Carette of Sark. John Oxenham
saw him give up that attempt and paddle boldly out, instead, into the middle of the coiling waters, saw him turn the cockleshell's blunt nose straight for the Pass, and stand watchfully amidships with his board poised to keep her to a true course if that might be.
The passage of the Race is no easy matter even with oars and strong men's hands upon them. A cockleshell and a board were but feeble things, and the girl knew it, and, dancing wildly all the time because she could not stand still, looked each second to see the tiny craft flung aside and cracked on the jagged rocks.
But, with a great raking pull here, and a mighty sweep there, kneeling now, and now standing with one foot braced against the side for leverage, the boy managed in some marvellous way to keep his cockleshell in midstream. The girl watched them go rocking down the dark way, and then sped off across the headland towards Havre Gosselin. She got there just in time to see a boat with two strong rowers plunging out into the Race past Pierre au Norman, and knew that the boy was safe, and then she slipped and tumbled down the zigzag to meet them when they came in. The boy would want his clothes, and she wanted to see her boat. For of course it would be hers, and now she would be able to come across from Brecqhou whenever she wished.
The matter was not settled quite so easily as that, however.
She was dancing eagerly among the big round stones on the shore of Havre Gosselin, when the boat came in, with the cockleshell in tow and the small boy sitting in it, with his chin on his knees and shaking still with excitement and chills.
"All the same, mon gars, it was foolishness, for you might have been drowned," said the older man of the two, as they drew in to the shore, and the other man nodded agreement.
"I—w-w-wanted it for C-C-Carette," chittered the boy.
"Yes, yes, we know. But—And then there is M. le Seigneur, you understand."
"But, Monsieur Carré," cried the small girl remonstratively, "it would never have come in if Phil had not gone for it. It would have got smashed in the Gouliot or gone right past and been lost. And, besides, I do so want it."
"All the same, little one, the Seigneur's rights must be respected. You'd better go and tell him about it and ask him—"
"I will, mon Gyu!" and she was off up the zigzag before he had finished.
And it would have been a very different man from Peter le Pelley who could refuse the beguilement of Carette's wistful dark eyes, when her heart was set on her own way, as it generally was.
The Seigneur, indeed, had no special liking for the Le Marchants, who had sat themselves down in his island of Brecqhou without so much as a by-your-leave or thank you. Still, the island was of little use to him, and to oust them would have been to incur the ill-will of men notorious for the payment of scores in kind, so he suffered them without opposition.
Carette told us afterwards that the Seigneur stroked her hair, when she had told all her story and proffered her request, assuring him at the same time that the little boat would be of no use to him whatever, as it could not possibly hold him.
"And what do you want with it, little one?" he asked.
"To come over from Brecqhou whenever I want, M. le Seigneur, if you please."
"My faith, I think you will be better on Sercq than on Brecqhou. But you will be getting yourself drowned in the Gouliot, and that would be a sad pity," said the Seigneur.
"But I can swim, M. le Seigneur, and I will be very, very careful."
"Well, well! You can have the boat, child. But if any ill comes of it, remember, I shall feel myself to blame. So be careful for my sake also."
And so the yellow cockleshell became Carette's golden bridge, and thereafter her comings and goings knew no bounds but her own wilful will and the states of the tides and the weather.
Krok's ideas in the matter of seigneurial rights of flotsam and jetsam were by no means as strict as his master's, especially where Carette was concerned. In his mute, dog-like way he worshipped Carette. In case of need, he would, I believe, have given his left hand in her service; and the right, I think he would have kept for himself and me. He procured from somewhere a great beam of ship's timber, and with infinite labour fixed it securely in a crevice of the rocks, high up by the Galé de Jacob, with one end projecting over the shelving rocks below. Then, with rope and pulley from the same ample storehouse, he showed Carette how she could, with her own unaided strength, hitch on her cockleshell and haul it up the cliff side out of reach of the hungriest wave. He made her a pair of tiny sculls too, and thenceforth she was free of the seas, and she flitted to and fro, and up and down that rugged western coast, till it was all an open book to her. But so venturesome was she, and so utterly heedless of danger, that we all went in fear for her, and she laughed all our fears to scorn.
CHAPTER VII
HOW I SHOWED ONE THE WAY TO THE BOUTIQUES
Another scene stands out very sharply in my recollection of the boy and girl of those early days, from the fact that it gave our Island folk a saying which lasted a generation, and whenever I heard the saying it brought the whole matter back to me.
"Show him the way to the Boutiques," became, in those days, equivalent to "mislead him—trick him—deceive him"—and this was how it came about.
I can see the boy creeping slowly along the south side of Brecqhou in a boat which was big enough to make him look very small. It was the smaller of the two boats belonging to the farm, but it was heavily laden with vraic. There had been two days of storm, the port at Brecqhou was full of the floating seaweed, and the fields at Belfontaine hungered for it. Philip Carré and Krok and the small boy had been busy with it since the early morning, and many boat-loads had been carried to Port à la Jument as long as the flood served for the passage of the Gouliot, and since then, into Havre Gosselin for further transport when the tide turned.
The weather was close and heavy still, sulky-looking, as though it contemplated another outbreak before settling to its usual humour. There was no sun, and now and again drifts of ghostly haze trailed over the long sullen waves.
But the small boy knew every rock on the shore of Brecqhou, and the more deadly ones that lay in the tideway outside, just below the surface, and whuffed and growled at him as he passed. His course shaped itself like that of bird or fish, without apparent observation.
The boat was heavy, but his bare brown arms worked the single oar over the stern like tireless little machines, and his body swung rhythmically from side to side to add its weight to his impulse.
He kept well out round Pente-à-Fouille with its jagged teeth and circles of sweltering foam. The tide was rushing south through the Gouliot Pass like a mill-race. It drove a bold furrow into the comparatively calm waters beyond, a furrow which leaped and writhed and spat like a tortured snake with the agonies of the narrow passage. And presently it sank into twisting coils, all spattered and marbled with foam, and came weltering up from conflict with the rocks below, and then hurried on to further torment along the teeth of Little Sark.
At the first lick of the Race on his boat's nose, the small boy drew in his oar without ever looking round, dropped it into the rowlock, fitted the other oar, and bent his sturdy back to the fight.
The twisting waters carried him away in a long swirling slant. He pulled steadily on and paid no heed, and in due course was spat out on the other side of the Race into the smooth water under lee of Longue Pointe. Then he turned his boat's nose to the north, and pulled through the slack in the direction of Havre Gosselin.
He was edging slowly round Pierre au Norman, where a whip of the current caught him for a moment, when a merry shout carried his