“Then Sainte-Éline keep them from the rocks!” sang out the mayor. “Ohé, Lizard, I want somebody to drum and read a proclamation. Where’s Jacqueline?”
At that instant a young girl, a mere child, appeared on the beach, dragging a sea-rake over the ground behind her. She was a lithe creature, bare-limbed and ragged, with the sea-tan on throat and knee. The blue tatters of her skirt hung heavy with brine; the creamy skin on her arms glittered with wet spray, and her hair was wet, too, clustering across her cheeks in damp elf-locks.
The mayor glanced at her with that stolid contempt which Finistère Bretons cherish toward those women who show their hair—an immodesty unpardonable in the eyes of most Bretons.
The girl caught sight of the mayor and gave him a laughing greeting which he returned with a shrug.
“If you want a town-crier,” she called up, in a deliciously fresh voice, scarcely tinged with the accent, “I’ll cry your edicts and I’ll drum for you, too!”
“Can your daughter beat the drum?” asked the mayor of the poacher, ignoring the girl’s eager face upturned.
“Yes,” said the poacher, indifferently, “and she can also beat the devil with two sticks.”
The girl threw her rake into a boat and leaped upon the rocks at the base of the cliff.
“Jacqueline! Don’t come up that way!” bawled the mayor, horrified. “Hey! Robert! Ohé! Lizard! Stop her or she’ll break her neck!”
The poacher looked up at his daughter then shrugged his shoulders and squatted down on his ragged 173 haunches, restless eyes searching the level ocean, as sea-birds search.