HOW I WENT TO SEE TORODE OF HERM
The next morning found me running in under La Givaude for the landing-place on Brecqhou, where my boat could lie safely in spite of the rising tide.
I was in the best of spirits, for low spirits come of having nothing to do, or not knowing what to do or how to do it. My next step was settled, lead where it might. I was going privateering, and now I was going to see Carette, and I intended to let her know that I was going and why, so that there should be no mistake about it while I was away.
I scrambled gaily up to the path that leads into the Island, and everything was shining bright, like the inside of an ormer shell—the sea as blue as the sky, except close under the headlands, where it was clear, soft green; the waves farther out flashed in the sunlight and showed their white teeth wherever they met the rocks; and the rocks were yellow and brown and black, and all fringed with tawny seaweed, and here beside me the golden-rod flamed yellow and orange, and the dark green bracken swung lazily in the breeze.
And then, of a sudden, a shot rang out, and a bullet flew past my head, and cut my whistling short.
"What fool's that?" I shouted at the smoke that floated out from behind a lump of rock in front, and a young man got up lazily from behind it, and stood looking at me as he rammed home another charge.
"You'll be hurting someone if you don't take care," I said.
"I do when I care to. That was only a hint. Who are you, and what do you want here?"
"I'm Phil Carré, of Belfontaine. I want to see Monsieur Le Marchant—and Ma'm'zelle Carette."
"Oh, you do, do you? And what do you want with them?"
"I'll tell them when I see them. Do you always wish your friends good-morning with a musket on Brecqhou?"
"Our friends don't come till they're asked."
"Then you don't have many visitors, I should say."
"All we want," was the curt reply.
He was a tall, well-built fellow, some years older than myself, good-looking, as all the Le Marchants were, defiant of face and careless in manner. He looked, in fact, as though it would not have troubled him in the least if his bullet had gone through my head.
He had finished loading his gun, and stood blocking the way, with no intention of letting me pass. And how long we might have stood there I do not know, when I saw another head bobbing along among the golden-rod, and another of the brothers came up and stood beside him.
"What is it, then, Martin? Who is he?" he asked, staring at me.
"Says he's Phil Carré, of Belfontaine, but—"
And the other dark face broke into a smile. "Tiens, I remember. You came across once before—"
"Yes. You had the measles."
"And what brings you this time, Phil Carré?"
"I want to speak with Monsieur Le Marchant."
"And to see Carette, I think you said, Monsieur Phil Carré," said the other.
"Certainly."
"Come along, then," said Helier, the new-comer. "There is no harm in Phil Carré. You have not by any chance gone into the preventive service, Monsieur Carré?" he laughed.
"Not quite. I'm off to the privateering. It's that I want to speak to your father about."
"How then?" he asked with interest, as we walked along towards the great wooden house in the hollow. "How does it concern him?"
"Torode of Herm is the cleverest privateer round here, they say. I thought to try with him, and your father knows more about him than anyone else."
"Ah! Torode of Herm! Yes, he is a clever man is Torode. But he won't take you, mon gars. He picks his own, and there is not an Island man among them."
The first thing I saw when I entered the house was Carette, busy at one of the bunks in the dimness at the far end of the room. She looked round, and then straightened up in surprise.
"Why, Phil? What are you doing here? One moment"—and I saw that she was tying a bandage round the arm of the man in the bunk. His eyes caught the light from the windows and gleamed savagely at me under his rumpled black hair. A similar face looked out from an adjoining bunk. When she had finished she came quickly across to me.
"Measles again?" I said, remembering my former visit.
"Yes, measles," she said, with the colour in her face and questions in her eyes.
"I came to see your father, and if I was in luck, yourself also, Carette."
"He is sleeping," she said, with a glance towards a side room. "He was anxious about these two, and he would take the night watch. They are feverish, you see."
"I will wait."
"He won't be long. He never takes much sleep. What do you want to—" and then some sudden thought sent a flush of colour into her face and a quick enquiry into her eyes, and she stopped short and stood looking at me.
"It's this, Carette—" and then the door of the side room opened quietly and Jean Le Marchant came out, looking at us with much surprise.
