THE MARQUIS DE SOUDAY DRAGS FOR OYSTERS
AND BRINGS UP PICAUT.
Bertha, who had left the farmhouse at La Logerie at the same time as
Michel, reached, her father after a tramp of about two hours. She
found him extraordinarily depressed and utterly disgusted with the
hermit's life he was leading in Maître Jacques' warren, though the
latter had arranged it for his personal comfort and installed him
safely in it.
From a feeling that was purely chivalrous, Monsieur de Souday had not
been willing to leave the country so long as Petit-Pierre was in it,
and in danger. Therefore, when Bertha came to him with the news of the
duchess's probable departure, the old Vendéan gentleman resigned
himself, though without heartiness, to follow the advice of General
Dermoncourt and depart for the third time to foreign lands.
He and his daughter left the forest of Touvois at once. Maître
Jacques, whose hand was now nearly well, though it lacked two fingers,
wished to accompany them to the coast and assist in their embarkation.
It was midnight when the three travellers, following the high-road
from Machecoul, reached the heights above the valley of Souday. As the
marquis looked at the four weathercocks on his four towers, which were
shimmering in the moonlight above the sea of verdure which surrounded
them, he sighed. Bertha heard him and came nearer to his side.
"What is it, father?" she said. "What are you thinking of?"
"Of many things, my poor child," he answered, shaking his head.
"Don't take gloomy thoughts into your head, father. You are still
young and vigorous; you'll see the house again some day."
"Yes," said the marquis, with another sigh, "but--" he stopped, half
choking.
"But what?" asked Bertha.
"I shall never see my poor Jean Oullier again."
"Alas!" said the girl.
"Oh, house,--poor house!" said the marquis; "how empty you will seem
to me without him!"
Though there was really more of egotism than attachment to his
faithful servant in the marquis's regret, if Jean Oullier could have
heard that lament it would certainly have touched him deeply.
Bertha resumed the subject.
"Do you know, father," she said, "I can't help fancying, though I am
sure I don't know why, that our poor friend, in spite of all they say,
is not dead. It seems to me that if he were really dead I should have
wept more for him; a secret hope, which I can't explain, comes and
stops my tears."
"That's odd," interrupted Maître Jacques; "but I have just the same
feeling. No, Jean Oullier is not dead; and I have something better
than presumption to go upon,--I saw the body they said was his, and I
couldn't recognize it."
"Then what has become of him?" asked the marquis.
"Faith, I don't know!" replied Maître Jacques; "but I keep expecting
every day to get news of him."
The marquis sighed again. At this moment they were passing through an
angle of the forest. Perhaps he was thinking of the hecatombs of game
he and his faithful keeper had piled beneath those verdant arches,--a
sight, alas! he might never see again. Perhaps the few words said by
Maître Jacques had opened his heart to a renewed hope of recovering
his old friend. The latter supposition is the more probable, for he
urged the master of rabbits to make most particular inquiries about
Jean Oullier's fate, and to let him know the result.
When they reached the seashore the marquis would not wholly conform to
the plan laid down by Michel and Bertha for his embarkation. He feared
that if they followed the shore along the bay of Bourgneuf, as agreed
upon, they might draw the attention of the coast-guard cutter to the
schooner; nothing would induce him to incur the reproach of
compromising Petit-Pierre's safety for personal considerations, and he
decided that the proper thing to do was for himself and daughter to go
out to sea and meet the "Jeune Charles."
Maître Jacques, who had friends and accomplices everywhere, soon found
a fisherman who was willing, for the consideration of a few louis, to
take them in his boat to the schooner. The little craft was drawn up
on the shore. The marquis and Bertha, instructed by Maître Jacques,
who was familiar with all smuggling man[oe]uvres, slipped into it and
escaped the eyes of the custom-house officers who watched the coast.
An hour later the tide floated the boat; the owner and his two sons,
who served as crew, got into her and put out to sea.
As it still wanted half an hour till daybreak, the marquis did not
wait till the boat was in the offing to come out of his hiding-place
in the little deck cabin, where he was even more cribbed and confined
than in Maître Jacques' burrow. As soon as the fisherman saw him he
began to ask questions.
"You say, monsieur, that the vessel you expect is coming from the
mouth of the Loire?"
"Yes," replied the marquis.
"At what hour was she to leave Nantes?"
"From three to five this morning," said Bertha.
The fisherman consulted the wind.
"The wind is southwest," he said; "the tide was high at three o'clock.
We ought to meet them between eight and nine; it will take them four
hours to get here. Meantime, in order not to attract attention from
the coast-guard, we had better throw over some drag-nets and make a
pretence of fishing, to explain our being here."
