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The Last Hope

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> The Last Hope




The leadsman called out a depth which Loo could have told without the
help of line or lead. For he had served a long apprenticeship on these
coasts under a captain second to none in the North Sea.

He turned a little on his bed of sails under repair, at which the Captain
had been plying his needle while the weather remained clear, and glanced
over his shoulder toward the ship's dinghy towing astern. The rope that
held it was made fast round the rail a few feet away from him. The boat
itself was clumsy, shaped like a walnut, of a preposterous strength and
weight. It was fitted with a short, stiff mast and a balance lug-sail. It
floated more lightly on the water than the bigger vessel, which was laden
with coal and provender and salt for the North Atlantic fishery, and the
painter hung loose, while the dinghy, tide-borne, sidled up to stern of
its big companion like a kitten following its mother with the uncertain
steps of infancy.

The face of the water was glassy and of a yellow green. Although the scud
swept in toward the land at a fair speed, there was not enough wind to
fill the sails. Moreover, the bounty of Holland seemed inexhaustible.
There was more to come. This fog-bank lay on the water halfway across the
North Sea, and the brief winter sun having failed to disperse it, was now
sinking to the west, cold and pale.

"The water seems shallow," said Barebone to the Captain. "What would you
do if the ship went aground?"

"We should stay there, _mon bon monsieur_, until some one came to help us
at the flood tide. We should shout until they heard us."

"You might fire a gun," suggested Barebone.

"We have no gun on board, mon bon monsieur," replied the Captain, who had
long ago explained to his prisoner that there was no ill-feeling.

"It is the fortune of war," he had explained before the white cliffs of
St. Valérie had faded from sight. "I am a poor man who cannot afford to
refuse a good offer. It is a Government job, as you no doubt know without
my telling you. You would seem to have incurred the displeasure or the
distrust of some one high placed in the Government. 'Treat him well,'
they said to me. 'Give him your best, and see that he comes to no harm
unless he tries to escape. And be careful that he does not return to
France before the mackerel fishing begins.' And when we do return to
Fécamp, I have to lie to off Notre Dame de la Garde and signal to the
Douane that I have you safe. They want you out of the way. You are a
dangerous man, it seems. _Salut_!"

And the Captain raised his glass to one so distinguished by Government.
He laughed as he set his glass down on the little cabin table.

"No ill-feeling on either side," he added. "_C'est entendu_."

He made a half-movement as if to shake hands across the table and thought
better of it, remembering, perhaps, that his own palm was not innocent of
blood-money. For the rest they had been friendly enough on the voyage.
And had the "Petite Jeanne" been in danger, it is probable that Barebone
would have warned his jailer, if only in obedience to a seaman's instinct
against throwing away a good ship.

He had noted every detail, however, of the dinghy while he lay on the
deck of the "Petite Jeanne"; how the runner fitted to the mast; whether
the halliards were likely to run sweetly through the sheaves or were
knotted and would jamb. He knew the weight of the gaff and the great
tan-soddened sail to a nicety. Some dark night, he had thought, on the
Dogger, he would slip overboard and take his chance. He had never looked
for thick weather at this time of year off the Banks, so near home,
within a few hours' sail of the mouth of Farlingford River.

If a breeze would only come up from the south-east, as it almost always
does in these waters toward the evening of a still, fine day! Without
lifting his head he scanned the weather, noting that the scud was blowing
more northward now. It might only be what is known as a slant. On the
other hand, it might prove to be a true breeze, coming from the usual
quarter. The "tap-tap" of the caulker's hammer on the slip-way in Harwich
River was silent now. There must be a breeze in-shore that carried the
sound away.

The topsail of the "Petite Jeanne" filled with a jerk, and the Captain,
standing at the tiller, looked up at it. The lower sails soon took their
cue, and suddenly the slack sheets hummed taut in the breeze. The "Petite
Jeanne" answered to it at once, and the waves gurgled and laughed beneath
her counter as she moved through the water. She could sail quicker than
her dinghy: Barebone knew that. But he also knew that he could handle an
open boat as few even on the Côtes-du-Nord knew how.

