Frenchman's Creek Read online

  There was a light in the lower casement, she could see the glow of it through the drawn curtains, but the street itself was deserted. She stood beneath the casement uncertainly, blowing on her cold fingers, and it seemed to her, not for the first time, that this scheme of summoning Philip Rashleigh was the most foolhardy of the whole enterprise, for surely he would soon be abed and asleep and therefore would give them no trouble. The rain beat down upon her, and she had never felt more lonely, never more helpless and more lost to action.

  Suddenly she heard the casement above her head open, and in panic she flattened herself against the wall. She could hear someone lean his elbows on the sill, and the sound of heavy breathing, and then there was a scattering of ashes from a pipe, they fell upon her shoulder, and a yawn and a sigh. There was a scraping of a chair in the room within, and whoever had moved the chair asked a question and he by the window made reply in a voice that was startlingly familiar. "There is a gale of wind blowing up from the southwest," said Godolphin, "it is a pity now that you did not moor the ship up the river after all. They may have trouble with her in the morning if this weather holds."

  There was silence, and Dona could feel her heart thumping in her side. She had forgotten Godolphin, and that he was brother-in-law to Philip Rashleigh. Godolphin, in whose house she had taken tea less than a week before. And here he was, within three feet of her, dropping the ash from his pipe onto her shoulder.

  The foolish wager of the wig came to her mind, and she realised then that the Frenchman must have known that Godolphin would be staying with Philip Rashleigh in Fowey that night, and that side by side with the capture of the ship he had planned the seizing of Godolphin's wig.

  In spite of her fear and her anxiety she smiled to herself, for surely this was sublime folly if anything was, that a man could so risk his life for the sake of a crazy wager. The thought of it made her love him the more, that beside those qualities of silence and understanding that had drawn her to him in the beginning, he should have this total indifference to the values of the world, this irrepressible madness.

  Godolphin was still leaning at the open casement, she could hear his heavy breathing and his yawns, and the words he had just spoken lingered in her mind, his reference to the ship, and the moving of her up river. An idea began to take shape in her brain, whereby the summoning of the owner on board would seem legitimate; then the other voice spoke abruptly from the room inside, and the casement was suddenly closed. Dona thought rapidly, reckless now of capture, the whole crazy folly of the night rousing in her the old choking sensation of delight she had known months ago when superbly indifferent to gossip and more than a little drunk she had roystered in the streets of London.

  Only this time the adventure was real, and not a practical joke, trumped up to alleviate the boredom of the small hours when the London air was stifling, and Harry too insistent in his claims. She turned away from the window, and went to the door, and without hesitation jangled the great bell that hung outside.

  The sound was greeted by the immediate barking of dogs, and then footsteps, and the drawing of bolts, and to her consternation Godolphin himself stood there, a taper in his hand, his great bulk filling the doorway. "What do you want?" he said angrily, "don't you know the hour, it's close on midnight, and everyone abed."

  Dona crouched back out of the light, as though timid at the reception he gave her. "Mr. Rashleigh is wanted," she said, "they sent me for him. The master is anxious to move the ship now, before the gale worsens."

  "Who is it?" called Philip Rashleigh from within, and all the while the dogs were barking and scratching at her legs, and Godolphin was kicking them back. "Down, Ranger, you devil, get back, Tancred," and then, "Come inside, boy, can't you?"

  "No, sir, I'm wet through to the skin, if you would please tell Mr. Rashleigh they have sent for him, from the ship," and already she began to edge away, for he was staring down at her, his brows drawn together in perplexity, as though there was something about her appearance that he did not understand, that was irregular. Once more Philip Rashleigh called out in irritation from the room within: "Who the devil is it then, is it Dan Thomas's boy, from Polruan, is it young Jim?"

  "Not so fast, then," called Godolphin, laying a hand upon Dona's shoulder. "Mr. Rashleigh would talk to you, is your name Jim Thomas?"

  "Yes, sir," said Dona, snatching insanely at the straw he offered her, "and the matter is urgent, the master says would Mr. Rashleigh go on board at once, there is no time to lose, the ship is in danger. Let me go, sir, I have another message to deliver, my mother is desperately ill, I must run now for a physician."

