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 chin to his
shoulder in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, a small white body
flash from a black ledge above the surf into the coiling waters beyond. He
stood up facing the bows and held the boat, till a brown head bobbed up
among the writhing coils. Then a slim white arm with a little brown hand
swept the long hair away from a pair of dancing eyes, and the swimmer came
slipping through the water like a seal.
But suddenly, some stronger coil of the waters below caught the glancing
white limbs. They sprawled awry from their stroke, a startled look dimmed
the dancing eyes with a strain of fear.
"Phil!"
And in a moment the boy in the boat had drawn in his oars, and kicked off
his shoes, and was ploughing sturdily through the belching coils.
"You're all right, Carette," he cried, as he drove up alongside, and the
swimmer grasped hurriedly at his extended arm. "We've done stiffer bits
than this. Now--rest a minute!--All right?--Come on then for the boat. Here
you are!--Hang on till I get in!"
He drew himself up slowly, and hung for a moment while the water poured out
of his clothes. Then, with a heave and a wild kick in the air, he was
aboard, and turned to assist his companion. He grasped the little brown
hands and braced his foot against the gunwale. "Now!" and she came up over
the side like a lovely white elf, and sank panting among the golden-brown
coils of vraic.
"It was silly of you to jump in there, you know," said the boy over his
shoulder, as he sat down to his oars and headed for Pierre au Norman again.
"The Race is too strong for you. I've told you so before."
"You do it yourself," she panted.
"I'm a boy and I'm stronger than you."
"I can swim as fast as you."
"But I can last longer, and the Race is too strong for me sometimes."
"B'en! I knew you'd pick me up."
"Well, don't you ever do it when I'm not here, or some day the black snake
will get you and you'll never come up again."
He was pulling steadily now through the backwater of Havre Gosselin;--past
the iron clamps let into the face of the rock, up and down which the
fishermen climbed like flies;--past the moored boats;--avoiding hidden
rocks by the instinct of constant usage, till his boat slid up among the
weed-cushioned boulders of the shore, and he drew in his oars and laid them
methodically along the thwarts.
The small girl jumped out and wallowed in the warm lip of the tide, and
finally squatted in it with her brown hands clasped round her pink-white
knees,--unabashed, unashamed, absolutely innocent of any possible necessity
for either,--as lovely a picture as all those coasts could show.
Her long hair, dark with the water, hung in wet rats' tails on her slim
white shoulders, which were just flushed with the nip of the sea. The clear
drops sparkled on her pretty brown face like pearls and diamonds, and
seemed loth to fall. Her little pink toes curled up out of the creamy wash
to look at her.
"Where are your things?" asked the boy.
"In the cave yonder."
"Go and get dressed," he said, looking down at her with as little thought
of unseemliness as she herself.
"Not at all. I'm quite warm."
"Well, I'm going to dry my things," and he began to wriggle out of his
knitted blue guernsey. "Also," he said, following up a previous train of
thought, "let me tell you there are devil-fish about here. One came up with
one of our pots yesterday."
"Pooh! I killed one with a stick this morning. They're only baby ones;
comme ça," and she measured about two inches between her little pink palms.
"This one was so big," and he indicated a yard or so, between the flapping
sleeves of the guernsey in which his head was still involved.
"I don't believe you, Phil Carré," she said with wide eyes. "You're just
trying to frighten me."
"All right! Just you wait till one catches hold of your leg when you're out
swimming all by yourself. If I'd known you'd be so silly I'd never have
taught you."
"You didn't teach me. You only dared me in and showed me how."
"Well then! And if I hadn't you'd never have learnt."
"Maybe I would. Someone else would have taught me."
"Who then?"
And to that she had no answer. For if the good God intends a man to drown
it is going against His will to try to thwart him by learning to
swim,--such, at all events, was the very prevalent belief in those parts,
and is to this day.
As soon as the boy was free of his clothes, he spread them neatly to the
sun on a big boulder, and with a whoop went skipping over the stones into
the water, till he fell full length with a splash and began swimming
vigorously seawards. The small girl sat watching him for a minute and then
skipped in after him, and the cormorants ceased their diving and the
seagulls their wheelings and mewings, and all gathered agitatedly on a rock
at the farther side of the bay, and wondered what such shouts and laughter
might portend.
