Maurier Daphne du - Frenchman’s Creek

They sat down under cover of the trees, and waited; and presently, one by one, came the ship's company, silent figures slipping towards them out of the darkness.

The captain of La Mouette called their names softly, and when they had answered, each one in turn, and he knew they were all together, he began to speak to them in the Breton that Dona could not understand. Once he looked out across the creek and pointed, and Dona saw the dim outline of a ship at anchor; she was swinging now, the bows pointing up stream towards them as the first of ebb-tide bubbled down the channel.

There was a riding-light high in the rigging, but otherwise no sign of life, and now and again there came a hollow creaking sound across the water as the ship swerved at the buoy to which she was moored. There was something desolate in this sound, something mournful, as though the ship had been abandoned and was a lost thing, and then with the sound came a little ripple of wind down the creek from the harbour, and the Frenchman, raising his head sharply and looking west towards the little town, frowned a moment, and turned his cheek to the breeze.

"What is it?" whispered Dona, for she felt instinctively that suddenly, for some reason, all was not well, and he waited a second or two before replying, still sniffing the air like an animal for scent, and then, "The wind has backed to the south-west," he said briefly.

Dona turned her cheek in the direction of the wind, and she, too, saw that the breeze that had blown off the land for the past twenty-four hours was now coming from the sea, and there was a tang about it that was different, a wet salt smell, and it came in gusts. She thought of La Mouette lying at anchor in the little bay, and she thought too of this other ship, moored here in the creek, and how the tide now was their only ally, for the wind had changed sides and had become a hostile force.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, but he did not answer, he had risen to his feet, and was making his way down over the slippery rocks and the dank seaweed to the strip of beach beside the creek, and the men followed him without a word, each in turn looking upwards at the sky, and to the south-west where the wind blew.

They all stood there on the beach, looking out across the creek to the silent vessel, and now there was a strong ripple upon the water, for the wind was blowing against the ebbtide, and the sound of the hollow chain straining against the buoy became louder than before. Then the captain of La Mouette walked a little way apart, and he beckoned to Pierre Blanc, who went to him, and stood listening to his master, his monkey-head nodding now and again in understanding. When they had finished the Frenchman came to Dona, and stood beside her, and he said, "I have just told Pierre Blanc to take you back to La Mouette."

She felt her heart beat suddenly in her breast, and a chill feeling come upon her, and "Why?" she said, "why do you want me to go?" Once more he looked up at the sky, and this time a spot of rain fell onto his cheek.

"The weather is going to play us false," he said, "La Mouette is now on a lee-shore, and the men I left on board will be making ready to beat out of the bay. You and Pierre Blanc will have time to return and hail her before they get sail on her."

"I understand," she said, "about the weather. It is going to be difficult for you to get the ship away. Not La Mouette I mean, but this ship. You no longer have the wind and the tide with you. That is why you want me to go back to La Mouette, is it not? In case there is trouble."

"Yes," he said.

"I am not going," she said.

He did not answer, and she could not see the expression on his face for he was looking out once more towards the harbour.

"Why do you want to stay?" he said at last, and there was something in his voice that made her heart beat afresh, but for another reason, and she remembered the evening they had gone fishing on the river and he had said the word "Night-jar" to her, in the same voice, with the same softness.

A wave of recklessness came upon her, and "What does it matter?" she thought, "why do we go on pretending, we may both die to-night, or to-morrow, and there will be so much that we shall not have had together." And digging her nails in her hands and looking out with him across the harbour she said with sudden passion: "Oh, death and damnation, you know why I want to stay."

She felt him turn and look at her, and away again, and then he said, "I wanted you to go, for the same reason."

Once more there was silence between them, each one searching for words, and if they had been alone there would have been no need for speaking, for the shyness that had been a barrier between them had dissolved suddenly, as though it had never been, and he laughed, and reached for her hand, and kissed the palm of it, saying, "Stay then, and we will make a fight for it, and hang together from the same tree, you and I."

Once more he left her, and beckoned again to Pierre Blanc, who grinned all over his face because the orders were changed. But now the spots of rain increased, the clouds had gathered in the sky, and the south-west wind was blowing in gusts down the creek from the harbour.

"Dona," he called, using her name for the first time, but carelessly, easily, as though he had always done so, and "Yes," she answered, "what is it, what do you want me to do?"

"There is no time to lose," he said, "we must get the ship under way before the wind strengthens. But first we must have the owner on board."

She stared at him as though he were crazy.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"When the wind was off the land," he told her briefly, "we could have sailed her out of Fowey Haven before the lazy fellows ashore had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes.

Now we shall have to beat out, or even warp her through the narrow channel between the castles. Philip Rashleigh will be safer on board his own vessel than raising the devil ashore, and sending a cannon-ball across our bows as we pass the fort."

"Are those not rather desperate measures?" she said.

"No more desperate than the undertaking itself," he answered.

He was smiling down at her, as though nothing mattered, and he did not care. "Would you like to do something with a spice of danger in it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "tell me what to do."