  But still Godolphin kept his hand on her shoulder, and now he brought the taper close to her face. "What have you round your head?" he said. "Are you ill, also, as well as your mother?"

  "What is all this nonsense?" shouted Rashleigh, coming into the hall. "Jim Thomas's mother has been in her grave these ten years. Who is it? What's wrong with the ship?" And now Dona shook herself clear from the hand that held her, and calling to them over her shoulder to make haste, the gale was freshening all the while, she ran across the square and down to the quay, hysterical laughter rising in her throat, with one of Rashleigh's dogs barking at her heels.

  She pulled up sharply just short of the quay, taking refuge in the doorway of a cottage, for there was someone standing there by the ladder who had not been before, and he was staring out across the harbour towards the entrance of the creek. He carried a lantern in his hand, and she guessed that he must be the night-watchman of the town, making his rounds, and now, through very cussedness it seemed to her, had taken up a position on the quay. She dared not venture forward until he had gone, and anyway Pierre Blanc would have taken the boat some little distance away, at sight of the night-watchman.

  She sheltered there in the doorway, watching the man, and biting at her fingernails in anxiety, and still he stared out across the harbour towards the creek, as though there was something there which engaged his attention, some movement. A little sick feeling stole over her, for perhaps after all the boarding of the ship had not gone according to plan, and even now the crew of La Mouette were struggling in the water, and their leader with them, or the resistance had been stronger than they had expected, and they were fighting now, on the decks of Rashleigh's ship, and it was these sounds that the night-watchman could hear, straining his eyes across the water. She could do nothing to help them; as it was she had probably drawn suspicion upon herself, and even as she stood there helpless in the doorway she heard the sound of voices, and footsteps, and round the corner of the street came Rashleigh himself and Godolphin, clad in great-coats against the weather, and Rashleigh with a lantern in his hand.

  "Ho, there," he called, and the night-watchman turned at his voice and hurried to meet him.

  "Have you seen a lad run this way?" said Rashleigh, but the watchman shook his head. "I have seen no one," he said, "but there is something amiss yonder, sir, it looks as though your vessel had broken away from the buoy."

  "What's that?" said Rashleigh, making towards the quay, and Godolphin, following him, said, "Then the lad did not lie after all." Dona crouched back in the doorway. They were past her now, and onto the quay, never once looking in the direction of the cottage. She watched them from the cover of the door, and they were standing with their backs to her, staring across the harbour as the watchman had done, and Godolphin's cape was billowing in the gusty wind, while the rain streamed down upon their heads.

  "Look, sir," called the watchman, "they are getting sail on her, the master must be going to take her up river."

  "The fellow is crazy," shouted Rashleigh, "there are not a dozen men on board, three-quarters of the fellows are sleeping ashore, they'll have her aground before they've finished. Go rouse some of 'em, Joe, we must get all hands on to her. Blast that incompetent fool Dan Thomas, what in the name of the Almighty does he think he is doing."

  He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed across the harbour. br />
  "Ahoy, there! Merry Fortune, ahoy!" and the night-watchman sped across the quay, and seized the rope of a ship's bell that was hanging there beside the lantern, and the sound of it clanged in the air, loud and insistent, compelling enough to waken every sleeping soul in Fowey. Almost at once a window was thrust open in a cottage up the street, and a head looked out and said, "What ails you, Joe, is anything wrong?" and Rashleigh, stamping up and down in a blind fury shouted back, "Put your breeches on, damn you, and get your brother too, the Merry Fortune is adrift there in the harbour."

  A figure came out from a doorway in another cottage, struggling into a coat as he emerged, and another man came running down the street, and all the while the ship's bell clanged, and Rashleigh shouted, and the rain and the wind tore at his cloak and the swaying lantern he carried in his hand.

  Lights appeared now in the windows of the cottages beneath the church and voices shouted, and voices called, and men appeared from nowhere, running onto the quay. "Get me a boat, can't you?" yelled Rashleigh, "put me aboard, one of you, put me aboard."

