A MAID OF THE SILVER SEA
by
JOHN OXENHAM
With Frontispiece in Colour by Harold Copping
Hodder and Stoughton Warwick Square, London, E.C.
TO
MY FRIEND
EDWARD BAKER
OF LA CHAUMIERE, SARK
ON WHOSE MOST HOSPITABLE AND SUPREMELY
COMFORTABLE VERANDAH, LOOKING OUT
TO THE FAIR COAST OF FRANCE, THIS
STORY WAS PARTLY WRITTEN, I
INSCRIBE THE SAME IN REMEMBRANCE
OF MANY
DELIGHTFUL DAYS
TOGETHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
HOW TWO LAY IN A CLEFT
CHAPTER II
HOW NANCE CAME TO BE HERSELF
CHAPTER III
HOW THE NEW MINE CAPTAIN CAME
CHAPTER IV
HOW GARD MADE NEW ACQUAINTANCES
CHAPTER V
HOW NANCE SHONE THROUGH HER MODEST VEILING
CHAPTER VI
HOW GRANNIE SCHEMED SCHEMES
CHAPTER VII
HOW GARD FOUGHT GALES AND TOM
CHAPTER VIII
HOW TOM WANTED TO BUT DIDN’T DARE
CHAPTER IX
HOW OLD TOM FOUND THE SILVER HEART
CHAPTER X
HOW YOUNG TOM FOUND HIS MATCH
CHAPTER XI
HOW GARD DREW NEARER TO HIS HEART’S DESIRE
CHAPTER XII
HOW NANCE CAME UP THE MAIN SHAFT WITHOUT GOING DOWN IT
CHAPTER XIII
HOW GARD REFUSED AN OFFER AND MADE AN ENEMY
CHAPTER XIV
HOW THEY WENT THROUGH THE DARKNESS OF THE NARROW WAY
CHAPTER XV
HOW TWO FELL OUT
CHAPTER XVI
HOW ONE FELL OVER
CHAPTER XVII
HOW TOM WENT TO SCHOOL FOR THE LAST TIME
CHAPTER XVIII
HOW PETER’S DIPLOMACY CAME TO NOUGHT
CHAPTER XIX
HOW THE SARK MEN FELT ABOUT IT
CHAPTER XX
HOW SARK CRAVED BLOOD FOR BLOOD
CHAPTER XXI
HOW LOVE TOOK LOVE TO SANCTUARY
CHAPTER XXII
HOW THE STARS SANG OF HOPE
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW NANCE SENT FOOD AND HOPE TO HIM
CHAPTER XXIV
HOW HE SAW STRANGE SIGHTS
CHAPTER XXV
HOW HE LIVED THROUGH THE GREAT STORM
CHAPTER XXVI
HOW HE HELD THE ROCK
CHAPTER XXVII
HOW ONE CAME TO HIM LIKE AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN
CHAPTER XXVIII
HOW THE OTHERS CAME TO MAKE AN END
CHAPTER XXIX
HOW HE CAME INTO AN UNKNOWN PLACE
CHAPTER XXX
HOW NANCE WATCHED FROM AFAR
CHAPTER XXXI
HOW TWO WENT IN AND THREE CAME OUT
CHAPTER XXXII
HOW JULIE MEDITATED EVIL
CHAPTER XXXIII
HOW HOPE CAME ONCE AGAIN
CHAPTER XXXIV
HOW JULIE’S SCHEMES FELL FLAT
CHAPTER XXXV
HOW AN ANGEL CAME BRINGING THE TRUTH
CHAPTER XXXVI
HOW HE CAME HOME FROM L’ETAT
CHAPTER XXXVII
HOW THEY LAID TRAPS FOR THE DEVIL
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HOW THEY LAID THE DEVIL BY THE HEELS
CHAPTER XXXIX
HOW THEY THANKED GOD FOR HIS MERCIES
CHAPTER I
HOW TWO LAY IN A CLEFT
A girl and a boy lay in a cubby-hole in the north side of the cliff
overlooking Port Gorey, and watched the goings-on down below.
The sun was tending towards Guernsey and the gulf was filled witn golden
light. A small brig, unkempt and dirty, was nosing towards the rough
wooden landing-stage clamped to the opposite rocks, as though doubtful
of the advisability of attempting its closer acquaintance.
“Mon Gyu, Bern, how I wish they were all at the bottom of the sea!” said
the girl vehemently.
“Whe--e--e--w!” whistled the boy, and then with a twinkle in his
eye,--“Who’s got a new parasol now?”