He was very little changed since I had seen him last. It was the same keen, handsome face, with its long white moustache and cold dark eyes, somewhat tired at the moment with their night duties.
"And this is—?" he asked suavely, as I bowed.
"It is Phil Carré, of Belfontaine, father," said Carette quickly. "He has come to see you."
"Very kind of Monsieur Carré. It is not after my health you came to enquire, monsieur?"
"No, sir. It is this. I have decided to go privateering, and I want to go with the best man. I am told Torode of Herm is the best, and that you can tell me more about him than anyone else."
"Ah—Torode! Yes, he is a very clever man is Torode—a clever man, and very successful. And privateering is undoubtedly the game nowadays. Honest free-trading isn't in it compared with the privateering, though even that isn't what it was, they say. Like everything else, it is overdone, and many mouths make scant faring. And so you want to go out with Torode?" he asked musingly.
"That is my idea. You see, monsieur, I have spent nearly four years in the trading to the Indies, and I am about as well off as when I started—except in experience. Now I want to make something—all I can, and as quickly as I can. And," I said, plunging headlong at my chief object in coming, "my reasons stand there," and I pointed to Carette, who jumped at the suddenness of it, and coloured finely, and bit her lip, and sped away on some household duty which she had not thought of till that moment.
Monsieur Le Marchant smiled, and the two young men laughed out.
"Ma foi!" said the old man. "You are frank, mon gars."
"It is best so. I wanted you to know, and I wanted Carette to know, though I think she has known it always. I have never thought of any but Carette, and as soon as I am able I will ask her to marry me."
"Whether I have other views for her or not?" said her father.
"No other could possibly love Carette as I do,"—at which he smiled briefly and the others grinned. "I have only one wish in life, and that is to care for her and make her happy."
"That is for the future, so we need not talk about it now. If you make a fortune at the privateering—who knows?"
"And what can you tell me of Torode, monsieur? Is he the best man to go out with?"
"He has been more successful than most, without doubt," and the keen cold eyes rested musingly on me, while he seemed to be turning deep thoughts in his mind. "Yes. Why not try him? And after your first voyage come across again, and we will talk it over. Martin,"—to the man who had given me good-morning with his musket,—"you are too long away from your post. Allez!"
"There was nothing in sight till Monsieur Carré came round the corner," said Martin, and went off to his look-out.
"These preventive men, with their constant new regulations, are an annoyance," said the old man quietly. "Some of them will be getting hurt one of these days. It is a pity the Government can't leave honest traders alone. They worry you also on Sercq, I suppose?"
"I hear of them. But we have nothing to do with the trading at Belfontaine, so they don't trouble us."
"Ah no, I remember. Well, come across again after your first voyage and tell us how you get on, Monsieur Carré."
Helier sauntered back with me towards the landing-place. Carette had disappeared. I wondered if my plain speaking had offended her, but I was glad she had heard.
I pulled out of the little bay and ran up my lug and sped straight across to Herm. Every rock was known to me, even though it showed only in a ring of widening circles or a flattening of the dancing waves into a straining coil, for we had been in the habit of fishing and vraicking here regularly until Torode took possession. And many was the time I had hung over the side of the rocking boat and sought in the depths for the tops of the great rock-pillars which once held up the bridge that joined Brecqhou to Herm and Jethou. But now the fishing and vraicking were stopped, for Torode liked visitors as little as did Jean Le Marchant.
And as I went I thought of Carette and how she looked when I spoke about her to her father. And one minute I thought I had seen in her a brief look which was not entirely discontent, and the next minute I was in doubt. Perhaps it was a gleam of anger and annoyance. I could not tell, for the chief thing I had seen in her face was undoubtedly a vast confusion at the publicity of my declaration. In my mind also was the contradiction of Helier Le Marchant's assertion that Torode would take no Island man into his crew, and his fathers advice to go and try him. I was inclined to think that Helier would prove right, for, even with my four years' experience of men and things, I saw that Monsieur Le Marchant was beyond my understanding.
My boat swirled into the narrow way between Herm and Jethou, where the water came up lunging and thrusting like great black jelly-fish. I dropped my sail and took the oars, and stood with my face to the bows and pulled cautiously among the traps and snares that lay thick on every side and still more dangerously out of sight. So I crept round the south of Herm and drew into the little roadstead on the west.
