PLAIN SAILING.
The steam trawler "Felice" out of Cherbourg was not much to look at,
but none the less she was a lady of virtue and of good intention. Her
engines had lost the sweet voice of youth through long argument and
bitter contest with the stern affronts of life. Where once they had
hummed and purred now they racketed and nagged, but they got through
the work none the less well on that account. The life of a fish wife
hardens the temperament and loosens the tongue and the "Felice" was no
exception to the rule. A plain, strident, powerful old woman bucketing
through calm and trouble with the same reproach for either. The
"Felice" wore rusty black--coarse and patched. She had long ago
forsaken her girlish waist band of royal blue esteeming such fallals
better suited to the children of the fleet. She was a no-nonsense
lady, one of the "up and doing and you be damned" sort, but she boasted
at least one unusual feature, the pride and envy of her fellows. She
was fitted with an aerial, the relic of an age when small vessels went
forth to sweep up big mines very often to be swept up themselves while
so engaged and to mention the fact by wireless in the short interval
between being struck and sinking.
Anthony Barraclough, wrapped in a suit of borrowed oilskins, leaned
against the deck-house and grinned at the breaking day. Like a fire
opal the sun rose out of the sea, its first rays dissipating the
ghostlike wisps of fog that drifted over the water. The "Felice" was
shouldering her way up channel against the slap of a running tide and
the greeny-black waves, as yet undyed by the morning blue, spumed and
spattered over the bows and wetted her decks with a sharp salt rain.
"Oh, Lord!" said Barraclough, dashing the spray out of his eyes. "Oh,
Lord! it's good to be alive."
His hand travelled to an inside breast pocket and stayed there, his
fingers lovingly caressing a case of morocco leather.
"And it's good to have brought it off. Damned good." His eyes looked
aloft to the sagging wires of the aerial.
"Wonder if I dare send 'em a message. Better not perhaps. Besides, I
want the fun of springing it on 'em myself. Still, I might give 'em a
hint--something to set 'em thinking."
He puzzled for a moment then broke into a fresh grin for a dainty
little code had suggested itself. It would be rather amusing to talk
to a group of financiers in the language of flowers. A memory of
Isabel's last words put the idea into his head when she had given him
the dog rose on the evening of his departure.
"It means hope, Tony," and "Hope it is," he had replied.
He turned to the little companion ladder and shouted into the dark
beneath.
"Ohe, Jean Prevost, half a minute."
And in answer appeared the head and shoulders of a short, thick-set,
twinkly eyed, unshaven man who gruffly demanded "Quoi?"
Jean Prevost, skipper of the "Felice," was not an "oil painting" to
look at but he was just as reliable as the craft he commanded. He and
Barraclough had had dealings together during the war and they respected
each other. If Jean Prevost were proud of anything it was of his
acquaintance with Barraclough and the knowledge he esteemed himself to
possess of the English tongue.
"Fizz me off a message on the wireless, there's a good soul."
"Hah!"
"Gerard, Regent Street, W. Deliver immediately single dog rose to Lord
Almont Frayne, Park Lane Mansions."
Jean Prevost nodded and repeated the message verbatim.
"That's it. Quick as you can."
"I send 'im now, I blerdy will. We find ze trawlers blerdy soon."
Jean Prevost showed a regrettable liberality in the use of this popular
adjective which he firmly believed lent vitality and refinement to any
sentence.
"That'll set them thinking," said Barraclough, as he turned away with a
smile. "Ha, the Eddystone!"
In direct line with their course rising like a thin twig out of the sea
showed the silhouette of the lighthouse, while between it and the now
faintly discernible mainland tiny dots of brown showed upon the water.
Your true Englishman is an absurd creation for he cannot return to his
native land even after the shortest absence, he cannot see the faint
familiar landmarks, the nestling villages, the rolling downs, the white
chalk or grey granite of her battlements, without a throb of honest
grateful pride. An imperial singing sounds in his ears--tuned to the
measure of breaking surf--such a song as lovers sing whose single words
are no more than this, "I am yours and you are mine."
"Tonight," he said. "Tonight I shall see her again."
There was the appointment at his rooms at 11 o'clock when he would
place the concession in Mr. Torrington's hands. That would be a big
moment. He could imagine Cranbourne's unbridled enthusiasm, Lord
Almont's congratulations in the style of P. G. Wodehouse, and Cassis,
that person of dry ashes and parchment, unbending to the greatness of
the occasion. He, Barraclough, was a made man, every newspaper in the
country would send its reporters to clamour at his doors, every charity
seek his aid when the story and the magnitude of his find became known.
From an ordinary commonplace individual, he would be transformed into a
figure of the age, the observed of all eyes, the target of every
tongue. And yet, the world at his feet, the wealth, the prominence,
the power, the achievement, faded and dwindled into nothing at all
beside one absurd but adorable longing. It was the thought of Isabel
sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, resting her chin upon them,
looking at him with great wide open eyes, smiling at him with moist
trembling lips.
Over head the aerial fizzed and crackled as his message voyaged forth
into space. The tiny dots between the Eddystone and the land took form
and detail and became the brown sails of a fishing fleet lolling idly
in the bay.
A hand on his shoulder aroused him from his reverie and he turned to
find Jean Prevost standing beside him.
Barraclough pointed to the North East.
"Number fifty-seven," he said.
The old skipper focussed a pair of binoculars and steadied them against
a stay of the funnel.
"Zere," he said, and pointed at a solitary sail to the West of its
fellows. "Heem! You see?"
Barraclough nodded.
"Diamond's a reliable chap. Always as good as his word. How long
shall we be?"
"Quarter hour--ten minit."
Nothing more was said until the "Felice" came alongside the solitary
fishing boat from the bows of which a tall bronzed seaman gave them a
welcoming hail.
"Good-bye and good luck, Jean Prevost," said Barraclough. "You'll hear
from me in a day or two."
"And blerdy good luck to you," said the Frenchman gripping the extended
hand.
Barraclough dropped over the side and landed on the stern sheets of
Number 57. A bell clanked and the "Felice" lurched away ruffing the
glassy water with her screw.
"Be ye right?" demanded Diamond, drawing up the cable of his anchor.
"Sure thing," said Barraclough. "Let her go."
The anchor came out of the water with a plop, the brown sail was
twisted and a little auxiliary oil engine began to snort.
"Wind's settin' just right," said Diamond, the sheet in one hand and
the tiller in the other. "Ye 'ad a good time?"
"First rate. Tell you all about it one of these days."
A friendly puff of wind from the South East filled the canvas and drove
them shoreward at a slant, the water lapping gently against the bows.
It seemed a very little while before they rounded the headland and
entered the narrow funnel of cliffs leading into Polperro. Not a soul
was to be seen at the breakwater, a circumstance Barraclough noted with
satisfaction, although he had no reason to expect opposition. They
lowered sail at the harbour mouth and came alongside a slippery wooden
ladder stapled into the stone wall of the pier.
"Ye'll take a bite o' breakwus?"
"Not this journey, Jack. I'm getting off as fast as I can. Here,
you'd better freeze on to these oil skins. No good to me." He
stripped off the coat he was wearing, shook hands, and mounted the
ladder.
"Thanks awfully. I'll be down this way for my honeymoon. Good-bye."
With a cheery wave and a smile he started down the jetty at a brisk
walk.