“Everybody!--but it’s not that. It’s the bustle--and the dirt--and the
noise--and oh--everything! You can’t remember what it was like before
these wretched mines came--no dust, no noise, no bustle, no dirty men,
no silly women, no nothing as it is now. Just Sark as it used to be. And
now--! Mon Gyu, yes I wish the sea would break in through their nasty
tunnels and wash them all away--pumps and engines and
houses--everything!”
And up on the hillside at the head of the gulf the great pumping-engine
clacked monotonously “Never! Never! Never!”
“You’ve got it bad to-day, Nan,” said the boy.
“I’ve always got it bad. It makes me sick. It has changed everything and
everybody--everybody except mother and you,” she added quickly.
“Get--get--get! Why we hardly used to know what money was, and now no
one thinks of anything but getting all they can. It is sickening.”
“S--s--s--s--t!” signalled the boy suddenly, at the sound of steps and
voices on the cliff outside and close at hand.
“Tom,” muttered the boy.
“And Peter Mauger,” murmured the girl, and they both shrank lower into
their hiding-place.
It was a tiny natural chamber in the sharp slope of the hill. Ages ago
the massive granite boulders of the headland, loosened and undercut by
the ceaseless assaults of wind and weather and the deadly quiet fingers
of the frost, had come rolling down the slope till they settled afresh
on new foundations, forming holes and crannies and little angular
chambers where the splintered shoulders met. In time, the soil silted
down and covered their asperities, and--like a good colonist--carrying
in itself the means of increase, it presently brought forth and
blossomed, and the erstwhile shattered rocks were royally robed in
russet and purple, and green and gold.
Among these fantastic little chambers Nance had played as a child, and
had found refuge in them from the persecutions of her big half-brother,
Tom Hamon. Tom was six when she was born--fourteen accordingly when she
was at the teasable age of eight, and unusually tempting as a victim by
reason of her passionate resentment of his unwelcome attentions.
She hated Tom, and Tom had always resented her and her mother’s
intrusion into the family, and Bernel’s, when he came, four years after
Nance.
What his father wanted to marry again for, Tom never could make out. His
lack of training and limited powers of expression did not indeed permit
him any distinct reasoning on the matter, but the feeling was there--a
dull resentment which found its only vent and satisfaction in stolid
rudeness to his stepmother and the persecution of Nance and Bernel
whenever occasion offered.
The household was not therefore on too happy a footing.
It consisted, at the time when our story opens, of--Old Mrs.
Hamon--Grannie--half of whose life had been lived in the nineteenth
century and half in the eighteenth. She had seen all the wild doings of
the privateering and free-trading days, and recalled as a comparatively
recent event the raiding of the Island by the men of Herm, though that
happened forty years before.
She was for the most part a very reserved and silent old lady, but her
tongue could bite like a whip when the need arose.
She occupied her own dower-rooms in the house, and rarely went outside
them. All day long she sat in her great arm-chair by the window in her
sitting-room, with the door wide open, so that she could see all that
went on in the house and outside it; and in the sombre depths of her
great black silk sun-bonnet--long since turned by age and weather to
dusky green--her watchful eyes had in them something of the inscrutable
and menacing.
Her wants were very few, and as her income from her one-third of the
farm had far exceeded her expenses for more than twenty years, she was
reputed as rich in material matters as she undoubtedly was in
common-sense and worldly wisdom. Even young Tom was sulkily silent
before her on the rare occasions when they came into contact.
Next in the family came the nominal head of it, “Old Tom” Hamon, to
distinguish him from young Tom, his son; a rough, not ill-natured man,
until the money-getting fever seized him, since which time his
home-folks had found in him changes that did not make for their comfort.
The discovery of silver in Sark, the opening of the mines, and the
coming of the English miners--with all the very problematical benefits
of a vastly increased currency of money, and the sudden introduction of
new ideas and standards of life and living into a community which had
hitherto been contented with the order of things known to its
forefathers--these things had told upon many, but on none more than old
Tom Hamon.
Suspicious at first of the meaning and doings of these strangers, he
very soon found them advantageous. He got excellent prices for his farm
produce, and when his horses and carts were not otherwise engaged he
could always turn them to account hauling for the mines.
As the silver-fever grew in him he became closer in his dealings both
abroad and at home. With every pound he could scrimp and save he bought
shares in the mines and believed in them absolutely. And he went on
scrimping and saving and buying shares so as to have as large a stake in
the silver future as possible.