If the breeze came strong, it would blow the fog-bank away, and Barebone
had need of its covert. Though there must be many English boats within
sight should the fog lift--indeed, the guardship in Harwich harbour would
be almost visible across the spit of land where Landguard Fort lies
hidden--Barebone had no intention of asking help so compromising. He had
but a queer story to tell to any in authority, and on the face of it he
must perforce appear to have run away with the dinghy of the "Petite
Jeanne."

He desired to get ashore as unobtrusively as possible. For he was not
going to stay in England. The die was cast now. Where Dormer Colville's
persuasions had failed, where the memory of that journey through Royalist
France had yet left him doubting, the incidents of the last few days had
clinched the matter once for all. Barebone was going back to France.

He moved as if to stretch his limbs and lay down once more, with his
shoulders against the rail and his elbow covering the stanchion round
which the dinghy's painter was made fast.

The proper place for the dinghy was on deck should the breeze freshen.
Barebone knew that as well as the French Captain of the "Petite Jeanne."
For seamanship is like music--it is independent of language or race.
There is only one right way and one wrong way at sea, all the world over.
The dinghy was only towing behind while the fog continued to be
impenetrable. At any moment the Captain might give the order to bring it
inboard.

At any moment Barebone might have to make a dash for the boat.

He watched the Captain, who continued to steer in silence. To drift on
the tide in a fog is a very different thing to sailing through it at ten
miles an hour on a strong breeze, and the steersman had no thought to
spare for anything but his sails. Two men were keeping the look-out in
the bows. Another--the leadsman--was standing amidships peering over the
side into the mist.

Still Barebone waited. Captain Clubbe had taught him that most difficult
art--to select with patience and a perfect judgment the right moment. The
"Petite Jeanne" was rustling through the glassy water northward toward
Farlingford.

At a word from the Captain the man who had been heaving the lead came aft
to the ship's bell and struck ten quick strokes. He waited and repeated
the warning, but no one answered. They were alone in these shallow
channels. Fortunately the man faced forward, as sailors always do by
instinct, turning his back upon the Captain and Barebone.

The painter was cast off now and, under his elbow, Barebone was slowly
hauling in. The dinghy was heavy and the "Petite Jeanne" was moving
quickly through the water. Suddenly Barebone rose to his feet, hauled in
hand over hand, and when the dinghy was near enough, leaped across two
yards of water to her gunwale.

The Captain heard the thud of his feet on the thwart, and looking back
over his shoulder saw and understood in a flash of thought. But even
then he did not understand that Loo was aught else but a landsman
half-recovered from sea-sickness. He understood it a minute later,
however, when the brown sail ran up the mast and, holding the tiller
between his knees, Barebone hauled in the sheet hand over hand and
steered a course out to sea.

He looked back over the foot of the sail and waved his hand. "_Sans
rancune!_" he shouted. "_C'est entendu!_" The Captain's own words.

The "Petite Jeanne" was already round to the wind, and the Captain was
bellowing to his crew to trim the sails. It could scarcely be a chase,
for the huge deep-sea fishing-boat could sail half as fast again as her
own dinghy. The Captain gave his instructions with all the quickness of
his race, and the men were not slow to carry them out. The safe-keeping
of the prisoner had been made of personal advantage to each member of the
crew.

The Captain hailed Barebone with winged words which need not be set down
here, and explained to him the impossibility of escape.

"How can you--a landsman," he shouted, "hope to get away from us? Come
back and it shall be as you say '_sans rancune._' Name of God! I bear
you no ill-will for making the attempt."

They were so close together that all on board the "Petite Jeanne" could
see Barebone laugh and shake his head. He knew that there was no gun on
board the fishing-boat. The lugger rushed on, sailing quicker, lying up
closer to the wind. She was within twenty yards of the little boat
now--would overhaul her in a minute.

But in an instant Barebone was round on the other tack, and the Captain
swore aloud, for he knew now that he was not dealing with a landsman. The
"Petite Jeanne" spun round almost as quickly, but not quite. Every time
that Barebone put about, the "Petite Jeanne" must perforce do the same,
and every time she lost a little in the manoeuvre. On a long tack or
running before the wind the bigger boat was immeasurably superior.
Barebone had but one chance--to make short tacks--and he knew it. The
Captain knew it also, and no landsman would have possessed the knowledge.
He was trying to run the boat down now.

