The Last Vendée

XXXII.

THE MARQUIS DE SOUDAY DRAGS FOR OYSTERS AND BRINGS UP PICAUT

Bertha, who had left the farmhouse at La Logerie at the same time as Michel, reached, her father after a tramp of about two hours. She found him extraordinarily depressed and utterly disgusted with the hermit's life he was leading in Maître Jacques' warren, though the latter had arranged it for his personal comfort and installed him safely in it.

From a feeling that was purely chivalrous, Monsieur de Souday had not been willing to leave the country so long as Petit-Pierre was in it, and in danger. Therefore, when Bertha came to him with the news of the duchess's probable departure, the old Vendéan gentleman resigned himself, though without heartiness, to follow the advice of General Dermoncourt and depart for the third time to foreign lands.

He and his daughter left the forest of Touvois at once. Maître Jacques, whose hand was now nearly well, though it lacked two fingers, wished to accompany them to the coast and assist in their embarkation.

It was midnight when the three travellers, following the high-road from Machecoul, reached the heights above the valley of Souday. As the marquis looked at the four weathercocks on his four towers, which were shimmering in the moonlight above the sea of verdure which surrounded them, he sighed. Bertha heard him and came nearer to his side.

"What is it, father?" she said. "What are you thinking of?"

"Of many things, my poor child," he answered, shaking his head.

"Don't take gloomy thoughts into your head, father. You are still young and vigorous; you'll see the house again some day."

"Yes," said the marquis, with another sigh, "but-" he stopped, half choking.

"But what?" asked Bertha.

"I shall never see my poor Jean Oullier again."

"Alas!" said the girl.

"Oh, house, – poor house!" said the marquis; "how empty you will seem to me without him!"

Though there was really more of egotism than attachment to his faithful servant in the marquis's regret, if Jean Oullier could have heard that lament it would certainly have touched him deeply.

Bertha resumed the subject.

"Do you know, father," she said, "I can't help fancying, though I am sure I don't know why, that our poor friend, in spite of all they say, is not dead. It seems to me that if he were really dead I should have wept more for him; a secret hope, which I can't explain, comes and stops my tears."

"That's odd," interrupted Maître Jacques; "but I have just the same feeling. No, Jean Oullier is not dead; and I have something better than presumption to go upon, – I saw the body they said was his, and I couldn't recognize it."

"Then what has become of him?" asked the marquis.

"Faith, I don't know!" replied Maître Jacques; "but I keep expecting every day to get news of him."

The marquis sighed again. At this moment they were passing through an angle of the forest. Perhaps he was thinking of the hecatombs of game he and his faithful keeper had piled beneath those verdant arches, – a sight, alas! he might never see again. Perhaps the few words said by Maître Jacques had opened his heart to a renewed hope of recovering his old friend. The latter supposition is the more probable, for he urged the master of rabbits to make most particular inquiries about Jean Oullier's fate, and to let him know the result.

When they reached the seashore the marquis would not wholly conform to the plan laid down by Michel and Bertha for his embarkation. He feared that if they followed the shore along the bay of Bourgneuf, as agreed upon, they might draw the attention of the coast-guard cutter to the schooner; nothing would induce him to incur the reproach of compromising Petit-Pierre's safety for personal considerations, and he decided that the proper thing to do was for himself and daughter to go out to sea and meet the "Jeune Charles."

Maître Jacques, who had friends and accomplices everywhere, soon found a fisherman who was willing, for the consideration of a few louis, to take them in his boat to the schooner. The little craft was drawn up on the shore. The marquis and Bertha, instructed by Maître Jacques, who was familiar with all smuggling man[oe]uvres, slipped into it and escaped the eyes of the custom-house officers who watched the coast. An hour later the tide floated the boat; the owner and his two sons, who served as crew, got into her and put out to sea.

As it still wanted half an hour till daybreak, the marquis did not wait till the boat was in the offing to come out of his hiding-place in the little deck cabin, where he was even more cribbed and confined than in Maître Jacques' burrow. As soon as the fisherman saw him he began to ask questions.

"You say, monsieur, that the vessel you expect is coming from the mouth of the Loire?"

"Yes," replied the marquis.

"At what hour was she to leave Nantes?"

"From three to five this morning," said Bertha.

The fisherman consulted the wind.

"The wind is southwest," he said; "the tide was high at three o'clock. We ought to meet them between eight and nine; it will take them four hours to get here. Meantime, in order not to attract attention from the coast-guard, we had better throw over some drag-nets and make a pretence of fishing, to explain our being here."

"Make a pretence!" cried the marquis; "why, I should like to fish in good earnest! All my life I have wanted the opportunity for that sport; and faith, as I can't hunt in Machecoul this year, it is a fine compensation which Heaven sends me, – too fine to miss it!"

In spite of Bertha's cautions-for she feared her father's great height might attract attention-the marquis began to work with the fisherman at once.

The net was thrown out and allowed to drag for some time at the bottom of the sea; but before long, the Marquis de Souday, who had valiantly hauled on the ropes to bring the net to the surface, was as delighted as a child with the shining mass of eels, turbot, plaice, skate, and oysters which came up palpitating from the depths of the sea. He at once forgot his griefs, his hopes, his memories; he forgot Souday and the forest of Machecoul, the marches of Saint-Philbert, the great moors; and with them he forgot wild-boars, deer, foxes, hares, partridges, and snipe, and thought only of the shining population with smooth or scaly skins which each throw of the net produced before his eyes.

Daylight came.

