Carette of Sark Part 34

A voice also as we drew close, m.u.f.fled and monotonous, but human beyond doubt. We crept round the mound till we came on a doorway all covered with furze and gra.s.ses till it looked no more than a part of the mound. We pulled open the door, and the voice inside said, "Blight him! Blight him!

Blight him!" and we crept in on our hands and knees.

There was a small fire of brown sods burning on the ground, and the place was full of a sweet pungent smoke. A little old man sat crouched with his chin on his knees staring into the fire, and said, "Blight him! Blight him!

Blight him!" without ceasing. There was no more than room for the three of us, and we elbowed one another as we crouched by the fire.

He turned a rambling eye on us, but showed no surprise.

"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" said the little old man.

"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" said I, deeming it well to fall in with his humour.

"Ay--who?" he asked.

"The one you mean."

"Ay,--Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and he lifted a bottle from the ground between his knees, and took a pull at it, and pa.s.sed it on to me. I drank and pa.s.sed it to Le Marchant, and the fiery spirit ran through my veins like new hot life.

"We are starving. Give us to eat," I said, and the old man pointed to a hole in the side of the hut. I thrust in my hand and found bread, dark coloured and coa.r.s.e, but amazingly sweet and strengthening, and a lump of fat bacon. We divided it without a word, and ate like famished dogs. And all the time the old man chaunted "Blight him!" with fervour, and drank every now and then from the bottle. We drank too as we ate, but sparingly, lest our heads should go completely, though we could not believe such hospitality a trap.

It was a nightmare ending to a nightmare journey, but for the moment we had food and shelter and we asked no more. When we had eaten we curled ourselves up on the floor and slept, with "Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" dying in our ears.

I must have slept a long time, for when I woke I felt almost myself again.

I had dim remembrances of half-wakings, in which I had seen the old man still crouching over his smouldering fire muttering his usual curse. But now he was gone, and Le Marchant and I had the place to ourselves, and presently Le Marchant stretched and yawned, and sat up blinking at the smoke.

"Where is the old one?" he asked. "Or was he only a dream?"

"Real enough, and so was his bread and bacon. I'm hungry again," and we routed about for food, but found only a bottle with spirits in it, which we drank.

We sat there in the careless sloth that follows too great a strain, but feeling the strength grow as we sat.

"Is he safe?" asked Le Marchant at last. "Or has he gone to bring the soldiers on us? And is it night or day?" and he felt round with his foot till it came on the door and let in a bright gleam of daylight.

We crawled out into the suns.h.i.+ne and sat with our backs against the sods of the house, looking out over the great sweep of the flats. It was like a sea whose tumbling waves had turned suddenly into earth and become fixed. Here and there great green breakers stood up above the rest with bristling crests of wire gra.s.s, and the darker patches of tiny tangled shrubs and heather and the long black pools and ditches were like the shadows that dapple the sea. The sky was almost as clear a blue as we get in Sercq, and was so full of singing larks that it set us thinking of home.

Away on the margin of the flats we saw the steeples of churches, and between us and them a small black object came flitting like a jumping beetle. We sat and watched it, and it turned into a man, who overcame the black ditches, and picked his way from tussock to tussock, by means of a long pole, which brought him to us at length in a series of flying leaps.

"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" he said as he landed. "So you are awake at last."

"Awake and hungry," I said.

He loosed a bundle from his back and opened it, and showed us bread and bacon.

"Blight him! Eat!" he said, and we needed no second bidding.

"You are from the cage?" he asked as he sat and watched us.

I nodded.

"All the birds that come my way I feed," he said. "For once I was caged myself. Blight him!"

"Whom do you blight?" I asked.

"Whom?" he cried angrily, and turned a suspicious eye on me. "The Hanover rat,--George!... And the blight works--oh, it works, and the brain rots in his head and the maggots gnaw at his heart. And they wonder why!... an effectual fervent curse!--Oh, it works! For years and years I've cursed him night and day and--you see! Keep him in the dark, they said. Let no man speak to him for a twelvemonth and a day, they said. And no man spoke, but I myself, and all day long and all night I cursed him out loud for the sound of my own voice, since no other might speak to me. For the silence and the darkness pressed upon me like the churchyard mould, and I kept my wits only by cursing. Blight him! Blight him! And now they say--But they may say what they will so they leave me in peace, for I know--and you know"--and he bent forward confidentially--"it's the King that's mad, and soon everyone will know it. Blight him! Blight him! Oh--an effectual fervent curse indeed!"

"We are grateful to you," I said, "for food and shelter. We have money, we will pay."

"As you will. Those who can, pay. Those who can't, don't. All caged birds, I help. Blight him! Blight him!"

"We would rest till night, then you can put us on our way to the coast.

This is an ill land to wander in in the dark. Last night we came on one who had strayed and died."

"Where away?" he asked quickly.

"In the marshes--over yonder--about a mile away, I should say."

"Was he clothed?" he snapped.

"Yes, he was clothed."

And he was off with his pole across the flats, in great bounds, while we sat wondering. We could see his uncouth hops as he went to and fro at a distance, and in time he came back with a bundle of clothes tied to his back.

"Food one can always get for the herbs of the marshes," he said, "and drink comes easy when you know where to get it. But clothes cost money and the dead need them not. Blight him!"

Le Marchant begged me to ask if he had any tobacco and a pipe, and I did so. He went inside and came out with a clay pipe and some dried brown herb.

"It is not what you smoke, but such as it is it is there," he said; and Le Marchant tried a whiff or two, but laid the pipe aside with a grunt.

"He speaks as do the others from the cage. How come you to speak as we do?"

"I am from Sercq. It is part of England."

"I never heard of it. Why did they cage you?"

"I was prisoner on a French s.h.i.+p which they captured. I let them believe me French rather than be pressed on board a King's s.h.i.+p."

"Right! Blight him!"

That long rest made men of us again. Our host had little to say to us except that the King was mad, and we concluded that on that subject he was none too sane himself, though in other matters we had no fault to find with him.

We got directions for our guidance out of him during the day, and as soon as it was dark he set off with us across the marshes, and led us at last on to more trustworthy ground and told us how to go. We gave him money and hearty thanks, and shook him by the hand and went on our way. The last words we heard from him, out of the darkness, were the same as we heard first in the darkness--"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and if they did another old man no harm they certainly seemed to afford great satisfaction to this one.

All that night we walked steadily eastward, pa.s.sing through sleeping villages and by sleeping farmhouses, and meeting none who showed any desire to question us. In the early morning I bought bread and cheese from a sleepy wife at a little shop in a village that was just waking up, and we ate as we walked, and slept in a haystack till late in the afternoon. We tramped again all night, and long before daylight we smelt salt water, and when the sun rose we were sitting on a cliff watching it come up out of the sea.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW WE CAME UPON A WHITED SEPULCHRE AND FELL INTO THE FIRE