Barebone might succeed in getting far enough away to be lost in the fog.
But in tacking so frequently he was liable to make a mistake. The bigger
boat was not so likely to miss stays. He passed so close to her that he
could read the figures cut on her stern-post indicating her draught of
water.

There was another chance. The "Petite Jeanne" was drawing six feet; the
dinghy could sail across a shoal covered by eighteen inches of water. But
such a shoal would be clearly visible on the surface of the water.
Besides, there was no shallow like that nearer than the Goodwins.
Barebone pressed out seaward. He knew every channel and every bank
between the Thames and Thorpeness. He kept on pressing out to sea by
short tacks. All the while he was peeping over the gunwale out of the
corner of his eye. He was near, he must be near, a bank covered by five
feet of water at low tide. A shoal of five feet is rarely visible on the
surface.

Suddenly he rose from his seat on the gunwale, and stood with the tiller
in one hand and the sheet in the other, half turning back to look at
"Petite Jeanne" towering almost over him. And as he looked, her bluff
black bows rose upward with an odd climbing movement like a horse
stepping up a bank. With a rattle of ropes and blocks she stood still.

Barebone went about again and sailed past her.

"_Sans rancune_!" he shouted. But no one heeded him, for they had other
matters to attend to. And the dinghy sailed into the veil of the mist
toward the land.




CHAPTER XXVI


RETURNED EMPTY

The breeze freshened, and, as was to be expected, blew the fog-bank away
before sunset.

Sep Marvin had been an unwilling student all day. Like many of his cloth
and generation, Parson Marvin pinned all his faith on education. "Give a
boy a good education," he said, a hundred times. "Make a gentleman of
him, and you have done your duty by him."

"Make a gentleman of him--and the world will be glad to feed and clothe
him," was the real thought in his mind, as it was in the mind of nearly
all his contemporaries. The wildest dreamer of those days never
anticipated that, in the passage of one brief generation, social
advancement should be for the shrewdly ignorant rather than for the
scholar; that it would be better for a man that his mind be stored with
knowledge of the world than the wisdom of the classics; that the
successful grocer might find a kinder welcome in a palace than the
scholar; that the manufacturer of kitchen utensils might feed with kings
and speak to them, without aspirates, between the courses.

Parson Marvin knew none of these things, however; nor suspected that the
advance of civilisation is not always progressive, but that she may take
hands with vulgarity and dance down-hill, as she does to-day. His one
scheme of life for Sep was that he should be sent to the ancient school
where field-sports are cultivated to-day and English gentlemen turned
upon the world more ignorant than any other gentlemen in the universe.
Then, of course, Sep must go to that College with which his father's life
had been so closely allied. And if it please God to call him to the
Church, and the College should remember that it had given his father a
living, and do the same by him--for that reason and no other--then, of
course, Sep would be a made man.

And the making of Sep had been in progress during the winter day that a
fog-bank came in from the North Sea and clung tenaciously to the low,
surfless coast. In the afternoon the sun broke through at last, wintry
and pale. Sep, who, by some instinct--the instinct, it is to be supposed,
of young animals--knew that he was destined to be of a generation that
should cultivate ignorance out of doors, rather than learning by the
fireside, threw aside his books and cried out that he could no longer
breathe in his father's study.

So Parson Marvin went off, alone, to visit a distant parishioner--one who
was dying by himself out on the marsh, in a cottage cut off from all the
world in a spring tide.

"Don't forget that it is high tide at five o'clock, and that there is no
moon, and that the dykes will be full. You will never find your way
across the marsh after dark," said Sep--the learned in tides and those
practical affairs of nature, which were as a closed book to the scholar.

Parson Marvin vaguely acknowledged the warning and went away, leaving Sep
to accompany Miriam on her daily errand to the simple shops in
Farlingford, which would awake to life and business now that the sea-fog
was gone. For the men of Farlingford, like nearly all seafarers, are
timorous of bad weather on shore and sit indoors during its passage,
while they treat storm and rain with a calm contempt at sea.

"Sail a-coming up the river, master," River Andrew said to Sep, who was
awaiting Miriam in the village street, and he walked on, without further
comment, spade on shoulder, toward the church-yard, where he spent a
portion of his day, without apparent effect.

