"I am opposed to further search," repeated Le Bihan, nervously picking
at the mass of silver buttons which covered the front of his velvet and
broadcloth jacket like a breastplate of scale armor.
Durand pursed up his lips, twisted his tremendous mustache, and hooked
his thumbs in his saber belt.
"As for me," he said, "I am in favor of further search."
"Further search for what--for the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked.
Le Bihan nodded. Durand frowned at the sunlit sea, rocking like a bowl
of molten gold from the cliffs to the horizon. I followed his eyes. On
the dark glistening cliffs, silhouetted against the glare of the sea,
sat a cormorant, black, motionless, its horrible head raised toward
heaven.
"Where is that list, Durand?" I asked.
The gendarme rummaged in his despatch pouch and produced a brass
cylinder about a foot long. Very gravely he unscrewed the head and
dumped out a scroll of thick yellow paper closely covered with writing
on both sides. At a nod from Le Bihan he handed me the scroll. But I
could make nothing of the coarse writing, now faded to a dull brown.
"Come, come, Le Bihan," I said impatiently, "translate it, won't you?
You and Max Fortin make a lot of mystery out of nothing, it seems."
Le Bihan went to the edge of the pit where the three Bannalec men were
digging, gave an order or two in Breton, and turned to me.
As I came to the edge of the pit the Bannalec men were removing a square
piece of sailcloth from what appeared to be a pile of cobblestones.
"Look!" said Le Bihan shrilly. I looked. The pile below was a heap of
skulls. After a moment I clambered down the gravel sides of the pit and
walked over to the men of Bannalec. They saluted me gravely, leaning on
their picks and shovels, and wiping their sweating faces with sunburned
hands.
"How many?" said I in Breton.
"Thirty-eight," they replied.
I glanced around. Beyond the heap of skulls lay two piles of human
bones. Beside these was a mound of broken, rusted bits of iron and
steel. Looking closer, I saw that this mound was composed of rusty
bayonets, saber blades, scythe blades, with here and there a tarnished
buckle attached to a bit of leather hard as iron.
I picked up a couple of buttons and a belt plate. The buttons bore the
royal arms of England; the belt plate was emblazoned with the English
arms and also with the number "27."
"I have heard my grandfather speak of the terrible English regiment, the
27th Foot, which landed and stormed the fort up there," said one of the
Bannalec men.
"Oh!" said I; "then these are the bones of English soldiers?"
"Yes," said the men of Bannalec.
Le Bihan was calling to me from the edge of the pit above, and I handed
the belt plate and buttons to the men and climbed the side of the
excavation.
"Well," said I, trying to prevent Môme from leaping up and licking my
face as I emerged from the pit, "I suppose you know what these bones
are. What are you going to do with them?"
"There was a man," said Le Bihan angrily, "an Englishman, who passed
here in a dog-cart on his way to Quimper about an hour ago, and what do
you suppose he wished to do?"
"Buy the relics?" I asked, smiling.
"Exactly--the pig!" piped the mayor of St. Gildas. "Jean Marie Tregunc,
who found the bones, was standing there where Max Fortin stands, and do
you know what he answered? He spat upon the ground, and said: 'Pig of an
Englishman, do you take me for a desecrator of graves?'"
I knew Tregunc, a sober, blue-eyed Breton, who lived from one year's end
to the other without being able to afford a single bit of meat for a
meal.
"How much did the Englishman offer Tregunc?" I asked.
"Two hundred francs for the skulls alone."
I thought of the relic hunters and the relic buyers on the battlefields
of our civil war.
"Seventeen hundred and sixty is long ago," I said.
"Respect for the dead can never die," said Fortin.
"And the English soldiers came here to kill your fathers and burn your
homes," I continued.
"They were murderers and thieves, but--they are dead," said Tregunc,
coming up from the beach below, his long sea rake balanced on his
dripping jersey.
"How much do you earn every year, Jean Marie?" I asked, turning to shake
hands with him.
"Two hundred and twenty francs, monsieur."
"Forty-five dollars a year," I said. "Bah! you are worth more, Jean.
Will you take care of my garden for me? My wife wished me to ask you. I
think it would be worth one hundred francs a month to you and to me.
Come on, Le Bihan--come along, Fortin--and you, Durand. I want somebody
to translate that list into French for me."
Tregunc stood gazing at me, his blue eyes dilated.
"You may begin at once," I said, smiling, "if the salary suits you?"
"It suits," said Tregunc, fumbling for his pipe in a silly way that
annoyed Le Bihan.
"Then go and begin your work," cried the mayor impatiently; and Tregunc
started across the moors toward St. Gildas, taking off his
velvet-ribboned cap to me and gripping his sea rake very hard.
"You offer him more than my salary," said the mayor, after a moment's
contemplation of his silver buttons.
"Pooh!" said I, "what do you do for your salary except play dominoes
with Max Portin at the Groix Inn?"
