The hero of a unique and mysterious adventure, which had been the only subject of talk on board the corvette for the last twenty-four hours, came along rolling, hat in hand, and enjoying a secret sense of his importance.
``Take the glass,’’ said the captain, ``and have a look at that vessel under the land. Is she anything like the tartane that you say you have been aboard of?’’
Symons was very positive. ``I think I can swear to those painted mastheads, your honour. It is the last thing I remember before that murderous ruffian knocked me senseless. The moon shone on them. I can make them out now with the glass.’’ As to the fellow boasting to him that the tartane was a dispatch-boat and had already made some trips, well, Symons begged his honour to believe that the beggar was not sober at the time. He did not care what he blurted out. The best proof of his condition was that he went away to fetch the soldiers and forgot to come back. The murderous old ruffian! ``You see, your honour,’ continued Symons, ``he thought I was not likely to escape after getting a blow that would have killed nine out of any ten men. So he went away to boast of what he had done before the people ashore; because one of his chums, worse than himself, came down thinking he would kill me with a dam big manure fork, saving your honour’s presence. A regular savage he was.’’
Symons paused, staring, as if astonished at the marvels of his own tale. The old master, standing at his captain’s elbow, observed in a dispassionate tone that, anyway, that peninsula was not a bad jumping-off place for a craft intending to slip through the blockade. Symons, not being dismissed, waited hat in hand while Captain Vincent directed the master to fill on the ship and stand a little nearer to the battery. It was done, and presently there was a flash of a gun low down on the water’s edge and a shot came skipping in the direction of the Amelia. It fell very short, but Captain Vincent judged the ship was close enough and ordered her to be hove to again. Then Symons was told to take a look through the glass once more. After a long interval he lowered it and spoke impressively to his captain:
``I can make out three heads aboard, your honour, and one is white. I would swear to that white head anywhere.’’
Captain Vincent made no answer. All this seemed very odd to him; but after all it was possible. The craft had certainly acted suspiciously. He spoke to the first lieutenant in a half-vexed tone.
``He has done a rather smart thing. He will dodge here till dark and then get away. lt is perfectly absurd. I don’t want to send the boats too close to the battery. And if I do he may simply sail away from them and be round the land long before we are ready to give him chase. Darkness will be his best friend. However, we will keep a watch on him in case he is tempted to give us the slip late in the afternoon. In that case we will have a good try to catch him. If he has anything aboard I should like to get hold of it. It may be of some importance, after all.’’
On board the tartane Peyrol put his own interpretation on the ship’s movements. His object had been attained. The corvette had marked him for her prey. Satisfied as to that, Peyrol watched his opportunity and taking advantage of a long squall, with rain thick enough to blur the form of the English ship, he left the shelter of the battery to lead the Englishman a dance and keep up his character of a man anxious to avoid capture.
Ral, from his position on the lookout, saw in the thinning downpour the pointed lateen sails glide round the north end of Porquerolles and vanish behind the land. Some time afterwards the Amelia made sail in a manner that put it beyond doubt that she meant to chase. Her lofty canvas was shut off too presently by the land of Porquerolles. When she had disappeared Ral turned to Arlette.
``Let us go,’’ he said.
Arlette, stimulated by the short glimpse of Ral at the kitchen door, whom she had taken for a vision of a lost man calling her to follow him to the end of the world, had torn herself out of the old woman’s thin, bony arms which could not cope with the struggles of her body and the fierceness of her spirit. She had run straight to the lookout, though there was nothing to guide her there except a blind impulse to seek Ral wherever he might be. He was not aware of her having found him until she seized hold of his arm with a suddenness, energy and determination of which no one with a clouded mind could have been capable. He felt himself being taken possession of in a way that tore all his scruples out of his breast. Holding on to the trunk of the tree, he threw his other arm round her waist, and when she confessed to him that she did not know why she had run up there, but that if she had not found him she would have thrown herself over the cliff, he tightened his clasp with sudden exultation, as though she had been a gift prayed for instead of a stumbling block for his pedantic conscience. Together they walked back. In the failing light the buildings awaited them, lifeless, the walls darkened by rain and the big slopes of the roofs glistening and sinister under the flying desolation of the clouds. In the kitchen Catherine heard their mingled footsteps, and rigid in the tall armchair awaited their coming. Arlette threw her arms round the old woman’s neck while Ral stood on one side, looking on. Thought after thought flew through his mind and vanished in the strong feeling of the irrevocable nature of the event handing him to the woman whom, in the revulsion of his feelings, he was inclined to think more sane than himself Arlette, with one arm over the old woman’s shoulders, kissed the wrinkled forehead under the white band of linen that, on the erect head, had the effect of a rustic diadem.
``To-morrow you and I will have to walk down to the church.’’
The austere dignity of Catherine’s pose seemed to be shaken by this proposal to lead before the God, with whom she had made her peace long ago, that unhappy girl chosen to share in the guilt of impious and unspeakable horrors which had darkened her mind.
Arlette, still stooping over her aunt’s face, extended a hand towards Ral, who, making a step forward, took it silently into his grasp.
