We've had a drowning at Pont du Sable. Drownings are not infrequent on this rough Norman coast of France. Only last December five able fishermen went down within plain sight of the dunes in a roaring white sea that gave no quarter. This gale by night became a cyclone; the sea a driving hell of water, hail and screaming wind. The barometer dropped to twenty-eight. The wind blew at one hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. Six fishing boats hailing from Boulogne perished with their crews. Their women went by train to Calais, still hoping for news, and returned weeping and alone.
At Boulogne the waves burst in spray to a height of forty feet over the breakwater—small wonder that the transatlantic liner due there to take on passengers, signalled to her plunging tender already in danger—"Going through—No passengers—" and proceeded on her way to New York.
The sea that night killed with a blow.
This latest drowning at Pont du Sable was a tragedy—or rather, the culmination of a series of tragedies.
"Suicide?"
"Non—mon ami—wait until you hear the whole truth of this plain tale."
On my return from shooting this morning, Suzette brought me the news. The whole fishing village has known it since daylight.
It seems that the miser, Garron—Garron's boy—Garron's woman, Julie, and another woman who nobody seems to know much about, are mixed up in the affair.
Garron's history I have known for months—my good friend the curé confided to me much concerning the unsavory career of this vagabond of a miser, whose hut is on the "Great Marsh," back of Pont du Sable. Garron and I hailed "bonjour" to each other through the mist at dawn one morning, as I chanced to pass by his abode, a wary flight of vignon having led me a fruitless chase after them across the great marsh. At a distance through the rifts of mist I mistook this isolated hut of Garron's for a gabion. As I drew within hailing distance of its owner I saw that the hut stood on a point of mud and wire grass that formed the forks of the stream that snakes its way through the centre of this isolated prairie, and so on out to the open sea, two kilometers beyond.
As shrewd a rascal as Garron needed just such a place to settle on. As he returned my bonjour, his woman, Julie, appeared in the low doorway of the hut and grinned a greeting to me across the fork of the stream. She impressed me as being young, though she was well on in the untold forties. Her mass of fair hair—her ruddy cheeks—her blue eyes and her thick strong body, gave her the appearance of youthful buxomness.