The Last Hope Part 29

SANS RANCUNE

A large French fis.h.i.+ng-lugger was drifting northward on the ebb tide with its sails flapping idly against the spars. It had been a fine morning, and the Captain, a man from Fecamp, where every boy that is born is born a sailor, had been fortunate in working his way in clear weather across the banks that lie northward of the Thames.

He had predicted all along in a voice rendered husky by much shouting in dirty weather that the fog-banks would be drifting in from the sea before nightfall. And now he had that mournful satisfaction which is the special privilege of the pessimistic. These fog-banks, the pest of the east coast, are the materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across the face of the sky.

They roll across the North Sea from their home in the marshes of Holland on the face of the waters, and the mariner, groping his way with dripping eyelashes and a rosy face through them, can look up and see the blue sky through the rifts overhead. When the fog-bank touches land it rises, slowly lifted by the warm breath of the field. On the coast-line it lies low; a mile inland it begins to break into rifts, so that any one working his way down one of the tidal rivers, sails in the counting of twenty seconds from suns.h.i.+ne into a pearly shadow. Five miles inland there is a transparent veil across the blue sky slowly sweeping toward the west, and rising all the while, until those who dwell on the higher lands of Ess.e.x and Suffolk perceive nothing but a few fleecy clouds high in the heavens.

The lugger was hardly moving, for the tide had only turned half an hour ago.

"Provided," the Captain had muttered within the folds of his woollen scarf rolled round and round his neck until it looked like a dusky life-belt--"provided that they are ringing their bell on the s.h.i.+pwash, we shall find our way into the open. Always sea-sick, this traveller, always sea-sick!"

And he turned with a kindly laugh to Loo Barebone, who was lying on a heap of old sails by the stern rail, concealing as well as he could the pangs of a consuming hunger.

"One sees that you will never be a sailor," added the man from Fecamp, with that rough humour which sailors use.

"Perhaps I do not want to be one," replied Barebone, with a ready gaiety which had already made him several friends on this tarry vessel, although the voyage had lasted but four days.

"Listen," interrupted the Captain, holding up a mittened hand. "Listen! I hear a bell, or else it is my conscience."

Barebone had heard it for some time. It was the bell-buoy at the mouth of Harwich River. But he did not deem it necessary for one who was a prisoner on board, and no sailor, to interfere in the navigation of a vessel now making its way to the Faroe fisheries for the twentieth time.

"My conscience," he observed, "rings louder than that."

The Captain took a turn round the tiller with a rope made fast to the rail for the purpose, and went to the side of the s.h.i.+p, lifting his nose toward the west.

"It is the land," he said. "I can smell it. But it is only the Blessed Virgin who knows where we are."

He turned and gave a gruff order to a man half hidden in the mist in the waist of the boat to try a heave of the lead.

The sound of the bell could be heard clearly enough now--the uncertain, hesitating clang of a bell-buoy rocked in the tideway--with its melancholy note of warning. Indeed, there are few sounds on sea or land more fraught with lonesomeness and fear. Behind it and beyond it a faint "tap-tap" was now audible. Barebone knew it to be the sound of a caulker's hammer in the Government repairing yard on the south side. They were drifting past the mouth of the Harwich River.

The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could have told without the help of line or lead. For he had served a long apprentices.h.i.+p on these coasts under a captain second to none in the North Sea.

He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, at which the Captain had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and glanced over his shoulder toward the s.h.i.+p's dinghy towing astern. The rope that held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from him. The boat itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength and weight. It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a balance lug-sail. It floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain steps of infancy.

The face of the water was gla.s.sy and of a yellow green. Although the scud swept in toward the land at a fair speed, there was not enough wind to fill the sails. Moreover, the bounty of Holland seemed inexhaustible.

There was more to come. This fog-bank lay on the water halfway across the North Sea, and the brief winter sun having failed to disperse it, was now sinking to the west, cold and pale.

"The water seems shallow," said Barebone to the Captain. "What would you do if the s.h.i.+p went aground?"

"We should stay there, _mon bon monsieur_, until some one came to help us at the flood tide. We should shout until they heard us."

"You might fire a gun," suggested Barebone.

"We have no gun on board, mon bon monsieur," replied the Captain, who had long ago explained to his prisoner that there was no ill-feeling.

"It is the fortune of war," he had explained before the white cliffs of St. Valerie had faded from sight. "I am a poor man who cannot afford to refuse a good offer. It is a Government job, as you no doubt know without my telling you. You would seem to have incurred the displeasure or the distrust of some one high placed in the Government. 'Treat him well,'

they said to me. 'Give him your best, and see that he comes to no harm unless he tries to escape. And be careful that he does not return to France before the mackerel fis.h.i.+ng begins.' And when we do return to Fecamp, I have to lie to off Notre Dame de la Garde and signal to the Douane that I have you safe. They want you out of the way. You are a dangerous man, it seems. _Salut_!"

And the Captain raised his gla.s.s to one so distinguished by Government.

He laughed as he set his gla.s.s down on the little cabin table.

"No ill-feeling on either side," he added. "_C'est entendu_."

He made a half-movement as if to shake hands across the table and thought better of it, remembering, perhaps, that his own palm was not innocent of blood-money. For the rest they had been friendly enough on the voyage.

And had the "Pet.i.te Jeanne" been in danger, it is probable that Barebone would have warned his jailer, if only in obedience to a seaman's instinct against throwing away a good s.h.i.+p.