``Oh, yes, you will, Aunt,’’ insisted Arlette. ``You will have to come with me to pray for Peyrol, whom you and I shall never see any more.’’
Catherine’s head dropped, whether in assent or grief; and Ral felt an unexpected and profound emotion, for he, too, was convinced that none of the three persons in the farm would ever see Peyrol again. It was as though the rover of the wide seas had left them to themselves on a sudden impulse of scorn, of magnanimity, of a passion weary of itself. However come by, Ral was ready to clasp for ever to his breast that woman touched by the red hand of the Revolution; for she, whose little feet had run ankle-deep through the terrors of death, had brought to him the sense of triumphant life.
CHAPTER XVI
Astern of the tartane, the sun, about to set, kindled a streak of dull crimson glow between the darkening sea and the overcast sky. The peninsula of Giens and the islands of Hyres formed one mass of land detaching itself very black against the fiery girdle of the horizon; but to the north the long stretch of the Alpine coast continued beyond sight its endless sinuosities under the stooping clouds.
The tartane seemed to be rushing together with the run of the waves into the arms of the oncoming night. A little more than a mile away on her lee quarter, the Amelia, under all plain sail, pressed to the end of the chase. It had lasted now for a good many hours, for Peyrol, when slipping away, had managed to get the advantage of the Amelia from the very start. While still within the large sheet of smooth water which is called the Hyres roadstead, the tartane, which was really a craft of extraordinary speed, managed to gain positively on the sloop. Afterwards, by suddenly darting down the eastern passage between the two last islands of the group, Peyrol actually got out of sight of the chasing ship, being hidden by the Ile du Levant for a time. The Amelia having to tack twice in order to follow, lost ground once more. Emerging into the open sea, she had to tack again, and then the position became that of a stern chase, which proverbially is known as a long chase. Peyrol’s skilful seamanship had twice extracted from Captain Vincent a low murmur accompanied by a significant compression of lips. At one time the Amelia had been near enough the tar
tane to send a shot ahead of her. That one was followed by another which whizzed extraordinarily close to the mastheads, but then Captain Vincent ordered the gun to be secured again. He said to his first lieutenant, who, his speaking trumpet in hand, kept at his elbow: ``We must not sink that craft on any account. If we could get only an hour’s calm, we would carry her with the boats.’’
The lieutenant remarked that there was no hope of a calm for the next twenty-four hours at least.
``No,’’ said Captain Vincent, ``and in about an hour it will be dark, and then he may very well give us the slip. The coast is not very far off and there are batteries on both sides of Frjus, under any of which he will be as safe from capture as though he were hove up on the beach. And look,’’ he exclaimed after a moment’s pause, ``this is what the fellow means to do.’’
``Yes, sir,’’ said the lieutenant, keeping his eyes on the white speck ahead, dancing lightly on the short Mediterranean waves, ``he is keeping off the wind.’’
``We will have him in less than an hour,’’ said Captain Vincent, and made as if he meant to rub his hands, but suddenly leaned his elbow on the rail. ``After all,’’ he went on, ``properly speaking, it is a race between the Amelia and the night.’’
``And it will be dark early to-day,’’ said the first lieutenant, swinging the speaking trumpet by its lanyard. ``Shall we take the yards off the back-stays, sir?’’
``No,’’ said Captain Vincent. ``There is a clever seaman aboard that tartane. He is running off now, but at any time he may haul up again. We must not follow him too closely, or we shall lose the advantage which we have now. That man is determined on making his escape.’’
If those words by some miracle could have been carried to the ears of Peyrol, they would have brought to his lips a smile of malicious and triumphant exultation. Ever since he had laid his hand on the tiller of the tartane every faculty of his resourcefulness and seamanship had been bent on deceiving the English captain, that enemy whom he had never seen, the man whose mind he had constructed for himself from the evolutions of his ship. Leaning against the heavy tiller he addressed Michel, breaking the silence of the strenuous afternoon.
``This is the moment,’’ his deep voice uttered quietly. ``Ease off the mainsheet, Michel. A little now, only.’’
When Michel returned to the place where he had been sitting to windward, the rover noticed his eyes fixed on his face wonderingly. Some vague thoughts had been forming themselves slowly, incompletely, in Michel’s brain. Peyrol met the utter innocence of the unspoken inquiry with a smile that, beginning sardonically on his manly and sensitive mouth, ended in something resembling tenderness.
``That’s so, camarade,’’ he said with particular stress and intonation, as if those words contained a full and sufficient answer. Most unexpectedly Michel’s round and generally staring eyes blinked as if dazzled. He too produced from somewhere in the depths of his being a queer, misty smile from which Peyrol averted his gaze.
``Where is the citizen?’’ he asked, bearing hard against the tiller and staring straight ahead. ``He isn’t gone overboard, is he? I don’t seem to have seen him since we rounded the land near Porquerolles Castle.’’
Michel, after craning his head forward to look over the edge of the deck, announced that Scevola was sitting on the keelson.
``Go forward,’’ said Peyrol, ``and ease off the fore-sheet now a little. This tartane has wings,’’ he added to himself.