"Make a pretence!" cried the marquis; "why, I should like to fish in
good earnest! All my life I have wanted the opportunity for that
sport; and faith, as I can't hunt in Machecoul this year, it is a fine
compensation which Heaven sends me,--too fine to miss it!"
In spite of Bertha's cautions--for she feared her father's great
height might attract attention--the marquis began to work with the
fisherman at once.
The net was thrown out and allowed to drag for some time at the bottom
of the sea; but before long, the Marquis de Souday, who had valiantly
hauled on the ropes to bring the net to the surface, was as delighted
as a child with the shining mass of eels, turbot, plaice, skate, and
oysters which came up palpitating from the depths of the sea. He at
once forgot his griefs, his hopes, his memories; he forgot Souday and
the forest of Machecoul, the marches of Saint-Philbert, the great
moors; and with them he forgot wild-boars, deer, foxes, hares,
partridges, and snipe, and thought only of the shining population with
smooth or scaly skins which each throw of the net produced before his
eyes.
Daylight came.
Bertha, who till then had sat in the bows absorbed in thought,
watching the waves as they parted at the prow of the little vessel and
floated away in two phosphorescent furrows,--Bertha now climbed on a
coil of rope to examine the horizon.
Through the morning mists, thicker at the mouth of the river than
elsewhere, she could see the tall masts and spars of several vessels;
but none of them carried the blue pennant by which they were to
recognize the "Jeune Charles." She observed this to the fisherman, who
assured her, with an oath, that it was impossible for the schooner, if
she left Nantes during the night, to have made the open sea already.
The marquis did not give the worthy fisherman and his men much time
for discussion, for he was so pleased with his taste of their trade
that he allowed no spare time between the throws of the net; and any
little pause that occurred he filled up with questions to the old
sailor on the rudiments of nautical science.
It was in the course of this instructive conversation that the
fisherman requested him to observe that by throwing the net as a drag
they were forced to make long tacks, and that this method of
proceeding would end by leading them astray from their post of
observation. But the marquis, with that careless indifference which
was the basis of his character, paid no attention to the skipper's
argument, and continued to fill the hold of the boat with the products
of the haul.
The morning went by. It was ten o'clock, and still no vessel
approached them. Bertha became very uneasy; she mentioned her fears to
her father several times, and at last with so much urgency that the
marquis could do no less than consent to go nearer to the mouth of the
river. He profited by the man[oe]uvre, however, to make the old sailor
teach him how to haul his wind,--that is to say, how to trim his sails
so as to make as slight an angle with the keel as the rigging would
allow. They were in the most tangled part of the demonstration when
Bertha uttered a cry.
She had just seen at a few hundred feet from the boat a large vessel
with all sail spread, to which she had hitherto paid no attention, as
it did not fly the promised signal, and was now partly hidden by the
jib of the boat.
"Look out! look out!" she cried; "there's a ship coming down upon us!"
The fisherman saw in an instant the danger that threatened them, and
springing to the helm he wrenched it from the hand of the marquis,
then, without observing that he knocked the latter flat on the deck,
he managed to get the boat round to windward of the ship, which was
close upon them. Rapid as the man[oe]uvre was, he could not prevent a
slight collision; the boom of the lugger's mainsail grazed the side of
the schooner with a loud noise, her gaff was entangled for a moment
with the latter's bowsprit; the boat heeled over, shipped a sea, and
if the skipper's rapid man[oe]uvre had not enabled him to catch the
wind, she might not have righted as rapidly as she did, or perhaps not
have righted at all.
"The devil take that damned coaster!" cried the old fisherman.
"Another minute and we should have gone to the bottom in exchange for
the fish we've just caught!"
"Go about! go about!" cried the marquis, exasperated by his fall.
"After him! the devil take me if I don't board him and ask the captain
what he means by such insolence!"
"Do you expect me," said the old sailor, "with my one sail and two
poor jibs, to overhaul a craft of that kind? Look at his canvas, the
villain!--every stitch set! And see how it draws!"
"Yet we must overtake him!" cried Bertha, running aft. "It is the
'Jeune Charles!'"
And she showed her father a broad, white band at the stern of the
other vessel on which could be read, in letters of gold. "LE JEUNE
CHARLES."
"Faith, you are right, Bertha!" cried the marquis. "Go about, my
friend, go about! But why doesn't he carry the signal agreed upon with
Monsieur de la Logerie? And why, instead of steering for the bay of
Bourgneuf, is he heading east?"
"Perhaps some accident has happened," said Bertha, turning pale.
"God grant it may not be to Petit-Pierre!" muttered the marquis.
Bertha admired her father's stoicism, but in her heart she murmured:
"God grant it may not be to Michel!"