But suddenly the boy broke off short in his sporting, and paddled
noiselessly, with his face straining seawards.
"What is it then, Phil? Has the big pieuvre got hold of your leg?" cried
the girl, as she splashed up towards him.
He raised a dripping hand to silence her, and while the dark eyes were
still widening with surprise, a dull boom came rolling along the wind over
the cliffs of Brecqhou.
"A gun," said the boy, and turned and headed swiftly for the shore.
"Wait for me, Phil!" cried the girl, as she skipped over the stones like a
sunbeam and disappeared into the black mouth of the cave.
"Quick then!" as he wrestled with his half-dried clothes, still sticky with
the sea-water.
He was fixing the iron bar, which served as anchor for his boat, under a
big boulder, when she joined him, still buttoning her skirt, and they sped
together up the hazardous path which led up to La Frégondée. He gave her a
helping hand now and again over difficult bits, but they had no breath for
words. They reached the top panting like hounds, but the boy turned at once
through the fields to the left and never stopped till he dropped spent on
the short turf of the headland by Saut de Juan.
"Ah!" he gasped, and sighed with vast enjoyment, and the girl stared
wide-eyed.
Down Great Russel, between them and Herm, two great ships were driving
furiously, with every sail at fullest stretch and the white waves boiling
under their bows. Farther out, beyond the bristle of reefs and islets which
stretch in a menacing line to the north of Herm, another stately vessel was
manoeuvring in advance of--
"One--two--three--four--five--six," counted the boy, "and each one as big
as herself."
Every now and again came the sullen boom of her guns and answering booms
from her pursuers.
"Six to one!" breathed the boy, quivering like a pointer. "And she's
terrible near the rocks. Bon Gyu! but she'll be on them! She'll be on them
sure," and he jumped up and danced in his excitement. "You can't get her
through there!--Ay-ee!" and he funnelled his hands to shout a warning
across three miles of sea in the teeth of a westerly breeze.
"Silly!" said the girl from the turf where she sat with her hands round her
knees. "They can't hear you!"
"Oh, guyabble! Oh, bon Gyu!" and he stood stiff and stark, as the great
ship narrowed as she turned towards them suddenly, and came threading her
way through the bristling rocks, in a way that passed belief and set the
hair in the nape of the boy's neck crawling with apprehension.
"Platte Boue!" he gasped, as she came safely past that danger. "Grand
Amfroque!" and he began to dance.
"Founiais!" and she came out into Great Russel with a glorious sweep, shook
herself proudly to the other tack, and went foaming past the Equêtelées and
the Grands Bouillons, swept round the south of Jethou, and began short
tacking for Peter Port in wake of her consorts.
Since the guns, the drama out there had unfolded itself in silence, and
silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward. The small boy danced
and waved his arms and cheered frantically. The ships beyond the reefs were
streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.
The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial
understanding of it all in her looks.
"Why are you so crazy about it?" she asked.
"Because we've won, you silly!"
"Of course! We're English. But all the same we ran away."
"We're English"--and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her
voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and
scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.
"Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates!
And let me tell you there's not many men could have brought that ship
through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for
sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the
_Crescent_ off Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who
received a large gold medal for the feat.]
His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his
shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise. It was a stout, heavily-built
man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever
wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have
cared to wear.
"Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?" he asked, in a tongue
that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of
all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no
conviction to the boy's mind.
But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was
too busy thinking to speak.
"Come then! Art dumb?" and he shook the boy roughly.
"Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!" said Carette, dancing round them with
apprehension for her companion. "He's dumb."
"He was shouting loud enough a minute ago," and he pinched the boy's ear
smartly between his big thumb and finger.
"It's only sometimes," said Carette lamely. "You let him go and maybe he'll
speak."
"See, my lad," said the burly one, letting go the boy's ear but keeping a
grip on his shoulder. "I'm not going to harm you. All I want to know is
whether you've seen any sizable ships banging about here lately.--You know
what I mean!"
The small boy knew perfectly what he meant, and his lip curled at thought
of being mistaken for the kind of boy who would open his mouth to a
preventive man. He shook his head, however.
"Not, eh? Well, you know the neighbourhood anyway. Take me to the
Boutiques."
"The Boutiques?" cried Carette.
"Ah! The Boutiques. You know where the Boutiques are, I can see."