Bertha, who till then had sat in the bows absorbed in thought, watching the waves as they parted at the prow of the little vessel and floated away in two phosphorescent furrows, – Bertha now climbed on a coil of rope to examine the horizon.

Through the morning mists, thicker at the mouth of the river than elsewhere, she could see the tall masts and spars of several vessels; but none of them carried the blue pennant by which they were to recognize the "Jeune Charles." She observed this to the fisherman, who assured her, with an oath, that it was impossible for the schooner, if she left Nantes during the night, to have made the open sea already.

The marquis did not give the worthy fisherman and his men much time for discussion, for he was so pleased with his taste of their trade that he allowed no spare time between the throws of the net; and any little pause that occurred he filled up with questions to the old sailor on the rudiments of nautical science.

It was in the course of this instructive conversation that the fisherman requested him to observe that by throwing the net as a drag they were forced to make long tacks, and that this method of proceeding would end by leading them astray from their post of observation. But the marquis, with that careless indifference which was the basis of his character, paid no attention to the skipper's argument, and continued to fill the hold of the boat with the products of the haul.

The morning went by. It was ten o'clock, and still no vessel approached them. Bertha became very uneasy; she mentioned her fears to her father several times, and at last with so much urgency that the marquis could do no less than consent to go nearer to the mouth of the river. He profited by the man[oe]uvre, however, to make the old sailor teach him how to haul his wind, – that is to say, how to trim his sails so as to make as slight an angle with the keel as the rigging would allow. They were in the most tangled part of the demonstration when Bertha uttered a cry.

She had just seen at a few hundred feet from the boat a large vessel with all sail spread, to which she had hitherto paid no attention, as it did not fly the promised signal, and was now partly hidden by the jib of the boat.

"Look out! look out!" she cried; "there's a ship coming down upon us!"

The fisherman saw in an instant the danger that threatened them, and springing to the helm he wrenched it from the hand of the marquis, then, without observing that he knocked the latter flat on the deck, he managed to get the boat round to windward of the ship, which was close upon them. Rapid as the man[oe]uvre was, he could not prevent a slight collision; the boom of the lugger's mainsail grazed the side of the schooner with a loud noise, her gaff was entangled for a moment with the latter's bowsprit; the boat heeled over, shipped a sea, and if the skipper's rapid man[oe]uvre had not enabled him to catch the wind, she might not have righted as rapidly as she did, or perhaps not have righted at all.

"The devil take that damned coaster!" cried the old fisherman. "Another minute and we should have gone to the bottom in exchange for the fish we've just caught!"

"Go about! go about!" cried the marquis, exasperated by his fall. "After him! the devil take me if I don't board him and ask the captain what he means by such insolence!"

"Do you expect me," said the old sailor, "with my one sail and two poor jibs, to overhaul a craft of that kind? Look at his canvas, the villain! – every stitch set! And see how it draws!"

"Yet we must overtake him!" cried Bertha, running aft. "It is the 'Jeune Charles!'"

And she showed her father a broad, white band at the stern of the other vessel on which could be read, in letters of gold. "LE JEUNE CHARLES."

"Faith, you are right, Bertha!" cried the marquis. "Go about, my friend, go about! But why doesn't he carry the signal agreed upon with Monsieur de la Logerie? And why, instead of steering for the bay of Bourgneuf, is he heading east?"

"Perhaps some accident has happened," said Bertha, turning pale.

"God grant it may not be to Petit-Pierre!" muttered the marquis.

Bertha admired her father's stoicism, but in her heart she murmured: "God grant it may not be to Michel!"

"Never mind!" said the marquis, "we must find out what all this means."

The lugger had meantime gone about, and again catching the wind, began to move rapidly through the water; this man[oe]uvre on a vessel of her size could be done so quickly that the schooner, in spite of her volume of sail, did not get far in advance. The fisherman was able to hail her.

The captain appeared on the poop.

"Are you the 'Jeune Charles' from Nantes?" asked the skipper of the boat, making a trumpet of his two hands.

"What's that to you?" answered the captain of the schooner, whose good humor did not seem to be restored by the certainty of having evaded the clutches of the law.

"I have folks aboard for you!" cried the fisherman.

"More messengers! A thousand devils! I tell you if you bring me any more such fellows like those I have had this night, I'll run you down, you old oyster-dredger, before I let 'em aboard!"

"No, they are passengers! Aren't you looking out for passengers?"

"I'm looking out for a good wind to take me round Cape Finisterre!"

"Let me come alongside," said the fisherman, at Bertha's suggestion.

The captain of the "Jeune Charles" looked at the sea, and not perceiving between himself and the coast anything to warrant apprehension, and desirous, moreover, to know if the passengers asking to come aboard were those for whom his vessel was chartered, he did as the fisherman requested, hauled down his foresail and mainsail and brought-to his vessel sufficiently to throw a line to the lugger and bring her alongside.

"Now, then!" cried the captain, leaning over his bulwarks, "what's all this about?"

"Ask Monsieur de la Logerie to come and speak to us," said Bertha.

"Monsieur de la Logerie is not aboard of me," replied the captain.

"But," returned Bertha, in a troubled voice, "at any rate, you have two ladies, haven't you?"

"Ladies or passengers, I haven't any," said the captain; "except a rascal in irons down in the hold, where he is cursing and swearing fit to take the masts out of the ship and make the bulkhead he's lashed to tremble."

"Good God!" cried Bertha, trembling herself. "Do you know if any accident has happened to the persons who were to embark on your ship?"