When, therefore, on the following day, they engaged a couple of boatmen to take them over to Creux—for Southerley did not offer to repeat his experience of navigating the channel himself—Bayre remained moody and thoughtful in the bows while his companions were chatty and cheerful in the stern.
It was one of those bright and sunny days of which January generally gives us a few as a set-off against the asperities of the February and March which must inevitably follow; the first view of the steep and rocky coast of Creux, with its fringe of jagged rocks, picturesque to see but dangerous to negotiate, was striking and impressive. The cliffs, of black and white granite, rose sheer out of the water, broken and eaten away in many places into deep ravines, where a softening growth of brown ferns made beautiful the entrance to shadowy caverns in the rock.
Outside the cliffs many a jagged pinnacle of the granite shot up its points from a little base of foam into the air, with seabirds circling round its summit and a soft plash-plash beating against its sides.
Nothing could be seen at first approach beyond the rocks and the steep cliff; but presently the travellers, struck dumb with appreciation of the picturesque, found themselves approaching a poor sort of little pier, close by which a small house, with a man in fisherman’s jersey lolling in front of it, gave the first sign of human presence on the island.
With some difficulty the boat was made fast and the three young men scrambled ashore. A climb of a few minutes brought them to the top of the cliff, and thence it was but a short quarter of a mile to the famous château, which, half hidden by almost the only clump of trees on the island, proved to be a long and very unimposing stone dwelling, large, straggling, and evidently built with an eye rather to use than to beauty.
On their way the travellers passed a small farmhouse, where a man of age difficult to fix, with greyish hair and clad in a blouse, saluted them and watched them with furtive eyes as they made their way towards the house. He was a very unprepossessing person, with small eyes set close together, and with the wrinkles of cunning and of avarice on his weatherbeaten face.
The unimposing entrance to the château was by a small courtyard, on the other side of which was a pleasant garden in which, in the summer, fruit and flowers, vegetables and sweet herbs, grew side by side.
A ring at the bell, the clang of which they heard echoing through the old house, brought to the door a woman of the peasant type, quite young, probably, and not ill-looking of feature, but with sly blue eyes and thick lips, and a furtive expression. She was dressed rather in the simple farmhouse costume than in that of the usual servants of a country house, and wore the round, close cap which is so generally becoming.
On making known their wish to see the treasures of M. Bayre’s collection, they were at once admitted by her into a plain-looking hall, where they inscribed their names in a large book which lay, with pens and ink, upon a table at one end.
While they were doing this they heard certain sounds in a little gallery above them, which informed them that they were observed from that quarter; and suddenly the girl looked up, and, as if obeying a signal, begged the gentlemen to excuse her one moment, ran up the staircase and for a moment disappeared.