"I want you to go with Pierre Blanc and find a boat," he said. "If you walk a little way along the shores of the creek here, towards the harbour entrance, you will come to some cottages, on the hill-side, and a quay. There will be boats moored there by the quay. I want you and Pierre Blanc to take the nearest boat you find and cross over to Fowey town, and go ashore, and call on Philip Rashleigh."

"Yes," she said.

"You won't mistake his house," he said, "it is hard by the church, facing the quay. You can see the quayside from here. There is a light upon it now."

"Yes," she said.

"I want you to tell him that his presence is urgently required on board his ship. Make up any story you like, play any part you have a fancy for. But keep in the shadow. You are a passable enough cabin-boy in darkness, but a woman under the light."

"Suppose he refuses to come?"

"He will not refuse, not if you are clever."

"And if he suspects me, and keeps me there?"

"I shall deal with him then."

He walked to the water's edge, and the men followed him. Suddenly she knew why they none of them wore jackets, why one and all were hatless, and why they now kicked off their shoes, tying them round their necks with a cord through the buckle. She looked out towards the ship, straining at her moorings there in the creek, the riding-light swaying to the freshening wind, while the men on board her slept soundly; and she thought of those silent trespassers who would come upon her out of the darkness. No creaking of oars in the night, no shadows of boats, but a wet hand stretching from the water upon the chain, and a wet foot-mark upon the fo'c'sle head, and lithe dripping figures dropping down upon her decks, a whisper, and a whistle, and a strangled smothered cry.

She shivered for no reason, except that she was a woman, and turning to her from the water he smiled at her and said, "Go now, turn your back on us, and go," and she obeyed him, stumbling once more across the rocks and the seaweed, with little Pierre Blanc trotting at her heels like a dog. Not once did she look back over her shoulder to the river, but she knew that they were all swimming now to the ship, that the wind was blowing stronger every moment, and the tide was running swiftly. She lifted her face, and then the rain began to fall, hard and fast, from the southwest.

DONA CROUCHED in the stern of the little boat, the rain beating on her shoulders, and Pierre Blanc fumbled in the darkness for the paddles. Already there was a run in the pool where the boats were anchored, and a white wash was breaking against the steps of the quay. There was no sign of life from the cottages on the side of the hill, and they had taken the first boat to hand without difficulty. Pierre Blanc pulled out into mid-channel, and as soon as they opened up the harbour entrance they met the full force of the rising wind, which, with the strong ebb-tide, set up a short cross-sea that splashed over the low gunwale of the small boat. The rain came fiercely, blotting out the hills, and Dona, shivering in her thin shirt, felt something of hopelessness in her heart, and she wondered if perhaps it was all her fault, she had broken the luck, and this was to be the last adventure of La Mouette, which had never before sailed with a woman on board.

She looked at Pierre Blanc as he strained at the paddles, and now he was no longer smiling, he kept glancing across his shoulder at the harbour mouth. They were coming closer to the town of Fowey, she could see a group of cottages by the side of the quay, and above them rose the tower of a church.

The whole adventure had become suddenly like an evil dream from which there could be no waking, and little Pierre Blanc with his monkey face was the partner of it.

She leant forward to him, and he rested a moment on his paddles, the boat rocking in the trough of a short sea.

"I shall find the house alone," she said, "and you must wait for me in the boat, by the side of the quay."

He glanced at her doubtfully, but she spoke with urgency, laying her hand on his knee. "It is the only way," she said, "and then if I do not return, in half-an-hour, you must go at once to the ship."

He seemed to turn her words over in his mind, and then he nodded, but still he did not smile, poor Pierre Blanc who had never been serious before, and she guessed that he too sensed the hopelessness of the adventure. They drew close to the quay, and the sickly lantern light shone down upon their faces. The water surged round the ladder, and Dona stood up in the stern of the boat, and seized the rungs in her hand. "Do not forget, Pierre Blanc," she said, "you are not to wait for me. Give me a half-hour only," and she turned swiftly, so that she should not see his anxious troubled face. She went past the few cottages towards the church, and came to the one house standing in the street, by the side of the hill.

There was a light in the lower casement, she could see the glow of it through the drawn curtains, but the street itself was deserted. She stood beneath the casement uncertainly, blowing on her cold fingers, and it seemed to her, not for the first time, that this scheme of summoning Philip Rashleigh was the most foolhardy of the whole enterprise, for surely he would soon be abed and asleep and therefore would give them no trouble. The rain beat down upon her, and she had never felt more lonely, never more helpless and more lost to action.

Suddenly she heard the casement above her head open, and in panic she flattened herself against the wall. She could hear someone lean his elbows on the sill, and the sound of heavy breathing, and then there was a scattering of ashes from a pipe, they fell upon her shoulder, and a yawn and a sigh. There was a scraping of a chair in the room within, and whoever had moved the chair asked a question and he by the window made reply in a voice that was startlingly familiar. "There is a gale of wind blowing up from the south-west," said Godolphin, "it is a pity now that you did not moor the ship up the river after all. They may have trouble with her in the morning if this weather holds."