’t she stay here? She could help Alice—make herself useful in the house or on the farm.”

“She cannot stay here.”

“But why not? There’s plenty of room for her.”

“There is no room. We do not want her.”

“But she can’t go back to Jersey. She’s absolutely alone, I tell you—not got a relation or a friend worth anything. She’d have gone to the bad if I hadn’t taken her. It would simply mean her ruin if we sent her back.”

“Then why do you not marry her? I thought you had found a wife in Jersey.”

Daniel lost his temper.

“That’s not the way we do things where I come from.”

“I’m damned if I’ll marry a woman I picked up at a dance hall—whom I know nothing about.”

“You say she is a Falle.”

“She says she is the daughter of Helier Falle who used to be at the Moinerie,” broke in Uncle Eugene. “I remember him going to Jersey in the year they put the light on Platte Fougère. He married an Ozanne.”

“But, even if—I mean I want to know more about my wife than who her parents were.”

“You want a lot, as Englishmen always do. You are lucky to have the chance of marrying a Sark girl. Most girls would say they do not want to marry an Englishman.”

“She may say so.”

“Oh my Gar! She will not.”

“But I couldn’t keep her anyhow. I’m not in a position to marry.”

“You earned sometimes thirty shillings a week last summer.”

“I sent a pound a week to my mother.”

“Then you must give up sending a pound a week to your mother, who has her own husband.”

Daniel was exasperated.

“Damn it all! What makes you so anxious for me to get married? It won’t do you any good.”

“Yes it will,” said Uncle Eugene. “If you marry you will not be an Englishman any more—you will live here all your life and become one of us. So we get your mother back again.”

“The devil you do! Well, I tell you I’m certainly not going to marry if it means chaining myself down to this damned island. Not that it means anything of the kind—I could take my wife over to England to-morrow if I wanted.”

“In the Baleine,” said Uncle Philip, and everybody laughed.

“Well, I don’t choose to get married. I brought this girl over here because I thought you’d be humane enough to take her in and let her have a chance of a decent life. I never dreamed of marrying her, or dreamed that you’d want me to.”

“We don’t want you to,” said a young Philip—“but we cannot have her here. We are already too many in the house.”

“And how many less should we be if I married her?”

“We should be two less. You would go and live at La Colinette, or at La Ville.”

“Or there is the empty house near Moie Fano,” said a young Peter.

Daniel absolutely failed to understand his uncles’ and cousins’ train of reasoning. They imagined, no doubt, that if he married they would get rid of his uncongenial presence in their house and at the same time bind him irrevocably to their island. He guessed that they were pleased that he should have found a woman in Jersey instead of Guernsey, and especially pleased that she had Sark connexions. There were still Falles at La Moinerie, who would probably acknowledge her as a kinswoman. At the same time he was lost in the cross-currents of minds so different from his own. He could not understand whether they really wanted him to marry, and, in some way patent to their reasoning, bring back his mother’s family to Sark, or whether they were merely terrifying him with marriage as an alternative to sending Rose Falla back to Jersey, hoping thus to get rid of her swiftly and creditably.

But though he failed to understand theirs, his own mind was made up. He could not marry this girl whom he scarcely knew, who had attracted him only by her helplessness. His heart was still loyal to Belle, or rather to the shadow of Belle. Besides, anyhow, he did not want to marry—not unless he fell in love again ... which was unthinkable.

§ 3

He rose moodily and went out. He was sick of his mother’s family. They seemed equally immune from ordinary human decency and ordinary human motives. Bah! they were savages—a thousand years behind the inhabitants of the Ouse Valley. He’d half a mind not to stick ’em any longer, but clear out and go home. His father would be glad to have him back at the George, and he felt that now he could face Belle at the Crown ... every day and all day just across the road ... a shadow come to life.... No, perhaps he was still unready to face Belle; but there were other places he could go to besides Bullockdean—anything would be better than living at the Pêche à Agneau.