"Never mind!" said the marquis, "we must find out what all this
means."
The lugger had meantime gone about, and again catching the wind, began
to move rapidly through the water; this man[oe]uvre on a vessel of her
size could be done so quickly that the schooner, in spite of her
volume of sail, did not get far in advance. The fisherman was able to
hail her.
The captain appeared on the poop.
"Are you the 'Jeune Charles' from Nantes?" asked the skipper of the
boat, making a trumpet of his two hands.
"What's that to you?" answered the captain of the schooner, whose good
humor did not seem to be restored by the certainty of having evaded
the clutches of the law.
"I have folks aboard for you!" cried the fisherman.
"More messengers! A thousand devils! I tell you if you bring me any
more such fellows like those I have had this night, I'll run you down,
you old oyster-dredger, before I let 'em aboard!"
"No, they are passengers! Aren't you looking out for passengers?"
"I'm looking out for a good wind to take me round Cape Finisterre!"
"Let me come alongside," said the fisherman, at Bertha's suggestion.
The captain of the "Jeune Charles" looked at the sea, and not
perceiving between himself and the coast anything to warrant
apprehension, and desirous, moreover, to know if the passengers asking
to come aboard were those for whom his vessel was chartered, he did as
the fisherman requested, hauled down his foresail and mainsail and
brought-to his vessel sufficiently to throw a line to the lugger and
bring her alongside.
"Now, then!" cried the captain, leaning over his bulwarks, "what's all
this about?"
"Ask Monsieur de la Logerie to come and speak to us," said Bertha.
"Monsieur de la Logerie is not aboard of me," replied the captain.
"But," returned Bertha, in a troubled voice, "at any rate, you have
two ladies, haven't you?"
"Ladies or passengers, I haven't any," said the captain; "except a
rascal in irons down in the hold, where he is cursing and swearing fit
to take the masts out of the ship and make the bulkhead he's lashed to
tremble."
"Good God!" cried Bertha, trembling herself. "Do you know if any
accident has happened to the persons who were to embark on your ship?"
"Faith, my pretty young lady," said the captain, "if you would tell me
what all this means you would oblige me greatly; for the devil is in
it if I can make out anything about it. Last night two men came on
board, both from Monsieur de la Logerie, with two different messages:
one ordered me to sail at once; the other told me to stay where I was.
One of these men was an honest farmer,--a mayor, I think, for he
showed me a bit of a tricolor scarf. It was he who told me to up
anchor and be off as fast as I could. The other, who wanted me to
stay, was an old galley-slave. I put faith in the most respectable of
the two, for, after all, his advice was safest, and I came away."
"My God!" exclaimed Bertha, "it must have been Courtin; some accident
has happened to Monsieur de la Logerie!"
"Do you want to see the other man?" asked the captain.
"What man?" said the marquis.
"The one I've got below in irons. You may recognize him, and then we
shall get at the truth of this business,--though it is too late now to
do any good."
"Too late to get away,--yes, that may be," said the marquis; "but not
too late to save our friends if they are in any peril. Show us the
man!"
The captain gave an order, and a few seconds later Joseph Picaut was
brought on deck. He was still chained and bound; but, in spite of his
bonds, he had no sooner caught sight of the coast of La Vendée, which
he thought he was fated never to see again, than, without reckoning
distance, or the impossibility of swimming, bound as he was, he tried
to escape his captors and fling himself into the sea.
This happened on the starboard side forward, so that the passengers in
the lugger, which was now to leeward near the stern of the vessel,
could not see what happened; but they heard Joseph Picaut's cry and
knew that a struggle of some kind was taking place on the schooner.
The fisherman pushed his boat along the side of the ship, and they
then saw Joseph Picaut struggling in the grasp of four men.
"Let me jump into the water!" he was shouting. "I'd rather die at once
than rot in that hole!"
He might possibly have succeeded in flinging himself overboard if he
had not at that instant recognized the faces of the Marquis de Souday
and Bertha, who were looking up at him in amazement. "Ah, Monsieur le
marquis! ah, Mademoiselle Bertha!" cried Picaut; "you will save me,
won't you? It is for executing Monsieur Michel's orders that this
brute of a captain treats me as he does; and the lies of that
scoundrel Courtin are at the bottom of it."
"Now, then, I want to know the truth about all this," interposed the
captain. "If you can relieve me of that blaspheming fellow I shall be
glad enough; for I'm not bound for either Botany-Bay or Cayenne."
"Alas!" said Bertha, "it is all true, captain. I don't know what
motive the mayor of La Logerie could have had to send you to sea
without your passengers; but it is very certain that this man is the
one who told you the truth."