So, when Miriam had done her shopping, it was only natural that they
should turn their footsteps toward the quay and the river-wall. Or was it
fate? So often is the natural nothing but the inevitable in holiday garb.

"That is no Farlingford boat," said Sep, versed in riverside knowledge,
so soon as he saw the balance-lug moving along the line of the
river-wall, half a mile below the village.

They stood watching. Few coasters were at sea in these months of wild
weather, and there was nothing moving on the quay. The moss-grown
slip-way, where "The Last Hope" had been drawn up for repair, stood gaunt
and empty, half submerged by the flowing tide. Many Farlingford men were
engaged in the winter fisheries on the Dogger, and farther north, in
Lowestoft boats. In winter, Farlingford--thrust out into the North Sea,
surrounded by marsh--is forgotten by the world.

The solitary boat came round the corner into the wider sheet of water,
locally known as Quay Reach.

"A foreigner!" cried Sep, jumping, as was his wont, from one foot to the
other with excitement. "It is like the boat that was brought up by the
tide, with a dead man in it, long ago. And that was a Belgian boat."

Miriam was looking at the boat with a sudden brightness in her eyes, a
rush of colour to her cheeks, which were round and healthy and of that
soft clear pink which marks a face swept constantly by mist and a salty
air. In flat countries, where men may see each other, unimpeded by hedge
or tree or hillock, across a space measured only by miles, the eye is
soon trained--like the sailor's eye--to see and recognise at a great
distance.

There was no mistaking the attitude of the solitary steersman of this
foreign boat stealing quietly up to Farlingford on the flood tide. It was
Loo Barebone sitting on the gunwale as he always sat, with one knee
raised on the thwart, to support his elbow, and his chin in the palm of
his hand, so that he could glance up the head of the sail or ahead,
without needing to change his position.

Sep turned and looked up at her.

"I thought you said he was never coming back," he said, reproachfully.

"So I did. I thought he was never coming back."

Sep looked at her again, and then at the boat. One never knows how much
children, and dogs--who live daily with human beings--understand.

"Your face is very red," he observed. "That comes from telling untruths."

"It comes from the cold wind," replied Miriam, with an odd, breathless
laugh.

"If we do not go home, he will be there before us," said Sep, gravely.
"He will make one tack across to the other side, and then make the mouth
of the creek."

They turned and walked, side by side, on the top of the sea-wall toward
the rectory. Their figures must have been outlined against the sky, for
any watching from the river. The girl, tall and strong, walking with the
ease that comes from health and a steadfast mind; the eager, restless boy
running and jumping by her side. Barebone must have seen them as soon as
they saw him. They were part of Farlingford, these two. He had a sudden
feeling of having been away for years, with this difference--that he came
back and found nothing changed. Whereas, in reality, he who returns after
a long absence usually finds no one awaiting him.

He did as Sep had foretold--crossing to the far side of the river, and
then gaining the mouth of the creek in one tack. Miriam and Sep had
reached the rectory garden first, and now stood waiting for him. He came
on in silence. Last time--on "The Last Hope"--he had come up the river
singing.

Sep waved his hand, and, in response, Barebone nodded his head, with one
eye peering ahead, for the breeze was fresh.

The old chain was still there, imperfectly fastened round a tottering
post at the foot of the tide-washed steps. It clinked as he made fast the
boat. Miriam had not heard the sound of it since that night, long ago,
when Loo had gone down the steps in the dark and cast off.

"I was given a passage home in a French fishing-boat, and borrowed their
dinghy to come ashore in," said Loo, as he came up the steps. He knew
that Farlingford would want some explanation, and that Sep would be proud
to give it. An explanation is never the worse for a spice of truth.

"Miriam told me you were never coming home again," answered Sep, still
nourishing that grievance.

"Well, she was wrong, and here I am!" was Loo's reply, with his old,
ready laugh. "And here is Farlingford--unchanged, and no harm done."

"Why should there be any harm done?" was Sep's prompt question.

Barebone was shaking hands with Miriam.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "Because there always is harm done, I
suppose."

Miriam was thinking that he had changed; that the man who had unmoored
his boat at these steps six months ago had departed for ever, and that
another had come back in his place. A minute later, as he turned to close
the gate that shut off the rectory garden from the river-wall, chance
ruled it that their eyes should meet for an instant, and she knew that he
had not changed; that he might, perhaps, never change so long as he
lived. She turned abruptly and led the way to the house.

