Frenchman's Creek Read online

  This time the shot fell short. "Save your powder, boys," he laughed, "you'll not catch us this time," while little Pierre Blanc, streaming wet and shaking himself like a dog, leant over the ship's side, his finger to his nose. And now the Merry Fortune reared and fell into the trough of the seas, and the sails thundered and shook, while someone shouted from the pursuing boats behind, and someone with a musket in his hand let fly at the rigging.

  "There is your friend, Dona," called the Frenchman, "do you know if he shoots straight?" She crawled aft, looking over the stern rail, and there was the leading boat almost beneath them, with Rashleigh's face glaring up at them, and Godolphin raising a musket to his shoulder.

  "There's a woman aboard," shouted Rashleigh, "look there!" But as he spoke Godolphin fired again, the ball whistling harmlessly over her head, and as the Merry Fortune heeled over in a sudden gust of wind Dona saw the Frenchman leave the wheel a moment to Pierre Blanc at his side. Laughing, he swung himself over the lee rail of the ship as it dipped in the sea, and Dona saw that he had a sword in his hand.

  "Greetings to you, gentlemen," he called, "and a safe passage back to Fowey quay, but first of all we would like something to remember you by," and reaching out with his sword he knocked Godolphin's hat off into the water, and pricking the great curled periwig with the point of his sword, he bore it aloft triumphantly, waving it in the air. Godolphin, bald as a naked baby, his bulbous eyes starting out of his scarlet face, fell backwards into the stern of the boat, his musket clattering beside him.

  Then a squall of rain came, blotting them from sight, and the sea broke over the rail of the ship, knocking Dona down into the scuppers. When she could stand again and get her breath, wiping the hair from her face, there was the fort on the headland away astern of them, and the boats were out of sight, and the Frenchman was standing with his hand on the wheel of the Merry Fortune, laughing at her, with Godolphin's wig dangling from the spokes.

  Chapter XIV

  THERE WERE TWO SHIPS in mid-channel, sailing in company about three miles distant from one another, and the leading ship had a curious rakish air about her, with her slanting masts and her coloured paintwork, as though she were leading the sober merchantman that followed her to uncharted waters beyond the far horizon.

  The summer gale that had thrashed the sea for twenty-four hours without ceasing had now blown itself out, and the sky was hard and blue without a single cloud. The swell too had died away, leaving the sea quiet and curiously still, so that the two ships, with only the breath of a northerly breeze to drive them, stayed almost motionless in the channel, their sails hanging uselessly upon the yards. A smell of cooking came from the galley of the Merry Fortune, the warm brown smell of roasting chicken, and the fragrance of it crept into the open port-hole of the cabin, mingling with the fresh salt air and the warm sun. Dona opened her eyes, and she became aware for the first time that the ship was no longer pitching and tossing in the trough of the Atlantic swell, the sickness that had overtaken her was gone, and above all she was hungry, hungrier than she had been in her life. She yawned, stretching her arms above her head, smiling to herself because she was no longer sea-sick, and then she swore softly, using one of Harry's more stable-sounding oaths, for she remembered that by being sea-sick she had forfeited her wager. She put her hands up to her ears, fingering her ruby earrings reluctantly, and as she did so she realised with full consciousness that she was stark naked under the blanket, and there was no trace of her clothes upon the cabin floor.

  It seemed eternity since she had stumbled down the companion-way in the dark, drenched, and exhausted, and sick, and flinging off her shirt and her breeches, and those lumping blistering shoes, had crept into the warmth of those comforting blankets, longing only for stillness and for sleep.

  Someone must have come into the cabin while she was sleeping, for the port-hole was wide open that had been closed before against the weather, her clothes had been taken away, and in their place was a ewer of boiling water and a towel.

