“Heu! heu!” he cried in the cheeping voice of a duckling, “la Grand’ Bête!”
He took me for the mythical monster of the peasants, whose power of assumption of any form is in ratio with the corrective ingenuity of nurses and mothers.
“Yes,” I said, my brain leaping to an idea; “I am la Grand’ Bête, and if you make a noise I shall devour you.”
His eyes were like full brown agates; his chin puckered to his lower lip; but he crushed his little fists against his chest to stay the coming outcry. My face relaxed as I looked at him.
“La Grand’ Bête is kind to the little ones that obey him. Can you use these sculls?”
“Mais, oui,” he whispered, with a soft sob; “I am the pretty little waterman.”
“Very well. Now, little waterman, I shall land at the bank over there, and then you can take the sculls and pull the boat across to the cove again. But you must be very silent and secret about having gone with la Grand’ Bête over the river, or he will come to your bedside in the night and devour you.”
I had been rowing gently as I talked, and now the nose of the skiff grounded easily under a low bank. I shipped the sculls, reached forward and took the rogue in my arms.
“Oh! but la Grand’ Bête loves the good children. Be a discreet little waterman, and thou shalt find a gold louis under thy pillow this very day month.”
I kissed him, and, turning, caught at the knots of grass and hauled myself up the bank. It was a clumsy disembarkation for a god, perhaps, but my late comrade did not appear to be shaken in his faith. I stopped and looked back at him when I had run a few yards from the river. He was paddling vigorously away, with a professional air, and the moonlight was shattered on his scull-blades into a rain of diamonds. Suddenly a patrol-boat was pulled up the river across his bows, and I half turned to fly, my heart in my mouth.