Le Bihan turned red, but Durand rattled his saber and winked at Max
Fortin, and I slipped my arm through the arm of the sulky magistrate,
laughing.
"There's a shady spot under the cliff," I said; "come on, Le Bihan, and
read me what is in the scroll."
In a few moments we reached the shadow of the cliff, and I threw myself
upon the turf, chin on hand, to listen.
The gendarme, Durand, also sat down, twisting his mustache into
needlelike points. Fortin leaned against the cliff, polishing his
glasses and examining us with vague, near-sighted eyes; and Le Bihan,
the mayor, planted himself in our midst, rolling up the scroll and
tucking it under his arm.
"First of all," he began in a shrill voice, "I am going to light my
pipe, and while lighting it I shall tell you what I have heard about the
attack on the fort yonder. My father told me; his father told him."
He jerked his head in the direction of the ruined fort, a small, square
stone structure on the sea cliff, now nothing but crumbling walls. Then
he slowly produced a tobacco pouch, a bit of flint and tinder, and a
long-stemmed pipe fitted with a microscopical bowl of baked clay. To
fill such a pipe requires ten minutes' close attention. To smoke it to a
finish takes but four puffs. It is very Breton, this Breton pipe. It is
the crystallization of everything Breton.
"Go on," said I, lighting a cigarette.
"The fort," said the mayor, "was built by Louis XIV, and was dismantled
twice by the English. Louis XV restored it in 1730. In 1760 it was
carried by assault by the English. They came across from the island of
Groix--three shiploads, and they stormed the fort and sacked St. Julien
yonder, and they started to burn St. Gildas--you can see the marks of
their bullets on my house yet; but the men of Bannalec and the men of
Lorient fell upon them with pike and scythe and blunderbuss, and those
who did not run away lie there below in the gravel pit now--thirty-eight
of them."
"And the thirty-ninth skull?" I asked, finishing my cigarette.
The mayor had succeeded in filling his pipe, and now he began to put his
tobacco pouch away.
"The thirty-ninth skull," he mumbled, holding the pipe stem between his
defective teeth--"the thirty-ninth skull is no business of mine. I have
told the Bannalec men to cease digging."
"But what is--whose is the missing skull?" I persisted curiously.
The mayor was busy trying to strike a spark to his tinder. Presently he
set it aglow, applied it to his pipe, took the prescribed four puffs,
knocked the ashes out of the bowl, and gravely replaced the pipe in his
pocket.
"The missing skull?" he asked.
"Yes," said I, impatiently.
The mayor slowly unrolled the scroll and began to read, translating from
the Breton into French. And this is what he read:
"ON THE CLIFFS OF ST. GILDAS,
APRIL 13, 1760.
"On this day, by order of the Count of Soisic, general in chief of the
Breton forces now lying in Kerselec Forest, the bodies of thirty-eight
English soldiers of the 27th, 50th, and 72d regiments of Foot were
buried in this spot, together with their arms and equipments."
The mayor paused and glanced at me reflectively.
"Go on, Le Bihan," I said.
"With them," continued the mayor, turning the scroll and reading on the
other side, "was buried the body of that vile traitor who betrayed the
fort to the English. The manner of his death was as follows: By order of
the most noble Count of Soisic, the traitor was first branded upon the
forehead with the brand of an arrowhead. The iron burned through the
flesh and was pressed heavily so that the brand should even burn into
the bone of the skull. The traitor was then led out and bidden to
kneel. He admitted having guided the English from the island of Groix.
Although a priest and a Frenchman, he had violated his priestly office
to aid him in discovering the password to the fort. This password he
extorted during confession from a young Breton girl who was in the habit
of rowing across from the island of Groix to visit her husband in the
fort. When the fort fell, this young girl, crazed by the death of her
husband, sought the Count of Soisic and told how the priest had forced
her to confess to him all she knew about the fort. The priest was
arrested at St. Gildas as he was about to cross the river to Lorient.
When arrested he cursed the girl, Marie Trevec----"
"What!" I exclaimed, "Marie Trevec!"
"Marie Trevec," repeated Le Bihan; "the priest cursed Marie Trevec, and
all her family and descendants. He was shot as he knelt, having a mask
of leather over his face, because the Bretons who composed the squad of
execution refused to fire at a priest unless his face was concealed. The
priest was l'Abbé Sorgue, commonly known as the Black Priest on account
of his dark face and swarthy eyebrows. He was buried with a stake
through his heart."
Le Bihan paused, hesitated, looked at me, and handed the manuscript back
to Durand. The gendarme took it and slipped it into the brass cylinder.
"So," said I, "the thirty-ninth skull is the skull of the Black
Priest."
"Yes," said Fortin. "I hope they won't find it."
"I have forbidden them to proceed," said the mayor querulously. "You
heard me, Max Fortin."