Yet, except for that final shower of tears at Abbeville, it did not appear that the kidnapper had ever had any trouble with the little boy. The rescuer, now, could not say so much.
CHAPTER XI
"Fifty Fathoms deep"
(1)
"We shall never make Jersey with this wind," said the young fisherman.
"We must!" replied La Vireville firmly. "We could run for Gorey if St. Helier is impossible."
The Norman shrugged his shoulders under his faded guernsey. "Much more likely to be blown into St. Malo! She makes a great deal of leeway."
The subject of their conversation lay before them at that moment on the beach, an open sixteen-foot fisherman's boat, broad in the beam, ballasted with stones, and lug-rigged. The unlucky north-east wind, strong and steady, whipped La Vireville's cloak about him, and caused him to put a hasty hand to his hat. It was about nine of the spring evening and very dusk. The lights of the upper town of Granville showed about three miles to the left, along the crest of the high rock that jutted out into the sea, and a scrap of an undesired moon served to emphasise the rate at which the clouds were driving over the sky.
"At any rate we must put to sea," said the émigré, determined to waste no more words. "Get the boat ready, and I will fetch the child, and then help you down with her. Wherever the wind may drive us to, we cannot remain here."
He spoke no less than the truth. There had been a very unpleasant little scene on leaving Vire that morning, from which the Chouan had managed to extricate Anne and himself only by the liberal distribution of bribes. He had been driven to employ the same unsatisfactory method with regard also to their postilion, dismissing him in unusual and suspicious fashion outside Granville. Although the youth (plied in addition by his fare with much strong drink) had promised not to take the empty postchaise into the town, but to return with sealed lips on the road whence he had come, and though his start on that road had actually been witnessed, it was more than probable that he was, at the very moment, back in Granville, if not laying information against his late passengers, at least babbling about them over his cups. Hasty departure was therefore imperative, but the situation of St. Valéry-sur-Somme seemed to be reproduced, with a difference. This time fate (or, in this particular, La Vireville's knowledge) had brought the travellers to a maison de confiance—one of the chain of secret Royalist refuges which stretched along the roads from the coast—had given them a well-disposed fisherman, its master, and a convenient boat, but had denied the wind necessary to the thirty miles that lay between them and Jersey.
François, the fisherman in question, shrugged his shoulders again. "Very well, if you insist. You know the risks you are running. If we weather Chausey, we may be blown on to the Minquiers."