And the first thing I saw, and saw no other for a while, was the handsomest ship I had ever set eyes on. A long low black schooner, with a narrow beading of white at deck level, and masts that tapered off into fishing-rods. She was pierced for six guns a-side, and a great tarpaulin cover on the forecastle and another astern hinted at something heavier there. Her lines and finish were so graceful that I felt sure she was French built, for English builders ever consider strength before beauty. A very fast boat, I judged, but how she would behave in dirty weather I was not so sure. Anyway, a craft to make a sailor's heart hungry to see her loosed and free of the seas. She sat the water like a gull, so lightly that one half expected a sudden unfolding of wings and a soaring flight into the blue.
I was still gazing with all my eyes, and drifting slowly in, when a sharp hail brought me round facing a man who leaned with his arms on a wall of rock and looked over and down at me.
"Hello there!"
"Hello!" I replied, and saw that it was young Torode himself.
From my position I could see little except the rising ground in the middle of the island, but I got the impression, chiefly no doubt from what I had heard, and from the thin curls of smoke that rose in a line behind him, that there was quite a number of houses there. In fact the place had all the look of a fortified post.
"Tiens! It is Monsieur Carré, is it not? And what may Monsieur Carré want here?" His tone was somewhat masterful, if not insolent. I felt an inclination to resent it, but bethought me in time that such could be no help to my plans, and that, moreover, nothing was to be gained by concealment.
"I came to see your father. Is he to be seen?"
"I want to join his ship there for the privateering. She's a beauty."
"Oh-ho! Tired of honest trading?"
"I didn't know privateering had become dishonest."
"Bit different from what you've been accustomed to, isn't it?"
"Bit more profitable anyway, so they say. Are you open for any hands?"
But Torode had turned and was in conversation with someone inside the rampart. I heard my own name mentioned, and presently he disappeared and his place was taken by an older man whom I knew instinctively for the great Torode himself.
A massive black head, and a grim dark face with a week's growth of bristling black hair about it, and a dark moustache,—a strong lowering face, and a pair of keen black eyes that bored holes in one; that was Torode of Herm as I first set eyes on him.
He stared at me so long and fixedly, as if he had never seen anything like me before, that at last, out of sheer discomfort, I had to speak.
"Monsieur Torode?" I asked, and after another staring pause, he said gruffly—
"B'en! I am Torode. What is it you want?"
"A berth on your ship there."
"And why? Who are you, then?"
"Your son knows me. My name is Carré,—Phil Carré. I come from Sercq."
"Where there?"
"Belfontaine."
"Does your father live there?"
"He's dead these twenty years. I live with my mother and my grandfather."
He seemed to be turning this over in his mind, and presently he asked—
"And they want you to go privateering?"
"I don't say they want me to. It's I want to go. They are willing—at all events they don't object."
"And why do you go against their wishes?"
"Well, it's this way, Monsieur Torode. I've been four voyages to the West and there's no great things in it. I want to be doing something more for myself."
"Why don't you try the free-trading?"
"Ah, there! We have never taken to the free-trading, but I don't know why."
"Afraid maybe."
"No, it's not that. There's more risk privateering."
"Well, then?"
"My folks don't like it. That's all I know."
"But they'll let you go privateering?"
"Yes," I said, with a shrug at my own lack of understanding on that point. "Privateering's honest business after all."
"And free-trading isn't! You'll never make a privateer, mon gars. You're too much in leading-strings."
"I don't know," I said, somewhat ruffled. "I have seen some service. We fought a Frenchman in the West Indies, and I've been twice wrecked."
"So! Well, we're full up, and business is bad or we wouldn't be lying here."
"And you won't give me a trial?"
"No!"
"And that's the last word?"
"That's the last word."
"Then I'll wish you good-day, monsieur. I must try elsewhere," and I dropped into my seat and pulled away down the little roadstead.
Monsieur Torode was still leaning over the wall, and watching me fixedly, when I turned the corner of the outer ridge of rocks and crept away through the mazy channels towards Peter Port. When I got farther out, and could get an occasional glimpse of the rampart, he was still leaning on it and was still staring out at me just as I had left him.