Carette of Sark. John Oxenham
it."
At which, when he heard it, George smiled crookedly through his swollen lips and half-closed eyes, and Martel found himself out in the cold.
He reconnoitred at a safe distance several times during the day, but each time found Hamon smoking his pipe in the doorway, with a show of enjoyment which his cut lips did not in reality permit.
He stole down in the dark and quietly tried the bolted door, but got only a sarcastic grunt for his pains.
He tried to get a lodging elsewhere, but no one would receive him.
He begged for food. No one would give him a crust, and everyone he asked kept a watchful eye on him until he was clear of the premises.
He pulled some green corn, and husked it between his hands, and tried to satisfy his complaining stomach with that and half-ripe blackberries.
He crept up to a farmsteading after dark, intent on eggs, a chicken, a pigeon—anything that might stay the clamour inside. The watch-dogs raised such a riot that he crept away again in haste.
The hay had been cut in the churchyard. That was No Man's Land, and none had the right to hunt him out of it. So he made up a bed alongside a great square tomb, and slept there that night, and scared the children as they went past to school next morning.
One of the cows at Le Port gave no milk that day, and Dame Vaudin pondered the matter weightily, and discussed it volubly with her neighbours, but did not try their remedies.
During the day he went over to Little Sercq in hopes of snaring a rabbit. But the rabbits understood him and were shy. When he found himself near the Cromlech it suggested shelter, and creeping in to curl himself up for a sleep, he came unexpectedly on a baby rabbit paralysed with fear at the sight of him. It was dead before it understood what was happening. He tore it in pieces with his fingers and ate it raw. They found its skin and bones there later on.
Under the stimulus of food his brain worked again. There was no room for him in Sercq, that was evident. He was alien, and the clan spirit was too strong for him.
He crept back across the Coupée in the dark, and passed a man there who bade him good-night, not knowing till afterwards who he was.
Next morning, when Philip Carré came in from his fishing and climbed the zigzag above Havre Gosselin, he was surprised at the sight of George Hamon smoking in the doorway of the cottage.
"Why, George, I thought you were off fishing," he said.
"Why then?"
"Your boat's away." And Hamon was leaping down the zigzag before he had finished, while Carré followed more slowly. But no amount of anxious staring across empty waters will bring back a boat that is not there. The boat was gone and Paul Martel with it, and neither was seen again in Sercq.
For many months Rachel Carré lived in instant fear of his unexpectedly turning up again. But he never came, and in time her mind found rest. The peace and aloofness of Belfontaine appealed to her, and at her father's urgent desire she stayed on there, and gave herself wholly to the care of the house and the training of her boy. The name of Martel, with its unpleasant memories, was quietly dropped, and in time came to be almost forgotten. The small boy grew up as Phil Carré, and knew no other name.
I am assured that he was a fine, sturdy little fellow, and that he took after his grandfather in looks and disposition. And his grandfather and Krok delighted in him, and fed his hungry little mind from their own hard-won experiences, and taught him all their craft as he grew able for it, so that few boys of his age could handle boat and nets and lines as he could. And Philip the elder, being of an open mind through his early travels, and believing that God was more like to help them that helped themselves than otherwise, made him a fearless swimmer, whereby the boy gained mighty enjoyment and sturdy health, and later on larger things still.
But it was his mother who led him gently towards the higher things, and opened the eyes of his understanding and the doors of his heart. She taught him more than ever the schoolmaster could, and more than most boys of his day knew. So that in time he came to see in the storms and calms, more than simply bad times and good; and in the clear blue sky and starry dome, in the magical unfoldings of the dawn and the matchless pageants of the sunset, more than mere indications of the weather.
Yet, withal, he was a very boy, full of life and the joy of it, and in their loving watchfulness over his development his mother and grandfather lost sight almost of the darker times out of which he had come, and looked only to that which he might in time come to be.
CHAPTER V
HOW CARETTE AND I WERE GIRL AND BOY TOGETHER
I suppose I could fill a great book with my recollections of those wonderful days when I was a boy of twelve and Carette Le Marchant was a girl of ten, and far and away the prettiest girl in Sercq—or in Guernsey or Jersey either, for that matter, I'll wager. And at that time I would have fought on the spot any boy not too visibly beyond me who dared to hold any other opinion.
My mother and my grandfather did not by any means approve my endless battles, I am bound to say, and I do not think I was by nature of a quarrelsome disposition, but it seems to me now that a good deal of my time was spent in boyish warfare, and as often as not Carette was in one way or another accountable for it.
Not that herself or her looks could be called in question. These spoke for themselves, though I grant you she was a fiery little person and easily provoked. If any attack was made on her looks or her doings it was usually only for my provocation, as the knights in olden times flung down their gauntlets by way of challenge. But there were other matters relating to Carette, or rather to her family, which I could defend only with my fists, and not at all with my judgment even at twelve years old, and only for her sake who had, of herself, nothing whatever to do with them.
For the Le Marchants of Brecqhou were known and held in a somewhat wholesome respect of fear, by all grown-up dwellers in the Islands, from Alderney to Jersey.
It was not simply that they were bold and successful free-traders. Free-trade—or, as some would call it, smuggling—was the natural commerce of the Islands, and there were not very many whose fingers were not in the golden pie. My grandfather, Philip Carré, was one, however, and he would have starved sooner than live by any means which did not commend themselves to his own very clear views of right and wrong. The Le Marchants had made themselves a name for reckless daring, and carelessness of other people's well-being when it ran counter to their own, which gave them right of way among their fellows, but won comment harsh enough behind their backs. Many a strange story was told of them, and as a rule the stories lost nothing in the telling.
But my boyish recollections of Carette—Carterette in full, but shortened by everyone to Carette, unless it was Aunt Jeanne Falla under very great provocation, which did not, indeed, happen often but was not absolutely unknown—my recollections of Carette, and of my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, and George Hamon, and Jeanne Falla, are as bright and rosy as the dawns and sunsets of those earlier days.
All these seem to have been with me from the very beginning. They made up my little world, and Carette was the sunlight—and occasionally the lightning—and the moonlight was my mother, and the bright stars were Jeanne Falla and George Hamon, while my grandfather was a benevolent power, always kind but rather far above me, and Krok was a mystery man, dearly loved, but held in something of awe by reason of his strange affliction.
For Krok could hear and understand all that was said to him, even in our Island tongue which was not native to him, but he had no speech. The story ran that he had been picked off a piece of wreckage, somewhere off the North African coast, by the ship in which my grandfather made his last