Sep had a hundred questions to ask, but only a few of them were personal.
Children live in a world of their own, and are not slow to invite those
whom they like to come into it, while to the others, they shut the door
with a greater frankness than is permissible later in life.

"Father," he explained, "has gone to see old Doy, who is dying."

"Is he still dying? He will never die, I am sure; for he has been trying
to do it ever since I remember," laughed Barebone; who was interested, it
seemed, in Sep's affairs, and never noticed that Miriam was walking more
quickly than they were.

"And I am rather anxious about him," continued Sep, with the gravity that
comes of a realised responsibility. "He moons along, you know, with his
mind far away, and he doesn't know the path across the marsh a bit. He is
bound to lose his way, and it is getting dark. Suppose I shall have to go
and look for him."

"With a lantern," suggested Loo, darkly, without looking toward Miriam.

"Oh, yes!" replied Sep, with delight. "With a lantern, of course. Nobody
but a fool would go out on to the marshes after dark without a lantern.
The weed on the water makes it the same as the grass, and that old woman
who was nearly drowned last winter, you know, she walked straight in, and
thought it was dry land."

And Loo heard no more, for they were at the door; and Miriam, in the
lighted hall, was waiting for them, with all the colour gone from her
face.

"He is sure to be in in a few minutes," she said; for she had heard the
end of their talk. She could scarcely have helped hearing Loo's weighty
suggestion of a lantern, which had had the effect he must have
anticipated. Sep was already hurriedly searching for matches. It would be
difficult to dissuade him from his purpose. What boy would willingly give
up the prospect of an adventure on the marsh alone, with a bull's-eye?
Miriam tried, and tried in vain. She gained time, however, and was
listening for Marvin's footstep on the gravel all the while.

Sep found the matches--and it chanced that there was a sufficiency of oil
in his lantern. He lighted up and went away, leaving an abominable smell
of untrimmed wick behind him.

It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal was a matter of
greater importance than it is to-day. A fire burned in the dining-room,
glowing warmly on the mellow walls and gleaming furniture; but there was
no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large windows facing the sunset
sky.

Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the shining, old-fashioned
kettle to the hob. She took a chair that stood near, and sat, with her
shoulder turned toward him, looking into the fire.

"We will have tea as soon as they come in," she said, in that voice of
camaraderie which speaks of a life-long friendship between a man and a
woman--if such a friendship be possible. Is it?--who knows? "They will
not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, after having been so long
abroad. It is one of the charms of coming home, or one of the
alleviations. I don't know which. And now, tell me all that has happened
since you went away--if you care to."




CHAPTER XXVII


OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

Miriam's manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as
he could remember. He had once thought--indeed, he had made to her the
accusation--that she was always conscious of the social gulf existing
between them; that she always remembered that she was by birth and
breeding a lady, whereas he was the son of an obscure Frenchman who was
nothing but a clockmaker whose name could be read (and can to this day be
deciphered) on a hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms.

Since his change of fortune he had, as all men who rise to a great height
or sink to the depths will tell, noted a corresponding change in his
friends. Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection which peeped
out at times almost against his puritanical will seemed to have suffered
a chill. The men of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed in "The
Last Hope" with him, seemed to hold him at a distance. They nodded to him
with a brief, friendly smile, but were shy of shaking hands. The hand
which they would have held out readily enough, had he needed assistance
in misfortune, slunk hastily into a pocket. For he who climbs will lose
more friends than the ne'er-do-well. Some may account this to human
nature for righteousness and others quite the contrary: for jealousy,
like love, lies hidden in unsuspected corners.

Juliette do Gemosac had been quite different to Loo since learning his
story. Miriam alone remained unchanged. He had accused her of failing to
rise superior to arbitrary social distinctions, and now, standing behind
her in the fire-lit dining-room of the rectory, he retracted that
accusation once and for all time in his own heart, though her
justification came from a contrary direction to that from which it might
have been expected.

Miriam alone remained a friend--and nothing else, he added, bitterly, in
his own heart. And she seemed to assume that their friendship, begun in
face of social distinctions, should never have to suffer from that
burthen.

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