"Unbind him, then! Ten thousand cat-o'-nine-tails! let him go hang
where he pleases! Now, as for you, what do you want? Are you coming
with me, or are you not? It won't cost any more to take you or leave
you. I was paid in advance; and to ease my conscience I'd rather like
to take somebody."
"Captain," said Bertha, "isn't it possible to go back up the river and
let our friends embark to-night as they meant to do last night?"
"Impossible!" replied the captain, shrugging his shoulders. "Think of
the custom-house officers and the river-police! No, no; a plan
postponed is a plan defeated. Only, I say again, if you wish to use my
vessel to get over to England, I am at your service, and it shall cost
you nothing."
The marquis looked at his daughter, but she shook her head.
"Thank you, captain, thanks," replied the marquis. "It is impossible."
"Then we had better part company at once," said the captain. "But
before we do so, let me ask you to do me a service."
"What is it?"
"It is about a little note of hand which I will give you, duly signed,
requesting you to draw my share of it when you draw your own."
"I'll do anything to please you, captain," said the marquis, affably.
"Very good; then add one hundred lashes on the back of the fellow who
fooled me last night, in addition to your own."
"It shall be done," replied the marquis.
"If he has any strength to bear them after he has paid what he owes to
me," said a voice.
At the same instant a heavy body fell into the water, and the head of
Joseph Picaut was seen about ten paces off, its owner swimming
vigorously to the lugger. Once freed of his irons, the Chouan,
fearful, no doubt, that some unforeseen circumstance should detain him
on the vessel, had plunged head foremost over the schooner's bulwark.
The skipper and the marquis gave him each a hand, and Joseph Picaut
clambered into the boat. He was scarcely there before he shouted:--
"Monsieur le marquis, tell that old whale up there that the brand on
my shoulder is a cross of honor!"
"Yes, captain, that's true!" cried the marquis. "This peasant was sent
to the galleys for doing his duty in the days of the Empire,--his duty
as we see it, I mean; and though I don't wholly approve of the means
he took, I can declare to you that he has not deserved the treatment
you gave him."
"Very well," said the captain, "that's all right. Once, twice, thrice,
will you come aboard, or will you not?"
"No, captain, thank you."
"Then good-bye, and better luck."
So saying, the captain signed to the helmsman, the schooner paid off
into the wind, the sails were squared again, and the vessel sailed
rapidly away, leaving the lugger stationary.
While the old fisherman was working his boat to shore, Bertha and her
father held counsel together. In spite of Picaut's explanations (and
those explanations were brief, the Chouan having only seen Courtin at
the moment when he was seized and bound) they could not understand the
motives of the mayor of La Logerie. His conduct, however, was plain
enough, and seemed to them extremely suspicious,--although, as Bertha
now told her father, he had shown a true devotion to Michel during his
illness, and had often expressed to her the utmost attachment to his
young master. The marquis, however, was strongly of opinion that his
present tortuous behavior concealed some scheme that was not only
dangerous to Michel's safety, but to that of their other friends.
As for Picaut, he declared plainly that he lived and breathed for
vengeance only, and that if Monsieur de Souday would give him a suit
of sailor's clothes to replace those which were torn from his back in
the struggles he had gone through, he would start for Nantes the
instant he touched land.
The marquis, convinced that Courtin's treachery was in some way
connected with Petit-Pierre, wished to go to the town himself; but
Bertha, who believed that Michel, finding the escape a failure, would
return to the farmhouse at La Logerie, where he would expect her to
join him, persuaded her father to put off entering Nantes till he
could get some more definite information.
The fisherman landed his passengers at the Pornic point. Picaut, for
whose benefit the skipper's son had given up his spencer and his
oilskin cap, started across country in a bee-line for Nantes, swearing
in every key that Courtin had better look out for himself. But before
leaving the marquis he begged him to tell Maître Jacques all the
particulars of his adventure, feeling quite certain that the master of
the warren would fraternally assist in his revenge.
It was thus that, thanks to his knowledge of localities, he was able
to reach Nantes about nine that evening; and going, naturally, to his
old post at the Point du Jour, he overheard a part at least of the
conversation between Courtin and the mysterious individual of
Aigrefeuille, and saw the money, or rather the bank-bills, which
Courtin did not regard as valuable until they were changed into coin.
As for the marquis and his daughter, it was not until nightfall that
they ventured, notwithstanding Bertha's impatience, to start for the
forest of Touvois; and it was not without actual grief of heart that
the old gentleman thought of the happy morning he had spent among the
fishes, reflecting that it would have no morrow, and that he was
fatally condemned to live, for an indefinite time, like a rat in his
hole.