  She climbed from the spacious bunk where she had lain for a day and a night, thinking, as she stood naked upon the floor of the cabin and washed, that whoever had been master of the Merry Fortune believed in comfort before vigilance. Glancing out of the port-hole as she parted her hair she saw away on the starboard bow the spars of La Mouette, gleaming scarlet in the sun. Once more the smell of chicken came to her nostrils, and then, hearing the sound of footsteps on the deck outside, she climbed back into her berth, dragging the blanket to her chin.

  "Are you awake yet?" called the Frenchman. She bade him come in, leaning back against the pillow, her heart beating foolishly, and he stood there in the doorway smiling down at her, and he had a tray in his hands. "I have lost my earrings after all," she said.

  "Yes, I know," he said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I came below once to see how you were, and you threw a pillow at my head and damned me to hell," he answered.

  She laughed, shaking her head. "You are lying," she said, "you never came, I never saw a soul,"

  "You were too far gone to remember anything about it," he said, "but we will not argue. Are you hungry?"

  "Yes."

  "So am I. I thought we might have dinner together."

  He began to lay the table, and she watched him from under cover of her blanket.

  "What is the time?" she asked.

  "About three o'clock in the afternoon," he told her.

  "And what day would it be?"

  "Sunday. Your friend Godolphin will have missed his morning in church, unless there is a good barber in Fowey."

  He glanced up at the bulkhead, and following his eyes she saw the curled periwig hanging upon a nail above her head.

  "When did you put it there?" she laughed. "When you were sick," he said.

  And now she was silent, hating the thought that he had seen her at such a moment, so shaming, so grossly undignified, and she pulled the blanket yet more closely round her, watching his hands busy with the chicken.

  "Can you eat a wing?" he asked.

  "Yes," she nodded, wondering how she could sit up without a stitch upon her body, and when he had turned his back to uncork the wine she sat up swiftly, and draped the blanket about her shoulders.

  He brought her a plate of chicken, looking her up and down as he did so. "We can do better for you than that," he said, "you forget the Merry Fortune had been to the Indies," and going outside for a moment he stooped to a large wooden box that stood beside the companion-way, and lifting the top he brought out a gaily-coloured shawl, all scarlet and gold, with a silken fringe. "Perhaps Godolphin had this in mind for his wife," he said. "There are plenty more down in the hold if you want them."

  He sat down at the table, tearing off a drumstick from the chicken, and eating it in his hand. She drank her wine, watching him over the rim of the glass.

  "We might have been hanging from that tree in Godolphin's park," she said.

  "We would have been, but for that slant of wind from the west," he answered.

  "And what are we going to do now?"

  "I never make plans on a Sunday," he told her.

  She went on eating her chicken, seizing the wing in her hands as he was doing, and from the bows of the ship came the sound of Pierre Blanc's lute, and the men's voices singing softly.

  "Do you always have the devil's own luck, Frenchman?" she said.

  "Always," he answered, throwing his drumstick out of the port-hole, and taking the fellow.

  The sun streamed in upon the table, while the lazy sea lapped against the side of the ship, and they went on eating, each aware of the other, and the hours that stretched before them.

  "Rashleigh makes his seamen comfortable," said the Frenchman presently, looking about him, "perhaps that was why they were all asleep when we climbed on board."

  "How many were there then?"

  "Half-a-dozen, that is all."

  "And what did you do with them?"

  "Oh,
we bound them back to back and gagged them, and cast them adrift in a boat. They were picked up by Rashleigh himself I dare say."

  "Will the sea be rough again?"

  "No, that is all finished."

  She leant back on her pillow, watching the pattern that the sun made on the bulkhead.

  "I am glad I had it, the danger and the excitement," she said, "but I am glad it is over too. I do not want to do it again, not that waiting outside Rashleigh's house, and hiding on the quay, and running across the hills to the cove until I thought my heart would burst."

  "You did not do too badly, for a cabin-boy," he said. He looked across at her, and then away again, and she began to plait the silk fringe of the shawl he had given her. Pierre Blanc was still playing his lute, playing the little rippling song she had heard when she saw La Mouette for the first time anchored in the creek below Navron.