Alone on the after-deck Peyrol turned his head to look at the Amelia. That ship, in consequence of holding her wind, was now crossing obliquely the wake of the tartane. At the same time she had diminished the distance. Nevertheless, Peyrol considered that had he really meant to escape, his chances were as eight to ten — -practically an assured success. For a long time he had been contemplating the lofty pyramid of canvas towering against the fading red belt on the sky, when a lamentable groan made him look round. It was Scevola. The citizen had adopted the mode of progression on all fours, and while Peyrol looked at him he rolled to leeward, saving himself rather cleverly from going overboard, and holding on desperately to a cleat, shouted in a hollow voice, pointing with the other hand as if he had made a tremendous discovery: ``La terre! La terre!’’
``Certainly,’’ said Peyrol, steering with extreme nicety. ``What of that?’’
``I don’t want to be drowned!’’ cried the citizen in his new hollow voice. Peyrol reflected a bit before he spoke in a serious tone:
``If you stay where you are, I assure you that you will . . .’’ he glanced rapidly over his shoulder at the Amelia. . . ``not die by drowning.’’ He jerked his head sideways. ``I know that man’s mind.’’
``What man? Whose mind?’’ yelled Scevola with intense eagerness and bewilderment. ``We are only three on board.’’
But Peyrol’s mind was contemplating maliciously the figure of a man with long teeth, in a wig and with large buckles to his shoes. Such was his ideal conception of what the captain of the Amelia ought to look like. That officer, whose naturally good-humoured face wore then a look of severe resolution, had beckoned his first lieutenant to his side again.
``We are gaining,’’ he said quietly. ``I intend to close with him to windward. We won’t risk any of his tricks. It is very difficult to outmanuvre a Frenchman, as you know. Send a few armed marines on the forecastle-head. I am afraid the only way to get hold of this tartane is to disable the men on board of her. I wish to goodness I could think of some other. When we close with her, let the marines fire a well-aimed volley. You must get some marines to stand by aft as well. I hope we may shoot away his halliards; once his sails are down on his deck he is ours for the trouble of putting a boat over the side.’’
For more than half an hour Captain Vincent stood silent, elbow on rail, keeping his eye on the tartane, while on board the latter Peyrol steered silent and watchful but intensely conscious of the enemy ship holding on in her relentless pursuit. The narrow red band was dying out of the sky. The French coast, black against the fading light, merged into the shadows gathering in the eastern board. Citizen Scevola, somewhat soothed by the assurance that he would not die by drowning, had elected to remain quiet where he had fallen, not daring to trust himself to move on the lively deck. Michel, squatting to windward, gazed intently at Peyrol in expectation of some order at any minute. But Peyrol uttered no word and made no sign. From time to time a burst of foam flew over the tartane, or a splash of water would come aboard with a scurrying noise.
It was not till the corvette had got within a long gunshot from the tartane that Peyrol opened his mouth.
``No!’’ he burst out, loud in the wind, as if giving vent to long anxious thinking, ``No! I could not have left you behind with not even a dog for company. Devil take me if I don’t think you would not have thanked me for it either. What do you say to that, Michel?’’
A half-puzzled smile dwelt persistently on the guileless countenance of the ex-fisherman. He stated what he had always thought in respect of Peyrol’s every remark: ``I think you are right, matre.’’
``Listen then, Michel. That ship will be alongside of us in less than half an hour. As she comes up they will open on us with musketry.’’
``They will open on us . . .’’ repeated Michel, looking quite interested. ``But how do you know they will do that, matre?’’
``Because her captain has got to obey what is in my mind,’’ said Peyrol, in a tone of positive and solemn conviction. ``He will do it as sure as if I were at his car telling him what to do. He will do it because he is a first-rate seaman, but I, Michel, I am just a little bit cleverer than he.’’ He glanced over his shoulder at the Amelia rushing after the tartane with swelling sails, and raised his voice suddenly. ``He will do it because no more than half a mile ahead of us is the spot where Peyrol will die!’’
Michel did not start. He only shut his eyes for a time, and the rover continued in a lower tone:
``I may be shot through the heart at once,’’ he said: ``
and in that case you have my permission to let go the halliards if you are alive yourself. But if I live I mean to put the helm down. When I do that you will let go the foresheet to help the tartane to fly into the wind’s eye. This is my last order to you. Now go forward and fear nothing. Adieu.’’ Michel obeyed without a word.
Half a dozen of the Amelia’s marines stood ranged on the forecastle-head ready with their muskets. Captain Vincent walked into the lee waist to watch his chase. When he thought that the jibboom of the Amelia had drawn level with the stern of the tartane he waved his hat and the marines discharged their muskets. Apparently no gear was cut. Captain Vincent observed the white-headed man, who was steering, clap his hand to his left side, while he hove the tiller to leeward and brought the tartane sharply into the wind. The marines on the poop fired in their turn, all the reports merging into one. Voices were heard on the decks crying that they ``had hit the white-haired chap.’’ Captain Vincent shouted to the master:
Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) Page 488
