Carette of Sark. John Oxenham
and something over; but strong and healthy, with a pair of keen blue eyes, and nothing whatever distinctive about his brown face, unless it was a touch of the inflexible honesty which had been diligently instilled into him from the time he was three years old. Perhaps also some little indication of the stubborn determination which must surely have come from his grandfather, and which some people called obstinacy.
Anyway the girl trusted him implicitly, ruled him imperiously, quarrelled with him at times but never beyond reason, and always quickly made it up again, and in so delightful a fashion that one remembered the quarrel no more but only the making-up—beamed upon him then more graciously than before, and looked to him for certain help in every time of need.
Inseparables these two, except when the Gouliot waters were in an evil humour and rendered the passage impossible, for her home was on Brecqhou and his was on Sercq. Fortunately for their friendship, Aunt Jeanne Falla lived on Sercq also, and Carette was as often to be found at Beaumanoir as at her father's house on Brecqhou, and it was to her father's liking that it should be so. For he and the boys were often all away for days at a time, and on such occasions, as they started, they would drop Carette on the rough shore of Havre Gosselin, or set her hands and feet in the iron rings that scaled the bald face of the rock, and up she would go like a goat, and away to the welcome of the house that was her second and better home. What Carette would have been without Aunt Jeanne I cannot imagine; and so—all thanks to the sweet, sharp soul who took her mother's place.
See these two, then, as they lay in the sweet short herbage of Tintageu or Moie de Mouton, chins on fist, crisp light hair close up alongside floating brown curls, caps or hats scorned impediments to rapid motion, bare heels kicking up emotionally behind, as they surveyed their little world, and watched the distant ships, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
Very clear in my memory is one such day, by reason of the fact that it was the beginning of a new and highly satisfactory state of matters between the boy and the girl.
Carette, you understand, was practically prisoner on Brecqhou except at such times as the higher powers, for good reasons of their own, put her ashore on Sercq. And, often as this happened, there were still many times when she would have been there but could not.
She had startled her companion more than once by wild threats of swimming the Gouliot, which is a foolhardy feat even for a man, for the dark passage is rarely free from coiling undercurrents, which play with a man as though he were no more than a piece of seaweed, and try even a strong swimmer's nerve and strength. And when she spoke so, the boy took her sharply to task, and drew most horrible pictures of her dead white body tumbling about among the Autelets, or being left stranded in the rock pools by Port du Moulin, nibbled by crabs and lobsters and pecked by hungry gulls; or, maybe, lugged into a sea-cave by a giant devil-fish and ripped into pieces by his pitiless hooked beak.
At all of which the silvery little voice would say "Pooh!" But all the same the slim little figure would shiver in the hot sunshine inside its short blue linsey-woolsey frock, and the dark eyes would grow larger than ever at the prospect, especially at the ripping by the giant pieuvre, in which they both believed devoutly, and eventually she would promise not to throw her young life away.
"But all the same, Phil, I do feel like trying it when I want over and they won't let me."
And—"Don't be a silly," the boy would say. "If you go and get yourself drowned, in any stupid way like that, Carette, I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
They were lying so one day on the altar rock behind Tintageu, the boy gazing dreamily into the vast void past the distant Casquets, where, somewhere beyond and beyond, lay England, the land of many wonders—England, where the mighty folks had lived of whom he had read in his grandfather's great book of plays—and strange, wild notions he had got of the land and the people; England, where they used to burn men and women at the stake, and pinch them with hot irons, and sting them to death with bees, and break them in pieces on wheels—a process he did not quite understand, though it seemed satisfactorily horrible; England, which was always at war with France, and was constantly winning great fights upon the sea; England, of whom they were proud to be a part, though—somewhat confusingly to twelve years old—their own ordinary speech was French; a wonderful place that England, bigger even than Guernsey, his grandfather said, and so it must be true. And sometime, maybe, he would sail across the sea and see it all for himself, and the great city of London, which was bigger even than Peter Port, though that, indeed, seemed almost past belief and the boy had his doubts.
He told Carette of England and London at times, and drew so wildly on his imagination—yet came so very far from the reality—that Carette flatly denied the possibilities of such things, and looked upon him as a romancer of parts, though she put it more briefly.
She herself lay facing west, gazing longingly at Herm and Jethou, with the long line of Guernsey behind. Guernsey bounded her aspirations. Sometime she was to go with Aunt Jeanne to Guernsey, and then she would be level with Phil, and be able to take him down when he boasted too wildly of its wonderful streets and houses and shops.
Suddenly she stiffened, as a cat does at distant sight of a mouse, gazed hard, sat up, jumped to her feet and began to dance excitedly as was her way.
"Phil! Phil!" and the boy's eyes were on the object at which her dancing finger pointed vaguely.
"A boat!" said he, jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so lawful prey and treasure-trove if they could secure it.
"Oh, Phil! Get it! I want it! It's just what I've been wanting all my life!"
It was a mere yellow cockleshell of a thing, almost round, and progressing, with wind and tide, equally well bow or stern foremost, its holding capacity a man and a half maybe, or say two children.
It came joggling slowly along, like a floating patch of sunlight, among the sun-glints, and every joggle brought it nearer to the grip of the current that was swirling south through the Gouliot. Once caught in the foaming Race, ten chances to one it would be smashed like an eggshell on some black outreaching fang of the rocks.
The boy took in all the chances at a glance, and sped off across the narrow neck to the mainland, tore along the cliff round Pegane and Port à la Jument, then away past the head of Saut de Juan, and down the cliff-side to where the black shelves overhang the backwater of the Gouliot.
He shed his guernsey during the safe passage between Jument and Saut de Juan. The rest of his clothing, one garment all told, he thoughtfully dropped at the top of the cliff before he took to the shelves. The girl gathered his things as she ran, and danced excitedly with them in her arms as she saw his white body launch out from the lowest shelf far away below her, and go wrestling through the water like a tiny white frog.
They had travelled quicker than the careless boat, and he was well out among the first writhings of the Race before it came bobbing merrily towards him. She saw his white arm flash up over the yellow side, and he hung there panting. Then slowly he worked round to the fat stern, and hauled himself cautiously on board, and stood and waved a cheerful hand to her.
Then she saw him pick up a small piece of board from the flooring of the boat and try to paddle back into the slack water. And she saw, too, that it was too late. The Race had got hold of the cockleshell, and a piece of board would never make it let go. Oars might, but there were no oars.
She