  "How long shall we stay in the Merry Fortune?" she said.

  "Why, do you want to go home?" he asked.

  "No-no, I just wondered," she said.

  He got up from the table, and crossing to the port-hole looked out at La Mouette where she lay almost becalmed some two miles distant.

  "That's the way of it at sea," he said, "always too much wind or too little. We'd be at the French coast by now with a capful of breeze. Perhaps we shall get it, tonight."

  He stood there with his hands deep in his breeches pockets, his lips framing the song that Pierre Blanc was playing on the lute.

  "What will you do when the wind does come?" she asked.

  "Sail within sight of land, and then leave a handful of men to take the Merry Fortune into port. As for ourselves, we shall return on board La Mouette"

  She went on playing with the tassel of the shawl.

  "And then where do we go?" she said.

  "Back to Helford of course. Do you not want to see your children?"

  She did not answer. She was watching the back of his head, and the set of his shoulders.

  "Perhaps the night-jar is still calling in the creek at midnight," he said. "We could go and find him, and the heron too. I never finished the drawing of the heron, did I?"

  "I do not know."

  "There are many fish too in the river waiting to be caught," he said.

  Pierre Blanc's song dwindled and died, and there was no sound but the lapping of water against the side of the ship. The Merry Fortune's bell struck the half-hour, and this was echoed by La Mouette, away in the distance. The sun blazed down upon the placid sea. Everything was peaceful. Everything was still.

  He turned away then from the port-hole, and came and sat down on the bunk beside her, still whistling the song under his breath.

  "This is the best moment for a pirate," he said. "The planning is over and done with, and the game a success. Looking back on it one can remember only the good moments, and the bad are put aside until next time. And so, as the wind will not blow before night-fall, we may do as we please."

  Dona listened to the lapping of the sea against the hull.

  "We might swim," she said, "in the cool of the evening. Before the sun goes down."

  "We might," he said.

  There was silence between them, and she went on watching the reflection of the sun above her head.

  "I cannot get up until my clothes are dry," she said.

  "No, I know."

  "Will they be very long, out there, in the sun?"

  "At least three hours more, I should say."

  Dona sighed, and settled herself down against her pillow.

  "Perhaps you could lower a boat," she said, "and send Pierre Blanc off to La Mouette for my gown."

  "He is asleep by now," said the captain of the ship, "they are all asleep. Didn't you know that Frenchmen like to be idle between one and five in the afternoon?"

  "No," she said, "I did not."

  She put her arms behind her head, and closed her eyes.

  "In England," she said, "people never sleep in the afternoon. It must be a custom peculiar to your countrymen. But in the meanwhile, what are we going to do until my clothes are dry?" He watched her, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

  "In France," he said, "they would tell you there is only one thing we could do. But perhaps that also is a custom peculiar to my countrymen."

  She did not answer. Then leaning forward he stretched out his hand, and very gently he began to unscrew the ruby from her left ear.

  Chapter XV

  DONA STOOD at the wheel of La Mouette, and the ship plunged into the long green seas, tossing the spray back upon the deck towards her. The white sails stretched and sang above her head, and all the sounds that she had grown to love came to her ears now in beauty and in strength. The creaking of the great blocks, the straining of ropes, the thud of the wind in the rigging, and down in the waist of the ship the voices of the men, laughing and chaffing one another, now and again looking up to see if she observed them, showing off like children to win a glance from her. The hot sun shone upon her bare head, and when the spray blew back upon the deck the taste came to her lips, and even the deck itself had a warm pungent smell, an odour of tar, and rope, and blue salt water.