  Someone was astir in the cottage where Dona had been hiding, she heard the patter of footsteps on the stairs, and she left the doorway and came out upon the quay. In the darkness and confusion, in the whistling wind and the streaming rain, she was only another figure mixing with the rest, staring out towards the ship that with sails hoisted on her yards was bearing down now towards the centre of the channel, her bows pointing to the harbour mouth.

  "Look, she's helpless," cried a voice, "the tide is taking her to the rocks, they must be mad aboard, or dead drunk, all of them."

  "Why doesn't he wear ship and get up, out of it," shouted another, and "Look, the tide has her," came the answer, and someone else, shrieking in Dona's ear, "The tide is stronger than the wind yet, the tide has her every time."

  Some of the men were struggling now with the boats moored beneath the quay, she could hear them swear as they fumbled with a frape, and Rashleigh and Godolphin, peering down from the side of the quay, cursed them for the delay. "Someone's monkey'd here with the frape," shouted one of the men, "the rope is parting, someone must have cut it with a knife," and suddenly Dona had a vision of little Pierre Blanc, grinning to himself in the darkness, while the great bell clanged and jangled on the quay.

  "Swim, one of you," yelled Rashleigh, "swim and bring me a boat. By God, I'll thrash the fellow who played the trick, I'll have him hanged."

  Now the ship was coming closer, Dona could see the men on the yards, and the great topsail shaking out, and someone was at the wheel there giving orders, someone with head thrown back, watching the sail draw taut.

  "Ahoy, there! Ahoy!" yelled Rashleigh, and Godolphin too added his cry, "Wear ship, man, wear ship before you lose your chance."

  And still the Merry Fortune held to her course; straight down channel and across the harbour she came, the ebbtide ripping under her keel. "He's crazy," screamed someone, he's making for the harbour mouth, look there, all of you, look there." For now that the ship was within hail Dona could see that there were three boats out in a line abreast, with a warp from the ship to each of them, and every man in them bent double to his oars, and still the topsail filled and pulled, and the courses too, and the ship heeled to a great puff of wind that came from the hills behind the town.

  "He is going to sea," shouted Rashleigh, "by God, he is taking her to sea," and suddenly Godolphin turned, and his great bulbous eyes fell upon Dona, who in her excitement had crept close to the edge of the quay. "There's that boy," he called, "he is to blame for this, catch him, one of you, catch that boy there." Dona turned, ducking swiftly under the arm of an old man who stared at her blankly, and she began to run, blindly, away from the quay and straight up the lane past Rashleigh's house, away from the church, and the town, towards the cover of the hills, while behind her she could hear a man shouting, and the sound of running feet, and a voice calling "Come back, will you, come back, I say."

  There was a path to her left, winding amongst the gorse and the young bracken, and she took it, stumbling on the rough ground in her clumsy shoes, the rain streaming in her face, and down below her she caught a gleam of the harbour water and could hear the wash of the tide against the cliff wall.

  Her only thought was to escape, to hide herself from those questing, bulbous eyes of Godolphin, for Pierre Blanc was lost to her now, and the Merry Fortune fighting her own battle in mid-harbour.

  She ran on in the wind and the darkness, the path taking her along the side of the hill to the harbour mouth, and even now it seemed to her that she could hear the hideous clanging of the ship's bell on the quay, rousing the people of the town, and she could see the angry figure of Philip Rashleigh hurling curses upon the men who struggled with the frape. The path began to descend at last, and pausing in her headlong flight, and wiping the rain from her face, she saw that it led down to a cove by the harbour mouth, and then wound upwards again to the fort on the headland. She stared in front of her, listening to the sound of the breakers below, and straining her eyes for a glimpse of the Merry Fortune, and then, glancing back over her shoulder, she saw a pin-prick of light advancing towards her down the path, and she heard the crunch of footsteps.