He got no return as yet from his investment, indeed. But that would
come all right in time, and the more shares he could get hold of the
larger the ultimate return would be. And so he stinted himself and his
family, and mortgaged his future, in hopes of wealth which he would not
have known how to enjoy if he had succeeded in getting it.
So possessed was he with the desire for gain that when young Tom came
home from sea he left the farming to him, and took to the mining
himself, and worked harder than he had ever worked in his life before.
He was a sturdy, middle-sized man, with a grizzled bullet head and
rounded beard, of a dogged and pertinacious disposition, but capable,
when stirred out of his usual phlegm, of fiery outbursts which overbore
all argument and opposition. His wife died when his boy Tom was three,
and after two years of lonely discomfort he married Nancy Poidestre of
Petit Dixcart, whose people looked upon it as something of a
_mésalliance_ that she should marry out of her own country into Little
Sark.
Nancy was eminently good-looking and a notable housewife, and she went
into Tom Hamon’s house of La Closerie with every hope and intention of
making him happy.
But, from the very first, little Tom set his face against her.
It would be hard to say why. Nancy racked her brain for reasons, and
could find none, and was miserable over it.
His father thrashed him for his rudeness and insolence, which only made
matters worse.
His own mother had given way to him in everything, and spoiled him
completely. After her death his father out of pity for his forlorn
estate, had equally given way to him, and only realised, too late, when
he tried to bring him to with a round turn, how thoroughly out of hand
he had got.
When little Tom found, as one consequence of the new mother’s arrival,
that his father thrashed instead of humouring him, he put it all down to
the new-comer’s account, and set himself to her discomfiture in every
way his barbarous little wits could devise.
He never forgot one awful week he passed in his grandmother’s care--a
week that terminated in the arrival of still another new-comer, who, in
course of time, developed into little Nance. It is not impossible that
the remembrance of that black week tended to colour his after-treatment
of his little half-sister. In spite of her winsomeness he hated her
always, and did his very best to make life a burden to her.
When, on that memorable occasion, he was hastily flung by his father
into his grandmother’s room, as the result of some wickedness which had
sorely upset his stepmother, and the door was, most unusually, closed
behind him, his first natural impulse was to escape as quickly as
possible.
But he became aware of something unusual and discomforting in the
atmosphere, and when his grandmother said sternly, “Sit down!” and he
turned on her to offer his own opinion on the matter, he found the keen
dark eyes gazing out at him from under the shadowy penthouse of the
great black sun-bonnet, with so intent and compelling a stare that his
mouth closed without saying a word. He climbed up on to a chair and
twisted his feet round the legs by way of anchorage.
Then he sat up and stared back at Grannie, and as an exhibition of
nonchalance and high spirit, put out his tongue at her.
Grannie only looked at him.
And, bit by bit, the tongue withdrew, and only the gaping mouth was
left, and above it a pair of frightened green eyes, transmitting to the
perverse little soul within new impressions and vague terrors.
Before long his left arm went up over his face to shut out the sight of
Grannie’s dreadful staring eyes, and when, after a sufficient interval,
he ventured a peep at her and found her eyes still fixed on him, he
howled, “Take it off! Take it off!” and slipped his anchors and slid to
the floor, hunching his back at this tormentor who could beat him on his
own ground.
For that week he gave no trouble to any one. But after it he never went
near Grannie’s room, and for years he never spoke to her. When he passed
her open door, or in front of her window, he hunched his shoulder
protectively and averted his eyes.
Resenting control in any shape or form, Tom naturally objected to
school.
His stepmother would have had him go--for his own sake as well as hers.
But his father took a not unusual Sark view of the matter.
“What’s the odds?” said he. “He’ll have the farm. Book-learning will be
no use to him,” and in spite of Nancy’s protests--which Tom regarded as
simply the natural outcrop of her ill-will towards him--the boy grew up
untaught and uncontrolled, and knowing none but the worst of all
masters--himself.
On occasion, when the tale of provocation reached its limit, his father
thrashed him, until there came a day when Tom upset the usual course of
proceedings by snatching the stick out of his father’s hands, and would
have belaboured him in turn if he had not been promptly knocked down.
After that his father judged it best for all concerned that he should
flight his troublesome wings outside for a while. So he sent him off in
a trading-ship, in the somewhat forlorn hope that a knowledge of the
world would knock some of the devil out of him--a hope which, like many
another, fell short of accomplishment.
The world knocks a good deal out of a man, but it also knocks a good
deal in. Tom came back from his voyaging knowing a good many things that
he had not known when he started--a little English among others--and
most of the others things which had been more profitably left unlearnt.