  And all this, she thought, is only momentary, is only a fragment in time that will never come again, for yesterday already belongs to the past and is ours no longer, and tomorrow is an unknown thing that may be hostile. This is our day, our moment, the sun belongs to us, and the wind, and the sea, and the men for'ard there singing on the deck. This day is forever a day to be held and cherished, because in it we shall have lived, and loved, and nothing else matters but that in this world of our own making to which we have escaped. She looked down at him, as he lay on the deck against the bulwark, his hands behind his head, and his pipe in his mouth. Now and again he smiled to himself as he slept there in the sun, and she remembered the feel of his back that had lain against hers all the night, and she thought with pity of all the men and women who were not light-hearted when they loved, who were cold, who were reluctant, who were shy, who imagined that passion and tenderness were two things separate from one another, and not the one, gloriously intermingled, so that to be fierce was also to be gentle, so that silence was a speaking without words. For love, as she knew it now, was something without shame and without reserve, the possession of two people who had no barrier between them, and no pride; whatever happened to him would happen to her too, all feeling, all movement, all sensation of body and of mind.

  The wheel of La Mouette lifted under her hands, and the ship heeled over in the freshening breeze, and all this, she thought, is part of what we feel for each other, and part of the loveliness of living, the strength that lies in the hull of a ship, the beauty of sails, the surge of water, the taste of the sea, the touch of the wind on our faces, and even the little simple pleasures of eating, and drinking, and sleeping, all these we share with delight and understanding, because of the happiness we have in one another.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, and taking the pipe out of his mouth he shook the ashes on the deck, and they blew away, scattering in the wind, and then he rose and stretched himself, yawning in idleness and peace and contentment, and he came and stood beside her at the wheel, putting his hands on the spokes above her hands, and they stood there, watching the sky and the sea and the sails, and never speaking.

  The coast of Cornwall was a thin line on the far horizon, and the first gulls came to greet them, wheeling and crying above the masts, and they knew that presently the land smell would drift towards them from the distant hills, and the sun would lose its strength, and later the wide estuary of Helford would open to them with the setting sun shining red and gold upon the water.

  The beaches would be warm where the sun had shone all day, and the river itself full and limpid with the tide. There would be sanderling skimming the rocks, and oyster-catchers brooding on one leg by the little pools, while higher up the river, near the creek, the heron would stand motionless, like a sleeping thing, only to rise at their approach and
glide away over the trees with his great soundless wings.

  The creek itself would seem still and silent after the boisterous sun and the lifting sea, and the trees, crowding by the water's edge, would be kindly and gentle. The night-jar would call as he had said, and the fishes plop suddenly in the water, and all the scents and sounds of midsummer would come to them, as they walked in the twilight under the trees, amongst the young green bracken and the moss.

  "Shall we build a fire again, and cook supper, in the creek?" he said to her, reading her thoughts. "Yes," she said, "on the quay there, like we did before," and leaning against him, watching the thin line of the coast becoming harder and more distinct, she thought of the other supper they had cooked together, and of the little shyness and restraint between them then that could never come again, for love was a thing of such simplicity once it was shared, and admitted, and done, with all the joy intensified and all the fever gone.

  So La Mouette stole in once more towards the land, as she had done that first evening that seemed so long ago now, when Dona had stood on the cliffs and watched her, premonition already in her heart. The sun went down, and the gulls came out to greet them, and the rising tide and the little evening wind brought the ship gently and in silence up the channel of the estuary. Even in the few days they had been absent a depth of colour had come to the trees that had not been before, and there was a richness in the green of the hills, and the still warm fragrance of midsummer hovered in the air like the touch of a hand. As La Mouette drifted with the tide a curlew rose with a whistle and sped away up river, and then, the ship losing way with the lack of wind as they came to the creek, the boats were lowered, and the warps made fast, and the ship was brought to her secret anchorage as the first shadows fell upon the water.

  The chain rattled with a hollow sound in the deep pool beneath the trees, and the ship swung round to meet the last of the flood tide, and suddenly from nowhere came a swan and his mate, like two white barges sailing in company, and following them three cygnets, soft and brown. They went away down the creek, leaving a wake behind them as a vessel would, and presently when all was snugged down for the night and the decks deserted, the smell of cooking came from the galley forward, and the low murmur of voices as the men talked in the fo'c'sle.