They both knew the Boutiques. It would be a very small child on Sercq who
did not know that much. The small boy knew, too, that both the Boutiques
and the Gouliot caves had nooks and niches in their higher ranges, boarded
off and secured with stout padlocked doors, where goods were stored for
transfer to the cutters and chasse-marées as occasion offered, just as they
were in the great warehouses of the Guernsey merchants. He had vague ideas
that so long as the goods were on dry land the preventive men could not
touch them, but of that he was not perfectly certain. These troublesome
Customs' officers were constantly having new powers conferred on them. He
had overheard the men discussing them many a time, and the very fact of
this man trying to find the Boutiques was in itself suspicious. But the man
was a stranger. That was evident from his uncouth talk and foolish ways,
and the small boy's mind was made up in a moment.
Carette was watching anxiously, with a wild idea in her mind that if she
flung herself at the preventive man's feet and held them tightly, the boy
might wriggle away and escape.
But the boy had a brighter scheme than that. He turned and led the way
inland, and dropped a wink to Carette as he did so, and her anxious little
brain jumped to the fact that the stranger was to be misled.
Her sharpened faculties perceived that the best way to second his efforts
was to pretend a vehement objection to his action and so lend colour to it.
"Don't you do it, Phil!" she cried, dancing round them. "Don't you do it,
or I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
Phil marched steadily on with the heavy hand gripping his shoulder.
"Sensible boy!" said the preventive man.
As everyone knows, the Boutiques lie hid among the northern cliffs by the
Eperquerie. But, once lose sight of the sea, amid the tangle of wooded
lanes which traverse the Island, and, without the guidance of the sun, it
needs a certain amount of familiarity with the district to know exactly
where one will come out.
The small boy stolidly led the way past Beaumanoir, and Carette wailed like
a lost soul alongside. Jeanne Falla looked out as they passed and called
out to know what was happening.
"This wicked man is making Phil show him the way to the Boutiques," cried
Carette, and the wicked man chuckled, and so did Jeanne Falla.
They passed the cottages at La Vauroque. The women and children crowded the
doors.
"What is it then, Carette?" they cried. "Where is he taking him?"
"He is making him show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette,
crumpling her pretty face into hideous grimaces by way of explanation.
"Oh, my good!" cried the women, and the procession passed on along the road
that led past Dos d'Ane. The steamy haze lay thicker here. The wind drove
it past in slow coils, but its skirts seemed to cling to the heather and
bracken as though reluctant to loose its hold on the Island.
They passed down a rough rock path with ragged yellow sides, and stood
suddenly looking out, as it seemed, on death.
In front and all around--a fathomless void of mist, which curled slowly
past in thin white whorls. The only solid thing--the raw yellow path on
which they stood. It stretched precariously out into the void and seemed to
rest on nothing. From somewhere down below came the hoarse low growl of sea
on rock. Otherwise the stillness of death.--The Coupée!
Sorely trying to stranger nerves at best of times was that wonderful
narrow bone of a neck which joins Little Sercq to Sercq,--six hundred feet
long, three hundred feet high, four feet wide at its widest at that time,
and in places less, and with nothing between the crumbling edges of the
path and the growling death below but ragged falls of rock, almost sheer on
the one side and little better on the other. On a clear day the
unaccustomed eye swam with the welter of the surf below on both sides at
once; the unaccustomed brain reeled at thought of so precarious a passage;
and the unaccustomed body, unless tenanted by a fool, or possessed of
nerves beyond the ordinary or of no nerves at all, turned as a rule at the
sight and thanked God for the feel of solid rock behind, or else went
humbly down on hands and knees and so crossed in safety with lowered crest.
To the eyes of the rat-faced man the path seemed but a wavering line in the
wavering mist. His hand gripped the boy's shoulder, grateful for something
solid to hang on to. And gripped it the harder when Carette skipped past
them and disappeared along that knife-edge of a dancing path.
"Come on!" said the boy,--the first words he had spoken.
But the preventive man's eyes were still fixed in horror on the place where
the girl had vanished.
"Come on!" said the boy again, and shook himself free, and went on along
the path.
"Aren't you coming?" he asked,--a shadow in the mist.
But the preventive man was feeling cautiously backwards for solid rock.
"Then I can't show you the Boutiques," said the boy, and passed out of
sight into the mist.