The advice was undoubtedly wise; nothing could be gained by confronting Roberval with vague accusations. Without a moment's loss of time La Pommeraye hastened to La Rochelle; but he could find no trace of any one who had been with Roberval. The sailors had all gone to sea again; and those of the colonists who were not already in prison once more were on their way to the seat of war. To the front also had gone the one or two gentlemen who were known to have returned from the ill-fated expedition. Strange as it may seem, Charles could obtain absolutely no more definite information than the vague reports which he had already heard.
He learned that Roberval had taken a number of his men back to Picardy with him, and was there doing yeoman service for King Francis. La Pommeraye had done enough travelling in the past few weeks to exhaust a man of ordinary strength; but he seemed incapable of fatigue. Once more his horse was saddled, and once more he set off on the familiar road to Picardy. The long journey was at last accomplished, and he arrived at the castle as the bleak November winds were sweeping across the land from the English Channel. Roberval was with a small army five miles away; but La Pommeraye recognised in one of the servants, Etienne Brulé by name, the man who had escaped uninjured from the famous encounter with Pamphilo de Narvaez, and who had ever afterwards regarded La Pommeraye as a being of a supernatural order. This man had been with De Roberval on his voyage, and from him, after an hour's cross-questioning, La Pommeraye at last elicited the truth. The remembrance of the horrors through which he had passed, and his terror of De Roberval's wrath if it were discovered that he had related the story of the desertion of Marguerite, seemed to have muddled the poor fellow's wits, and his tale was wild and incoherent. But he stuck manfully to his assertion that he had seen Claude reach the shore.
"The others laughed me to scorn," he said, "and some went so far as to say that they saw the demons drag him down, but I know better. My eyesight is stronger than theirs, and I saw him rescued and dragged ashore by the women. But Monsieur will not speak to the Sieur de Roberval of these things? He foams at the mouth if his niece's name is so much as mentioned; and he would kill me if he found that I had told you about her."
Charles heeded not the man's words. Before his eyes he saw a great pillar of smoke rising up and spreading far over the ocean; he saw his pilot seize the helm and steer away from the dreaded spot. As the vision rose before him he cried aloud in the bitterness of his heart, "O God! Thou art too cruel, too cruel!"
CHAPTER XIII
It was a sad duty that Bastienne and Marguerite had to perform when they made Marie's poor broken body ready for burial. And while they toiled with loving hands within the hut, Claude worked as best he could to prepare a rude coffin from some of the planks which had remained after the building of their dwelling. Each blow of his hammer went to the hearts of the women, from whom this sad calamity seemed to have taken the last ray of hope.
By the evening of the day which followed her death all was ready, and Claude, with an aching heart, dug a grave in the level, grassy sod, just back of the cliff from which she had fallen. All completed, he returned to the hut, and the three watched silently by their dead till morning broke upon them. Shivering in body and mind, they made ready to carry her remains to their island grave, while the wild sea-birds, which flew screaming in the face of the coming storm, seemed, to their saddened hearts, to wail of human impotence.
Bastienne and Marguerite took the head of the coffin between them, while Claude carried the foot, and the mournful little procession left the hut, and climbed the hill on which the grave had been dug. Slowly their burden was lowered into the shallow earth; and, holding the crucifix above it, they offered up prayers for the rest of the soul which had been so suddenly snatched from among them. It was hard to cast the first spadeful of earth upon the coffin. As each pebble struck the lid, it seemed to them as if Marie must feel the blows. But the bitter duty was at last at an end, the last stone was placed on the rude monument which marked Marie's resting-place, and sadly they turned to leave the spot.