He had noted every detail, however, of the dinghy while he lay on the deck of the "Pet.i.te Jeanne"; how the runner fitted to the mast; whether the halliards were likely to run sweetly through the sheaves or were knotted and would jamb. He knew the weight of the gaff and the great tan-soddened sail to a nicety. Some dark night, he had thought, on the Dogger, he would slip overboard and take his chance. He had never looked for thick weather at this time of year off the Banks, so near home, within a few hours' sail of the mouth of Farlingford River.

If a breeze would only come up from the south-east, as it almost always does in these waters toward the evening of a still, fine day! Without lifting his head he scanned the weather, noting that the scud was blowing more northward now. It might only be what is known as a slant. On the other hand, it might prove to be a true breeze, coming from the usual quarter. The "tap-tap" of the caulker's hammer on the slip-way in Harwich River was silent now. There must be a breeze in-sh.o.r.e that carried the sound away.

The topsail of the "Pet.i.te Jeanne" filled with a jerk, and the Captain, standing at the tiller, looked up at it. The lower sails soon took their cue, and suddenly the slack sheets hummed taut in the breeze. The "Pet.i.te Jeanne" answered to it at once, and the waves gurgled and laughed beneath her counter as she moved through the water. She could sail quicker than her dinghy: Barebone knew that. But he also knew that he could handle an open boat as few even on the Cotes-du-Nord knew how.

If the breeze came strong, it would blow the fog-bank away, and Barebone had need of its covert. Though there must be many English boats within sight should the fog lift--indeed, the guards.h.i.+p in Harwich harbour would be almost visible across the spit of land where Landguard Fort lies hidden--Barebone had no intention of asking help so compromising. He had but a queer story to tell to any in authority, and on the face of it he must perforce appear to have run away with the dinghy of the "Pet.i.te Jeanne."

He desired to get ash.o.r.e as un.o.btrusively as possible. For he was not going to stay in England. The die was cast now. Where Dormer Colville's persuasions had failed, where the memory of that journey through Royalist France had yet left him doubting, the incidents of the last few days had clinched the matter once for all. Barebone was going back to France.

He moved as if to stretch his limbs and lay down once more, with his shoulders against the rail and his elbow covering the stanchion round which the dinghy's painter was made fast.

The proper place for the dinghy was on deck should the breeze freshen.

Barebone knew that as well as the French Captain of the "Pet.i.te Jeanne."

For seamans.h.i.+p is like music--it is independent of language or race.

There is only one right way and one wrong way at sea, all the world over.

The dinghy was only towing behind while the fog continued to be impenetrable. At any moment the Captain might give the order to bring it inboard.

At any moment Barebone might have to make a dash for the boat.

He watched the Captain, who continued to steer in silence. To drift on the tide in a fog is a very different thing to sailing through it at ten miles an hour on a strong breeze, and the steersman had no thought to spare for anything but his sails. Two men were keeping the look-out in the bows. Another--the leadsman--was standing amids.h.i.+ps peering over the side into the mist.

Still Barebone waited. Captain Clubbe had taught him that most difficult art--to select with patience and a perfect judgment the right moment. The "Pet.i.te Jeanne" was rustling through the gla.s.sy water northward toward Farlingford.

At a word from the Captain the man who had been heaving the lead came aft to the s.h.i.+p's bell and struck ten quick strokes. He waited and repeated the warning, but no one answered. They were alone in these shallow channels. Fortunately the man faced forward, as sailors always do by instinct, turning his back upon the Captain and Barebone.

The painter was cast off now and, under his elbow, Barebone was slowly hauling in. The dinghy was heavy and the "Pet.i.te Jeanne" was moving quickly through the water. Suddenly Barebone rose to his feet, hauled in hand over hand, and when the dinghy was near enough, leaped across two yards of water to her gunwale.

The Captain heard the thud of his feet on the thwart, and looking back over his shoulder saw and understood in a flash of thought. But even then he did not understand that Loo was aught else but a landsman half-recovered from sea-sickness. He understood it a minute later, however, when the brown sail ran up the mast and, holding the tiller between his knees, Barebone hauled in the sheet hand over hand and steered a course out to sea.

He looked back over the foot of the sail and waved his hand. "_Sans rancune!_" he shouted. "_C'est entendu!_" The Captain's own words.

The "Pet.i.te Jeanne" was already round to the wind, and the Captain was bellowing to his crew to trim the sails. It could scarcely be a chase, for the huge deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng-boat could sail half as fast again as her own dinghy. The Captain gave his instructions with all the quickness of his race, and the men were not slow to carry them out. The safe-keeping of the prisoner had been made of personal advantage to each member of the crew.

The Captain hailed Barebone with winged words which need not be set down here, and explained to him the impossibility of escape.

"How can you--a landsman," he shouted, "hope to get away from us? Come back and it shall be as you say '_sans rancune._' Name of G.o.d! I bear you no ill-will for making the attempt."

They were so close together that all on board the "Pet.i.te Jeanne" could see Barebone laugh and shake his head. He knew that there was no gun on board the fis.h.i.+ng-boat. The lugger rushed on, sailing quicker, lying up closer to the wind. She was within twenty yards of the little boat now--would overhaul her in a minute.

But in an instant Barebone was round on the other tack, and the Captain swore aloud, for he knew now that he was not dealing with a landsman. The "Pet.i.te Jeanne" spun round almost as quickly, but not quite. Every time that Barebone put about, the "Pet.i.te Jeanne" must perforce do the same, and every time she lost a little in the manoeuvre. On a long tack or running before the wind the bigger boat was immeasurably superior.

Barebone had but one chance--to make short tacks--and he knew it. The Captain knew it also, and no landsman would have possessed the knowledge.

He was trying to run the boat down now.