  She flung herself down amongst the bracken, and the footsteps drew nearer, and she saw it was a man bearing a lantern in his hand. He walked swiftly, looking neither to right nor left of him, and he went straight past her, down to the cove, and then up again towards the headland; she could see the glimmer of his lantern as he climbed the hill. She knew then that he was going to the fort, Rashleigh had sent him to warn the soldiers on duty at the fort. Whether suspicion had crossed his mind at last, or whether he still thought that the master of the Merry Fortune had lost his wits and was taking his ship to disaster, she could not tell, nor did it matter very much. The result would be the same. The men who guarded the entrance to the harbour would fire on the Merry Fortune.

  And now she ran down the path to the cove, but instead of climbing to the headland as the man with the lantern was doing, she turned left along the beach, scrambling over the wet rocks and the seaweed to the harbour mouth itself. It seemed to her that she was looking once again at the plan of Fowey Haven. She saw the narrow entrance, and the fort, and the ridge of rocks jutting out from the cove where she now found herself, and in her mind was the one thought that she must reach those rocks before the ship came to the harbour mouth, and in some way warn the Frenchman that the alarm had been sent to the fort.

  She was sheltered momentarily, under the lee of the headland, and no longer had to fight her way against the wind and the rain, but her feet slipped and stumbled on the slippery rocks, still running wet where the tide had left them, and there were cuts on her hands and her chin where she had fallen, while the hair that had come loose from the sash that bound it blew about her face.

  Somewhere a gull was screaming. Its persistent cry echoed in the cliffs above her head, and she began to curse it, savagely and uselessly, for it seemed to her that every gull now was a sentinel, hostile to herself and to her companions, and this bird who wailed in the darkness was mocking her, crying that all her attempts to reach the ship were useless. In a moment or two the ridge of rocks would be within reach, she could hear the breakers, and then, raising herself on her hands and looking forward, she saw the Merry Fortune bearing down towards the harbour mouth, the short seas breaking over her bows. The boats that had towed her were hoisted now on deck, and the men that had manned them were thronging the ship's side, for suddenly and miraculously the wind had shifted a point or two to the west, and with the strong ebb under her the Merry Fortune was sailing her way sea-ward. There were other boats upon the water now, little craft coming in pursuit, and men who shouted and men who swore, and surely that was Godolphin himself in one of them, with Rashleigh by his side. Dona laughed, wiping her hair out of her eyes, for nothing mattered now, neither Rashleigh's anger nor Godolphin's recognition of her should it come, for the Merry Fortune was sai
ling away from them, recklessly and joyfully, into the summer gale. Once again the gull screamed, and this time he was close to her; she looked about for a stone to throw at him, and instead she saw a small boat shoot past the ridge of rocks ahead of her, and there was Pierre Blanc, his small face upturned towards the cliffs, and once again he gave his sea-gull's cry.

  Dona stood then, laughing still, and raised her arms above her head, and shouted to him, and he saw her and brought his boat in to the rocks beside her, and she scrambled down into the boat beside him, asking no question, nor he either, for he was pulling now into the short breaking seas towards the ship. The blood was running from the cut on her chin, and she was soaked to the waist, but she did not care. The little boat leapt into the steep seas, and the salt spray blew in her face with the wind and the rain. There was a flash of light, and the crash of a cannon, and something splashed into the water ten yards ahead of them, but Pierre Blanc, grinning like a monkey, pulled on into mid-channel, and here was the Merry Fortune herself, thrashing through the sea towards them, the wind thundering in her crowded sails.

  Another flash, another deafening report, and this time there was a tearing sound of splintering wood, but Dona could see nothing, she only knew that someone had thrown a rope down into the boat, and someone was pulling them close to the side of the ship, and there were faces laughing down at her, and hands that lifted her, and away beneath her was the black swirl of water and the little boat upside down, disappearing in the darkness.

  The Frenchman was standing at the wheel of the Merry Fortune, and he too had a cut on his chin, and his hair was blowing about his face, and the water streamed from his shirt, but for one moment his eyes held hers and they smiled at each other, and then "Throw yourself on your face, Dona," he said, "they'll be firing again," and she lay beside him on the deck, exhausted, aching, shivering with the rain and the spray, but nothing mattered, and she did not mind.